Once in a while there comes along an opera in an “updated” production that does not offend, but works. This Faust was one of those. Perhaps playing off of John Adams’s Dr. Atomic, producer Des McAnuff set the opera in the laboratory of Dr. Faust, a physicist with the Manhattan Project. The constant in every scene was a pair of industrial-grade steel balconies and railings and spiral staircase, one to the left and one to the right. In the center of the back wall was a huge opening, as tall as the Met stage permits, in back of which various images were projected. A small number of props were placed in the center of the stage for each scene.
In Act 1, the props included (large) models of Little Boy and Fat Man suspended in the air, and one of the projected images was of the Atomic Bomb Dome. There were a number of industrial-grade tables in Dr. Faust’s laboratory, covered by sheer white cloths; when Mephistopheles arrived, the cloths were whisked/blown away. At one point we saw Marguerite as a lab assistant working with a complex piece of laboratory equipment that looked something like a lathe.
For Act 2 the laboratory tables with equipment were removed and the crowd brought in other tables for the tavern scene. Respecting the libretto, Valentin did brandish his sword at Mephistopheles. Instead of making a cross of the pieces of the broken sword, a staging device that I have previously seen used to great effect, Valentin threatened Mephistopheles with the medallion that Marguerite had given him, and a few members of the chorus constructed a large “cross” by hoisting one table on its short side, with another table above it, and a third table positioned horizontally in front of the second to form the crossbar.
In Act 3 there were just a couple of low benches; Siebel put his bouquet on one of them and Faust placed the jewel box beneath the other one. There was also a foot-powered Singer sewing machine at which Marguerite worked.
Act 4 was most notable for presenting a Marguerite about 9 months pregnant; at the end of the church scene, she disappeared briefly in the middle of the chorus and then emerged no longer pregnant but holding a small bundle, which she promptly stuffed into the laboratory’s wash basin (the same wash basin from which Siebel had gotten his holy water in Act 3).
Act 5 opened with a scene that, in my experience, is even more rarely presented than the Wolf’s Crag scene in Lucia di Lammermoor—the Walpurgis Night scene. A number of ghouls with ghastly makeup were seated on both sides of a long table which held a Little Boy with its top hatch removed and its “entrails” spilling out onto the table. In the final scene, Marguerite was locked in a 10x10 steel jail cell, which Faust opened with the key that Mephistopheles has provided. When the chorus sang “She is saved!” she ascended to heaven by walking up four flights of industrial-grade steel stairs at the back of the stage, while Mephistopheles and Faust sank down through a trap door. At the very end, Faust reappeared, dressed again as the old man that he was at the beginning, and drank the beaker of poison that he had poured near the beginning of Act 1, then collapsed on the floor—as though the events of the opera had been a dream.
Our cast:
Faust: Jonas Kaufmann
Méphistophélès: René Pape
Marguerite: Marina Poplavskaya
Valentin: Russell Braun
Siébel: Michèle Losier
Conductor: Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Production: Des McAnuff
René Pape, with his luscious bass voice, made a commanding Mephistopheles, and seemed to get the most applause at curtain call time. Jonas Kaufmann was a superb Faust; he included a diminuendo at the end of Act 2 that I missed but my neighbors marveled at. Marina Poplavskaya’s Marguerite seemed a bit tentative. Russell Braun’s (Valentin) death scene was masterful, but the music gave no break for applause. The orchestra under Yannick Nézet-Séguin performed magnificently. The encore performance is Wednesday, Jan. 11; attend if you can. It’s not an alpha, but at least a very solid beta.
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Saturday, December 3, 2011
Rodelinda, Metropolitan Opera HD Live, Dec. 3 2011
Rodelinda is the oldest opera yet presented in the Met HD series. Iphegenie in Tauride dates back to 1779, but Rodelinda, regina de’ Longobardi (to give it its full name) was premiered in 1725. Some of us noted resemblances between Rodelinda and The Messiah; the latter was composed in 1741 and first performed in 1742. Self-borrowings were not uncommon at that time.
The first act opened in a large, spare bedroom, with Rodelinda chained by one arm to her very simple bed. She was soon released by Grimoaldo, usurper of her husband’s throne. Thereafter the scenes shifted between a courtyard and a library. The most prominent feature of the courtyard was a large obelisk; to the right there was a small stable for four to six horses. The library was magnificent: two stories, with balcony, and with hundreds of large books behind glass doors. Even with Met HD close-up camera work, it was not apparent that the books had titles. My guess is that each book was actually a papier-mâché block painted with a large stripe for the title area and thinner stripes for the binding cords. Nevertheless it was very effective. For one scene the courtyard was raised out of sight so that we could see the prison in which Bertarido (the deposed king) was being incarcerated.
Our cast:
Rodelinda: Renée Fleming
Eduige: Stephanie Blythe
Bertarido: Andreas Scholl (countertenor)
Unulfo: Iestyn Davies (countertenor)
Grimoaldo: Joseph Kaiser
Garibaldo: Shenyang
Conductor: Harry Bicket
Production: Stephen Wadsworth
Renée Fleming sang well; I certainly liked her performance here better than her Lucrezia Borgia, recently seen at San Francisco Opera. But I preferred Stephanie Blythe’s singing, if not her acting—certain advantages accrue to a person of Fleming’s size rather than Blythe’s. Of the two countertenors, I much preferred the Unulfo of Iestyn Davies. (Interesting sidelight: in the intermission interview, both countertenors demonstrated their normal speaking voices; Andreas Scholl could pitch his speaking voice rather low. Neither had missed puberty.) Shenyang contributed a mellifluous bass voice in his relatively minor role.
The authenticity and detail of Stephen Wadsworth’s sets were entirely in keeping with the “authenticity” and detail of his sets for Der Ring des Nibelungen in Seattle, currently my gold standard for Ring productions. (Start making plans for the 2013 Seattle Ring!) The music was pleasant, though not particularly memorable or cathartic. A beta.
The first act opened in a large, spare bedroom, with Rodelinda chained by one arm to her very simple bed. She was soon released by Grimoaldo, usurper of her husband’s throne. Thereafter the scenes shifted between a courtyard and a library. The most prominent feature of the courtyard was a large obelisk; to the right there was a small stable for four to six horses. The library was magnificent: two stories, with balcony, and with hundreds of large books behind glass doors. Even with Met HD close-up camera work, it was not apparent that the books had titles. My guess is that each book was actually a papier-mâché block painted with a large stripe for the title area and thinner stripes for the binding cords. Nevertheless it was very effective. For one scene the courtyard was raised out of sight so that we could see the prison in which Bertarido (the deposed king) was being incarcerated.
Our cast:
Rodelinda: Renée Fleming
Eduige: Stephanie Blythe
Bertarido: Andreas Scholl (countertenor)
Unulfo: Iestyn Davies (countertenor)
Grimoaldo: Joseph Kaiser
Garibaldo: Shenyang
Conductor: Harry Bicket
Production: Stephen Wadsworth
Renée Fleming sang well; I certainly liked her performance here better than her Lucrezia Borgia, recently seen at San Francisco Opera. But I preferred Stephanie Blythe’s singing, if not her acting—certain advantages accrue to a person of Fleming’s size rather than Blythe’s. Of the two countertenors, I much preferred the Unulfo of Iestyn Davies. (Interesting sidelight: in the intermission interview, both countertenors demonstrated their normal speaking voices; Andreas Scholl could pitch his speaking voice rather low. Neither had missed puberty.) Shenyang contributed a mellifluous bass voice in his relatively minor role.
The authenticity and detail of Stephen Wadsworth’s sets were entirely in keeping with the “authenticity” and detail of his sets for Der Ring des Nibelungen in Seattle, currently my gold standard for Ring productions. (Start making plans for the 2013 Seattle Ring!) The music was pleasant, though not particularly memorable or cathartic. A beta.
Friday, November 25, 2011
La Voix Humaine and Pagliacci, Opera San Jose, Nov. 22 2011
Two days later, back to San Jose to see the other cast perform this unusual double bill. The sets and action were the same as in the first cast. I was very much looking forward to seeing this cast because A Woman would be sung by Suzan Hanson, who had sung Tatiana in the company’s 1989 (?) production of Eugene Onegin and had turned in one of the most impressive performances I have seen on the operatic stage.
Our cast:
A woman: Suzan Hanson
Conductor: Andrew Whitfield
Director: Layna Chianakas
This evening, the acting wasn’t up to the standard set by Betany Coffland two days before. Hanson sang well enough, but didn’t convey the intensity of feeling that Coffland had. A bit better than a gamma.
Our cast for Pagliacci:
Tonio: Jason Detweiler
Canio: Travis Jones
Nedda: Jouvanca Jean-Baptiste
Beppe: Michael Dailey
Silvio: Krassen Karagizov
Conductor: Andrew Whitfield
Director: Cynthia Stokes
This performance failed to reach the relatively low bar set by the performance of two days prior. Travis Jones appeared to be out of his element as Canio. Again, no magic, no intensity. A gamma.
Our cast:
A woman: Suzan Hanson
Conductor: Andrew Whitfield
Director: Layna Chianakas
This evening, the acting wasn’t up to the standard set by Betany Coffland two days before. Hanson sang well enough, but didn’t convey the intensity of feeling that Coffland had. A bit better than a gamma.
Our cast for Pagliacci:
Tonio: Jason Detweiler
Canio: Travis Jones
Nedda: Jouvanca Jean-Baptiste
Beppe: Michael Dailey
Silvio: Krassen Karagizov
Conductor: Andrew Whitfield
Director: Cynthia Stokes
This performance failed to reach the relatively low bar set by the performance of two days prior. Travis Jones appeared to be out of his element as Canio. Again, no magic, no intensity. A gamma.
La Voix Humaine and Pagliacci, Opera San Jose, Nov. 20 2011
La Voix Humaine (“The Human Voice”) is a one-act, one-singer opera by Francis Poulenc in which the singer spends 45 minutes on the telephone breaking up with the man that she had lived with for five years. Pagliacci, a 70-minute, two-act opera by Ruggero Leoncavallo, is one of the highlights of the verismo style of Italian opera. Pagliacci is usually preceded in the operatic evening by Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana, not by La Voix Humaine. Why not “Cav & Pag”? According to Larry Hancock, it simply costs too much to do Cav & Pag; opening with La Voix Humaine allows for a reasonable amount of music in one evening without breaking the bank.
No economy of set was obvious in La Voix Humaine. We saw a clever representation of an apartment in Paris: the side walls and most of the back wall were basic flat black, but windows had been artfully sketched in using narrow, flexible white tubes (oversized drinking straws?). In the center of the back wall was a large double window that looked out over the rooftops of Paris. The apartment was furnished with a sofa and an easy chair atop a circular rug. Along the right wall was a small table with a mirror; along the left wall was a small bar in a box whose sides were on hinges, along the lines of a side-by-side refrigerator but much smaller. And in the center there was a coffee table on which rested the telephone, which plays an important part in the opera.
Our cast:
A woman: Betany Coffland
Conductor: Andrew Whitfield
Director: Layna Chianakas
The opera was based on a play by the same name, written in 1930 by the French playwright (and man of many other talents) Jean Cocteau. His actors had complained of being “over-directed,” not given enough freedom to display their acting abilities, so he said “Here’s a telephone and one half of a telephone conversation. Act away!” And Betany Coffland did. We first heard anguished sobs from offstage, then she rushed in and busied herself for three or four minutes with the mirror and the bar before the orchestra played the first note of music. For the next 45 minutes, Coffland held up her end of the telephone conversation masterfully, at one point winding the telephone cord around her neck. At the end, after they have hung up, she went and stood in the window, apparently about ready to jump a la Tosca, but then the lights went out. It was an excellent display of acting, and she sang pretty well too. A solid beta.
After an intermission, Pagliacci. Most of the money for sets must have been spent on La Voix Humaine. We saw a concrete wall curving in from the left, about 6 feet high at the edge of the stage, dropping gradually to about 3 feet high in the center of the stage. In front of the concrete wall there was an elliptical concrete “stage,” about 2 feet high and 15 feet long. To the right, nothing. The players did have a small (very small) cart that they pushed down the ramp in back of the curving wall, and there were some boxes that some assistants carried around. After intermission (we got an intermission after “Vesti la giubba” and before the intermezzo), the curtain rose on the same set, except that a wall with a door and a window had been erected at the back of the “stage.”
Our cast:
Tonio: Evan Brummel
Canio: Alexander Boyer
Nedda: Jasmina Halimic
Beppe: Michael Dailey
Silvio: Krassen Karagizov
Conductor: Andrew Whitfield
Director: Cynthia Stokes
Pagliacci can be an exciting opera, especially in the final scene when the actions of the play resemble real-life events so closely that the play-within-a-play breaks down and the Canio character “actually” stabs his wife and her lover. This time, there was no magic. I was sufficiently not caught up in the action that I began to wonder, “Where in his clown suit has Canio hidden the knife that he will use?” and I located said knife in Tonio’s hand. Tonio is standing at the edge of the “stage” and hands the knife to Canio when he needs it. To the director’s credit, this is the same knife that Canio almost used on Nedda just before “Vesti la giubba” and that Tonio had picked up after Beppe had wrung it from him—after all, Tonio had threatened Nedda with “You will pay for this!” after she had rejected his advances. Competently performed, but that’s all. A gamma.
No economy of set was obvious in La Voix Humaine. We saw a clever representation of an apartment in Paris: the side walls and most of the back wall were basic flat black, but windows had been artfully sketched in using narrow, flexible white tubes (oversized drinking straws?). In the center of the back wall was a large double window that looked out over the rooftops of Paris. The apartment was furnished with a sofa and an easy chair atop a circular rug. Along the right wall was a small table with a mirror; along the left wall was a small bar in a box whose sides were on hinges, along the lines of a side-by-side refrigerator but much smaller. And in the center there was a coffee table on which rested the telephone, which plays an important part in the opera.
Our cast:
A woman: Betany Coffland
Conductor: Andrew Whitfield
Director: Layna Chianakas
The opera was based on a play by the same name, written in 1930 by the French playwright (and man of many other talents) Jean Cocteau. His actors had complained of being “over-directed,” not given enough freedom to display their acting abilities, so he said “Here’s a telephone and one half of a telephone conversation. Act away!” And Betany Coffland did. We first heard anguished sobs from offstage, then she rushed in and busied herself for three or four minutes with the mirror and the bar before the orchestra played the first note of music. For the next 45 minutes, Coffland held up her end of the telephone conversation masterfully, at one point winding the telephone cord around her neck. At the end, after they have hung up, she went and stood in the window, apparently about ready to jump a la Tosca, but then the lights went out. It was an excellent display of acting, and she sang pretty well too. A solid beta.
After an intermission, Pagliacci. Most of the money for sets must have been spent on La Voix Humaine. We saw a concrete wall curving in from the left, about 6 feet high at the edge of the stage, dropping gradually to about 3 feet high in the center of the stage. In front of the concrete wall there was an elliptical concrete “stage,” about 2 feet high and 15 feet long. To the right, nothing. The players did have a small (very small) cart that they pushed down the ramp in back of the curving wall, and there were some boxes that some assistants carried around. After intermission (we got an intermission after “Vesti la giubba” and before the intermezzo), the curtain rose on the same set, except that a wall with a door and a window had been erected at the back of the “stage.”
Our cast:
Tonio: Evan Brummel
Canio: Alexander Boyer
Nedda: Jasmina Halimic
Beppe: Michael Dailey
Silvio: Krassen Karagizov
Conductor: Andrew Whitfield
Director: Cynthia Stokes
Pagliacci can be an exciting opera, especially in the final scene when the actions of the play resemble real-life events so closely that the play-within-a-play breaks down and the Canio character “actually” stabs his wife and her lover. This time, there was no magic. I was sufficiently not caught up in the action that I began to wonder, “Where in his clown suit has Canio hidden the knife that he will use?” and I located said knife in Tonio’s hand. Tonio is standing at the edge of the “stage” and hands the knife to Canio when he needs it. To the director’s credit, this is the same knife that Canio almost used on Nedda just before “Vesti la giubba” and that Tonio had picked up after Beppe had wrung it from him—after all, Tonio had threatened Nedda with “You will pay for this!” after she had rejected his advances. Competently performed, but that’s all. A gamma.
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Satyagraha, Metropolitan Opera HD Live, Nov. 19 2011
According to a superb commentary in the New York Review of Books, Satyragraha is the middle opera in a trilogy about “saintly men”: Einstein (Einstein on the Beach), Gandhi (Satyagraha), and Akhenaten, the father of Tutankhamun, and the pharaoh who attempted to introduce monotheistic religion to Egypt (Akhnaten). I love the music of Akhnaten and so had high hopes for Satyragraha. These hopes were only partly realized.
The structure of the opera is highly unusual. The libretto is in Sanskrit. The libretto consists of passages from the Bhaghavad Gita. These passages are not words that the characters would utter if they came to life, but rather phrases of the holy text that are appropriate to the action taking place on stage. And according to the Met’s web site, “Satyagraha features minimal subtitles. ... Glass did not wish the text to be understood -- just to be heard -- and to allow the actions on stage to speak for themselves.” There were some subtitles, but they were few and far between, so for long stretches we listened to language that we did not understand, without the aid of translation. Theoretically, that made no difference. In practice, I wondered whether this opera might work as an oratorio, without staging.
Our cast:
Miss Schlesen: Rachelle Durkin
M. K. Gandhi: Richard Croft
Mr. Kallenbach: Kim Josephson
Parsi Rustomji: Alfred Walker
Conductor: Dante Anzolini
Production: Phelim McDermott
All three acts of the opera took place in front of a semicircular wall made of corrugated steel, with doors along the bottom that opened and closed, and a “picture window” in which a different figure sat or stood (silently) for each act: Leo Tolstoy, Rabindranath Tagore, and Martin Luther King Jr.
In Act 1, we saw the young Gandhi as he arrived in South Africa, dressed in a lawyer’s suit. Upstage, two gigantic “puppets” were formed before our eyes; one appeared to be made of tenuously connected bits of paper and the other from woven baskets. The puppets reenacted the battle between the Kuruvas and the Pandavas.
In Act 2 we saw a line of oddly-dressed men in prominent plaids and clashing colors getting their shoes shined by other men dressed as menials, while upstage several large puppets wandered to and fro. These puppets seemed to be constructed of a papier-mache-like substance and featured grotesque expressions. In the second scene, long rolls of printed newspaper were unrolled across the stage, then wadded together, and the very large wad was grasped by a woman who was hoisted (along with her wad) to the top of the corrugated steel backdrop. In the third scene, the chorus displayed and then burned their registration cards.
The music of Acts 1 and 2 was not as compelling as the music of Akhnaten, but it was rather interesting in its own right. Things sort of fell apart in Act 3. The second and larger part of Act 3 was a long monologue by Gandhi, in Sanskrit, without subtitles, while up in the “picture window” an actor mimed the gestures of Martin Luther King Jr. addressing a (presumably) large crowd. With essentially no action, and no understanding of the words, and no significant variation in the music, Act 3 went by as a big “Huh?”
The whole affair came off as a bit better than a gamma. I will attend the encore, in the hope that a second experience will make more of an impression on me—and also as some sort of preparation for San Francisco’s upcoming production of Nixon in China, another opera in which no one falls in love, no one dies, and there is no inter-character conflict.
The structure of the opera is highly unusual. The libretto is in Sanskrit. The libretto consists of passages from the Bhaghavad Gita. These passages are not words that the characters would utter if they came to life, but rather phrases of the holy text that are appropriate to the action taking place on stage. And according to the Met’s web site, “Satyagraha features minimal subtitles. ... Glass did not wish the text to be understood -- just to be heard -- and to allow the actions on stage to speak for themselves.” There were some subtitles, but they were few and far between, so for long stretches we listened to language that we did not understand, without the aid of translation. Theoretically, that made no difference. In practice, I wondered whether this opera might work as an oratorio, without staging.
Our cast:
Miss Schlesen: Rachelle Durkin
M. K. Gandhi: Richard Croft
Mr. Kallenbach: Kim Josephson
Parsi Rustomji: Alfred Walker
Conductor: Dante Anzolini
Production: Phelim McDermott
All three acts of the opera took place in front of a semicircular wall made of corrugated steel, with doors along the bottom that opened and closed, and a “picture window” in which a different figure sat or stood (silently) for each act: Leo Tolstoy, Rabindranath Tagore, and Martin Luther King Jr.
In Act 1, we saw the young Gandhi as he arrived in South Africa, dressed in a lawyer’s suit. Upstage, two gigantic “puppets” were formed before our eyes; one appeared to be made of tenuously connected bits of paper and the other from woven baskets. The puppets reenacted the battle between the Kuruvas and the Pandavas.
In Act 2 we saw a line of oddly-dressed men in prominent plaids and clashing colors getting their shoes shined by other men dressed as menials, while upstage several large puppets wandered to and fro. These puppets seemed to be constructed of a papier-mache-like substance and featured grotesque expressions. In the second scene, long rolls of printed newspaper were unrolled across the stage, then wadded together, and the very large wad was grasped by a woman who was hoisted (along with her wad) to the top of the corrugated steel backdrop. In the third scene, the chorus displayed and then burned their registration cards.
The music of Acts 1 and 2 was not as compelling as the music of Akhnaten, but it was rather interesting in its own right. Things sort of fell apart in Act 3. The second and larger part of Act 3 was a long monologue by Gandhi, in Sanskrit, without subtitles, while up in the “picture window” an actor mimed the gestures of Martin Luther King Jr. addressing a (presumably) large crowd. With essentially no action, and no understanding of the words, and no significant variation in the music, Act 3 went by as a big “Huh?”
The whole affair came off as a bit better than a gamma. I will attend the encore, in the hope that a second experience will make more of an impression on me—and also as some sort of preparation for San Francisco’s upcoming production of Nixon in China, another opera in which no one falls in love, no one dies, and there is no inter-character conflict.
Monday, November 7, 2011
Carmen, San Francisco Opera, Nov. 6 2011
An intense week of opera-going (Don Giovanni, Xerxes, Don Giovanni, Carmen rehearsal, Siegfried, an aborted attempt at Susannah, Carmen) came to a conclusion with San Francisco Opera’s opening performance of their current Carmen. It was the Jean-Pierre Ponnelle production that dates back to 1981, with a common feature of all four sets being a a brick wall mostly covered with pale yellow plaster, and a long arch high above. In Act 1 there was a small door to the space on the other side of the wall, and a wall fountain from which townspeople could fill their jugs. There were some graffiti on the wall, the only legible one being “Viva Escamillo!” Just before the cigarette girls took their smoke break, the wall underneath the arch slid to the left, and a large double door with “Fabrica de Tabaco” slid in from the right. In Act 2, the area under the arch was filled with a large wooden platform up high and a staircase down to stage level. In Act 3 (the smuggler’s hideout in the mountains) the wall and the arch were still there, but the spaces below and behind the arch were filled with rocky landscape. In Act 4, in front of the bull ring, there was a large double door through which the crowd entered the arena, and a jailhouse-like metal gate through which the picadors and chulos and bandilleras marched to their jobs.
Our cast:
Carmen: Kendall Gladen
Don José: Thiago Arancam
Micaëla: Sara Gartland
Escamillo: Paulo Szot
Frasquita: Susannah Biller
Mercédès: Cybele Gouverneur
Le Dancaïre: Timothy Mix
Le Remendado: Daniel Montenegro
Moralès: Trevor Scheunemann
Zuniga: Wayne Tigges
Lillas Pastia: Yusef Lambert
Conductor: Nicola Luisotti
Director: Jose Maria Condemi
Set Designer: Jean-Pierre Ponnelle
Kendall Gladen acted the part of Carmen magnificently. She’s tall, statuesque, moves well on stage, and her body language and facial expressions fit my notion of Carmen to a T. Her voice, however, did not carry as well as it did in the dress rehearsal. Thiago Arancam’s Don Jose sounded rather strained and forced. Paulo Szot’s Escamillo failed to generate any sparks. Sara Gartland sang an affecting Micaëla; her third-act aria keeps running through my mind. Wayne Tigges sounded more in his element as Zuniga than he did as Ariodates in last week’s Xerxes. Yusef Lambert, in the speaking part of Lillas Pastia, had the best projection of the cast.
In an interesting touch, Jose Maria Condemi staged the entr’acte to Act 3, having Don Jose give Carmen a ring (the one that she will give back to him in Act 4 by putting it on the tip of his knife) and put his hand on her belly; she reacted with a pantomime of swinging a baby back and forth in the cradle of her arms—and then laughed with gusto. At the very end, with Carmen dead on the ground, Don Jose put the ring back on her finger. It was only this final confrontation that generated much in the way of excitement; all the preceding was competent but short on magic. Somewhat shy of a beta.
Our cast:
Carmen: Kendall Gladen
Don José: Thiago Arancam
Micaëla: Sara Gartland
Escamillo: Paulo Szot
Frasquita: Susannah Biller
Mercédès: Cybele Gouverneur
Le Dancaïre: Timothy Mix
Le Remendado: Daniel Montenegro
Moralès: Trevor Scheunemann
Zuniga: Wayne Tigges
Lillas Pastia: Yusef Lambert
Conductor: Nicola Luisotti
Director: Jose Maria Condemi
Set Designer: Jean-Pierre Ponnelle
Kendall Gladen acted the part of Carmen magnificently. She’s tall, statuesque, moves well on stage, and her body language and facial expressions fit my notion of Carmen to a T. Her voice, however, did not carry as well as it did in the dress rehearsal. Thiago Arancam’s Don Jose sounded rather strained and forced. Paulo Szot’s Escamillo failed to generate any sparks. Sara Gartland sang an affecting Micaëla; her third-act aria keeps running through my mind. Wayne Tigges sounded more in his element as Zuniga than he did as Ariodates in last week’s Xerxes. Yusef Lambert, in the speaking part of Lillas Pastia, had the best projection of the cast.
In an interesting touch, Jose Maria Condemi staged the entr’acte to Act 3, having Don Jose give Carmen a ring (the one that she will give back to him in Act 4 by putting it on the tip of his knife) and put his hand on her belly; she reacted with a pantomime of swinging a baby back and forth in the cradle of her arms—and then laughed with gusto. At the very end, with Carmen dead on the ground, Don Jose put the ring back on her finger. It was only this final confrontation that generated much in the way of excitement; all the preceding was competent but short on magic. Somewhat shy of a beta.
Saturday, November 5, 2011
Susannah, San Francisco Parlor Opera, Nov. 5 2011
What is San Francisco Parlor Opera? We didn’t know, but when we discovered that they were performing Carlisle Floyd’s Susannah, my favorite post-Puccini 20th-century opera, we jumped at the chance to see it. SFPO, as its name implies, performs opera in private homes. As a result, tickets are quite limited. This performance was limited to 55 attendees, and took place in the Zellerbach Mansion, across the street from the Panhandle of Golden Gate Park. Or rather, the performance took place in the back yard of the Zellerbach Mansion, during the first good rain of the season. Yes, they put up tarps in an attempt to keep the patrons dry. No, it didn’t entirely work. With only 55 patrons, in a private home, I was not expecting a full orchestra; I expected a piano, and got a piano. I expected an electronic piano that would sound like a piano, but I got a very distorted electronic piano that no one could possibly confuse with a real piano. The performing space consisted primarily of the steps from the yard up to the first floor. The young voices in open air did not carry well to the back of the audience. In general, my expectations were not very high. For the most part, even low expectations were not met. We bailed after about 10 minutes. At least we had a nice dinner at Jannah Restaurant beforehand.
Siegfried, Metropolitan Opera HD Live, Nov. 5 2011
We have a Siegfried! This morning’s HD Live broadcast of Siegfried with Jay Hunter Morris in the title role was so impressive that one of my friends could not contain herself, and used her iPhone at first intermission to send out a message to her fellow Ring-heads “Are you enjoying this as much as I am?” Not having such a phone, I had to wait until getting home before I could reply “Absolutely!”
Furthermore, the Met seems to be getting its act together with respect to La Machine, the 45-ton, 24-plank behemoth that dominates every scene, and still occasionally goes awry. (In the previous performance of Siegfried, I am told by a friend who was there, La Machine seized up at the beginning of the final scene, and Siegfried and Brünnhilde had to do some rapid improvising in their acting.) I think that La Machine serves the opera best when it takes a configuration at the beginning of a scene and then doesn’t move unless the story line calls for it, such as raising a few planks so that a dragon can appear.
In this production La Machine was used a lot as a surface to receive projections, many of which were effective. In the prologue, we saw what looked like a tangle of tree roots, with several snakes worming their way among them. In Act 2 in front of Fafner’s cave, we saw a well-vegetated hillside with half a dozen strictly vertical tree trunks. In Act 3 we saw some very impressive flames—if these were computer-generated, hats off to the programmers. Later in Act 3 the flames are confined to the outermost planks, while Brünnhilde is awakened from her slumber on a grassy meadow with flowers.
Aside from what was done with La Machine, this was a fairly conventional production, with Mime and Siegfried dressed in crudely-stitched leathers, a bellow and anvil for forging Notung. The Wanderer did appear without his eye patch; in its place he wore a large black contact lens and had black makeup around that eye. And Erda was dressed in a black dress covered with reflective pieces of what appeared to be mica. I heard one uncharitable comment comparing the dress to a disco ball.
There was one particularly unconventional element. In Act 1, in the “twenty questions” scene with Mime, the Wanderer carried a fairly hefty spear. It looked to be a good two inches in diameter, and the close-up was so close that I wondered why it did not have actual runes carved in it, to echo the line “With the runes carved on the shaft of his spear, Wotan rules the world.” But the shaft of the spear turned out not to be made of wood. At the beginning of Act 3, in the scene with Erda, the Wanderer popped off the tip and the butt of the spear and the shaft unrolled into a ten-foot-long parchment, with runes on it. So that’s how you get all of Wotan’s contracts onto the shaft of a spear! He and Erda then walked over the parchment as though it were a rug, presumably to show contempt for the old order that is fading away. The Wanderer did not roll up the parchment to reconstruct the spear that would block Siegfried’s way to Brünnhilde. After the parchment was unrolled, the Wanderer was left with just a length of metal of quite small diameter. It looked to be about as sturdy as a curtain rod. The Wanderer laid his curtain rod across the end of one of the planks of La Machine, and Siegfried hacked off the part of it just beyond the edge of the plank. Not very convincing.
One of the most important staging decisions in any Siegfried is, what to do for a dragon? According to Speight Jenkins, the dragon must be frightful. (Sorry, but trash compactors don’t make it.) This dragon brandished some very long sharp teeth, but otherwise it looked like an inflatable balloon suitable for Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.
Our cast:
Mime: Gerhard Siegel
Siegfried: Jay Hunter Morris
The Wanderer: Bryn Terfel
Alberich: Eric Owens
Fafner: Hans-Peter König
Woodbird: Mojca Erdmann
Erda: Patricia Bardon
Brünnhilde: Deborah Voigt
Conductor: Fabio Luisi
Production: Robert Lepage
And what a cast! Highest praise goes to Jay Hunter Morris, who had been the cover for Gary Lehman, and was tapped to step into the role when Lehman fell ill. (Interestingly, he had been a cover for San Francisco’s Siegfried this summer, and stepped into the role when Ian Storey found himself unable to perform that role in both Siegfried and Götterdämmerung, and chose to limit himself to Götterdämmerung.) Others may quibble, but I find it hard to imagine a better Siegfried. He sang beautifully—the slightly strange color in his voice that I heard in San Francisco’s Siegfried was not in evidence. He did have a small crack at the very end of Act 1, and his final note at the end of Act 3 seemed to be cut rather short, but everywhere else his voice was right where it needed to be. In his intermission interview a week ago, he said that the hardest part of the role was acting like an 18-year-old boy, but he brought that off very well. It was hard to believe that he is in his 40s—I haven’t tracked down a birthdate, but I have found in the Paris News the announcement of his engagement, dated 1988. He simply was Siegfried. I am so eager to catch the encore broadcast, assuming that it is scheduled.
Gerhard Siegel won points by avoiding the whining tone that is all too common among portrayals of Mime. Bryn Terfel’s voice could have been a bit darker, lending more gravitas to his “Heil dir, weise Schmied” in Act 1, but it still gave me goosebumps. Deborah Voigt could have been less dark in “Heil dir, Sonne” but that was also worth goosebumps. Both Eric Owens and Hans-Peter König displayed marvelous bass voices.
Bottom line: a triumph for Jay Hunter Morris, with great support from his co-stars. Clearly an alpha.
Furthermore, the Met seems to be getting its act together with respect to La Machine, the 45-ton, 24-plank behemoth that dominates every scene, and still occasionally goes awry. (In the previous performance of Siegfried, I am told by a friend who was there, La Machine seized up at the beginning of the final scene, and Siegfried and Brünnhilde had to do some rapid improvising in their acting.) I think that La Machine serves the opera best when it takes a configuration at the beginning of a scene and then doesn’t move unless the story line calls for it, such as raising a few planks so that a dragon can appear.
In this production La Machine was used a lot as a surface to receive projections, many of which were effective. In the prologue, we saw what looked like a tangle of tree roots, with several snakes worming their way among them. In Act 2 in front of Fafner’s cave, we saw a well-vegetated hillside with half a dozen strictly vertical tree trunks. In Act 3 we saw some very impressive flames—if these were computer-generated, hats off to the programmers. Later in Act 3 the flames are confined to the outermost planks, while Brünnhilde is awakened from her slumber on a grassy meadow with flowers.
Aside from what was done with La Machine, this was a fairly conventional production, with Mime and Siegfried dressed in crudely-stitched leathers, a bellow and anvil for forging Notung. The Wanderer did appear without his eye patch; in its place he wore a large black contact lens and had black makeup around that eye. And Erda was dressed in a black dress covered with reflective pieces of what appeared to be mica. I heard one uncharitable comment comparing the dress to a disco ball.
There was one particularly unconventional element. In Act 1, in the “twenty questions” scene with Mime, the Wanderer carried a fairly hefty spear. It looked to be a good two inches in diameter, and the close-up was so close that I wondered why it did not have actual runes carved in it, to echo the line “With the runes carved on the shaft of his spear, Wotan rules the world.” But the shaft of the spear turned out not to be made of wood. At the beginning of Act 3, in the scene with Erda, the Wanderer popped off the tip and the butt of the spear and the shaft unrolled into a ten-foot-long parchment, with runes on it. So that’s how you get all of Wotan’s contracts onto the shaft of a spear! He and Erda then walked over the parchment as though it were a rug, presumably to show contempt for the old order that is fading away. The Wanderer did not roll up the parchment to reconstruct the spear that would block Siegfried’s way to Brünnhilde. After the parchment was unrolled, the Wanderer was left with just a length of metal of quite small diameter. It looked to be about as sturdy as a curtain rod. The Wanderer laid his curtain rod across the end of one of the planks of La Machine, and Siegfried hacked off the part of it just beyond the edge of the plank. Not very convincing.
One of the most important staging decisions in any Siegfried is, what to do for a dragon? According to Speight Jenkins, the dragon must be frightful. (Sorry, but trash compactors don’t make it.) This dragon brandished some very long sharp teeth, but otherwise it looked like an inflatable balloon suitable for Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.
Our cast:
Mime: Gerhard Siegel
Siegfried: Jay Hunter Morris
The Wanderer: Bryn Terfel
Alberich: Eric Owens
Fafner: Hans-Peter König
Woodbird: Mojca Erdmann
Erda: Patricia Bardon
Brünnhilde: Deborah Voigt
Conductor: Fabio Luisi
Production: Robert Lepage
And what a cast! Highest praise goes to Jay Hunter Morris, who had been the cover for Gary Lehman, and was tapped to step into the role when Lehman fell ill. (Interestingly, he had been a cover for San Francisco’s Siegfried this summer, and stepped into the role when Ian Storey found himself unable to perform that role in both Siegfried and Götterdämmerung, and chose to limit himself to Götterdämmerung.) Others may quibble, but I find it hard to imagine a better Siegfried. He sang beautifully—the slightly strange color in his voice that I heard in San Francisco’s Siegfried was not in evidence. He did have a small crack at the very end of Act 1, and his final note at the end of Act 3 seemed to be cut rather short, but everywhere else his voice was right where it needed to be. In his intermission interview a week ago, he said that the hardest part of the role was acting like an 18-year-old boy, but he brought that off very well. It was hard to believe that he is in his 40s—I haven’t tracked down a birthdate, but I have found in the Paris News the announcement of his engagement, dated 1988. He simply was Siegfried. I am so eager to catch the encore broadcast, assuming that it is scheduled.
Gerhard Siegel won points by avoiding the whining tone that is all too common among portrayals of Mime. Bryn Terfel’s voice could have been a bit darker, lending more gravitas to his “Heil dir, weise Schmied” in Act 1, but it still gave me goosebumps. Deborah Voigt could have been less dark in “Heil dir, Sonne” but that was also worth goosebumps. Both Eric Owens and Hans-Peter König displayed marvelous bass voices.
Bottom line: a triumph for Jay Hunter Morris, with great support from his co-stars. Clearly an alpha.
Don Giovanni, San Francisco Opera, Nov. 2 2011
Four days after seeing the Met’s Don Giovanni on Met HD Live, it’s into San Francisco for SF Opera’s “for real” live performance of the same opera. Compared to the Met’s, it was rather much a disappointment. The predominant stage element was a set of very large (four feet by twelve, or thereabouts) “mirrors” that weren’t very reflective and were a bit transparent—you could see characters walking behind them. Individual mirrors would sit on the stage, or be hoisted out of sight, or positioned somewhere in between on the director’s whim. There were also a large number of 18th-century style chairs lined up along the side walls and the back wall; Leporello used three of them to take a short nap as Act 1 proper (after the overture) began. Act 2 opened with three large hedges to the left, right, and upstage center. In the graveyard scene there were a number of massive stone blocks; the Commendatore’s depicted him as slouched in an wrought-iron chair. The most impressive set was the final one, where the statue arrived for dinner: the back wall was hung with what must have been hundreds of square yards of a rich dark-red fabric, draped in such a fashion as to present concentric semicircles with their center at the top center of the back wall. Don Giovanni disappeared through a trap door in front of the long dining table, with only smoke or steam to suggest the horrors of hell—no flames or even any red lights shining on the clouds.
Our cast:
Leporello: Marco Vinco
Donna Anna: Ellie Dehn
Don Giovanni: Lucas Meachem
The Commendatore: Morris Robinson
Don Ottavio: Shawn Mathey
Donna Elvira: Serena Farnocchia
Zerlina: Kate Lindsey
Masetto: Ryan Kuster
Conductor: Nicola Luisotti
Director: Gabriele Lavia
Set designer: Alessandro Camera
I found the singing to be competent but undistinguished all the way around, except for Marco Vinco’s Leporello, who displayed a nicely sonorous bass voice. The acting was the weak spot. Don Giovanni appeared to be something of a has-been who had enjoyed the dining table too much and for too long. Leporello was decidedly over-acted—either that, or he was making sure that the patrons in the back of the house could see his every move. Zerlina was less of an innocent country girl and more of a tart—she did not live up to the expectations created by her very fine portrayal of Niklaus in the Met HD broadcast of Les Contes d'Hoffmann. Overall, not much more than a gamma.
Our cast:
Leporello: Marco Vinco
Donna Anna: Ellie Dehn
Don Giovanni: Lucas Meachem
The Commendatore: Morris Robinson
Don Ottavio: Shawn Mathey
Donna Elvira: Serena Farnocchia
Zerlina: Kate Lindsey
Masetto: Ryan Kuster
Conductor: Nicola Luisotti
Director: Gabriele Lavia
Set designer: Alessandro Camera
I found the singing to be competent but undistinguished all the way around, except for Marco Vinco’s Leporello, who displayed a nicely sonorous bass voice. The acting was the weak spot. Don Giovanni appeared to be something of a has-been who had enjoyed the dining table too much and for too long. Leporello was decidedly over-acted—either that, or he was making sure that the patrons in the back of the house could see his every move. Zerlina was less of an innocent country girl and more of a tart—she did not live up to the expectations created by her very fine portrayal of Niklaus in the Met HD broadcast of Les Contes d'Hoffmann. Overall, not much more than a gamma.
Monday, October 31, 2011
Xerxes, San Francisco Opera, Oct. 30 2011
Xerxes was described as a comic opera, rather uncommon for an instance of the genre of opera seria, “serious opera,” but as presented at San Francisco Opera, it certainly was comic. The director was highly inventive, calling for all sorts of “stage business,” and the singers brought it all off with considerable skill.
The pre-performance curtain looks rather much like a huge swath of artificial grass, hanging just in back of where the regular massive gold curtain would be. This green curtain is used during the overture to introduce the characters and their positions, a good idea in an opera with a plot as complicated as this one has. As the name and position of each character are projected on the green curtain, the singer of that role comes out on stage and mimes a suggestion of his or her role. When Elviro is introduced as a servant, he simply shrugs his shoulders and holds up his hands–but as he walks offstage, he stops and “conducts” the orchestra to its next cadence.
When the green curtain goes up, we see a representation of London’s Vauxhall Gardens: a gigantic room, the size of the War Memorial stage, with white walls on the left, right, and rear, all painted in green with depictions of the gardens. For some scenes, the rear wall is removed, revealing a rocky landscape with what looks like a scale model of the ruins of Persepolis. Scene-to-scene variety is provided by the contents of the room: a statue of Handel (labeled “Timotheus” on the pedestal), sling chairs for the supernumeraries to sit in, elegant restaurant tables with tablecloths all the way to the floor, twelve potted cacti, a lawn bowling game, etc.
Our cast:
Xerxes: Susan Graham
Romilda: Lisette Oropesa
Arsamenes: David Daniels
Atalanta: Heidi Stober
Amastris: Sonia Prina
Ariodates: Wayne Tigges
Elviro: Michael Sumuel
Conductor: Patrick Summers
Production: Nicholas Hytner
Susan Graham is simply an amazing performer. Every time I have seen her (Dead Man Walking, La Belle Helene, Iphegenie in Tauride, Ariodante) it has been an exceptional experience. Her “Scherza infida” (Ariodante) was one of the most compelling arias I have ever heard on an opera stage. Here in Xerxes, her stage presence was phenomenal. She owned that stage. There was far too much stage business to remember it all, so I’ll content myself with just one recollection: a fellow singer was performing his/her da capo aria, and with her gestures and body language, Susan appeared to mock the entire concept of the da capo aria. Priceless! More than anyone else, Susan Graham in the cast means that it will be a magnificent evening in the theater.
It wasn’t just Susan’s show; the other singers also fully participated in all of the stage business. The entire setting was inspired. At first blush, one might think that setting a (completely fictional) tale about an ancient king of Persia in Vauxhall Gardens, at one point in a restaurant in Vauxhall Gardens, to be yet another example of a director’s “concept” gone horribly awry–but this time it worked. My opera seria instructor, who has attended every San Francisco Opera production since 1969, declares this production to be the finest of an 18th-century opera in that entire time span. Personally, I would vote for the Semele of 2000, but I won’t contest the point. Xerxes could be the highlight of the fall opera season (still need to see Don Giovanni and Carmen), but it’s not quite an alpha.
The pre-performance curtain looks rather much like a huge swath of artificial grass, hanging just in back of where the regular massive gold curtain would be. This green curtain is used during the overture to introduce the characters and their positions, a good idea in an opera with a plot as complicated as this one has. As the name and position of each character are projected on the green curtain, the singer of that role comes out on stage and mimes a suggestion of his or her role. When Elviro is introduced as a servant, he simply shrugs his shoulders and holds up his hands–but as he walks offstage, he stops and “conducts” the orchestra to its next cadence.
When the green curtain goes up, we see a representation of London’s Vauxhall Gardens: a gigantic room, the size of the War Memorial stage, with white walls on the left, right, and rear, all painted in green with depictions of the gardens. For some scenes, the rear wall is removed, revealing a rocky landscape with what looks like a scale model of the ruins of Persepolis. Scene-to-scene variety is provided by the contents of the room: a statue of Handel (labeled “Timotheus” on the pedestal), sling chairs for the supernumeraries to sit in, elegant restaurant tables with tablecloths all the way to the floor, twelve potted cacti, a lawn bowling game, etc.
Our cast:
Xerxes: Susan Graham
Romilda: Lisette Oropesa
Arsamenes: David Daniels
Atalanta: Heidi Stober
Amastris: Sonia Prina
Ariodates: Wayne Tigges
Elviro: Michael Sumuel
Conductor: Patrick Summers
Production: Nicholas Hytner
Susan Graham is simply an amazing performer. Every time I have seen her (Dead Man Walking, La Belle Helene, Iphegenie in Tauride, Ariodante) it has been an exceptional experience. Her “Scherza infida” (Ariodante) was one of the most compelling arias I have ever heard on an opera stage. Here in Xerxes, her stage presence was phenomenal. She owned that stage. There was far too much stage business to remember it all, so I’ll content myself with just one recollection: a fellow singer was performing his/her da capo aria, and with her gestures and body language, Susan appeared to mock the entire concept of the da capo aria. Priceless! More than anyone else, Susan Graham in the cast means that it will be a magnificent evening in the theater.
It wasn’t just Susan’s show; the other singers also fully participated in all of the stage business. The entire setting was inspired. At first blush, one might think that setting a (completely fictional) tale about an ancient king of Persia in Vauxhall Gardens, at one point in a restaurant in Vauxhall Gardens, to be yet another example of a director’s “concept” gone horribly awry–but this time it worked. My opera seria instructor, who has attended every San Francisco Opera production since 1969, declares this production to be the finest of an 18th-century opera in that entire time span. Personally, I would vote for the Semele of 2000, but I won’t contest the point. Xerxes could be the highlight of the fall opera season (still need to see Don Giovanni and Carmen), but it’s not quite an alpha.
Don Giovanni, Metropolitan Opera HD Live, Oct. 29 2011
Today offered the opportunity to see two performance of the same opera in the same day. The Met broadcast their Don Giovanni at 10am west coast time; we could have attended San Francisco Opera’s Don Giovanni that evening, but figured that was a bit much.
The Met set was pretty simple and not very interesting, with the exception of the statue-comes-to-dinner scene. Most of the action takes place in the street just outside a three-story building; each story is divided into six door-size bays, each with a pair of shutters. The shutters spent most of their time closed, but occasionally one or two or more would open to let someone step into or out of the building, or to view the street from one of the upper stories. Close-ups revealed that the building was probably painted 50 years ago: the paint is extensively worn away. The elements of the set could be pulled apart to generate an alley into which Leporello could escape in Act 2, or pulled way apart to reveal Don Giovanni’s party at the end of Act 1. In such cases there was a backdrop of another three-story array of bays and shutters, echoing the one that we see most of the time. For the graveyard and statue-comes-to-dinner scenes, the shutters were gone; in each bay was a graveyard statue, with the Commendatore’s statue in a large bay at the second-story level.
Our cast:
Leporello: Luca Pisaroni
Don Giovanni: Mariusz Kwiecien
Donna Anna: Marina Rebeka
The Commendatore: Štefan Kocán
Don Ottavio: Ramón Vargas
Donna Elvira: Barbara Frittoli
Zerlina: Mojca Erdmann
Masetto: Joshua Bloom
Conductor: Fabio Luisi
Production: Michael Grandage
The entire performance was very fine, but I have to single out three exceptional moments: (1) Ramón Vargas giving us an outstanding “Il mio tesoro” (2) the statue-comes-to-dinner scene, with Štefan Kocán’s “Don Giovanni!” summons raising goosebumps, and Don Giovanni disappearing through a trapdoor in the floor while puffs of flame appear 3 feet in the air to either side of his dining table (3) the intermission interview with Jay Hunter Morris, tapped to replace an ailing Gary Lehman in the upcoming performances of Siegfried. Morris was beside himself with awe and enthusiasm: “I get to sing on the Met stage with Bryn Terfel!! And Debbie Voigt!! And Gerhard Siegel!!" His gentle southern accent made him all the more endearing. You can catch similar enthusiasm from him at 4:30 and 8:25 of a 10-minute video about San Francisco’s 2011 Ring.
The above is not to slight the contributions of the other singers. Mariusz Kwiecien is a candidate for the world’s leading Don Giovanni, and Luca Pisaroni complemented him well as Leporello. Mojca Erdmann made a fetching Zerlina. And it was a pleasure to listen to the others. A very solid beta.
The Met set was pretty simple and not very interesting, with the exception of the statue-comes-to-dinner scene. Most of the action takes place in the street just outside a three-story building; each story is divided into six door-size bays, each with a pair of shutters. The shutters spent most of their time closed, but occasionally one or two or more would open to let someone step into or out of the building, or to view the street from one of the upper stories. Close-ups revealed that the building was probably painted 50 years ago: the paint is extensively worn away. The elements of the set could be pulled apart to generate an alley into which Leporello could escape in Act 2, or pulled way apart to reveal Don Giovanni’s party at the end of Act 1. In such cases there was a backdrop of another three-story array of bays and shutters, echoing the one that we see most of the time. For the graveyard and statue-comes-to-dinner scenes, the shutters were gone; in each bay was a graveyard statue, with the Commendatore’s statue in a large bay at the second-story level.
Our cast:
Leporello: Luca Pisaroni
Don Giovanni: Mariusz Kwiecien
Donna Anna: Marina Rebeka
The Commendatore: Štefan Kocán
Don Ottavio: Ramón Vargas
Donna Elvira: Barbara Frittoli
Zerlina: Mojca Erdmann
Masetto: Joshua Bloom
Conductor: Fabio Luisi
Production: Michael Grandage
The entire performance was very fine, but I have to single out three exceptional moments: (1) Ramón Vargas giving us an outstanding “Il mio tesoro” (2) the statue-comes-to-dinner scene, with Štefan Kocán’s “Don Giovanni!” summons raising goosebumps, and Don Giovanni disappearing through a trapdoor in the floor while puffs of flame appear 3 feet in the air to either side of his dining table (3) the intermission interview with Jay Hunter Morris, tapped to replace an ailing Gary Lehman in the upcoming performances of Siegfried. Morris was beside himself with awe and enthusiasm: “I get to sing on the Met stage with Bryn Terfel!! And Debbie Voigt!! And Gerhard Siegel!!" His gentle southern accent made him all the more endearing. You can catch similar enthusiasm from him at 4:30 and 8:25 of a 10-minute video about San Francisco’s 2011 Ring.
The above is not to slight the contributions of the other singers. Mariusz Kwiecien is a candidate for the world’s leading Don Giovanni, and Luca Pisaroni complemented him well as Leporello. Mojca Erdmann made a fetching Zerlina. And it was a pleasure to listen to the others. A very solid beta.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Anna Bolena, Metropolitan Opera HD Live, Oct. 15 2011
Anna Bolena was described as Donizetti’s first great opera, and looking through a list of the 30 operas that preceded it, that’s a fair claim. The 30 predecessors are populated with names such as Emilia di Liverpool and Gli esiliati in Siberia (“The Exiles in Siberia”). Raise your hand if you have ever even had the opportunity to see one of these.
Donizetti starts to hit his stride with number 31, Anna Bolena, and finally hits the big time with number 36, L'elisir d'amore. Ultimately he will write 65 operas, more if you include several operas that were revised and given under new names.
This is something of a year for house premieres of Donizetti. Not only was this the first time that the Met has produced Anna Bolena (181 years after its premiere in Milan), but this year San Francisco Opera presented its first performances of Lucrezia Borgia. San Francisco has presented Anna Bolena twice, in 1984 and 1995. I saw both of them, and neither made much of an impression on me. I was hoping that Anna Netrebko would deliver the goods this time.
When the curtain rises on the Met’s production, we see the interior of a room in the palace. The walls are paneled into 2- by 3-foot sections, with the left-hand portion of the wall toward the back of the stage, the right-hand portion near the front, and a wall from back to front connecting the two, all of the same design, all very dark. These walls will move around between scenes, with their other sides representing stone or whitewashed brick exterior walls, and sometime other interior walls. Aside from walls, there is not much of note except at the beginning of the second act, where a very tall, very red bed is positioned on the left side of the same set seen at the beginning of the first act.
Our cast:
Anne Boleyn (Anna Bolena): Anna Netrebko
Jane (Giovanna) Seymour: Ekaterina Gubanova
Mark Smeaton: Tamara Mumford
Lord Richard (Riccardo) Percy: Stephen Costello
Henry VIII (Enrico): Ildar Abdrazakov
Conductor: Marco Armiliato
Production: David McVicar
Anna Netrebko was the star of the show and sang magnificently, although she wasn’t as captivating as she was years ago as Susanna and Zerlina, or even more recently as Norina. Ekaterina Gubanova nearly upstaged her as her rival Jane Seymour. Ildar Abdrazakov made a fine, young, vital, not over-dressed Henry VIII. My friends thought highly of Stephen Costello as Percy, but his voice was tinged with a quality that I didn’t particularly appreciate. The sets were uninspired. The music was pleasant enough, but at best showed only traces of the genius that was to come later. Not quite a beta, despite Anna Netrebko.
Donizetti starts to hit his stride with number 31, Anna Bolena, and finally hits the big time with number 36, L'elisir d'amore. Ultimately he will write 65 operas, more if you include several operas that were revised and given under new names.
This is something of a year for house premieres of Donizetti. Not only was this the first time that the Met has produced Anna Bolena (181 years after its premiere in Milan), but this year San Francisco Opera presented its first performances of Lucrezia Borgia. San Francisco has presented Anna Bolena twice, in 1984 and 1995. I saw both of them, and neither made much of an impression on me. I was hoping that Anna Netrebko would deliver the goods this time.
When the curtain rises on the Met’s production, we see the interior of a room in the palace. The walls are paneled into 2- by 3-foot sections, with the left-hand portion of the wall toward the back of the stage, the right-hand portion near the front, and a wall from back to front connecting the two, all of the same design, all very dark. These walls will move around between scenes, with their other sides representing stone or whitewashed brick exterior walls, and sometime other interior walls. Aside from walls, there is not much of note except at the beginning of the second act, where a very tall, very red bed is positioned on the left side of the same set seen at the beginning of the first act.
Our cast:
Anne Boleyn (Anna Bolena): Anna Netrebko
Jane (Giovanna) Seymour: Ekaterina Gubanova
Mark Smeaton: Tamara Mumford
Lord Richard (Riccardo) Percy: Stephen Costello
Henry VIII (Enrico): Ildar Abdrazakov
Conductor: Marco Armiliato
Production: David McVicar
Anna Netrebko was the star of the show and sang magnificently, although she wasn’t as captivating as she was years ago as Susanna and Zerlina, or even more recently as Norina. Ekaterina Gubanova nearly upstaged her as her rival Jane Seymour. Ildar Abdrazakov made a fine, young, vital, not over-dressed Henry VIII. My friends thought highly of Stephen Costello as Percy, but his voice was tinged with a quality that I didn’t particularly appreciate. The sets were uninspired. The music was pleasant enough, but at best showed only traces of the genius that was to come later. Not quite a beta, despite Anna Netrebko.
Saturday, October 8, 2011
Turandot, San Francisco Opera, October 4 2011
This was the concluding performance of the current presentation of Turandot. It was the David Hockney set, dating back to 1992. Act 1 is all bright red buildings with blue-green roofs. In the middle is a tower with a gong positioned at its base, up a few steps from stage level. At the second-story level there is a red scrim which, when illuminated from within, displays Turandot and her attendants so that Calaf can see the person that the Prince of Persia is about to lose his head for. To the left of the tower is a ramp up to a gate in the city wall, through which said Prince of Persia and an entire procession will march to his execution. To the far left is the city wall. Off to the right is a deep alleyway. Three severed heads hang from some of the eaves. The soldiers wear costumes that reminded me of Samurai warriors; I hope that they are actually authentic Chinese garb.
Act 2 opens with Ping, Pang, and Pong in front of a stage-wide and stage-high scrim featuring a painting of a classical Chinese scene with a lake in the foreground, a little house on the shore of the lake, and huge vertical monoliths in the background. To the left and right of the classical scene, the painting represents the interior of a large house, the rooms containing a few simple chairs, the whole presented in a rather skewed perspective. For the riddle scene, the scrim rises to show us more red walls, blue-green roofs, and 12-15 steps leading from the front of the stage to the rear doorway through which Emperor Altoun is carried on his throne.
Things get a lot darker in Act 3; after all, “no one shall sleep.” In the center of the stage there is a half-moon bridge with wide, red railings; above are a series of two-dimensional cutouts resembling stylized trees. For the conclusion of the act, the tree cutouts go away and the lights come up on a set of many bright-red cutouts, all very complicated and non-representational but nevertheless very striking.
Our cast:
Turandot: Irene Theorin
Calaf: Marco Berti
Liu: Leah Crocetto
Timur: Raymond Aceto
Conductor: Nicola Luisotti
Director: Garnett Bruce
This Turandot is most notable for the main-stage debut of Leah Crocetto. She first came to my attention two or three years ago, when she dominated everyone else on stage at the Merola Summer Concert, and I’ve been eager to hear her ever since. My wish was barely granted in last year’s season, when she sang the offstage priestess in Act 1 scene 2 of Aida. Now she gets a larger, on-stage role with “Signor, ascolta” in Act 1 and “Tanto, amore segreto” followed by “Si, Principessa” in Act 3. She sang beautifully and deserves the accolade in a published review, “an Adler Fellow whose future stardom has never been in doubt.” Some carped about her acting. My feeling was that she spent much of her time on stage as simply an observer (as did Timur), and she rightly did not call attention to herself. Irene Theorin was a capable Turandot; Marco Berti had no problem being heard (quoth a friend: “He had one note–loud.”) Raymond Aceto, last seen as Hunding in Die Walküre, also presented himself well. Nicola Luisotti was in his element, conducting Puccini. At the beginning of Act 3, when he asked the orchestra to stand, they remained seated and let him accept all the applause, a behavior that I have not seen before at San Francisco Opera. At final curtain call, the audience awarded the performers a standing ovation–which they seem to do almost every time now. 20 years ago, when they stood for Samuel Ramey’s tour-de-force Mefistofele, a standing ovation meant something. Now, not so much. A worthy performance, to be sure, but at best a solid beta.
Act 2 opens with Ping, Pang, and Pong in front of a stage-wide and stage-high scrim featuring a painting of a classical Chinese scene with a lake in the foreground, a little house on the shore of the lake, and huge vertical monoliths in the background. To the left and right of the classical scene, the painting represents the interior of a large house, the rooms containing a few simple chairs, the whole presented in a rather skewed perspective. For the riddle scene, the scrim rises to show us more red walls, blue-green roofs, and 12-15 steps leading from the front of the stage to the rear doorway through which Emperor Altoun is carried on his throne.
Things get a lot darker in Act 3; after all, “no one shall sleep.” In the center of the stage there is a half-moon bridge with wide, red railings; above are a series of two-dimensional cutouts resembling stylized trees. For the conclusion of the act, the tree cutouts go away and the lights come up on a set of many bright-red cutouts, all very complicated and non-representational but nevertheless very striking.
Our cast:
Turandot: Irene Theorin
Calaf: Marco Berti
Liu: Leah Crocetto
Timur: Raymond Aceto
Conductor: Nicola Luisotti
Director: Garnett Bruce
This Turandot is most notable for the main-stage debut of Leah Crocetto. She first came to my attention two or three years ago, when she dominated everyone else on stage at the Merola Summer Concert, and I’ve been eager to hear her ever since. My wish was barely granted in last year’s season, when she sang the offstage priestess in Act 1 scene 2 of Aida. Now she gets a larger, on-stage role with “Signor, ascolta” in Act 1 and “Tanto, amore segreto” followed by “Si, Principessa” in Act 3. She sang beautifully and deserves the accolade in a published review, “an Adler Fellow whose future stardom has never been in doubt.” Some carped about her acting. My feeling was that she spent much of her time on stage as simply an observer (as did Timur), and she rightly did not call attention to herself. Irene Theorin was a capable Turandot; Marco Berti had no problem being heard (quoth a friend: “He had one note–loud.”) Raymond Aceto, last seen as Hunding in Die Walküre, also presented himself well. Nicola Luisotti was in his element, conducting Puccini. At the beginning of Act 3, when he asked the orchestra to stand, they remained seated and let him accept all the applause, a behavior that I have not seen before at San Francisco Opera. At final curtain call, the audience awarded the performers a standing ovation–which they seem to do almost every time now. 20 years ago, when they stood for Samuel Ramey’s tour-de-force Mefistofele, a standing ovation meant something. Now, not so much. A worthy performance, to be sure, but at best a solid beta.
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Lucrezia Borgia, San Francisco Opera, Oct. 2 2011
For the first time in its history, San Francisco Opera is presenting Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia, written less than two years prior to Lucia di Lammermoor and sounding very much like that opera, though without any actual overlap. Lucrezia also lacks the musical and dramatic impact of Lucia. It rates only a short writeup in Grove’s Dictionary and no mention in Sir Denis Forman’s A Night at the Opera, but it was worth including in The Book of 101 Opera Librettos. We have Renee Fleming to thank for bringing this opera to our attention, which in turn brought a couple of fine singers to our attention.
This production begins with a staged overture. Lucrezia stands over a smoky (or steaming) grate with a spotlight on her, with the rest of the stage fairly dark. But we are able to make out men fighting with swords in slow motion, reenacting the incident to be described later in Act 1 in which Gennaro saved Orsini’s life. When the lights come up–it’s night in Venice–we see the outer walls of two buildings, constructed from wide but short light-colored stone. Between the buildings the “street” is built from shallow steps running all the way across the stage, and most of the way front to back. In back we can see the night sky to the right, and a tall narrow archway to the left. In Act 2 the buildings and steps remain, but now in the background there is a plinth supporting a sculpture of a charging bull. On the vertical face of the plinth is the Borgia family crest, above the word “BORGIA” in well-executed Roman capitals. It is this “B” that Gennaro removes to leave the word “ORGIA,” thus insulting the Borgia family and earning himself a death sentence. When Gennaro is brought before the Duke to answer for this crime, the building walls close in to become the inner walls of the Duke’s palace. Only a portion of the plinth and bull remain visible. Later a massive pair of steel-grate doors close in front of the plinth. In Act 3 the movable walls open up a bit to reveal more night sky, punctuated by three or four poplar trees. They are replaced by the tall narrow archway of Act 1, this time directly facing the audience. When Lucrezia expels everyone but herself and Gennaro from the room, a pair of doors close the archway.
Our cast:
Lucrezia Borgia: Renee Fleming
Genarro: Michael Fabiano
Duke Alfonso: Vitalij Kowaljow
Maffio Orsini: Elizabeth DeShong
Conductor: Riccardo Frizza
Director: John Pascoe
Lucrezia Borgia was brought to San Francisco as a vehicle for Renee Fleming. It’s unfortunate when the star soprano gets upstaged by her leading man. Michael Fabiano, a winner of the 2007 Metropolitan National Council auditions (as documented in the movie The Audition) sang with considerable power and presence, though some of my neighbors expressed reservations about the quality of his voice. In comparison, Fleming was rather subdued. Kowaljow sang a convincing Duke.
With music that is pleasant but hardly memorable, uninspired staging, and a star who seemed to be off her game, this performance fell somewhat short of a beta.
This production begins with a staged overture. Lucrezia stands over a smoky (or steaming) grate with a spotlight on her, with the rest of the stage fairly dark. But we are able to make out men fighting with swords in slow motion, reenacting the incident to be described later in Act 1 in which Gennaro saved Orsini’s life. When the lights come up–it’s night in Venice–we see the outer walls of two buildings, constructed from wide but short light-colored stone. Between the buildings the “street” is built from shallow steps running all the way across the stage, and most of the way front to back. In back we can see the night sky to the right, and a tall narrow archway to the left. In Act 2 the buildings and steps remain, but now in the background there is a plinth supporting a sculpture of a charging bull. On the vertical face of the plinth is the Borgia family crest, above the word “BORGIA” in well-executed Roman capitals. It is this “B” that Gennaro removes to leave the word “ORGIA,” thus insulting the Borgia family and earning himself a death sentence. When Gennaro is brought before the Duke to answer for this crime, the building walls close in to become the inner walls of the Duke’s palace. Only a portion of the plinth and bull remain visible. Later a massive pair of steel-grate doors close in front of the plinth. In Act 3 the movable walls open up a bit to reveal more night sky, punctuated by three or four poplar trees. They are replaced by the tall narrow archway of Act 1, this time directly facing the audience. When Lucrezia expels everyone but herself and Gennaro from the room, a pair of doors close the archway.
Our cast:
Lucrezia Borgia: Renee Fleming
Genarro: Michael Fabiano
Duke Alfonso: Vitalij Kowaljow
Maffio Orsini: Elizabeth DeShong
Conductor: Riccardo Frizza
Director: John Pascoe
Lucrezia Borgia was brought to San Francisco as a vehicle for Renee Fleming. It’s unfortunate when the star soprano gets upstaged by her leading man. Michael Fabiano, a winner of the 2007 Metropolitan National Council auditions (as documented in the movie The Audition) sang with considerable power and presence, though some of my neighbors expressed reservations about the quality of his voice. In comparison, Fleming was rather subdued. Kowaljow sang a convincing Duke.
With music that is pleasant but hardly memorable, uninspired staging, and a star who seemed to be off her game, this performance fell somewhat short of a beta.
Heart of a Soldier 2, San Francisco Opera, Sept. 27 2011
Back to the San Francisco Opera House for a rerun of Heart of a Soldier, figuring that it’s unlikely that I’ll get another chance to see it, and hoping that I would get more out of it a second time around—which usually happens with new music.
To the previous report, let me note a scene I had omitted: after the firefight in the Vietnamese jungle that ends with Rick disobeying orders and rushing off to rescue Dan Hill’s platoon, there was a short scene in which Dan calls Rick a hero. Rick brushes off the compliment with “All the real heroes are dead,” a presentiment of his heroic actions on 9/11. The scene is set simply, with Dan lounging in the midst of a pile of 55-gallon oil drums. In Act 2, scenes with Rick and Dan are set on a platform that slides out from the left, with a simple concrete bench. Shortly after Rick meets Susan, jogging around the slide-out platform with the fire hydrant, they have coffee sitting on patio furniture that has replaced the fire hydrant.
I got a bit more musically out of this second performance. Specifically, in Viet Nam, where Rick is instructing his soldiers to sing, the “Sing Sierra, sing India, sing November, sing Golf” (that is, sing S-I-N-G) chorus was very effective. I paid more attention to Rick’s act 2 aria this time; it’s about military brotherhood.
It was worth going to a second time—a beta.
To the previous report, let me note a scene I had omitted: after the firefight in the Vietnamese jungle that ends with Rick disobeying orders and rushing off to rescue Dan Hill’s platoon, there was a short scene in which Dan calls Rick a hero. Rick brushes off the compliment with “All the real heroes are dead,” a presentiment of his heroic actions on 9/11. The scene is set simply, with Dan lounging in the midst of a pile of 55-gallon oil drums. In Act 2, scenes with Rick and Dan are set on a platform that slides out from the left, with a simple concrete bench. Shortly after Rick meets Susan, jogging around the slide-out platform with the fire hydrant, they have coffee sitting on patio furniture that has replaced the fire hydrant.
I got a bit more musically out of this second performance. Specifically, in Viet Nam, where Rick is instructing his soldiers to sing, the “Sing Sierra, sing India, sing November, sing Golf” (that is, sing S-I-N-G) chorus was very effective. I paid more attention to Rick’s act 2 aria this time; it’s about military brotherhood.
It was worth going to a second time—a beta.
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Idomeneo 3, Opera San Jose, Sept. 23 2011
I normally see both casts; this production is sufficiently spectacular that a third visit was called for. Everything was the same as the performance of Sept. 17, except that Tony Quartuccio replaced George Cleve on the podium, and Andrew Whitfield replaced Nova Safo in the relatively minor role of Arbace. I tried to evaluate whether I actually heard any difference with different conductors, and concluded that Cleve’s performance was just a tiny bit “crisper.”
I had spoken with Silas Elash after the Sept. 22 performance, and learned where he was positioned as The Voice. I thought he had been just out of sight on the third level of the palace, but no—he was on the other side of a grate at the very top of the ceiling of the theater, way up there. He sounded even better than he had before.
I spoke with one of the cellists afterward, and she said that the orchestra had been told not to get used to all the money and care and attention lavished on this performance—“After this, it’s back to JC Penney.” Thank you, Dr. Packard and Opera San Jose, for a magnificent cultural contribution.
I had spoken with Silas Elash after the Sept. 22 performance, and learned where he was positioned as The Voice. I thought he had been just out of sight on the third level of the palace, but no—he was on the other side of a grate at the very top of the ceiling of the theater, way up there. He sounded even better than he had before.
I spoke with one of the cellists afterward, and she said that the orchestra had been told not to get used to all the money and care and attention lavished on this performance—“After this, it’s back to JC Penney.” Thank you, Dr. Packard and Opera San Jose, for a magnificent cultural contribution.
Idomeneo 2, Opera San Jose, Sept. 22 2011
Back to the California Theatre to see the “other” cast perform Mozart’s Idomeneo, and to refresh my memory on the sets. From my orchestra (rather than balcony) seat, I could see that the ceiling of the opening set was also painted. Most of the painting was of geometric designs; the wall on the left depicted porpoises. Elettra’s first act aria is performed in front of a dark-gray-on-black backdrop while a scene change is made behind; she is accompanied (visually) by her handmaidens (dancers) who dramatize her mental state. The diorama forming the backdrop of the second scene was the plastic/cellophane material, unpainted. When the curtain goes up for Act 2 (which is actually the finale of Act 1, perhaps they had intermission “early” to make the two acts closer to the same length), the diorama features a painting of ships at sea; at the left there is a depiction of a village at the base of a mountain. The painting is a reproduction of an artwork from the island of Santorini, 17th century BC. When the scene shifts to the royal apartments, Idomeneo has a not-very-fancy throne (not a bench, as previously reported) to sit on. Elettra gets to cover another scene change—a large painting of three Cretan women, with eyes on the sides of their faces just as in Egyptian paintings, is hung in front of the dark-gray-on-black curtain. In Act 3, when the scene changes from the small room in the basement of the palace to the gigantic Palace of Knossos, it is covered by a recitative by Arbace in front of the dark-gray-on-black curtain. For this production, they cut Arbace’s aria in which he offered himself to be sacrificed instead of Idamante. The palace does have three levels. The final scene change is covered with Idomeneo’s “Torna la pace” (Peace has returned), sung in front of a large painting of a Cretan warrior.
Our cast:
Idomeneo: Christopher Bengochea
Idamante: Aaron Blake
Ilia: Rebecca Davis
Elettra: Christina Major
The Voice: Silas Elash
Conductor: George Cleve
Director: Brad Dalton
Rebecca Davis made an outstanding Ilia. Christopher Bengochea started in less than top form, but by the end of the evening he was displaying a power in his voice that came across as authority rather than just volume. Christina Major sang Elettra beautifully, although her acting make it look as though Katisha had somehow wandered into this performance. In 1786 Mozart rewrote the castrato part of Idamante for a tenor, and this performance did not make a convincing argument for presenting that version. Perhaps the tenor voice lacks the agility of the mezzo-soprano voice. My understanding is that the rewriting made only minor changes, and then mainly in the ensembles rather than in the solo arias. Silash Elash’s The Voice was even more impressive in my orchestra seat than in my balcony seat.
Another wonderful evening, again better than beta, not quite alpha.
Our cast:
Idomeneo: Christopher Bengochea
Idamante: Aaron Blake
Ilia: Rebecca Davis
Elettra: Christina Major
The Voice: Silas Elash
Conductor: George Cleve
Director: Brad Dalton
Rebecca Davis made an outstanding Ilia. Christopher Bengochea started in less than top form, but by the end of the evening he was displaying a power in his voice that came across as authority rather than just volume. Christina Major sang Elettra beautifully, although her acting make it look as though Katisha had somehow wandered into this performance. In 1786 Mozart rewrote the castrato part of Idamante for a tenor, and this performance did not make a convincing argument for presenting that version. Perhaps the tenor voice lacks the agility of the mezzo-soprano voice. My understanding is that the rewriting made only minor changes, and then mainly in the ensembles rather than in the solo arias. Silash Elash’s The Voice was even more impressive in my orchestra seat than in my balcony seat.
Another wonderful evening, again better than beta, not quite alpha.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Heart of a Soldier, San Francisco Opera, Sept. 18 2011
Mozart last night; brand-new opera this afternoon. David Gockley’s project to bring the book “Heart of a Soldier” to the operatic stage, a project initiated when he was director of Houston Grand Opera, finally came to fruition. The book tells the life story of Rick Rescorla, the head of security for Morgan Stanley, who led 2700 employees in the World Trade Center to safety after the attacks of Sept. 11, only to lose his own life when he went back to search for stragglers. The opera, by composer Christopher Theofanidis and librettist Donna DiNovelli, follows the book very closely. Of course, with only 1 hour 40 minutes of music, some of the details have to be omitted, but nearly all of the important events do make it to the stage.
The backdrop for the entire production is a representation of the Twin Towers. We see four stories of each building, each with seven bays facing the audience; the insides are bare except for people and the emergency exit stairway. The towers will be obscured by drop-downs from time to time, but the physical structures stay in place through both acts.
Act 1 opens with the young Cyril (Rick’s actual given name, he adopted “Rick” in honor of the American soldiers) making friends with the American soldiers who were in Cornwall preparing for D-Day. In the next scene, we see the inside of a bar in Rhodesia, with walls of corrugated sheet metal, where Rick meets his life-long friend Dan Hill. Rick is borne in on the shoulders of other men; they are all celebrating his killing of a lion that has been menacing the local village. Rick shouts “Who is ready to wrestle the strongest man in Rhodesia?” and the first words of Dan Hill are “I’m ready to wrestle the second strongest man in Rhodesia!” (The pre-performance talk had advised us that yes, there were humorous lines, and despite the serious nature of the story, we should feel free to laugh at the right times.)
There is a brief scene in Ft. Benning, Georgia, where Rick and Dan are in Officer’s Candidate School. An ordinary rigging pole descends from on high and a number of men use it to do pull-ups. (I heard that these supers were super-athletes, capable of 100 pull-ups and 200 push-ups, and magnificent physical specimens, though we only got to see their backs.) Then it’s off to Viet Nam, with another large piece of corrugated metal with a jagged gash through it serving as the backdrop, while projections of jungle plants are displayed on it. The final scene depicts Rick’s wedding to “a bride” who has no music to sing. We see a number of large round tables set for a wedding reception, and Rick and his bride enter through an archway of crossed swords. The women tend to gather on the left side of the stage, Rick and his military buddies on the right side, echoing the point made in the book that Rick paid little attention to his bride at the reception.
After intermission, the twin towers are on full display, as Rick leads his charges in evacuation drills. Dan Hill is there, describing what it would take to bring down the towers. (Dan had eerily predicted both the 1993 truck bomb in the basement of WTC, as well as the 2001 attacks.) Then there is an interlude where we see Susan, who will become Rick’s second wife, relaxing in the park with her dog. The only suggestion of a park is a large red fire hydrant mounted on a short platform. Rick comes by, jogging in his bare feet (he’s writing a book on a barefoot runner), meets Susan, and before long they are having coffee. Then it’s back to WTC. The stage towers do not actually fall (this is not an updated version of Samson and Dalila), but the destruction is represented by lights suddenly going off, emergency lights coming on, and lots and lots of paper floating down from on high. In a short epilog, without voices, Dan Hill and Susan Rescorla kneel and smear their arms with concrete dust, echoing Rick’s ritual of smearing his skin with the blood of the lion he had killed in Rhodesia, the idea being to acquire the strength that the dead had possessed.
Our cast:
Rick Rescorla: Thomas Hampson
Dan Hill: William Burden
Susan Rescorla: Melody Moore
(and 28 minor characters)
Conductor: Patrick Summers
Director: Francesca Zambello
Thomas Hampson was involved with the project nearly from the beginning, and he portrayed his character perfectly with his acting and singing and craggy good looks. William Burden and Melody Moore supported him ably. This time, Zambello’s staging was spot-on, perfectly suited to the material at hand, and avoiding the directorial conceit so much in evidence in San Francisco’s Ring of a few months ago.
But how was the music? Lots of people are afraid of modern opera, and often with good reason. What little of Theofanidis's other music I have heard suggests “movie music,” which is not necessarily bad; it certainly goes down better than Berg and Schoenberg and Ligeti. Here the music serves the story well, without calling attention to itself unduly. Much of the vocal line is almost recitative. Rick gets one full-blown aria, in the second act, the thrust of which I forget.
How was the story? As previously mentioned, the libretto was very true to the book. The librettist did leave out a lot of the Viet Nam story, but wisely so. Going in, I had my concerns about an opera comprising lots of little scenes (there is a prologue and five scenes before intermission), based on last year’s Anna Karenina at Opera San Jose, whose 19 separate scenes seemed rather disjointed. These scenes were long enough to be more than thumbnail-size stories, and though there was no smooth transition between the scenes (note that we jumped from the jungles of Viet Name to Rick’s first wedding), the story line worked. The details of the libretto, however, left a bit to be desired. There were too many rhyming couplets, and I do have to credit the line “I’m going to have to give you a geography lesson” as being as mundane as “Who was that on the telephone?” (Angle of Repose, Andrew Imbrie, 1976).
Bottom line: I enjoyed it. It’s definitely one of the better modern operas that I have seen, though Götterdämmerung has nothing to worry about. I’m looking forward to seeing it again in a few days. A beta.
The backdrop for the entire production is a representation of the Twin Towers. We see four stories of each building, each with seven bays facing the audience; the insides are bare except for people and the emergency exit stairway. The towers will be obscured by drop-downs from time to time, but the physical structures stay in place through both acts.
Act 1 opens with the young Cyril (Rick’s actual given name, he adopted “Rick” in honor of the American soldiers) making friends with the American soldiers who were in Cornwall preparing for D-Day. In the next scene, we see the inside of a bar in Rhodesia, with walls of corrugated sheet metal, where Rick meets his life-long friend Dan Hill. Rick is borne in on the shoulders of other men; they are all celebrating his killing of a lion that has been menacing the local village. Rick shouts “Who is ready to wrestle the strongest man in Rhodesia?” and the first words of Dan Hill are “I’m ready to wrestle the second strongest man in Rhodesia!” (The pre-performance talk had advised us that yes, there were humorous lines, and despite the serious nature of the story, we should feel free to laugh at the right times.)
There is a brief scene in Ft. Benning, Georgia, where Rick and Dan are in Officer’s Candidate School. An ordinary rigging pole descends from on high and a number of men use it to do pull-ups. (I heard that these supers were super-athletes, capable of 100 pull-ups and 200 push-ups, and magnificent physical specimens, though we only got to see their backs.) Then it’s off to Viet Nam, with another large piece of corrugated metal with a jagged gash through it serving as the backdrop, while projections of jungle plants are displayed on it. The final scene depicts Rick’s wedding to “a bride” who has no music to sing. We see a number of large round tables set for a wedding reception, and Rick and his bride enter through an archway of crossed swords. The women tend to gather on the left side of the stage, Rick and his military buddies on the right side, echoing the point made in the book that Rick paid little attention to his bride at the reception.
After intermission, the twin towers are on full display, as Rick leads his charges in evacuation drills. Dan Hill is there, describing what it would take to bring down the towers. (Dan had eerily predicted both the 1993 truck bomb in the basement of WTC, as well as the 2001 attacks.) Then there is an interlude where we see Susan, who will become Rick’s second wife, relaxing in the park with her dog. The only suggestion of a park is a large red fire hydrant mounted on a short platform. Rick comes by, jogging in his bare feet (he’s writing a book on a barefoot runner), meets Susan, and before long they are having coffee. Then it’s back to WTC. The stage towers do not actually fall (this is not an updated version of Samson and Dalila), but the destruction is represented by lights suddenly going off, emergency lights coming on, and lots and lots of paper floating down from on high. In a short epilog, without voices, Dan Hill and Susan Rescorla kneel and smear their arms with concrete dust, echoing Rick’s ritual of smearing his skin with the blood of the lion he had killed in Rhodesia, the idea being to acquire the strength that the dead had possessed.
Our cast:
Rick Rescorla: Thomas Hampson
Dan Hill: William Burden
Susan Rescorla: Melody Moore
(and 28 minor characters)
Conductor: Patrick Summers
Director: Francesca Zambello
Thomas Hampson was involved with the project nearly from the beginning, and he portrayed his character perfectly with his acting and singing and craggy good looks. William Burden and Melody Moore supported him ably. This time, Zambello’s staging was spot-on, perfectly suited to the material at hand, and avoiding the directorial conceit so much in evidence in San Francisco’s Ring of a few months ago.
But how was the music? Lots of people are afraid of modern opera, and often with good reason. What little of Theofanidis's other music I have heard suggests “movie music,” which is not necessarily bad; it certainly goes down better than Berg and Schoenberg and Ligeti. Here the music serves the story well, without calling attention to itself unduly. Much of the vocal line is almost recitative. Rick gets one full-blown aria, in the second act, the thrust of which I forget.
How was the story? As previously mentioned, the libretto was very true to the book. The librettist did leave out a lot of the Viet Nam story, but wisely so. Going in, I had my concerns about an opera comprising lots of little scenes (there is a prologue and five scenes before intermission), based on last year’s Anna Karenina at Opera San Jose, whose 19 separate scenes seemed rather disjointed. These scenes were long enough to be more than thumbnail-size stories, and though there was no smooth transition between the scenes (note that we jumped from the jungles of Viet Name to Rick’s first wedding), the story line worked. The details of the libretto, however, left a bit to be desired. There were too many rhyming couplets, and I do have to credit the line “I’m going to have to give you a geography lesson” as being as mundane as “Who was that on the telephone?” (Angle of Repose, Andrew Imbrie, 1976).
Bottom line: I enjoyed it. It’s definitely one of the better modern operas that I have seen, though Götterdämmerung has nothing to worry about. I’m looking forward to seeing it again in a few days. A beta.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Idomeneo, Opera San Jose, Sept. 17 2011
Idomeneo is Mozart’s 11th opera, and his first great one. It’s rarely performed, perhaps because of the staging demands, perhaps because of the modern public’s lack of appetite for opera seria, an operatic form that was already going out of style in Mozart’s day. But based on this Opera San Jose production, it deserves far more exposure than it has today.
The Packard Humanities Foundation funded a historically accurate production. The foundation’s director, David Woodley Packard, is a professor of classics, with a particular interest in the time and place in which Idomeneo is set: the island of Crete, approximately 1200 BC, right after the Trojan War. Packard brought his knowledge of art and architecture, and that of his professional colleagues, to the production, ranging all the way from the massive set near the end of Act 3 down to the earrings worn by the performers. And scuttlebutt has it that more was spent on this one production than Opera San Jose normally spends in an entire year of four productions. There was even enough funding to permit a complete performance, no need to cut any music in order to bring the show in under 3 hours (I measured 3 hours 35 minutes).
Act I opens in the royal palace, with walls and columns decorated with historical authenticity. The palace floor consists of light brown, almost sandy, 4 ft x 4 ft tiles, which also serve well for the following scene at the seashore. Idomeneo and his shipmates have landed safely on the beach after surviving the wreck of their ship, whose mast and tattered sail can be seen upstage. The beach and ship are surrounded by a semicircular diorama.
Act 2 continues the diorama theme, but now the diorama is informed by the artwork from a piece of decorated 17th century BC pottery depicting the ships of the era. The original artwork was about 16 inches on a side; it has been very effectively recreated in large scale to fill the back of the stage. The scene change takes us back to the royal palace, but a different part, the king’s chambers, consisting of painted (though not decorated) walls and pillars, and a low bench for the king to sit on. Another scene change takes us back to the diorama, this time fairly abstract, looking crinkled cellophane. When the storm hits at the end of the act, strobe lights on the cellophane do a good job of depicting the storm.
Act 3 opens in a very simple set, apparently downstairs in the palace. It looks like a small room, seen at a 45° angle; through an open doorway (without door) we can see steps leading to the upper level of the palace. The scene changes to the most impressive one of the evening: a massive set representing the exterior of the palace of Knossos, again with walls and pillars, but there are (at least) three levels, with people standing on all the levels. (I had heard reports of four levels, but from the Grand Tier I could only see three.) In my preview I had made mention of the fact that Mozart saved the trombones for near the end, bringing them in to preface an announcement from The Voice. In this performance, we don’t get trombones, we get a thunderous statement from the Mighty Wurlitzer installed at the California Theatre, originally a 1927 movie palace. I read that for this performance they installed four new 32-foot organ pipes. (The organ could use more of them, but this performance only needed those four notes.) Following Elettra’s final aria, Idomeneo sings an aria in front of the curtain (and in front of a drop-down panel of artwork), an aria not included in my commercial recording. This aria has covered the final scene change, where they get rid of the palace and return us to the diorama, this time with three copies of a piece of art depicting bull-leaping.
Our cast:
Idomeneo: Alexander Boyer
Idamante: Betany Coffland
Ilia: Sandra Bengochea
Elettra: Jasmina Halimic
The Voice: Silas Elash
Conductor: George Cleve
Director: Brad Dalton
It was a fine cast to go along with a fine production. Everyone sang well, but I was particularly taken with the intense portrayals of Idamante and Elettra by Coffland and Halimic. Elettra is a particularly juicy role, she has a couple of rip-roaring arias to express her extreme displeasure at a Trojan slave (Ilia) rather than her, a Greek, being the one that Idamante is in love with. I had expected The Voice to be amplified and perhaps electronically modified, but Elash's sonorous bass voice filled the hall. It’s unfortunate that we got to hear The Voice for only about two minutes. (I had wondered where The Voice would spend the first two acts; he is not called for, and then does not even appear, until near the end of Act 3. As second intermission began, I ran into Elash descending from the upper balcony, on his way to his warm-up.) George Cleve, our local Mozart expert, led a first-rate orchestra.
Fantastic sets, wonderful costumes, great singing and playing, and first-class Mozart—what’s not to like? Well, the libretto, written by the chaplain at the court of Salzburg, something of an amateur at libretto-writing. Mozart’s music is superb at a moment-by-moment level, but as an entire work of art, it failed to leave a tremendous impact at the end of the evening. Somewhere between an alpha and a beta.
The Packard Humanities Foundation funded a historically accurate production. The foundation’s director, David Woodley Packard, is a professor of classics, with a particular interest in the time and place in which Idomeneo is set: the island of Crete, approximately 1200 BC, right after the Trojan War. Packard brought his knowledge of art and architecture, and that of his professional colleagues, to the production, ranging all the way from the massive set near the end of Act 3 down to the earrings worn by the performers. And scuttlebutt has it that more was spent on this one production than Opera San Jose normally spends in an entire year of four productions. There was even enough funding to permit a complete performance, no need to cut any music in order to bring the show in under 3 hours (I measured 3 hours 35 minutes).
Act I opens in the royal palace, with walls and columns decorated with historical authenticity. The palace floor consists of light brown, almost sandy, 4 ft x 4 ft tiles, which also serve well for the following scene at the seashore. Idomeneo and his shipmates have landed safely on the beach after surviving the wreck of their ship, whose mast and tattered sail can be seen upstage. The beach and ship are surrounded by a semicircular diorama.
Act 2 continues the diorama theme, but now the diorama is informed by the artwork from a piece of decorated 17th century BC pottery depicting the ships of the era. The original artwork was about 16 inches on a side; it has been very effectively recreated in large scale to fill the back of the stage. The scene change takes us back to the royal palace, but a different part, the king’s chambers, consisting of painted (though not decorated) walls and pillars, and a low bench for the king to sit on. Another scene change takes us back to the diorama, this time fairly abstract, looking crinkled cellophane. When the storm hits at the end of the act, strobe lights on the cellophane do a good job of depicting the storm.
Act 3 opens in a very simple set, apparently downstairs in the palace. It looks like a small room, seen at a 45° angle; through an open doorway (without door) we can see steps leading to the upper level of the palace. The scene changes to the most impressive one of the evening: a massive set representing the exterior of the palace of Knossos, again with walls and pillars, but there are (at least) three levels, with people standing on all the levels. (I had heard reports of four levels, but from the Grand Tier I could only see three.) In my preview I had made mention of the fact that Mozart saved the trombones for near the end, bringing them in to preface an announcement from The Voice. In this performance, we don’t get trombones, we get a thunderous statement from the Mighty Wurlitzer installed at the California Theatre, originally a 1927 movie palace. I read that for this performance they installed four new 32-foot organ pipes. (The organ could use more of them, but this performance only needed those four notes.) Following Elettra’s final aria, Idomeneo sings an aria in front of the curtain (and in front of a drop-down panel of artwork), an aria not included in my commercial recording. This aria has covered the final scene change, where they get rid of the palace and return us to the diorama, this time with three copies of a piece of art depicting bull-leaping.
Our cast:
Idomeneo: Alexander Boyer
Idamante: Betany Coffland
Ilia: Sandra Bengochea
Elettra: Jasmina Halimic
The Voice: Silas Elash
Conductor: George Cleve
Director: Brad Dalton
It was a fine cast to go along with a fine production. Everyone sang well, but I was particularly taken with the intense portrayals of Idamante and Elettra by Coffland and Halimic. Elettra is a particularly juicy role, she has a couple of rip-roaring arias to express her extreme displeasure at a Trojan slave (Ilia) rather than her, a Greek, being the one that Idamante is in love with. I had expected The Voice to be amplified and perhaps electronically modified, but Elash's sonorous bass voice filled the hall. It’s unfortunate that we got to hear The Voice for only about two minutes. (I had wondered where The Voice would spend the first two acts; he is not called for, and then does not even appear, until near the end of Act 3. As second intermission began, I ran into Elash descending from the upper balcony, on his way to his warm-up.) George Cleve, our local Mozart expert, led a first-rate orchestra.
Fantastic sets, wonderful costumes, great singing and playing, and first-class Mozart—what’s not to like? Well, the libretto, written by the chaplain at the court of Salzburg, something of an amateur at libretto-writing. Mozart’s music is superb at a moment-by-moment level, but as an entire work of art, it failed to leave a tremendous impact at the end of the evening. Somewhere between an alpha and a beta.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
The Barber of Seville (again), Merola Opera Program, August 7 2011
Back to Herbst Theater three days later to see the other Merolini in this summer's complete opera production. The staging was of course the same as that of the other cast, with just a few minor changes. Dr. Bartolo did without a cane, which was fine; the other performance with the cane was not convincing. He sported a voluminous gray wig, rather than the previous voluminous bright red wig. Figaro got a marvelous bit of stage business early in Act 1: after Rosina “accidentally” dropped her note to “Lindoro” serenading her, Figaro somersaulted (briskly!) from the left side of the stage to the center to pick up the note, accompanied by a rapid-fire run on the harpsichord, a brief quote from the overture. Oh, what you can do with young singers!
Our cast:
Fiorello: Suchan Kim
Almaviva: Daniel Curran
Figaro: Mark Diamond
Rosina: Renée Rapier
Dr. Bartolo: John Maynard
Don Basilio: Peixin Chin
Berta: Marina Boudart Harris
Conductor: Mark Morash
Director: Roy Rallo
Diamond made a superb Figaro; Curran’s Almaviva was a couple of cuts above what I heard in the prior performance. Boudart Harris gave us a marvelously perky Berta. But my favorite was Peixin Chin, whose “La Calunnia” resonated with considerable power and depth. I am very much looking forward to hearing him at Merola’s Grand Finale—I hear that he will sing the Osmin half of a duet from The Abduction from the Seraglio, which features some notes so low that some very fine basses are unable to reach.
It’s not clear how much difference the cast made, and how much difference one more evening of on-stage experience made, but I enjoyed this performance much more than the previous one. A beta.
Our cast:
Fiorello: Suchan Kim
Almaviva: Daniel Curran
Figaro: Mark Diamond
Rosina: Renée Rapier
Dr. Bartolo: John Maynard
Don Basilio: Peixin Chin
Berta: Marina Boudart Harris
Conductor: Mark Morash
Director: Roy Rallo
Diamond made a superb Figaro; Curran’s Almaviva was a couple of cuts above what I heard in the prior performance. Boudart Harris gave us a marvelously perky Berta. But my favorite was Peixin Chin, whose “La Calunnia” resonated with considerable power and depth. I am very much looking forward to hearing him at Merola’s Grand Finale—I hear that he will sing the Osmin half of a duet from The Abduction from the Seraglio, which features some notes so low that some very fine basses are unable to reach.
It’s not clear how much difference the cast made, and how much difference one more evening of on-stage experience made, but I enjoyed this performance much more than the previous one. A beta.
Sunday, August 7, 2011
The Barber of Seville, Merola Opera Program, August 4 2011
Every summer, the Merola Opera Program invites a number (this year, 20) of young singers to San Francisco for 12 weeks of intensive study and learning. As part of the program, they present a complete opera, on stage, for the public. Last year it was The Elixir of Love; this year it was The Barber of Seville. Because there are far more “Merolini” than principal roles, there are two casts. The chorus positions are filled from the Merolini who are not singing the principal roles. The stage director is a seasoned professional, as are the conductor and the orchestra. In the orchestra I recognized Rufus Olivier, principal bassoonist for the San Francisco Opera orchestra; his son, Rufus David, also with the San Francisco Opera orchestra; and Virginia Smedberg, who has played with Opera San Jose for many years.
In this production, before the curtain goes up, Fiorello and Almaviva appear at the front of the stage, and Fiorello assists Almaviva in changing clothes from those of a Count to those of a Lindoro, the “poor student” that he will claim to be while serenading Rosina. When the curtain does go up, we see a curtain-behind-the-curtain of hanging green tinsel. “Ecco ridente” is sung in front of this green curtain, at the front of the stage. When the serenade is finished, we get the same violation of the text that we saw earlier this year in San Jose: Fiorello’s musicians are supposed to be thanking Almviva for his generosity, but here they advance menacingly on him and finally force him to hand over some greenbacks.
The arrival of Figaro is announced by a hand, holding a straight razor, peeking out from the right side of the stage. Figaro makes much of the razor, including wielding it like a rapier at one point, and practically slitting Almaviva’s throat when the latter reappears. Figaro persuades Almaviva to sing another, simpler, ad hoc serenade, the first one having been ineffective in bringing Rosina to her window. This time it works—Rosina sticks her head (just her head) out between the strands of green tinsel, and Dr. Bartolo similarly sticks his head out a few feet to the right.
After Almaviva and Figaro depart, the green tinsel curtain rises to reveal Rosina seated on a French baroque chair on top of a table, with other chairs lying on the table at strange angles, and other tables leaning up against her table. There is a 5-foot tall stack of various dishes, which she adds to during her aria “Una voce poco fa.” By the end of the aria, she has draped herself in a tablecloth, stuck plastic forks in her hair, and with her right hand raised a candelabra over head in an obvious personification of the Statue of Liberty. Clever, but completely irrelevant.
When Don Basilio enters, he is wearing headphones attached to a small rectangular box—Geiger counter? microphone?—that he holds in his hand. Both he and Dr. Bartolo are dressed and made up like caricatures of French dancing masters, with bouffant wigs and plenty of makeup. Dr. Bartolo is completely over the top with rouge and lipstick and blue eye shadow and beauty spots.
One of the challenges of a stage director is to set the chorus that concludes Act 1. Here the police force arrive carrying assault rifles that resemble AK-47s, and they spend their time in back of and on top of the tables that now extend from one side of the stage to the other, pointing their rifles at the principals at the front of the stage. Again the stage directions are ignored, as Almaviva bribes the captain of the guard instead of revealing to him (privately) his badge of nobility.
When the Act 2 curtain rises, we see eight large tables stood on end, all with their tops facing the audience, all with tablecloths featuring six-pointed stars, the angles of their points more acute than the angles of a Star of David. After Dr. Bartolo muses on recent events for a minute, Almaviva enters in another disguise, that of “Don Alonso,” a pupil of Don Basilio. He is carrying three black-and-white posters, each proclaiming in one way or another that “The end is near.” He attaches them to the upturned tables; the third one that he puts up says that “Judgment day is coming” with May 21 crossed out and October 21 beneath it. Good for a laugh, but again, its relevance to the story line escapes me. He is also carrying a roll-up piano, which he lays out on the stage and then lies on his stomach in front of it to play during the music lesson.
When Don Basilio makes his entrance, he does so by pushing over one of the upended tables. He is again wearing the headphones with the Geiger counter. During the storm, five of the remaining seven tables are pushed over by the “wind.” We are left with two adjacent tables standing in the center of the stage, with Rosina standing on a platform in back of them; this substitutes for the second floor of Dr. Bartolo’s home in a more ambitious production. Almaviva and Figaro bring a ladder onstage to climb up to Rosina; Dr. Bartolo removes it at the called-for time; Rosina and Almaviva descend by out-of-sight stairs to come to the front of the stage for the notarization. They all get to walk over the joists on the undersides of the other six large tables, which are now face-down on the stage.
I don’t expect high-budget productions from the Merola Opera Program, but I can’t help remembering the highly effective Barber of Seville that the Fremont Opera mounted a few years ago with just furniture and costumes and acting, no sets. Here, less could have been more. And why does Don Alonso’s knock sound from the right side of the stage, when he enters from the left side?
Our cast:
Fiorello: Suchan Kim
Almaviva: Heath Huberg
Figaro: Jonathon Michie
Rosina: Suzanne Rigden
Dr. Bartolo: Philippe Sly
Don Basilio: Adam Lau
Berta: Deborah Nansteel
Conductor: Mark Morash
Director: Roy Rallo
Perhaps it was just opening-night jitters, but the cast did not manage to redeem the annoying staging. Jonathon Michie (Figaro) and Philippe Sly (Dr. Bartolo) acquitted themselves well. I had heard high praise for Adam Lau (Don Basilio) but his performance did not measure up to my expectations. Suzanne Rigden had a nice set of pipes but seemed unable to coax the musicality from them that I hope will shortly be within her capabilities. I’m looking forward to hearing these singers again at the Grand Finale. Overall, a gamma.
In this production, before the curtain goes up, Fiorello and Almaviva appear at the front of the stage, and Fiorello assists Almaviva in changing clothes from those of a Count to those of a Lindoro, the “poor student” that he will claim to be while serenading Rosina. When the curtain does go up, we see a curtain-behind-the-curtain of hanging green tinsel. “Ecco ridente” is sung in front of this green curtain, at the front of the stage. When the serenade is finished, we get the same violation of the text that we saw earlier this year in San Jose: Fiorello’s musicians are supposed to be thanking Almviva for his generosity, but here they advance menacingly on him and finally force him to hand over some greenbacks.
The arrival of Figaro is announced by a hand, holding a straight razor, peeking out from the right side of the stage. Figaro makes much of the razor, including wielding it like a rapier at one point, and practically slitting Almaviva’s throat when the latter reappears. Figaro persuades Almaviva to sing another, simpler, ad hoc serenade, the first one having been ineffective in bringing Rosina to her window. This time it works—Rosina sticks her head (just her head) out between the strands of green tinsel, and Dr. Bartolo similarly sticks his head out a few feet to the right.
After Almaviva and Figaro depart, the green tinsel curtain rises to reveal Rosina seated on a French baroque chair on top of a table, with other chairs lying on the table at strange angles, and other tables leaning up against her table. There is a 5-foot tall stack of various dishes, which she adds to during her aria “Una voce poco fa.” By the end of the aria, she has draped herself in a tablecloth, stuck plastic forks in her hair, and with her right hand raised a candelabra over head in an obvious personification of the Statue of Liberty. Clever, but completely irrelevant.
When Don Basilio enters, he is wearing headphones attached to a small rectangular box—Geiger counter? microphone?—that he holds in his hand. Both he and Dr. Bartolo are dressed and made up like caricatures of French dancing masters, with bouffant wigs and plenty of makeup. Dr. Bartolo is completely over the top with rouge and lipstick and blue eye shadow and beauty spots.
One of the challenges of a stage director is to set the chorus that concludes Act 1. Here the police force arrive carrying assault rifles that resemble AK-47s, and they spend their time in back of and on top of the tables that now extend from one side of the stage to the other, pointing their rifles at the principals at the front of the stage. Again the stage directions are ignored, as Almaviva bribes the captain of the guard instead of revealing to him (privately) his badge of nobility.
When the Act 2 curtain rises, we see eight large tables stood on end, all with their tops facing the audience, all with tablecloths featuring six-pointed stars, the angles of their points more acute than the angles of a Star of David. After Dr. Bartolo muses on recent events for a minute, Almaviva enters in another disguise, that of “Don Alonso,” a pupil of Don Basilio. He is carrying three black-and-white posters, each proclaiming in one way or another that “The end is near.” He attaches them to the upturned tables; the third one that he puts up says that “Judgment day is coming” with May 21 crossed out and October 21 beneath it. Good for a laugh, but again, its relevance to the story line escapes me. He is also carrying a roll-up piano, which he lays out on the stage and then lies on his stomach in front of it to play during the music lesson.
When Don Basilio makes his entrance, he does so by pushing over one of the upended tables. He is again wearing the headphones with the Geiger counter. During the storm, five of the remaining seven tables are pushed over by the “wind.” We are left with two adjacent tables standing in the center of the stage, with Rosina standing on a platform in back of them; this substitutes for the second floor of Dr. Bartolo’s home in a more ambitious production. Almaviva and Figaro bring a ladder onstage to climb up to Rosina; Dr. Bartolo removes it at the called-for time; Rosina and Almaviva descend by out-of-sight stairs to come to the front of the stage for the notarization. They all get to walk over the joists on the undersides of the other six large tables, which are now face-down on the stage.
I don’t expect high-budget productions from the Merola Opera Program, but I can’t help remembering the highly effective Barber of Seville that the Fremont Opera mounted a few years ago with just furniture and costumes and acting, no sets. Here, less could have been more. And why does Don Alonso’s knock sound from the right side of the stage, when he enters from the left side?
Our cast:
Fiorello: Suchan Kim
Almaviva: Heath Huberg
Figaro: Jonathon Michie
Rosina: Suzanne Rigden
Dr. Bartolo: Philippe Sly
Don Basilio: Adam Lau
Berta: Deborah Nansteel
Conductor: Mark Morash
Director: Roy Rallo
Perhaps it was just opening-night jitters, but the cast did not manage to redeem the annoying staging. Jonathon Michie (Figaro) and Philippe Sly (Dr. Bartolo) acquitted themselves well. I had heard high praise for Adam Lau (Don Basilio) but his performance did not measure up to my expectations. Suzanne Rigden had a nice set of pipes but seemed unable to coax the musicality from them that I hope will shortly be within her capabilities. I’m looking forward to hearing these singers again at the Grand Finale. Overall, a gamma.
Friday, July 15, 2011
Götterdämmerung, San Francisco Opera, July 3 2011
You know that a production has taken a left turn somewhere when the staging matches the libretto so poorly that they have to take serious liberties with the supertitles. And that’s what happens in San Francisco Opera’s staging of the first prologue to Götterdämmerung, with the Norns. Wagner sets the action on the Valkyries’ rock, where Brünnhilde was laid down to sleep on Wednesday evening and Siegfried awakened her on Friday evening. It’s now Sunday afternoon, and the Norns are supposed to be tossing the rope of fate from one to the other and tying it variously around a pine tree, a fir tree, and a rock. Wagner has the Third Norn begin what little action there is with “Why don’t we spin and sing?” In San Francisco, the scene takes place on, or within, a printed circuit board that is projected on the scrim. On the floor there is a massive pile of thick cables, clearly reminiscent of the cables underneath the raised floor of any computer room that has been in use for years, and the Third Norn sings “Why don’t we switch the cable now?” Later on, the supertitle reads “I used to lay the cable by the fir tree.” When the rope of fate frays and breaks, there is a flash of light from the end of the cable, and we read “The connection is broken!” as we hear “Es riß! Es riß! Es riß!” (“It tore!”) All the while, the Norns are wearing garish green surgical gowns and skullcaps, with black aprons in front, and are sporting dark sunglasses.
At the end of the first prologue, the Norns descend “to mother” and the scene changes to the Valkyries’ rock, as called for. It is the same set as at the end of Siegfried, with the concrete structures of the Die Walküre set showing the ravages of time.
Act 1 proper begins in the Hall of the Gibichungs. The structure is largely plate-glass windows supported by thick stainless steel frames; the furniture consists of a couple of white modern-style sofas, almost Mies van der Rohe in appearance, and a small bar. In the background an oil refinery can barely be discerned. Act 1 ends back at the Valkyries’ rock, with Waltraute’s entreaty to Brünnhilde to give the ring back to the Rhinemaidens and “Gunther’s” conquest of Brünnhilde.
Act 2 opens with the appearance of Alberich and his question to Hagen, “Are you sleeping, my son?” Here the extended orchestral introduction is given a strange accompaniment on stage. Hagen and Gutrune are sitting on a large Mies van der Rohe-style bed; Hagen is apparently channel-surfing by pointing a remote control at the audience. When he clicks it, a red LED on its end illuminates, and a brief rectangular flash appears on the scrim, though we don’t actually see any TV images. Gutrune tries her hand with the remote control, then leaves and Hagen curls up in time for Alberich’s appearance. After the dialogue between father and son, Hagen goes back to sleep, and Alberich picks up the remote control and appears to be as puzzled by it as any 1900-era person might be. It’s humorous, but we don’t need humor here.
Act 2 continues with a more public place in the Hall of the Gibichungs. The raked metal grate stage that underlies every scene of this Ring is there, surmounted by a horizontal white platform that occupies most of the right half of the stage. On the left, a few white steps descend to the metal grate floor; on the right, more white steps ascend to the edge of the stage. On the left there is a long low bench extending from downstage to upstage.
In Act 3 the destruction of Nature continues. The Rhine has apparently run dry. The river bed is festooned with empty plastic bottles, old tires, and other detritus; toward the rear is a discarded camper shell. The Rhinemaidens appear with large black plastic garbage bags and begin to fill them with the plastic water bottles. When Siegfried enters, he is carrying a rifle in addition to Notung. The curtain drops for the scene change in which all the river bed junk is removed. Three pairs of lights seem to approach from the rear, but when the curtain goes up, there are no jeeps to be seen. Siegfried, Gunther, and Hagen are dressed in bright orange coveralls, while the rest of the hunting party is dressed in camouflage. The spoils of the hunt are brought in on handcarts, flat platforms with an axle and rubber tires located very near the end of the cart. Siegfried’s body will be carried back to the Hall of the Gibichungs on one of these carts.
The final scene is set on a bare stage, just the metal grate floor that we are quite familiar with by now. Siegfried’s body is brought in on one of the handcarts. At the end the body is unceremoniously dumped over the edge at the back of the stage while “gasoline” is poured from jerry cans over the now out-of-sight body. Hagen enters with his cry of “Zurück von dem Ring!” (“Get back from the Ring!”), and rather than drowning him the Rhinemaidens whip out a bright yellow plastic bag and suffocate him with it. More “message,” I guess.
Our cast:
First Norn: Ronnita Miller
Second Norn: Daveda Karanas
Third Norn: Heidi Melton
Brünnhilde: Nina Stemme
Siegfried: Ian Storey
Gunther: Gerd Grochowski
Gutrune: Melissa Citro
Hagen: Andrea Silvestrelli
Waltraute: Daveda Karanas
Alberich: Gordon Hawkins
Woglinde: Stacey Tappan
Wellgunde: Lauren McNeese
Flosshilde: Renée Tatum
Conductor: Donald Runnicles
Director: Francesca Zambello
I continue to be a big fan of Andrea Silvestrelli. His Hagen was appropriately menacing, and his Hagen’s Watch solo near the end of Act 1 was spine-tingling. Gordon Hawkins shone in his limited role as Alberich, just as he did in Siegfried. Nina Stemme performed solidly as Brünnhilde all afternoon long. Ian Storey was OK as Siegfried. The orchestra under Runnicles’s direction was in top form. The curtain call featured something I had never seen before: the entire orchestra was on stage, with the principal horn player in the lineup in front, next to Runnicles.
So what am I going to remember from this, my eleventh Ring cycle? I will remember Brandon Jovanovich’s remarkable debut as Siegmund. I will remember Andrea Silvestrelli’s commanding presence as Fasolt and as Hagen, and wish that he could have sung Hunding as well. I will remember Jay Hunter Morriss’s well-acted Siegfried, and hope that his being called up from his role as cover will be the start of something big for him. I will remember the glorious sound at my seat in the balcony. And even though I didn’t care for it (perhaps because I didn’t care for it), Francesca Zambello’s excesses with the staging will be memorable. Everything considered, a beta-plus.
At the end of the first prologue, the Norns descend “to mother” and the scene changes to the Valkyries’ rock, as called for. It is the same set as at the end of Siegfried, with the concrete structures of the Die Walküre set showing the ravages of time.
Act 1 proper begins in the Hall of the Gibichungs. The structure is largely plate-glass windows supported by thick stainless steel frames; the furniture consists of a couple of white modern-style sofas, almost Mies van der Rohe in appearance, and a small bar. In the background an oil refinery can barely be discerned. Act 1 ends back at the Valkyries’ rock, with Waltraute’s entreaty to Brünnhilde to give the ring back to the Rhinemaidens and “Gunther’s” conquest of Brünnhilde.
Act 2 opens with the appearance of Alberich and his question to Hagen, “Are you sleeping, my son?” Here the extended orchestral introduction is given a strange accompaniment on stage. Hagen and Gutrune are sitting on a large Mies van der Rohe-style bed; Hagen is apparently channel-surfing by pointing a remote control at the audience. When he clicks it, a red LED on its end illuminates, and a brief rectangular flash appears on the scrim, though we don’t actually see any TV images. Gutrune tries her hand with the remote control, then leaves and Hagen curls up in time for Alberich’s appearance. After the dialogue between father and son, Hagen goes back to sleep, and Alberich picks up the remote control and appears to be as puzzled by it as any 1900-era person might be. It’s humorous, but we don’t need humor here.
Act 2 continues with a more public place in the Hall of the Gibichungs. The raked metal grate stage that underlies every scene of this Ring is there, surmounted by a horizontal white platform that occupies most of the right half of the stage. On the left, a few white steps descend to the metal grate floor; on the right, more white steps ascend to the edge of the stage. On the left there is a long low bench extending from downstage to upstage.
In Act 3 the destruction of Nature continues. The Rhine has apparently run dry. The river bed is festooned with empty plastic bottles, old tires, and other detritus; toward the rear is a discarded camper shell. The Rhinemaidens appear with large black plastic garbage bags and begin to fill them with the plastic water bottles. When Siegfried enters, he is carrying a rifle in addition to Notung. The curtain drops for the scene change in which all the river bed junk is removed. Three pairs of lights seem to approach from the rear, but when the curtain goes up, there are no jeeps to be seen. Siegfried, Gunther, and Hagen are dressed in bright orange coveralls, while the rest of the hunting party is dressed in camouflage. The spoils of the hunt are brought in on handcarts, flat platforms with an axle and rubber tires located very near the end of the cart. Siegfried’s body will be carried back to the Hall of the Gibichungs on one of these carts.
The final scene is set on a bare stage, just the metal grate floor that we are quite familiar with by now. Siegfried’s body is brought in on one of the handcarts. At the end the body is unceremoniously dumped over the edge at the back of the stage while “gasoline” is poured from jerry cans over the now out-of-sight body. Hagen enters with his cry of “Zurück von dem Ring!” (“Get back from the Ring!”), and rather than drowning him the Rhinemaidens whip out a bright yellow plastic bag and suffocate him with it. More “message,” I guess.
Our cast:
First Norn: Ronnita Miller
Second Norn: Daveda Karanas
Third Norn: Heidi Melton
Brünnhilde: Nina Stemme
Siegfried: Ian Storey
Gunther: Gerd Grochowski
Gutrune: Melissa Citro
Hagen: Andrea Silvestrelli
Waltraute: Daveda Karanas
Alberich: Gordon Hawkins
Woglinde: Stacey Tappan
Wellgunde: Lauren McNeese
Flosshilde: Renée Tatum
Conductor: Donald Runnicles
Director: Francesca Zambello
I continue to be a big fan of Andrea Silvestrelli. His Hagen was appropriately menacing, and his Hagen’s Watch solo near the end of Act 1 was spine-tingling. Gordon Hawkins shone in his limited role as Alberich, just as he did in Siegfried. Nina Stemme performed solidly as Brünnhilde all afternoon long. Ian Storey was OK as Siegfried. The orchestra under Runnicles’s direction was in top form. The curtain call featured something I had never seen before: the entire orchestra was on stage, with the principal horn player in the lineup in front, next to Runnicles.
So what am I going to remember from this, my eleventh Ring cycle? I will remember Brandon Jovanovich’s remarkable debut as Siegmund. I will remember Andrea Silvestrelli’s commanding presence as Fasolt and as Hagen, and wish that he could have sung Hunding as well. I will remember Jay Hunter Morriss’s well-acted Siegfried, and hope that his being called up from his role as cover will be the start of something big for him. I will remember the glorious sound at my seat in the balcony. And even though I didn’t care for it (perhaps because I didn’t care for it), Francesca Zambello’s excesses with the staging will be memorable. Everything considered, a beta-plus.
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Siegfried, San Francisco Opera, July 1 2011
A day off for the performers (and the audience!), then back into San Francisco for Siegfried, the third installment of the Ring cycle. Advance photos had prepared me for the very unusual setting of Act 1. Mime and Siegfried are living in a small trailer, no more than 20 feet long, with most of its right side (facing the audience) cut away to reveal the dinette and the bare-bones kitchen; an avocado-colored stove sits on the ground just outside the trailer. I never saw it properly illuminated, but again thanks to advance photos I knew that right next to the stove were two cases of Rheingold beer. In the background, consistent with the industrial nature of the production, there is the silhouette of an electrical substation. To the right of the trailer are the tools that Siegfried will use to reforge Notung: an anvil that looks more like a V-8 engine block, a bellows, and an old bathtub. Yes, Siegfried does split the anvil at the conclusion of the act.
Fafner’s cave is located in an industrial alley. The side of the building has four sliding metal doors with windows along the top; in the alley there is an industrial-strength table with various objects on it. Among these objects are a 2-foot length of galvanized pipe, and a brace-and-bit that Siegfried will use to bore holes in its length in his attempt to fashion an instrument to echo the woodbird. The woodbird is a soprano dressed in a red gown, who walks to and fro on the catwalk above the sliding metal doors, and eventually descends to stage level. When Fafner responds to Siegfried’s horn call, two of the doors open and a very large metal “monster” (that’s what the supertitles say, rather than “dragon”) emerges. It’s supposed to be an industrial-scale trash compactor. Advance information says that when Siegfried stabs the monster, it bleeds oil rather than blood, but I couldn’t see that from my vantage point.
For Act 3 we are back in the valley of the Rhine, with two-dimensional cutouts representing the canyon walls, but there is no Rhine or any suggestion of it, just the bare metal grate floor that is a feature of all of the acts. After Siegfried breaks Wotan’s spear with his sword, the curtain comes down to allow a scene change to Brünnhilde’s rock, where we left her at the end of Die Walküre. The gun emplacement where she was put to sleep must have been made of really cheap concrete, for in the 18 years that it has taken Siegfried to grow to (the beginnings of) adulthood, much of the concrete has deteriorated significantly—it’s a different set, although it echoes the previous set.
Our cast:
Mime: David Cangelosi
Siegfried: Jay Hunter Morris
The Wanderer: Mark Delavan
Alberich: Gordon Hawkins
Forest Bird: Stacey Tappan
Fafner: Daniel Sumegi
Erda: Ronnita Miller
Brünnhilde: Nina Stemme
Conductor: Donald Runnicles
Director: Francesca Zambello
I hope that this role will be a breakthrough for Jay Hunter Morris. He was originally scheduled to cover Ian Storey’s Siegfried in the final two operas, but Storey suffered a medical problem that interfered with his study of both roles, so he took Götterdämmerung and Morris got to sing the Siegfried Siegfried. While not quite as vocally impressive as Brandon Jovanovich (Siegmund) had been two evenings earlier, he nevertheless sang quite well and did a superb job of acting the part of a teenage boy. It was particularly delightful to watch his facial expressions as he is trying to figure out what to do with this sleeping person who is “not a man.” David Cangelosi was also a very active performer, turning cartwheels and somersaults as he anticipates feeding a poisoned drink to Siegfried after the battle. Gordon Hawkins could give his all in the short amount of time that is he onstage as Alberich. Mark Delavan continued to be competent as the Wanderer. And Nina Stemme just gets better and better. Act 3 is when the orchestra really comes into its own, after Wagner takes 12 years off to write Tristan und Isolde and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, and returns to the Ring with astoundingly advanced compositional skills. Donald Runnicles led the orchestra in a tour de force performance. Overall, quite good, but not quite good enough for an alpha.
Fafner’s cave is located in an industrial alley. The side of the building has four sliding metal doors with windows along the top; in the alley there is an industrial-strength table with various objects on it. Among these objects are a 2-foot length of galvanized pipe, and a brace-and-bit that Siegfried will use to bore holes in its length in his attempt to fashion an instrument to echo the woodbird. The woodbird is a soprano dressed in a red gown, who walks to and fro on the catwalk above the sliding metal doors, and eventually descends to stage level. When Fafner responds to Siegfried’s horn call, two of the doors open and a very large metal “monster” (that’s what the supertitles say, rather than “dragon”) emerges. It’s supposed to be an industrial-scale trash compactor. Advance information says that when Siegfried stabs the monster, it bleeds oil rather than blood, but I couldn’t see that from my vantage point.
For Act 3 we are back in the valley of the Rhine, with two-dimensional cutouts representing the canyon walls, but there is no Rhine or any suggestion of it, just the bare metal grate floor that is a feature of all of the acts. After Siegfried breaks Wotan’s spear with his sword, the curtain comes down to allow a scene change to Brünnhilde’s rock, where we left her at the end of Die Walküre. The gun emplacement where she was put to sleep must have been made of really cheap concrete, for in the 18 years that it has taken Siegfried to grow to (the beginnings of) adulthood, much of the concrete has deteriorated significantly—it’s a different set, although it echoes the previous set.
Our cast:
Mime: David Cangelosi
Siegfried: Jay Hunter Morris
The Wanderer: Mark Delavan
Alberich: Gordon Hawkins
Forest Bird: Stacey Tappan
Fafner: Daniel Sumegi
Erda: Ronnita Miller
Brünnhilde: Nina Stemme
Conductor: Donald Runnicles
Director: Francesca Zambello
I hope that this role will be a breakthrough for Jay Hunter Morris. He was originally scheduled to cover Ian Storey’s Siegfried in the final two operas, but Storey suffered a medical problem that interfered with his study of both roles, so he took Götterdämmerung and Morris got to sing the Siegfried Siegfried. While not quite as vocally impressive as Brandon Jovanovich (Siegmund) had been two evenings earlier, he nevertheless sang quite well and did a superb job of acting the part of a teenage boy. It was particularly delightful to watch his facial expressions as he is trying to figure out what to do with this sleeping person who is “not a man.” David Cangelosi was also a very active performer, turning cartwheels and somersaults as he anticipates feeding a poisoned drink to Siegfried after the battle. Gordon Hawkins could give his all in the short amount of time that is he onstage as Alberich. Mark Delavan continued to be competent as the Wanderer. And Nina Stemme just gets better and better. Act 3 is when the orchestra really comes into its own, after Wagner takes 12 years off to write Tristan und Isolde and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, and returns to the Ring with astoundingly advanced compositional skills. Donald Runnicles led the orchestra in a tour de force performance. Overall, quite good, but not quite good enough for an alpha.
Monday, July 4, 2011
Die Walküre, San Francisco Opera, June 29 2011
As befits a proper Ring cycle, it’s back to San Francisco the day after Das Rheingold for the second (and most popular) installment, Die Walküre, the one in which Wotan causes the death of his son Siegmund and banishes his daughter Brünnhilde for trying to save him, all to some of the most glorious music ever written.
Act 1 opens with the orchestra portraying Siegmund running through a violent storm, with an immediate musical tie-in to Donner’s “He da! He da, he do!” of the end of Das Rheingold. Here our attention is diverted from the orchestra by projections depicting roiling seas and a run through the redwoods. I preferred to shut my eyes and immerse myself in the music. When the curtain goes up, we see the outside of Hunding’s hut, actually a simple frame house that I would place in the 1930s South. The hearth at which Siegmund collapses is a large barbecue pit, just outside the house. When Sieglinde invites him inside, the side of the house is whisked into the rafters, and we get a diagonal perspective of Hunding’s living room, with taxidermied deer on the walls, a tall hutch with domestic knickknacks, a sword hanging on the wall, and a two-dimensional cutout of a large tree in the middle. There is no sword in the tree—that comes later, about the time that Siegmund cries out, “Father! Where is the sword you promised me?” The sword has apparently been hanging vertically behind the tree; now it falls to the right, with an audible “clack!”, and its hilt is now visible. Sorry, but that’s the least successful sword that I’ve ever seen. When it’s time for Winterstürme and Du bist der Lenz, the two sides of the living room are pulled apart so that the audience sees them edge-on (and so they are as out of sight as possible) and a projection of a very large full moon appears at the back of the stage. After they (yes, here Siegmund and Sieglinde together) pull Notung out of the tree, the tree is whisked into the rafters, giving the pair plenty of room to paw one another before rushing off upstage.
Act 2 brings us inside Valhalla for the confrontation between Wotan and Fricka. Wotan has an office high above a large industrial city, with its skyscrapers far below and embedded in industrial pollution, as seen through half a dozen tall plate-glass windows. In front of the windows is a loooong black table, which Wotan uses as his desk. For scene 3 we move to a no-man’s land underneath a decaying freeway, littered with old tires, an old bench seat, and other detritus of urban life.
Act 3, which opens with “The Ride of the Valkyries,” is the most successful. We see a large concrete structure that echoes the gun emplacements overlooking the Golden Gate, with a circular gun platform in the middle, a concrete wall in back that slopes down to the right and then continues sloping down as it comes downstage; on the left there is a metal staircase that descends downstage. These Valkyries are World War II paratroopers, dressed in Amelia Earhart-like garb. Doubles slide down ropes, starting high above the middle of the stage and landing at stage level, just behind the curtain walls; the singers then rush on stage, dragging their parachutes behind them. (The audience applauded, both at the appearance of the first paratroopers and again at the end of The Ride.) In lieu of bodies or body parts of dead heroes, the Valkyries carry close-cropped photos of American soldiers killed in the Civil War, World Wars I and II, and Iraq and Afghanistan. There are also photos of Hunding and Siegmund (despite the fact that Wotan tells Brünnhilde that he has no use of Hunding in Valhalla). The fire that Wotan causes to spring up around Brünnhilde surrounds her on only three sides: lines of gas flames proceed up the metal staircase, down the back edge of the rear concrete wall, and then down toward stage level on the right.
Our cast:
Siegmund: Brandon Jovanovich
Sieglinde: Heidi Melton
Hunding: Daniel Sumegi
Wotan: Mark Delavan
Brünnhilde: Nina Stemme
Fricka: Elizabeth Bishop
Gerhilde: Sara Gartland
Helmwige: Tamara Wapinsky
Ortlinde: Melissa Citro
Waltraute: Daveda Karanas
Rossweisse: Lauren McNeese
Siegrune: Maya Lahyani
Grimgerde: Renée Tatum
Schwertleite: Cybele Gouverneur
Conductor: Donald Runicles
Director: Francesca Zambello
And what a cast it was! I was tremendously impressed with Brandon Jovanovich’s Siegmund, a good-looking heartthrob of a guy with a clear, powerful tenor to match. I can remember being equally impressed by two previous Siegmunds: Placido Domingo in 2000, and Jon Vickers in 1976. He may have tired just a little bit right at the end of Act 1, but the audience exploded in the biggest burst of applause in this entire cycle when the Act 1 music concluded. Heidi Melton certainly deserved some of it, but I was cheering for Jovanovich. He is on record as having a Lohengrin in his future; I would love to see that in San Francisco!
Also worthy of particular note was Elizabeth Bishop’s majestic Fricka. As a group, the Valkyries were outstanding. It was as though the chorus master, with only eight women to guide, could spend lots of time with each one. Much praise is being heaped on Nina Stemme’s Brünnhilde, and deservedly so, but I found myself thinking on occasion, hmmm, that note would be worthy of Rita Hunter. Not all of them, but some of them. Rita Hunter was the Brünnhilde in my very first complete Ring cycle, and she thrilled the entire Seattle audience with one of the greatest voices I have ever heard. It got me to wondering: if your first Brünnhilde was Birgit Nilsson, or Kirsten Flagstad, would any other Brünnhilde ever measure up? That may be the box that I am in.
Act 1, an alpha. Acts 2 and 3, not quite.
Act 1 opens with the orchestra portraying Siegmund running through a violent storm, with an immediate musical tie-in to Donner’s “He da! He da, he do!” of the end of Das Rheingold. Here our attention is diverted from the orchestra by projections depicting roiling seas and a run through the redwoods. I preferred to shut my eyes and immerse myself in the music. When the curtain goes up, we see the outside of Hunding’s hut, actually a simple frame house that I would place in the 1930s South. The hearth at which Siegmund collapses is a large barbecue pit, just outside the house. When Sieglinde invites him inside, the side of the house is whisked into the rafters, and we get a diagonal perspective of Hunding’s living room, with taxidermied deer on the walls, a tall hutch with domestic knickknacks, a sword hanging on the wall, and a two-dimensional cutout of a large tree in the middle. There is no sword in the tree—that comes later, about the time that Siegmund cries out, “Father! Where is the sword you promised me?” The sword has apparently been hanging vertically behind the tree; now it falls to the right, with an audible “clack!”, and its hilt is now visible. Sorry, but that’s the least successful sword that I’ve ever seen. When it’s time for Winterstürme and Du bist der Lenz, the two sides of the living room are pulled apart so that the audience sees them edge-on (and so they are as out of sight as possible) and a projection of a very large full moon appears at the back of the stage. After they (yes, here Siegmund and Sieglinde together) pull Notung out of the tree, the tree is whisked into the rafters, giving the pair plenty of room to paw one another before rushing off upstage.
Act 2 brings us inside Valhalla for the confrontation between Wotan and Fricka. Wotan has an office high above a large industrial city, with its skyscrapers far below and embedded in industrial pollution, as seen through half a dozen tall plate-glass windows. In front of the windows is a loooong black table, which Wotan uses as his desk. For scene 3 we move to a no-man’s land underneath a decaying freeway, littered with old tires, an old bench seat, and other detritus of urban life.
Act 3, which opens with “The Ride of the Valkyries,” is the most successful. We see a large concrete structure that echoes the gun emplacements overlooking the Golden Gate, with a circular gun platform in the middle, a concrete wall in back that slopes down to the right and then continues sloping down as it comes downstage; on the left there is a metal staircase that descends downstage. These Valkyries are World War II paratroopers, dressed in Amelia Earhart-like garb. Doubles slide down ropes, starting high above the middle of the stage and landing at stage level, just behind the curtain walls; the singers then rush on stage, dragging their parachutes behind them. (The audience applauded, both at the appearance of the first paratroopers and again at the end of The Ride.) In lieu of bodies or body parts of dead heroes, the Valkyries carry close-cropped photos of American soldiers killed in the Civil War, World Wars I and II, and Iraq and Afghanistan. There are also photos of Hunding and Siegmund (despite the fact that Wotan tells Brünnhilde that he has no use of Hunding in Valhalla). The fire that Wotan causes to spring up around Brünnhilde surrounds her on only three sides: lines of gas flames proceed up the metal staircase, down the back edge of the rear concrete wall, and then down toward stage level on the right.
Our cast:
Siegmund: Brandon Jovanovich
Sieglinde: Heidi Melton
Hunding: Daniel Sumegi
Wotan: Mark Delavan
Brünnhilde: Nina Stemme
Fricka: Elizabeth Bishop
Gerhilde: Sara Gartland
Helmwige: Tamara Wapinsky
Ortlinde: Melissa Citro
Waltraute: Daveda Karanas
Rossweisse: Lauren McNeese
Siegrune: Maya Lahyani
Grimgerde: Renée Tatum
Schwertleite: Cybele Gouverneur
Conductor: Donald Runicles
Director: Francesca Zambello
And what a cast it was! I was tremendously impressed with Brandon Jovanovich’s Siegmund, a good-looking heartthrob of a guy with a clear, powerful tenor to match. I can remember being equally impressed by two previous Siegmunds: Placido Domingo in 2000, and Jon Vickers in 1976. He may have tired just a little bit right at the end of Act 1, but the audience exploded in the biggest burst of applause in this entire cycle when the Act 1 music concluded. Heidi Melton certainly deserved some of it, but I was cheering for Jovanovich. He is on record as having a Lohengrin in his future; I would love to see that in San Francisco!
Also worthy of particular note was Elizabeth Bishop’s majestic Fricka. As a group, the Valkyries were outstanding. It was as though the chorus master, with only eight women to guide, could spend lots of time with each one. Much praise is being heaped on Nina Stemme’s Brünnhilde, and deservedly so, but I found myself thinking on occasion, hmmm, that note would be worthy of Rita Hunter. Not all of them, but some of them. Rita Hunter was the Brünnhilde in my very first complete Ring cycle, and she thrilled the entire Seattle audience with one of the greatest voices I have ever heard. It got me to wondering: if your first Brünnhilde was Birgit Nilsson, or Kirsten Flagstad, would any other Brünnhilde ever measure up? That may be the box that I am in.
Act 1, an alpha. Acts 2 and 3, not quite.
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