The Pueblo Opera Cultural Council

The first monsoon of the Santa Fe summer season lands about an hour before Pueblo Opera Program Youth Night. The heavy rain plasters the fancy up-dos and bright satins, polished shoes and immaculate suits of the young folk turning up for what could be their first opera. 

There’s no requirement to ‘get all gussied-up’, Renee Royal of San Ildefonso Pueblo explains, but that doesn’t stop most of the audience. Renee and I are sitting in the cantina for the pre-show dinner, along with five other members of the Pueblo Opera Cultural Council: Renee’s husband Leon, Marita Swazo Hinds from Tesuque Pueblo, Toni Herrera from Santa Clara Pueblo, and Mina and Jordan Harvier, also from Santa Clara. Known as POCC, the Pueblo Opera Cultural Council formalised after Santa Fe Opera’s 2018 production of Doctor Atomic. The Pueblo Opera Program itself (POP) has been running for over fifty years.

I’m especially interested in POP as I haven’t found another example of classical music and First Nations engagement that’s been running as long. To celebrate POP’s 50th birthday in 2023, the Santa Fe Opera commissioned a documentary: ‘The Pueblo Opera Program: And What Could Be Next’, directed by Santa Clara Pueblo film maker Beverly R. Singer, and produced by the members of the POCC.

‘What could be next?’ is a live question for the Council, who are keen to see the program develop further. Mina points out that the Pueblo Opera Program has historically centred on kids. Parents can attend, but ‘if you don’t have a kid to bring along, you don’t get to go’. Enter the POP ‘Date Night’ - dinner and an opera for adults only. And yes, friends count as dates.

If the dinner is anything like the buffet we’ve just helped ourselves to, you can sign me up for date night. The food is generous and delicious, the menu collaboratively curated by the POCC and Santa Fe Opera, as generous hospitality and a communal meal are key elements of the reciprocal relationships developed between the company and the Pueblo nations.
Renee’s young granddaughter drifts over for introductions, in a fuchsia party dress and colourful clips in her hair. Her grandfather Leon asks me if I intend to take any music into Australia’s First Nations communities. I tell him it’s part of what I’m planning, and I’m curious to hear how POP succeeded, because as many arts organisations in Australia have learned, free tickets don’t automatically equal accessibility. People need to feel comfortable walking through the door of a concert or rehearsal, especially if they’ve never been before.

​Renee says human contact, and information in hard copy, is essential. She puts information and sign-up sheets at her seniors’ centre; community centres are also good. The next step is being physically present to answer questions immediately and in person (just like the above, ‘do we have to get gussied up’? Answer: only as much as you want to).

And then, there’s Doctor Atomic. Everyone on the POCC has their own Doctor Atomic story. It’s clear the production is still both a source of great pride, and a point of deep learning, that’s set a very high benchmark for future engagement. Jordan explains the director Peter Sellars chose to include a Pueblo Native American corn dance during the opera because he wanted to show the Pueblo peoples’ resilience: that despite everything they and their land had been through, they’re still here, dancing, just as they had for centuries before. Mina agrees on the symbolism: “It doesn’t matter what the chaos [around us] is - we’re here to bring the balance”.

The Doctor Atomic corn dance was created especially for that performance. While each Pueblo has a corn dance, they differ in detail - music, traditional dress, choreography - so it was better to start over than try to amalgamate. This also helped address community sensitivities about displaying cultural dances publicly. Another key factor was that the opera’s choreographer, Yup’ik woman Emily Johnson, asked Marita to organise a meeting with the Governor of Tesuque Pueblo to let him know her plans and gain his permission to work on Tesuque land.

After dinner, we pack into Stieren Hall for the pre-show entertainment - local arts educator Oliver Prezant’s incredible  3, 2, 1, Opera! A pre-concert talk with a difference, Oliver has commandeered the skills of the Santa Fe Opera costume department to fit out enough kids to represent each major role in Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro. Not skimping on the overture, which he has the whole hall singing, Oliver whirls through the plot. The kids model the characters with varying degrees of success and hilarity. Dr Bartolo’s performance is Oscar-worthy, but his scene is stolen when Susannah and Figaro refuse to hold hands (ew!), holding sleeve cuffs instead. I’m impressed to find Oliver teaching the kids how to sing key phrases from arias in Italian (‘it’s like Spanish, right?’ he encourages them). The whole event is funny, smart, and most importantly, full of active, intelligent participation.

The following dress rehearsal for Figaro is spectacular. After the rain, New Mexico puts on a ravishing sunset, the liquid gold of the sun reflecting in the glittering bronze clockwork set. While some of the littlest kids and their families leave at intermission, there is plenty of audience remaining to laugh at the jokes until the show ends at midnight.

We see most of the Pueblo Opera Cultural Council again before the La Boheme dress rehearsal the following night. It’s particularly fun to sit with Toni’s daughter, and see photos of her pets, including a wolf spider (a kid after my own heart). It’s the last time I see Jordan and Mina - they’re off on a road trip to see Metallica with their son. It was his idea, and he’s saved up to buy them all the tickets. So I ask them a final question: if you were me, and wanting to build a relationship with First Nations communities, where would you begin? 

The answer’s immediate - start with the community’s elders and reach out to their leadership of each respected Pueblo who have their own Governor and Tribal Council. In an Australian context, that would mean starting with each nation’s Elders. They say I should explain what I want to do, and make sure nothing I’m planning is disrespectful, or unintentionally appropriating cultural content.

I remember this comment when, a few days later, I’m at a Preview Dinner for Figaro’s opening night. I’m seated next to another POCC member, Claudene Martinez, and her grandson Damien, both from San Ildefonso Pueblo. Claudene is telling me about the shock Pueblo folk felt at their first sight of Janáček’s opera Cunning Little Vixen. On seeing singers costumed as animals, including foxes and deer, it took a while for the Native American audience members to decide that the characters were an original feature of the opera, and not a reference to Native culture. ‘That was one opera where everyone stayed to the end!’ Claudene says; they wanted to figure out what they were seeing. As a half-Czech, such a confusion would never have occurred to me; I’m surprised and then slightly embarrassed to realise it.

Like a number of young people I’ve met, Claudene’s grandson Damien is a third-generation part of the Pueblo Opera Program. Figaro will be his second opera; he found his first opera ‘pretty interesting’. The fact this program is now generational is, to me, one of its most impressive elements. Something is working.

Yet there’s still a desire to do more. Along with Doctor Atomic, there’s one thing every Council member raises with me. To my surprise, a major element in the ‘what could be next’ for POCC is a cultural exchange to Australia. Sydney Opera House is on their bucket list, but so is meeting Indigenous Australian artists and communities. 

So let’s make it happen, Sydney - and make sure the hospitality is up to standard, because these folk set great store by feeding a person, body and soul.