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.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
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.
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