Opera - Under the stars, a programme of adventurous spirit shines, writes Michael Portillo 2005 Season Santa Fe Opera, New Mexico

The Santa Fe opera house has no walls. A warm breeze travels across the scrub from the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and fans the stalls. Through gaps in the stage scenery you can see the blackness of the desert night, with maybe just a twinkling light or two from the direction of Los Alamos. During Turandot, as the characters sing of the moon, it rises obediently, on cue, to the left of the orchestra pit.

Santa Fe is an even more extraor-dinary phenomenon than Glyndebourne. In this remote location the house manages to sell 76,000 seats each summer, more than half of them to residents of New Mexico. Santa Fe prides itself on mounting challenging works. This year it presents a Peter Sellars production of the first opera, Ainadamar, by the Argentinian composer Osvaldo Golijov. In it the actress Margarita Xirgu (Dawn Upshaw) recalls meeting Federico GarcIa Lorca and taking the title role in his play Mariana Pineda, about a martyred 19th-century political activist. Lorca's own fate was to echo Pineda's.

But there are popular operas, too, in the Santa Fe repertory. This year's production of Turandot has the wildest costumes I have seen outside a nightclub. "Over-the-top" is an insufficient description of the elaborate architectural structures that Ping, Pang and Pong, and the ice princess herself, bear precariously on their heads. Costume changes are frequent: in her final scene Turandot appears in an outrageous outfit for no more than two minutes. It is no surprise that the designer Willa Kim has won several awards for shows on Broadway.

Jennifer Wilson (who recently sang Gutrune in the Lyric Opera of Chicago's production of Wagner's Gotterdammerung) is an extremely powerful and effective Turandot. The brilliant acoustics are a surprise in a large house that is open to the winds. Wilson projects hugely from the back of the stage, from the top of what appears to be a Perspex football terrace, part of the set designed by the opera's director, Douglas Fitch.

Carl Tanner is more than adequate as the tenor hero, Calaf. Patricia Racette is a popular figure in Santa Fe, having sung Amelia in the 2004 production of Verdi's Simon Boccanegra and the title role in Janacek's Katya Kabanova the previous year. This year she tackles Liu, the slave girl whose love for Calaf leads her to sacrifice her life, enabling him to marry the princess (though why he would want to do that beats me). Racette's lyrical and moving performance does not disappoint. With her slight frame, she seems genuinely vulnerable during the torture scene, in which the cruel Turandot attempts to extract the secret of Calaf's name.

The crisp chorus is an achievement, given the huge demands made by the composer. In the pit, the young musical director Alan Gilbert and the opera festival orchestra do full justice to Puccini's magnificent score.

The musicians are also in great form under the baton of Bernard Labadie in a rare production of Mozart's juvenile work Lucio Silla, loosely based on the life of the ruthless Lucius Cornelius Sulla, who became a Roman consul in 88BC. The young composer had not yet developed his magnificent sense of drama when this piece appeared in 1772. The plot inches forward mainly by way of very long and difficult solo arias. But even as a teenager, Mozart wrote music that was divine.

The first-act duet between the lovers Cecilio (a banished senator sung by the mezzo-soprano Susan Graham) and Giunia (the soprano Celena Shafer) is gloriously performed. Gregory Kunde has the title role, Anna Christy is his sister Celia, and the male soprano Michael Maniaci sings Cecilio's friend Cinna. These five carry the burden of a long opera between them, but they showed no strain during an evening of unusually sweet singing.

The British influence at Santa Fe is strong. Richard Gaddes, the general director, is English and the house brought in Jonathan Kent (of Almeida and Donmar fame) to direct Lucio Silla. I cannot fathom his production. Both male and female leads are encumbered with 18th-century costumes, which, though beautiful, are two metres wide. Meanwhile, four young men in modern dress, wearing ties and blindfolds, perform a dumbshow among the singers.

Many believe that the triumph of the Santa Fe season is Britten's Peter Grimes. With Alan Gilbert conducting, it stars Anthony Dean Griffey as the fisherman and the English baritone Alan Opie as Captain Balstrode in a production by the Scottish director Paul Curran.

Santa Fe is said to be addictive, which is an expensive proposition if you live in England. It combines high-quality work with an adventurous spirit in an exceptional setting. I shall certainly want to go again. Next year the New Mexico desert will provide Thomas Ades's Tempest with its American premiere, with Kent directing. An inviting prospect indeed.

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