By Brian Nixon —
A Pulitzer-winning poet, a fine cast, beautiful scenery (Santa Fe), and a marvelous musical score. What could go wrong with the world premiere of The Righteous, a contemporary work performed by the Santa Fe Opera?
From a technical and artistic standpoint—very little. The production was stellar.
But from a Christian standpoint, The Righteous hits very close to home. This is exactly what one of its undercurrents is meant to do: shine a light on religious-political affairs in the church, the subtle hypocrisy found within some American religious institutions, a quest for control.
Three promotional keywords tell all: Faith. Power. Ambition.
As the program states, “The Righteous explores the tension between genuine faith and the fraught world of 1980s politics. Along the way, the characters’ sacred love for God becomes entwined with the complicated realities of their romantic lives.
“The opera opens with David, a preacher in the 1980s building a church in the American Southwest. He marries into a wealthy oil family and is eventually pressed to run as governor of his state, succeeding his father-in-law Paul. At the same time, he has an affair with Sheila, whose more mystical theology enraptures him, leading them both to a personal crossroads by the end of the decade.”
With music by Gregory Spears and libretto by Tracy K. Smith (Pulitzer-winning poet), the opera covered a lot of cultural ground. And as lovely as elements were within the opera, I couldn’t help but be disconcerted. Not because adultuous preachers are to blame, but because the American Christian landscape has produced so many “Paul’s” (an ambitious oil magnet, using the Christian population to get votes) and “David’s” (a preacher turned politician, leaving his wife and church for more power and prestige). The end result of the marriage between the Christian faith and political ambition leaves some churches bruised and ineffective in their broader witness.
In an interview with Spears and Smith, Gregory Spears mentions that the piece is about “spirituality.” Smith states that The Righteous arose from an “Interest in history, not just as a remote or discrete field of study, but as something that we live with, and something that is disconcerting so…that bumps up against us…waiting for us to resolve…”
Smith continues that The Righteous is a story about “self-finding, and self-making, and God is a vehicle for that for many people.” To exemplify this, Smith mentions the character, David, whose first love was God, but political ambition changes David, a shift in perspective occurs, an undermining, a compromise, a disruption (all words Smith used in the interview).
Think of those words: undermining, compromise, and disruption.
It seems to me that when the church takes its focus off a Person (Jesus) and place it on a political cause or politician (as many within Christian Nationalism do), we are left with the words expressed above—destabilizing the church’s focus, a concession to culture, and disturbance of the church’s life and mission.
Though the church should be the first to notice such conflicts, we don’t always see them. So, it takes art to do so. And this is where The Righteous succeeds brilliantly: It holds a mirror up to some in the American church, saying, “Here, look at you, this is what you look like and are doing.”
My only question is: How shall the church respond? Do we look at the mirror and say, “Oh, well?” Or do we change the appearance, starting with our internal character, moving to our outer countenance?
Maybe the ending choral number in the opera states it best, Smith has the singers lament, “Life is long and wisdom is slow…O, Lord, what did I mistake you for?” It appears that confusing power with the pursuit of a Person (Jesus) is the mistake the church makes.
Hard-hitting themes aside, The Righteous is unique in other ways. The Santa Fe newspaper, Pasatiempo, writes, The Righteous “is distinctive in at least three important ways: it’s not an adaptation of a famous book or film but rather has an original libretto by a major figure from the literary world; it has several identifiable, substantial arias for the main characters; and the aria texts are based on a historic poetic form, the villanelle.”
So, if the trenchant theme of The Righteous doesn’t appeal to you, then maybe the plentitude of beauty will: a thoughtful musical score, poetic libretto, and an elegant and simple set design. It’s all there. And for Christians who take seriously God’s truth, beauty, and goodness, The Righteous delivers in many ways, a modern Biblical tale of faith, fame, and the fallout of infidelity (to God and people), asking “O, Lord, what did I mistake for you?”
