Death, like all those tourists packing every corner of Santa Fe in its high season, happily takes a holiday under the blazing sun of this glorious desert.

Death has pervaded the stage of Santa Fe Opera, where Osvaldo Golijov's "Ainadamar," a sad opera about the fascist murder of the poet and playwright Federico Garc�a Lorca during the Spanish Civil War, has just gotten sadder. And more violent. And more rhapsodic. And more relevant. In it, death is now encapsulated. In that encapsulation comes the promise of rebirth. And in the rebirth, a failed opera, reconceived and rewritten, was reborn here as well Saturday night.