Marriage of Figaro, San Francisco Opera, Oct. 10 2010

Das Rheingold yesterday, followed immediately by an author/book-signing event by Lotfi Mansouri, former general director of San Francisco Opera, followed today by San Francisco Opera's performance of The Marriage of Figaro. Fall opera season is busy, but boy is it fun!

The production, by John Copley, dates back to 1986; this is the sixth season in which it has been seen. The sets are lovely, traditional, and in no need of being updated. In Act 1 we see the room that the Count has given to Figaro and Susanna, with two-story tall golden-brown walls and a wooden staircase leading up to a balcony that provides access to the Count's and Countess's bedrooms. There is a bedframe, an armoire, and a dressing-table—and of course a large wooden chair in which Cherubino will hide. Act 2, in the Countess's bedroom, has the same golden-brown walls, and a large bed. The bedroom door is backstage center, the closet is to the right, and the window is to the left. (In a nice bit of stagecraft, Susanna will open the curtains and the sun will stream in.) Act 3 is the one incongruous setting, in a courtyard. There are iron gates to the left, the castle behind (with perfectly rendered Spanish clay tiles), a Moorish design on the wall, and a writing desk at the side of the courtyard. Act 4, in the garden, is dominated by tall Lombardy poplars; there are a few steps leading up to a higher level of the garden. The pavilion is offstage.

Our cast:
Figaro: Kostas Smoriginas
Susanna: Heidi Stober
Countess Almaviva: Ellie Dehn
Cherubino: Michèle Losier
Count Almaviva: Trevor Scheunemann
Marcellina: Catherine Cook
Don Basilio: Greg Fedderly
Doctor Bartolo: Dale Travis
Don Curzio: Robert MacNeil
Barbarina: Sara Gartland
Conductor: Nicola Luisotti
(Luca Pisaroni, Danielle de Niese, Lucas Meacham, and John Del Carlo had sung in earlier performances in this run.) What was notable about this performance was the stage action—how many ideas were due to the singers, and how many to the director, is one the great imponderables, but there were any number of nice touches. For example, when Cherubino enters the Countess's bedroom in Act 2, Luisotti played the first bar of “Non piu andrai” on the harpsichord. When Cherubino enters the garden in Act 4, he (she) is humming the same tune. When the Count knocks on the Countess's door, Cherubino's first impulse is to hide under the bedcovers, echoing his hiding under Susanna's dress (in this production, a patterned sheet) in Act 1. In Act 3, after Figaro has discovered that Marcellina is his mother, and after Susanna slaps him, he goes and buries his head in his mother's lap just like a little boy. This last bit is something that is funny once, but probably not nearly as effective if seen a second time, like the tank in Laurent Pelly's production of Daughter of the Regiment.

Vocally, Ellie Dehn's Countess was the standout, with her two big arias "Porgi amor" and "Dove sono" being particularly effective. Don Basilio projected well; the remaining singers did not. They seemed to be young voices not accustomed to filling a space the size of the San Francisco Opera House. Overall, the performance was a success, with more audience laughter than is typical, and leading up to a moving “Perdono, perdono” finale in the garden. A beta.

Das Rheingold, Metropolitan Opera HD Live, Oct. 9 2010

The Metropolitan Opera has launched their new Ring production, directed by Robert Lepage, whose primary center of attention is the 45-ton "machine" or "device" that occupies the rear portion of the stage. Imagine a left-to-right axle that supports 24 2-foot wide planks or seesaws, 2 inches apart from each other, each of which can be rotated independently about the axle. The planks are actually obtuse isosceles triangles, with the long side maybe 20 feet long and the short sides maybe 11 feet long. When the triangles are all lined up with their long sides facing the audience, images can be projected on it (and with other configurations as well).

Scene 1 had one of the short sides nearly level, with the other short side sloping down to the stage floor at an angle that permitted Alberich to climb up the slope to press his advances on the Rhinemaidens above, and permitted him to slide down to stage level. The slope must have been similar to that of a playground slide. On this slope were projected images of gold and silver coins, which slid down in response to the actions of the singers. In scene 2, two sets of six planks were held level, providing platforms for the giants to stand on—a novel alternative to platform shoes or stagehands carrying the singers piggyback or gigantic puppets. Other planks formed a slope down to the stage, permitting Freia (or her stagehand double) to enter sliding head-first on her belly to just below stage level, from whence Freia herself climbed up to the stage. Donner and Froh entered in the same manner. The descent to Nibelheim was handled by rotating each plank a few degrees more than the preceding one, forming a twisted staircase; doubles suspended by wires walked from one side to the other, starting off with their bodies parallel to the stage floor and gradually righting themselves. Scene 3 didn't make much use of the planks, and the ascent from Nibelheim was the inverse of the descent. In Scene 4 the giants were again supported on their platforms, and Freia was laid out in a hammock-like net while various golden shields were placed on top of her to hide her from the giants' eyes—not particularly effective. The best use of the machine was made for the Rainbow Bridge: six planks in the center were positioned so that they could be climbed, the remaining planks were made vertical, while rainbow lighting was projected on the machine and above it. We did not see a Valhalla.

By and large I felt that the machine was well used to convey the action, but nevertheless it called too much attention to itself—“how will the machine be configured next?” The machine left a relatively modest space in front of it for most of the action to take place, 10 or 15 feet. The costumes were in keeping with a “conventional” as opposed to “radical” Ring productions: Wotan, Froh, and Donner were dressed as mythical heroes, with plastic breastplates to make them appear muscular; Loge was dressed in an outfit made up of strips of cloth; the giants looked like burly Norsemen. Fricka and Freia wore simple gowns, though Fricka had some sort of brooch just below her bosom that pulsed with light on occasion.

The cast was as follows:
Freia: Wendy Bryn Harmer
Fricka: Stephanie Blythe
Erda: Patricia Bardon
Loge: Richard Croft
Mime: Gerhard Siegel
Wotan: Bryn Terfel
Alberich: Eric Owens
Fasolt: Franz-Josef Selig
Fafner: Hans-Peter König
plus three Rheinmaidens not credited in the Met's handout. James Levine was at the helm, back from several months of recuperation from medical problems. Of the singers, I was particularly struck by Eric Owens as Alberich. He sang with a snarl in his voice that fitted the part perfectly. My only reservation about him was that he smiled too much. The orchestra under Levine played magnificently and the total effect was very powerful—matching the 2005 Seattle Rheingold as “best Rheingold I've ever seen.” I definitely want to get to the encore broadcast.

See also the Met's page, “A New Ring for the Met”