Out West Arts: Performance at the end of the world

Nina Stemme and Ian Storey Photo: Cory Weaver/SFO 2011

Sunday brought the end of San Francisco Opera’s first complete performance of Wanger’s Ring cycle this summer and its first as a company in a dozen years. I don’t have much to add about my comments on director Francesca Zambello’s staging of Götterdämmerung beyond my comments from last week. The second performance of the cycle's concluding opera had changed little outside of Ian Storey’s performance as Siegfried, which crumpled vocally midway through Act II. General Director David Gockley came on stage before Act III to announce Storey was vocally indisposed, but had been treated and would sing the rest of the performance. He carried on with a bit more unsteadiness than before, but he did finish with good energy. Later, Storey was visibly moved to the point of tears as he embraced conductor Donald Runnicles at the curtain call. It was clearly a tough afternoon for him and everyone. There was a sense of exhilarated exhaustion on stage and in the audience when things concluded on Sunday.

The entire cycle appeared to be a huge success judging by the audiences’ reaction. Nina Stemme generated the biggest ovation of all and there were few people I spoke with who were not moved to using superlatives to describe her performance. Already a known Wagnerian soprano, Stemme changed the current landscape for Brünnhildes last week. She completed the tightly packed 6-day performance schedule with a sound a little more humanly worn than it was in the Götterdämmerung premiere two weeks ago. She was a shade harsh in just one or two spots and missed the big concluding note of the Act I duet with Siegfried. But no matter. She’s still unparalleled right now in this role.

The crowd was a perpetually excited one. I saw a number of notables including Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra's own Jeffrey Kahane and more than a few national journalists lured out with the promise of seeing Stemme while in town for the meeting of the Music Critics Association of North America. Looking at some of the commentary that has appeared under the bylines of the heaviest hitters in classical music writing, it's surprising how little it takes to impress many of them theatrically. There continues to be this strange preoccupation on the need for a sense of humanity in this tale without many actual humans in it. It's as if Narcissus has become the end all and be all of arts criticism with work only rising to the level of importance when we recognize ourselves in it. Ironically, the most "human" moments of Zambello's Ring were categorically the weakest such as the drawn out dull Act III of Siegfried which had mawkish interactions between both Wotan and Erda as well as between Siegfried and Brünnhilde. The calculus is always too obvious and easy: the characters are rolling around on top of one another, ergo they must be in love.

And while the dead tree media was still flexing what’s left of its once prestigious muscles for a company whose management can’t seem to find enough unions to point its fingers at these days, the house was filled with the loving souls of San Francisco’s diverse online opera and music blog community. And really that was one of the best parts for me. I got to see many of the folks whose thoughts and writing I most admire and respect while in town, including Lisa Hirsch, Axel Feldheim, sfmike, Patrick Vaz, John Marcher, and the ever-present Opera Tattler. You should follow them all if you don't already.

Labels: SF Opera 10/11

Nina Stemme and Jay Hunter Morris Photo: Cory Weaver/SFO 2011

It’s hard to know what to make of San Francisco Opera’s new Siegfried, which had its second performance as part of the company’s new Francesca Zambello-directed Ring cycle on Friday. This is a particularly thorny opera to begin with and arguably the one that has least withstood the ravages of time. Zambello’s meandering focus throughout the cycle as a whole and convoluted thematic interests continue to blunt the overall emotional effect of the proceedings. However, her vision of Siegfried as an opera in its own right is the most intriguing yet of the four operas. And with a cast including Nina Stemme and a really pleasing Jay Hunter Morris in the title role, it actually is one of the better Siegfrieds I’ve personally seen.

From the moment the ever-present video starts to roll on the opening curtain, one gets the sense that the “American” part of this Ring cycle has been long forgotten. The images are filled with an environment under stress including deforestation and polluted air. All of Michael Yeargan’s sets in the first two acts are dominated by post-industrial dystopias complete with smoke stacks, derelict buildings, and garbage everywhere. By the time our youngest and most naïve of heroes is born, the status quo of Wotan’s world is about destruction of the environment and urban blight. Act I takes place outside of a beaten up trailer home surrounded by smithy tools and garbage. Even more intriguing, however, is the reversal of standard expectations in Act II. Here, Fafner’s cave is now an abandoned factory warehouse. Wotan, as the Wanderer, arrives to fine Alberich cooking up Molotov cocktails among the abandon car parts. When our titular hero arrives he is welcomed by the Forest Bird who is now an actual woman on a catwalk above unable to speak Siegfried’s language until that fateful drop of blood is spilled. Initially she gestures toward him as if speaking sign language and when she does talk, their relationship takes on colors beyond man's relationship to bird. When Fafner finally presents himself, it’s inside of a giant futuristic war vehicle like some operatic transformer. It’s all very fascinating to watch and an interesting twist. In the midst of the scene most associated with the beauty of the natural world in all of Wagner’s operas, Zambello has plunked in its place the most dissociated, mechanistic and industrial of imagery. The point is well taken, though, and I felt that it worked exceedingly well despite some oddly added touches like Alberich lighting the fuse on one of his bombs only to extinguish it immediately for no apparent reason and the Forest Bird madly signaling Siegfried not to set the now gasoline-soaked bodies of Fafner and Mime aflame as was his original impulse. Again what this actions has to do with anything is cloudy, but the Act as a whole is more engaging that what you may be accustomed to. (For those of you counting at home, that now brings gasoline-soaking for immolation scenes to a total of two in this cycle.)

Jay Hunter Morris Photo: Cory Weaver/SFO 2011

By the time the evening rolls into Act III, however, things start to slide off the rails. The opening interaction between the Wanderer and Erda is played as an (ex-)lovers’ quarrel completing with some fairly aggressive posturing. And when Zambello finally gets the action to the mountaintop, there’s little left to say outside of the cliché gestures she prefers as signs of human interaction. The good news is that unlike Robert Lepage who is increasingly demonstrating to New York audiences that he has little guidance for his actors on stage, Zambello wants her characters to interact and directs them on how to do so. This is not stand and deliver performance, but it is something you've seen before.

For character development and interaction, the audience continues to have to turn to the uniformly strong cast to fill in Zambello's gaps. Jay Hunter Morris plays the title role. He was a last minute replacement for the originally announced Ian Storey who withdrew from the Siegfried performances while continuing in Götterdämmerung. Morris has covered the role elsewhere, and his time in the limelight in San Francisco was remarkably good. He is even in tone with plenty of stamina throughout. He is a bit light of voice for the part overall and can be drowned out at times by the orchestra but he makes up for it with confidence and clear, flowing vocal lines. He treats Siegfried less as a mindless adolescent, and more as a clueless everyday guy. He’s physically appealing as well, and his chemistry with the evening’s Brünnhilde, Nina Stemme, is strong.

Stemme is again excellent and she delivers a Brünnhilde who is the ultimate morning person, bright eyed and radiant even after years of sleep. David Cangelosi sings Mime peppered with comic touches including cartwheels and odd little dances. Mark Delavan’s Wanderer was hit and miss. His Act II confrontation with Alberich was rich and dark compared to his interactions with Mime and Erda. Stacey Tappan, who has made a name playing bird roles here and in L.A. (where she sang both Wagner's Forest Bird and the Raven in Die Vögel), was a lovely Forest Bird. L.A. audiences will also recognize the Erda, Ronnita Miller, who lends vocal nobility to her role, even when the stage directions she is given work against her doing so. The orchestra and conductor Donald Runnicles continue to be wildly popular with the audience. Which I think is true for the overall production. This Siegfried does take off at moments and while these successes often come at the expense of ignoring the context of the prior two operas in the cycle, there is also a free-wheeling quality to the show that lends excitement when mixed with such good principal vocalists.

Labels: SF Opera 10/11

Nina Stemme and Mark Delavan Photo: Cory Weaver/SFO 2011

San Francisco Opera’s new production of Die Walküre directed by Francesca Zambello returned on Wednesday as part of the company’s first complete Ring cycle of the summer. It was a welcome return, but one that came with incredibly high expectations in that its try-out run in the summer of 2010 was one of the company’s best-regarded productions in the last several years. It really had something to please just about any opera-goer, from paratrooper Valkyries to the superlative talents of Nina Stemme and Eva-Maria Westbroek. The fact that this now integrated Die Walküre revival fails to generate quite that much heat is somewhat of a foregone conclusion. But it comes pretty close. At the center of it all is the jaw-dropping performance of Nina Stemme as Brünnhilde. I still have trouble wrapping my head around it completely. So much live classical music and opera performance suffers in the age of easy comparisons with readily available benchmarks of bygone years just a download away. To hear something like Nina Stemme’s effortless bright and ringing performance is one of those rarities that turns people into opera fanatics. Well it's happening right now in the Bay area, and I suspect soon elsewhere in many other cities to come if Stemme continues to be interested in singing the part. This is a great one.

Brandon Jovanovich and Anja Kampe Photo: Cory Weaver/SFO 2011

Of course, Mark Delavan is also returning, and he had a particularly good night on Wednesday. He’s a very emotionally expressive Wotan and on this evening he gave the best performance I’ve heard from him so far in the run with a much bigger sound and more color than at other times. He appears to be growing consistently in the part over time and is standing his own against what I would consider to be a landmark performance. The rest of the roles have been significantly recast from before. Anja Kampe, who sang Sieglinde in Los Angeles during the stand alone premiere of Achim Freyer’s Die Walküre now appears in San Francisco in the same role for the first two cycles. She’s strong and steely-voice and fits in well with the cast. Opposite her was Brandon Jovanovich taking over for Christopher Ventris from the prior outing. Jovanovich has become a hot property over the last two seasons as a late-bloomer. After years of singing in all kinds of venues, he’s suddenly on the most prestigious opera stages everywhere, singing just about everything from Don José and Pinkerton to roles in Il Tabarro and Die Vögel. Now he’s suddenly Siegmund and making his role debut. It still feels like a performance in progress. Jovanovich is tall and very good looking which doesn’t hurt and he easily has the strength to pull this off. But on Wednesday, he struggled with pitch in a couple spots in Act I and his German diction reinforced the notion that this was a decidedly “American” Ring. But during the close of Act II, things had settled and he was stronger, surer and more in the game. Elizabeth Bishop’s Fricka was assured without being cloying or melodramatic. Anyone who inserts themselves between this particular Wotan and Brünnhilde is asking for trouble, and she came out smelling like a rose.

Zambello’s early 20th-century robber baron capitalism staging is probably the most directly derivative of the Shaw/Chereau school of Wagner. It already seems a little worn in spots. The rural cottage with its abundance of rifles and animal heads on the wall is a pointed and modern view as is the abandoned freeway underpass in the second part of Act II. But the mountain top of Act III is mighty dull after awhile. Zambello still insists on the most cliché stage directions when she wants to communicate what’s “human.” I suppose such a low-brow goal deserves the kind of meaningful embraces its characters always have right on cue to the music. Zambello’s insistence on telling you how to feel when it’s already obvious in so many other ways can be stifling at times. The paratrooper Valkyires seemed less of a hit this time around, too, though it was not clear if that was simply due to many in the audience being familiar with them at this point.

Any review of the evening would be remiss to overlook the great players of the San Francisco Opera orchestra and conductor Donald Runnicles, who sounded to be breathing easier on night two. Runnicles has been long scheduled to conduct this Ring, and I for one hope it is not the end of his appearances with the company after this Ring has come and gone. But on Wednesday, his absence seemed a thing far in the distance with such an alive performance. The cycle continues on Friday with Siegfried.

Labels: SF Opera 10/11

Gordon Hawkins, Stacey Tappan, Lauren McNeese, and Renée Tatum Photo: Cory Weaver/SFO 2011

I’m not one to get worked up about the whole booing thing. I don’t typically care whether or not people boo at the opera. I suppose if enough people do it at a particular performance, I find it rather exciting on some level in that everyone is worked up about something, or at least pretending to be worked up about something. But I have to admit on Tuesday when San Francisco Opera opened up its full performances of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen with Das Rheingold, I was somewhat put off by a sole and quite loud booer during the curtain calls. The targets were specific vocal performers – Melissa Citro who sang the role of Freia and Gordon Hawkins who sang Alberich. What bothered me is how random and strange it was that they were singled out for scorn. Sure, I wasn’t blown away by either performance and would agree Hawkins left a lot to be desired both vocally and otherwise, but did it really rise to the level of such a public spectacle of distaste? I mean, neither was a crime against music, and, frankly, mediocrity hardly seems like an excuse to boo someone. And booing Freia is like chewing out the busboy at an expensive restaurant for not removing your finished plate quickly enough. It’s Freia, people. All she’s got to do (at least in Francesca Zambello’s world) is throw her hands around and lie on the ground while bags of gold are piled on top of her. For heaven’s sake, Zambello’s production is still the worst thing about this Rheingold and even that doesn’t come close to deserving booing.

Das Rheingold is the oldest of the four productions Zambello created for this Ring and the one most closely tied to the American history subtext originally floated for this co-production with the Washington National Opera where it received its premiere. The costumes reference late 19th- and early 20th-century American upper classes for the gods with Alberich and the Nibelungen approximating laborers of the period for a dash of class warfare. And while the video imagery for the production appears to be markedly upgraded, the live action of Das Rheingold looked more cheap and barren to me this time around compared to its prior Summer 2008 outing. The opening scene with Alberich and the Rheinmaidens was accompanied by dramatic video of raging waters and mist that was eye catching. But simultaneously, the live action was bathed in so much stage fog that the vocalists frequently disappeared below the haze unintentionally creating the effect that they were not waving, but drowning. The slaying of Fasolt by Fafner looks unintentionally comical—as it always does—and as usual this was abetted by the struggle to make the vocalists resemble giants in some way. There are still overly choreographed bits as well, as when all of the gods grab onto Donner's croquet mallet-cum-hammer in turn to the beats in the music. One wants to change the channel until one realizes that this, in fact, is not television. But all this being said, there are some moments that work well and the minimalism of the final scenes can be very striking.

What I've written thus far may make the show seem less exciting than it was. The opening night was the most excited and full I've seen an opera audience here in San Francisco for a while. And in many ways their excitement was justified considering the overall quality of the performance. Donald Runnicles and the orchestra started out with what sounded to me like a bit of nerves, but soon settled into a robust and well paced performance. The star of the show onstage was tenor Stefan Margita as Loge. Just as he was in 2008, Margita crafted an equally menacing and sympathetic Loge and cut through the huge orchestra like the greatest of Wagnerians. I found myself wishing he had more to sing as the evening went on he was so enjoyable to listen to. Mark Delavan sang Wotan with clarity and much more emotion than many of his contemporaries who prefer to go the stoic king of the gods route. Elizabeth Bishop was a bright and clear Fricka, without being overly cloying. David Cangelosi has returned with his completely satisfying and well sung Mime for the cycles here as well. Overall the evening works and works quite well. It's engaging, and most importantly it makes you excited to come back for the next installment of the story, which is really what Das Rheingold should do. Even in its weakest and most predictable moments the staging kept moving and the two-and-a-half hours flies by as if it were far shorter. And that is nothing to boo about.

Labels: SF Opera 10/11

Nina Stemme, Andrea Silvestrelli, Ian Storey, and cast Photo: Cory Weaver/SFO 2011

After years in the making and a late-term abortion in Washington, D.C., Francesca Zambello’s production of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen reached its conclusion in San Francisco with the opening performance of Götterdämmerung on Sunday. (For those of you who may have forgotten, Washington National Opera was the original venue for this production that only made it through the end of Siegfried before the economy and the company pulled the plug with 2 concert performances of the finale.) Perhaps more than Zambello’s Ring or Wanger’s Ring, or for that matter San Francisco Opera’s Ring or America’s Ring, what has arrived in California is above all else Nina Stemme’s Ring. The company appears to be acutely aware of this. Following a superb performance on her part Sunday, Stemme took a solo bow on the empty stage and was forcibly put forward by Zambello for a third one after her bows with the rest of the cast. The company knows when they have a great thing, and Stemme is it. The following cycles in San Francisco will mark her first appearances as Brünnhilde in complete Ring performances and it is already clear that she is on top of the current heap. No one currently singing before the public can touch the ease and clarity of her top notes in this role and the power with which she manages them. The beauty and effortlessness of the vocal performance was jaw dropping at times. I’ll admit that I wasn’t as certain about the middle and lower parts of her range on this particular Götterdämmerung Brünnhilde afternoon, where the power seemed to drop away at times. But as a total artistic performance, she leaves everyone around I can think of in the dust.

To be honest, the rest of the afternoon could have been horrific and it would have been irrelevant compared to Stemme’s work, but it wasn’t. The much loved and missed maestro, Donald Runnicles was back in the pit for an assured and often lovely performance. I personally could have used a little more dynamic range overall, but the pacing was first rate. Perhaps the biggest vocal surprise of the show was tenor Ian Storey as Siegfried. He’s proven to be a somewhat controversial Tristan, and when he backed out of the Siegfried performances he had originally committed to last month due to inadequate preparation time stemming from a prior illness, eyebrows were raised. He delivers in Götterdämmerung without strain or warble anywhere. His voice is lighter than one might expect, with more a head than chest quality, but also has an athletic ease. He was well paired with Stemme, and they had good stage chemistry, even in some of his more buffoonish moments on stage. There were many other notable performances including the large voiced Andrea Silvestrelli as Hagen and Melissa Citro as a vamped-up, man-hungry Gutrune. (More on that later, and for those who don't want any specific spoilers, this may be a good place to stop reading.)

The biggest disappointment in the whole show is Francesca Zambello’s decidedly middle-brow modern-dress production. It’s hard to judge how close or far the production strays from being successful, in part, because Zambello has so many ideological irons in the fire it's not really certain what she is driving at here. It certainly is not the culmination of an "American" Ring as billed by WNO, a fact that Zambello acknowledges in her own program note. She states, "When we began the production in 2005 in Wahington, D.C., the seat of political power, we focused on the misuse of it. In San Francisco, where Californians have a keen consciousness of nature and the environment, we placed more emphasis on despoilation." If by this she means we know garbage when we see it, she's right on that count and the whiff coming off this show is mighty suspicious.

At times, this Götterdämmerung comes off as an amalgamation of every directorial idea floated for a Ring cycle in the last 30 years. Zambello’s vision is a standard post-Chereau approach and is simultaneously presented as a number of things including an environmental ring and a feminist ring and others. Wagner's opera are certainly big enough for holding a whole world's worth of ideas. But in the home stretch Zambello's vision is muddled and indecisive. Götterdämmerung now takes place in an identifiable near future on the grounds of an oil refinery. The three Norns appear after the introduction dressed in surgical outfits and busily laying cable. They are behind a scrim where digital circuitry blinks and glows, only to be later replaced with five hours of ominous billowing black and gray clouds. The sets are uniformly static and filled with modernist furnishings Hollywood has misappropriated for decades from their utopian origins in order to signify menace and evil. (See Los Angeles Plays Itself for footnotes.) A sexed up Gutrune and leather clad brother lounge around a massive steel frame atrium in leopard skin bar stools and curvy white sofas. All of this is surrounded by massive amounts of conduit designed to carry who knows what.

Although initially visually attractive, much of the opera visually grows cold quickly. In Act II, Zambello brings on a group of black-clad cowering women following the male chorus during Brünnhilde's arrival in the Gibichung Hall. They skulk around suggesting the Gibichungs have systematically engrained a physically oppressive misogyny as a cornerstone of their culture. The women claw at the comparatively shiny and pretty Brünnhilde like a sort of space rock until she spots her now brainwashed husband. All of this comes home to roost in Act III, which opens in the dry riverbed of the Rhine now strewn with mountains of plastic bottles and other garbage. The filthy Rheinmaidens are busy filling garbage bags with trash until they come across Siegfried in his bright orange hunting outfit and carrying his semi-automatic assault rifle and Nothung. The staging of the subsequent murder is clunky and awkward with Siegfried raising his arm from a prone position when he is returned in the final scene.

Of course, the big finale is when all hell breaks loose ideologically. After Siegfried's body is returned and Brünnhilde arrives, all the men, including Hagen leave the stage leaving Gutrune and the Rheinmaidens as the sole witnesses to her entire climactic aria. When she calls for the funeral pyre to be built, the village women again appear with garbage bags they drop at the back of the stage before the Rheinmaidens douse it with gasoline. Siegfried's body is dumped and Brünnhilde discusses the ring directly with the Rheinmaidens. Hagen returns suddenly for the operas final line only to be tackled by the Rheinmaidens who kill him by suffocating him with one of their bright yellow garbage bags. This bizarre collision of feminist and environmental frames is followed by a rain storm, a flood of water, and the men returning while the photographed faces of the real-life veterans used in Die Walküre fall from the sky. And just in case you weren't confused enough, the old-favorite of a small child in a white gown bringing a tree to plant at the foot of the stage as the gray sky clears to blue wraps up the whole show. And thus ends Wagner's four day music drama on the origins of Arbor Day.

No, I'm not making this up. And to be honest as much as I appreciated the effort, the big finish was more disappointing than anything else. I'm all for unusual challenging productions. Heck, I don't typically care if they are "faithful" to anything in particular or even if they completely make sense. But I'm also for committing to an idea or vision and sticking with it. Zambello's take on the Ring smacks of intellectual desperation in the end, or at least a decision to change horses mid-race that doesn't pay off. Oddly though, all of this doesn't really amount to much when you consider the musical qualities of the show. And missing Nina Stemme would be on the order of the gravest error - like failing to give up a cursed ring. Full cycles kick off in San Francisco next week so stick around for further reports.

Labels: SF Opera 10/11

This is a bit of the unparalleled operatic greatness I'm partaking of tonight. If you haven't, you should do whatever you can to see San Francisco Opera's current production of The Makropulos Case before it ends its run on Sunday. This year I'm thankful for Karita Mattila and Leos Janacek. Happy Thanksgiving.

Labels: SF Opera 10/11

Miro Dvorsky and Karita Mattila Photo: Cory Weaver/SF Opera 2010

One of the joys of opera is that any single performance can strive for perfection, but only rarely is it achieved due to a very long list of artistic variables. When it does happen, it is an absolute thrill. So I'm happy to report that the new production of Leoš Janáček’s The Makropulos Case that opened in San Francisco this week is about as close as one can hope to get to operatic perfection. It’s a dense tale of a woman who had something close to perpetual youth forced upon her only to discover over three hundred years later that maybe immortality isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Yet despite this weighty material and a fair amount of depravity, The Makropulos Case makes for one riveting evening in the theater.

The starring role of Emilia Marty, an opera singer of many more years than she would readily admit, is sung by soprano Karita Mattila with such searing clarity and ease that it cuts right through you like a cold North wind. Mattila's beautiful voice is only that much more remarkable considering the high level of physicality she puts into this part, frequently moving about the stage in an almost athletic way. Mattila is taking on this Janáček role for the first time after hugely successful turns as both Jenufa and Kátya Kabanová. With an Emilia Marty this significant under her belt, it can now be said she has done more for the 20th-century operatic masterpieces of Leoš Janáček than anyone since Elisabeth Söderström. Of course, San Francisco has a history of excellent Janáček productions due in no small part to the work of Sir Charles Mackerras who was the company’s principal guest conductor from 1993 to 1999 and to whose memory this run of The Makropulos Case is dedicated. I for one can not think of a finer tribute.

Mattila is surrounded by a wonderful cast including Gerd Grochowski as Baron Prus and Miro Dvorsky as Albert Gregor. But her best companions in this tour de force are director Olivier Tambosi and conductor Jiří Bělohlávek. Tambosi, who has directed Mattila in Janáček operas with great success in the past has placed the action amongst a set of large curved walls that rotate, revealing the various interiors described in the libretto, including the massive law office of the first Act. When the curtain first rises, these partitions rapidly spin around one another highlighting only the large glowing clock faces that dominate the wall of each set piece. The color scheme is largely balck and white with a gray scale gradient dominating the walls and set decoration. Soon Mattila enters the picture looking every bit like a young Kim Novac. When she sings her final aria she is draped in a floor-length white gown and her short blond hair is set off in the intense glow of white lighting from above. It is a striking image like so many in this production.

Jiří Bělohlávek is known for his interpretations of Janáček and he is the clear heir to the Mackerras legacy. The orchestra played beautifully in a score that calls for their musical contribution to almost act as an entirely separate character in the drama. Much like the staging, everything in the pit worked beautifully well with the other elements of the production. The show leaves you exhilarated and is undoubtedly one of the best productions seen on the San Francisco stage in the last five years. There are four more performances of The Makropulos Case through November 28. If I could, I’d see every one of them. You should make an effort to at least see one.

Labels: SF Opera 10/11

Ainhoa Arteta and Plácido Domingo Photo: Cory Weaver/SF Opera 2010

I’m in San Francisco this weekend for a number of reasons. None of them are to hear Rufus Wainwright perform his new Five Shakespeare Sonnets with the San Francisco Symphony. Instead, I felt my time was much better spent catching Placido Domingo in Alfano’s Cyrano de Bergerac. I know, this is old news. In fact on Friday’s closing performance I did feel a bit like I was the last opera fan who hasn’t seen the world’s most well-known opera performer in this role he's taken everywhere in recent years. And I can confirm that virtually everything that you’ve heard about Cyrano is true. Alfano’s opera in and of itself is rather dreadful. The libretto, by Henri Cain, is fine as is Rostand’s original source material. But the music is sadly insubstantial, never really building to anything or unifying the action on stage.

But the opera has had its champions and you could not ask for a bigger one than Placido Domingo who is making his first San Francisco Opera appearance in over a decade. He is the show here. And what a show it is. I could go on about the high quality of his vocal performance, but instead lets talk about his masterful acting skills. He is a performer who knows how to draw the crowd into him using more than just his voice. He fills the stage with his presence even when he is playing a character that often struggles to stay on the romantic sidelines. Watching him made me think how lucky we are in Los Angeles where Domingo’s role as General Director of the Los Angeles Opera has brought him to the stage there in so many roles over the last decades. Getting bodies in seats is a priority for every opera company right now and the power of Domingo in this respect is on full display in San Francisco. A little-known opera with no stars would mean empty seats anywhere right now, and yet the entire run has been nearly sold-out on Domingo's name alone. And watching him as Cyrano de Bergerac makes that all seem perfectly logical.

Interestingly, the other elements in this production were all quite good. Petrika Ionesco’s direction and set design were detailed, grand and lively. Imported from Paris’ Théatre du Chatelet, it’s a pointed reminder that a true-to-period production does not need to be static or boring. There’s tons of movement and a huge cast who are managed impressively throughout. The rest of the cast sounded solid even up against an opera superstar. Ainhoa Arteta sang the part of Roxane and Chrstian by Thiago Arancam, both of who made the most of sometimes meager-sounding vocal lines. Patrick Fournillier conducted an orchestra that was committed and clean sounding in music that was typically neither. On balance though, I’ve seen far worse star-vehicles (Fleming in Rossini’s Armida anyone?) And while I don’t know how many more Cyranos Domingo may or may not have on his schedule, wherever he appears, I’m sure there will be long lines of people still wanting to hear him.

Labels: SF Opera 10/11

Marcello Giordani and Micaela Carosi Photo: Corey Weaver/SFO 2010

It’s hard to take San Francisco Opera’s current production of Verdi’s Aida ,which opened their season earlier this month, seriously. I saw it on Sunday and couldn’t believe that it had no more artistic aspirations than say Ernest Goes to Camp. It borders on kitsch, but doesn’t really have the humor to pull it off. Garish would be the other word that comes to mind, but that’s more of a compliment than I would intend. The six-year-old behind me seemed to enjoy it, as did many in the Sunday matinee, retiree-populated crowd. So maybe the best way to think of this show is as a tale of war, murder, and suicide that speaks to the six-year-old in all of us.

Dolora Zajick, Marcello Giordani and Christian Van Horn Photo: Corey Weaver/SFO 2010

And in another way, this Aida directed by Jo Davies with neon-colored production design from Zandra Rhodes, made me question my career choice. One might surmise from this that all it takes to direct an opera is to dress up some singers, line them up at the foot of the stage, and let them have at it. Or to put it another way, this Aida makes doing nothing look easy. Now reportedly the idea behind the production is to refocus attention on the central love triangle. Fine, a great idea even. But I for one would not have taken that away from this particular performance. The interaction between principals is more often than not stiff and just as likely to happen with either involved party standing at the opposite end of the stage facing the audience. The only moment of life in the entire dead three hours was a turquoise, life-sized elephant puppet Radames arrives on in Act II that elicited applause from the audience. If that is your kind of thing, then this Technicolor travesty may be the opera you’re looking for. And given that San Francisco Opera is putting on a mammoth 12 performances, you should have plenty of chance to go.

On the bright side, I’ve heard far worse sounding Aidas. Conductor Nicola Luisotti avoids the orchestra descending into self-parody and things moved along nicely. Dolora Zajick was the vocal star of the show delivering her patented Amneris. Given that she hadn’t been burdened with acting direction, it gave her wide berth to work her vocal magic au naturel. Marcello Girordani sang Radames with good energy and some urgency. He was stable enough throughout his range and appeared heroic. Micaela Carosi was the Aida and had by far lost the costume lottery for the evening – mid-riff, real or implied, is a delicate thing on the opera stage. She was strong and mostly in sync with the orchestra, but I really didn’t find her all that convincing. Then there are the bare-chested supernumeraries in the giant gold lamé hoop skirts. I admired the over-the-top look, but it was mind-boggling how it was tied to a show so short on excitement or originality. Aida keeps going and going with performances right through the start of December.

Labels: SF Opera 10/11

Alice Coote and Ramon Vargas in Werther Photo: Corey Weaver/SFO 2010

Shame on you San Francisco. Saturday night at the War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco Opera put on a first-rate, interesting, and very well sung performance of Werther and you could have thrown a brick in the rear orchestra with no risk of hitting anyone. What? You actually want a season of not much else besides Figaro, Butterfly, and Aida? Oh wait, you’ve already got that. Well, get ready for more if you all can’t support a show as good as this Werther is. Of course, considering the casting, the excellent singing is a given. Ramón Vargas has made Werther a calling-card role and he has more than a few splendid romantic turns in this. He seemed particularly unbound and thoroughly believable. His Charlotte is a radiant Alice Coote. You may recall that Coote was a replacement after the originally announced Elīna Garanča backed-out when she reportedly got a better offer elsewhere invoking a tersely worded missive from David Gockley. Well, the company may not have got its glitzy international opera vixen, but it did get something much better, a touching, warm and beautifully sung Charlotte. Give me Alice
Coote any day for this role (and any number of others). I was also quite fond of Heidi Stober’s Sophie and Brian Mulligan’s Albert. Emmanuel Villaume conducted a richly textured and well-paced performance from the orchestra.

Alice Coote and Ramon Vargas in Werther Photo: Corey Weaver/SFO 2010

Although all the great singing in the world won’t save a bad production, Coote and Vargas have lucked into a very thought-provoking new one from Francisco Negrin. The opera’s action plays out in a single set comprising of a small grove of trees encased in metal around their trunks and a mountain of boxes to the left side of them representing the homestead of Charlotte’s parents and later that of her own family. All of this is surrounded by a black lacquer enclosure lined with white lights. The stage is elevated roughly six feet. The black backdrop opens to reveal a variety of projections including blocks of homes and later splatters of blood. The raised stage floor is entered primarily through a trap to the right of the grove and all of this is foregrounded by a small room representing Werther’s own quarters. At times he lays in bed amidst images of Charlotte including a rear wall that becomes a video screen for projected images of her.

Negrin emphasizes that Werther's affections for Charlotte are not in any way reciprocated until Act III. Negrin keeps Werther and Charlotte physically separate during their big Act III duet, stalling their kiss until Werther is about to die in the final act. In fact, Negrin portrays the Act III duet as a dream of Charlotte's. As she lays in bed next to her husband Albert, she recalls Werther's letters and discovers her love for him. The net effect of this maneuver is to Tristan-ize the opera providing no consummation of their love until Werther’s death is imminent. In the same vein, Negrin uses two Werther doubles in Act IV. After he commits suicide, Charlotte goes to the side of one of the fallen doppel-Werthers as Vargas watches events from the sidelines, singing the final duet as if a ghost observing his own life slipping away. It’s all very engaging and produces a quite touching ending. Admittedly, this interpretation may not be to everyone's taste; however, it is a very attractive and an often thoughtful one that deserves a much bigger audience than the one it had on Saturday.

Labels: SF Opera 10/11