Review: ‘The Righteous’ Brings Stirring Prayer to Santa Fe Opera

We’ve had “The Shining” and “Cold Mountain,” “The Hours” and “Dead Man Walking,” and works based on the lives of Steve Jobs, Malcolm X and Frida Kahlo. “Lincoln in the Bardo” and “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay” are coming soon.

Opera audiences, traditionalists even before the pandemic, have ventured back warier than ever about buying tickets for anything other than the standards. So as companies try to present contemporary pieces alongside “Aida” and “La Bohème,” they bank on familiar titles and subjects.

Many classic operas were adaptations; “Bohème,” for example, was inspired by a collection of stories. But lately the results have tended to feel less like great art than like bending over backward to coax a cautious public. Something special comes from being truly original: It’s no coincidence that perhaps the best opera of our time, Kaija Saariaho’s “Innocence” (2021), was that rarity, a brand-new story.

So is “The Righteous,” commissioned by Santa Fe Opera from the composer Gregory Spears and the poet Tracy K. Smith. Spears and Smith also created from scratch their first full-length collaboration, “Castor and Patience” (2022). They deserve great credit for this. These days it’s remarkable to sit at a premiere and be able to think, with admiration, “Here are imaginations at work” instead of “I’d rather be watching the movie.”

Taking place over a few weeks, “Castor and Patience” was an intimate family drama — though one with larger societal implications. While a family is also at the center of “The Righteous,” which opened on July 13, the new opera is in every way a more sprawling piece, stretching from 1979 through the early 1990s, with a large cast and chorus and booming climaxes to match its impassioned lyricism.

At its core is a man’s progress from youthful idealism to profound moral compromise. The main character, David, is a talented, devoted preacher who’s grown up close to a wealthy, well-connected oil family in the American Southwest. He marries the family’s daughter and, as his scrappy ministry grows in size and influence, he’s tempted more and more by the prospect of political power. As he climbs, he leaves betrayals both personal and ideological in his wake.