THE ROMANCE THAT NEVER ENDS By Ivan Barnett

Patina Model re-enacting Madame Butterfly for photo shoot.  Image, Peter Ogilvie

“Opera is love, hate, death. It is very important. With a little makeup, you can become another person. The opera is something fake, that, little by little, on stage, it become true.”—Luciano Pavarotti

Opera is the great art form that never stops stirring my soul.  It is passion amplified. It’s storytelling stretched to the edge of human emotion—then lifted higher by voice. Opera doesn’t just ask you to watch or listen. It asks you to feel. And for me, that’s where my romance with the art form began and has stayed. 

I didn’t grow up with opera. It wasn’t in the air of my Pennsylvania upbringing. But somewhere along the line, perhaps the first time I saw a live performance that cracked open my chest with its scale, sound, and sincerity, I was hooked. Opera is emotional architecture. It builds and demolishes in the same breath.

When I came to Santa Fe over three decades ago, I knew I had landed somewhere sacred. This wasn’t just an art town. This was a place that embraced intensity and drama with open arms. Here, art wasn’t supposed to whisper. It could roar. And nowhere is that more beautifully evident than at the Santa Fe Opera—a jewel in the desert, suspended between mountain and sky.

Ana Maria Martinez.  Photo by Peter Ogilvie

The Santa Fe Opera is not only one of the most innovative opera companies in the world, but it is also, without exaggeration, one of the most magical performance venues ever conceived. Open to the elements, its stage breathes with the desert air. The lighting is real, sunset and moonlight included. The sound soars into the night like it’s always belonged there. Whether you’re watching a classic like Carmen or a daring premiere, what you experience in that amphitheater is something beyond performance. It’s opera as communion.

It wasn’t long before this enchantment began to influence my creative planning at Patina Gallery. Between 2016 and 2022, I co-curated and produced several exhibitions that drew directly from opera—not just as subject matter but as emotional terrain. These were not subtle gestures. These were full-throated, theatrical celebrations of what opera is: drama, beauty, agony, redemption, ornamentation, and transformation.

Steve Jobs, The Tension of Opposites.  Photo by Doug Menuez

The most vivid of these exhibitions, for me, remains The Tension of Opposites. Inspired in part by the mythic nature of opera, and even more so by the dualities it wrestles with.  I shaped this show around contrast: light and shadow, passion and restraint, boldness and delicacy. Jewelry became the aria, each piece, a voice. The gallery became a kind of modern-day opera house.

What thrilled me most was watching how artists responded to the invitation to “go operatic.” They did not hold back. The gallery walls and drawers were filled with work that seemed to sing, dramatic neck-pieces that carried the scale of a Wagner finale, intricate brooches like whispered duets, and color palettes that made Puccini blush. The jewelry was alive with theater, and it was no accident.

Opera, like fine jewelry, demands discipline and fire in equal measure. There’s nothing careless about it. Nothing was generic. Both are labors of love, craft turned expression, turned presence. That’s what I wanted to celebrate.

And as the exhibitions grew more immersive, so too did my relationships with the artists, not just those creating visual work, but those whose voices carried opera into the world.

Susan Graham, Mezzo Soprano.  Photo by Peter Ogilvie.

It was during this period that I had the true honor of befriending Susan Graham—the legendary American mezzo-soprano whose voice has filled opera houses from the Met to Paris, and who, thankfully, considers Santa Fe one of her creative homes. Susan embodies elegance, strength, and intelligence, both on and off stage. She doesn’t just perform opera—she interprets it, lives it. Her ability to inhabit roles with warmth and truth has made her one of the most beloved voices of our time. But more than that, she’s become a cherished part of my own story, someone who understands that the arts are not silos, but ecosystems.

Another unforgettable connection came through the extraordinary Angel Blue, the radiant American soprano whose star continues to rise with dazzling power. Angel’s voice is a force of nature—capable of both shattering glass and breaking hearts. But what’s most compelling about Angel is her authenticity. She sings with her whole being, and when she steps into a role—be it Mimì in La Bohème or Violetta in La Traviata—you don’t just hear it. You feel it in your bones. Meeting her was like meeting the future of opera: fearless, grounded, and radiant. I am grateful to call her a friend.

Both Susan and Angel reflect everything I love about this art form: its generosity, its vulnerability, its complexity. In my work with Serious Play today, consulting and coaching artists, I often find myself returning to the lessons opera has taught me. Not just about performance, but about life.

Angel Blue, Soprano.  Photo by Dario Acosta

Opera is a mirror. It reflects how we love, how we fail, how we rise again. It asks us to be brave, to be bold, and most of all, to be human. That’s what I try to draw out of the creatives I work with. I ask them: what’s your “aria?” What’s the role only you can play?

Here in Santa Fe, we’re lucky. We’re surrounded by art forms that echo across time and cultures. We have adobe and abstraction, landscape and lyricism. But opera holds a special place because it doesn’t whisper or mumble or equivocate. It declares, dares, and elevates. And for that, I will always be in awe.

Opera is not just a night at the theater. It is an architecture of feeling. It builds us up. It tears us open. And then it hands us back to ourselves, changed.

I will always be grateful that this city, this community, and this opera house, this desert cathedral of sound, welcomed me into the story.

“When the curtain rises, the only thing that matters is the truth.”
—Maria Callas

© 2025, by Ivan Barnett.

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