Live Entertainment in Santa Fe

The Lensic Performing Arts Center is Santa Fe's crown jewel of cultural programming — a 820-seat restored 1931 Moorish-Spanish Renaissance theater in downtown that presents world-class concerts, dance, theater, and film for the state's arts capital. Santa Fe's extraordinary concentration of art galleries, opera (the famed Santa Fe Opera), and cultural tourism creates a discerning arts audience that the Lensic serves with programming comparable to venues in cities ten times its size.

Lensic Performing Arts Center is Santa Fe's most magnificent historic venue — a 1931 Moorish-Spanish Colonial theater beautifully restored to present Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival concerts, Opera previews, and major touring performances. Its extraordinary architecture, combining Moorish arches with Spanish Colonial details in the world's largest adobe city, creates the most atmospheric performance venue in the American Southwest.

Santa Fe Opera is one of the world's most extraordinary opera experiences — an open-air hilltop theater where world-class opera performances are presented with the Jemez Mountains and summer thunderstorms as a backdrop. Founded in 1957, the Santa Fe Opera has premiered over 100 operas and presents summer festivals featuring internationally renowned singers and conductors in the most spectacular natural setting of any major opera house in the world.

Santa Fe Opera is one of the world's most celebrated opera companies — an open-air theater 7,000 feet above sea level in the Jemez Mountains presenting summer operas under a partial roof with views of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and extraordinary desert sunsets. The combination of world-class casting, spectacular natural staging, and the unique open-air design that allows summer storms to become part of the theatrical experience creates the most distinctive opera experience in the Western Hemisphere.

Santa Fe Symphony Orchestra serves one of America's most culturally sophisticated small cities — presenting outstanding orchestral music to a Santa Fe community of unusual artistic education and engagement. Santa Fe's remarkable concentration of internationally traveled, culturally sophisticated residents (attracted by the extraordinary arts scene, the climate, and the natural beauty of northern New Mexico) creates a symphony audience of unusual knowledge and appreciation.