OUTDOOR OPERA : ‘THE NOSE’ BY SHOSTAKOVICH IN SANTA FE

Opera in marvelously anachronistic Santa Fe has always been something of a paradox.

Ever since the summer of ‘57, John Crosby’s sturdy cultural mirage in the middle of the New Mexico desert has tended to deal kindly with anything difficult and/or esoteric. At the same time, the company has tended to bumble and stumble when it confronted the familiar, presumably easier, challenges of the bread-and-butter repertory.

This season would seem to be no exception.

Monday night, with furious lightning streaking the sky and the benign lights of Los Alamos blinking in the distance, the al fresco opera house seven miles out of town ground out some Puccini.

The vehicle was “Madama Butterfly.” Crosby conducted ponderously. Bruce Donnell directed a conventional production that fused nice old costumes and flimsy new sets. Nothing went seriously wrong. Nothing went memorably right.

Tuesday night, Santa Fe mauled Mozart. The vehicle was “Le Nozze di Figaro.” In this revival of the broad, brusque and ugly edition conceived in 1985 by Goran Jarvefelt and conducted by George Manahan, elegance, poignance and wit were consistently sacrificed to the gods of cutesy klutzery.

On Wednesday, however, things looked and sounded drastically different. The vehicle this time was Shostakovich’s “The Nose” a provocative, rarely staged gray comedy written in 1928 and first performed in America--by the Santa Fe Opera, of course--in 1965.

“The Nose” isn’t likely to supplant “Carmen” in the hearts and minds of the unwashed masses outside this mecca. It represents a weird conglomeration of satirical whimsy, socio-political parody, stubborn parlando and genuine orchestral adventure.

The surface-sober text, based on a bizarre story by Gogol, concerns a distracted and distraught Russian major who happens to lose his nose. Repeat: Lose his nose.

In vain, the bereft hero seeks help from the police, from government officials, from a newspaper editor, even from a doctor. The ultimate dismissal comes, in Merle and Deena Puffer’s spiffy translation, from the mean medico. “No nose,” he intones with basso pomposity, “is good nose.”

Meanwhile, the flighty nasal protrusion finds its mysterious and independent way into a besotted barber’s sandwich. Then it tries to flee the country disguised as a councilor of state. Finally, grudgingly, possibly in desperation, it returns to its original facial habitat.

The deep and dark meaning of all this is not instantly apparent to the innocent observer. Still, the piquant proceedings are always amusing, sometimes even stimulating.

Lou Galterio, the resourceful stage director, seems to have added a few narrative wrinkles involving the ominous force of the police state. In the process, he thumbs his nose, as it were, at the libretto and the folksy idiom. No harm done.

Although his vocal lines seldom rise beyond stylized rhythmic conversation, Shostakovich manipulated verbal caricature deftly. He also took daring advantage of unexpected range extremes. The tenors and sopranos must sing very, very high; the contraltos and basses must sing very, very low.

While the agitated actors on the stage rant, chirp, squeal and grumble, the progressive musicians in the pit do wild and wondrous things of their own, most of them complex and percussive. The brilliantly orchestrated confusion is invariably clever. The Santa Fe forces make the most of it.

Edo de Waart conducts with taut, razzle-dazzle fervor. Given the elaborate and atmospheric designs of Robert Perdciola, Galterio sustains the image of a seedy storybook Russia gone awry. The action moves with speed and point.

The cast, from lofty principal to lowly chorister, flirts with perfection. Alan Titus, his blowzy, mustachioed cheeks puffed up to accommodate the illusion of an absent proboscis, brings just the right touch of tragic bluster to the baritonal agonies of the major. In his quest for nasal salvation, he receives crusty support from a large, impeccably indoctrinated cast that includes Gimi Beni, Anthony Laciura, Sally Wolf, Keith Buhl, James Ramlet, Martha Jane Howe, James Schwisow, Gweneth Dean, Mary Ellen Landon and James Doing.

Undaunted by the challenge of novelty and primitive obscurity, the audience filled the house and cheered as if Shostakovich were Puccini. Sophistication lives 7,000 feet above sea level on the edge of an arroyo in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.