Masatomo Oto's costumes for TEA: A Mirror of SoulMostly good, except for sometimes OK. There’s a sword fight, drums made out of water, and a beautiful woman who sings upside-down. With assets like that, what could possibly go wrong with Tea: A Mirror of Soul, the Tan Dun opera which made its American premiere at the Santa Fe Opera for the 2008 season?

Photo: Anne Dickinson HayungaD Numbers only imagined they were in Madrid Midnight in Madrid, and the net effect of New Mexico’s smoking ban means that standing outside, under a blistering moon, is a smoke-choked thing, while inside there’s barely a whiff of cigarettes. But the floorboards in the Mine Shaft Tavern are tweaking hard enough to exhume billows of mid-century coal and blackened ember dust anyway. D Numbers is on the stage, driving toward the far end of the set, sucking time out of the center of the room with a staccato, dork-funk mobius of bright notes, crank riffs and drum rodeo that keeps rolling on like a tide that forgot to turn.