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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.