Opera: The Hellish Drive

For days, out-of-state cars had been rolling into Santa Fe, N. Mex. Director John Crosby of the Santa Fe Opera had been preparing for them for three years while he played "the chess game of getting my men into position on the board."

As he worked through the logistical gambits of mounting the U.S. premiere of Alban Berg's atonal, macabre, erotic opera Lulu, Crosby collected a power ful king and queen: Conductor Robert Craft, a devotee of Berg, and brilliant and beautiful Coloratura Soprano Joan Carroll, who had sung the leading role 39 times before, yet never in English. But...

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