Aida, Metropolitan Opera HD Live, Dec. 15 2012

To the best of my recollection, this is the first opera to be broadcast a second time on the Met’s HD Live series, the previous broadcast being the one of Oct. 24 2009, with Violeta Urmana, Johan Botha, Dolora Zajick, and Daniele Gatti, in the same Sonja Frisell production. This production dates back to 1988, and is a “classic” production with nothing outlandish.

Act 1 Scene 1 took place in front of a large tan stone wall, or rather three walls delimited by two square columns. The middle wall was somewhat recessed, allowing the various characters to enter and exit by slipping behind the left and right walls. For Scene 2, the walls were removed to reveal the Temple of Pthah, where Radames received his commission as the general of the Egyptian army. This time the wall was against the back of the stage, with various stone platforms jutting out from it. In the center, supported ten feet above the stage by the wall structure, was some sort of idol; from its space, ramps led upwards to the left and right.

Act II Scene 1, Amneris’s chambers, featured another stone wall with Egyptian paintings on it. In the center, a small raised platform was marked at its front corners by square pillars, and on this platform was Amneris’s chaise longue. The transition to Scene 2 was accomplished by lowering the “crown moulding” from on high down to stage level, while the wall and chaise longue were dropped into the basement. The Triumphal March took place in front of a structure that vaguely resembled Abu Simel, with Egyptian gods and hieroglyphs carved into a massive wall upstage, with another raised platform for the King of Egypt and his daughter, Amneris. There were no elephants, or even props made to suggest elephants, but there were horses. Six trumpet players shared the King’s reviewing stand; they played loooooong ceremonial trumpets.

Act III was set on the banks of the Nile. On the left, an entryway and steps led into the Temple of Isis, where Amneris prayed before her wedding ceremony. On the right were rocks as tall as a human, with a path wending among them. The painted backdrop showed a low but extensive structure on a hill on the other side of the Nile; on our side of the Nile were many plants, perhaps papyrus bushes.

Act IV Scene 1, in which Amneris offers to save Radames if he will give up his love for Aida, was played in front of yet another stone wall. Scene 2, the trial of Radames, featured a large stone plaza surrounded by stone pillars, with a couple of stone pillars in the interior. Scene 3, the tomb, was somewhat of an echo of Act 1 Scene 1, with a middle wall recessed behind left and right walls, allowing Aida to appear from the depths of the tomb. But the tomb was only half the height of the stage; the ceiling of the tomb formed the floor of the surface on which Amneris could walk back and forth, lamenting her fate.

Our cast:

Aida: Liudmyla Monastyrska
Amneris: Olga Borodina
Radamès: Roberto Alagna
Amonasro: George Gagnidze
Ramfis: Štefan Kocán
The King: Miklós Sebestyén

Conductor: Fabio Luisi

Production: Sonja Frisell

Set Designer: Gianni Quaranta

The Met, of course, presented a spectacular Triumphal March, with a cast of what seemed like hundreds, though we learned at intermission that supers would march across the stage in one costume, do a quick change, and march across again in a different guise. As for the singing, only Olga Borodina’s Amneris of Act IV Scenes 1 and 2 and George Gagnidze’s Amonasro of Act 2 Scene 2 offered much to get excited about. On the whole, the production was entertaining but rarely moving, somewhat short of a beta.

La Clemenza di Tito, Metropolitan Opera HD Live, Dec. 1 2012

San Francisco Opera performed Mozart’s almost-final opera (it premiered 3½ weeks before The Magic Flute) in 1993, and it didn’t make much of an impression on me then. But with nearly 20 more years of opera experience under my belt, including Idomeneo, and with notable performers such as Elina Garanca, Barbara Frittoli, and Kate Lindsey, it was worth a short drive and a few bucks to give La Clemenza di Tito another try. Definitely better the second time around!

No radical director “concepts” were in evidence here. Every scene was a variation on a basic set comprising two levels of stage, with a semicircular series of steps to connect the front and the back, and stone arches and columns in abundance, with a large arch in the center of the back wall. Inside this arch were placed various objects appropriate to the action of the scene: a large bed in the opening scene, a ship (on rails) for Berenice’s departure, a statue, etc. 

Our cast: 

Servilia: Lucy Crowe
Vitellia: Barbara Frittoli
Sesto: Elina Garanca
Annio: Kate Lindsey
Tito: Giuseppe Filianoti
Publio: Oren Gradus

Conductor: Harry Bicket
Production: Jean-Pierre Ponnelle

I’ve been a fan of Kate Lindsey ever since her knockout performance as Nicklausse in The Tales of Hoffman (Met HD Live broadcast Dec. 2009), and again she was superb. Her duet with Servilia (Lucy Crowe) was ravishing. Elina Garanca certainly has a wide range of characters. I’ve seen her as Cenerentola, Carmen, and now the pants role of Sesto, and each time she was outstanding. To think that, prior to La Cenerentola, I said “Elina Garanca? Who’s that?” Now I know, and you can count me as one of her fans too. Barbara Frittoli sang very well, but was somewhat overshadowed by those first two. Definitely a beta.

Tosca, San Francisco Opera, Nov. 29 2012

After seeing the Angela Gheorgiu Tosca on Nov. 18, and reading a review of the other cast (with Patricia Racette) that started “What a difference a change in cast makes!” I picked up a ticket to see that other cast. 

The other cast:
Tosca: Patricia Racette
Cavaradossi: Brian Jagde
Scarpia: Mark Delavan
Angelotti: Christian van Horn
Sacristan: Dale Travis
Conductor: Nicola Luisotti
Director: Jose Maria Condemi

The main thing that I learned from this performance is to avoid the ultra-low-priced seats in the back corner of the second balcony. There is a reason that they are priced so low. 

As in the first cast, the Scarpia was the most impressive. This time it was Mark Delavan, in fine voice, though without the tremendous depth of villainy that Lado Ataneli gave us in the summer of 2009. Brian Jagde’s Cavaradossi was somewhat marginal in Santa Fe a few months ago, and my hopes for a quantum improvement for San Francisco were not realized. Patricia Racette sang well, but without reaching the heights of her 2007 Cio-Cio San. Too bad that Angelotti has such a small part, I would have loved to hear more of Christian van Horn. It’s still somewhat short of a beta, though my inferior seat may have a lot to do with that judgment.

The Tempest, Metropolitan Opera HD Live (encore broadcast), Nov. 28 2012

I’m trying to catch all of the Met HD broadcasts that my schedule permits. Dr. Atomic is the only one that I’ve intentionally missed, having seen it in San Francisco the year before and come away with the feeling that I really didn’t need to see it again. So, knowing little more than that Thomas Adès's The Tempest was new and was based on Shakespeare, I trundled on down to our local movie theater, hoping for another new opera that I could enjoy as much as Moby-Dick.

The music and staging of the prelude described the tempest at sea. A body double (undoubtedly a gymnast) for Ariel climbed up onto and into a large, whirling chandelier, while at stage level various drowning persons writhed through slits in a very large blue fabric. When the storm subsided, the blue fabric was withdrawn to reveal a stage-upon-the-stage in front, rows of elegantly dressed opera patrons beyond the stage, and in the background the balcony levels of a classic European opera house—La Scala, we were told, since Prospero is the rightful Duke of Milan. The rest of the action of act 1 took place on this stage, and above it (Ariel sang from a catwalk high above the stage), and below it (Caliban spent most of his time in the two-foot high space between the Met’s stage and The Tempest’s stage). Miranda sinks into, and is later expelled from, the prompter’s box.

The opera-house setting continued for acts 2 and 3. In act 2, the secondary stage was filled with two-dimensional cutouts of a forest. Ferdinand was drawn upward from the prompter’s box, his wrists attached to ropes that ascended into the rafters; after Miranda unlocked the shackles from his wrists, the two walked upstage into the sunset. In the first part of act 3 we saw the backstage workings of the theater, with a gigantic scaffold that supported three levels of chorus. As the characters complained about being hungry and thirsty, a very long table was brought on stage. But in the middle of their repast, a demonic version of Ariel and her chandelier appeared and frightened everyone away. In the final scene we saw a cross-section of the opera house: to the left, a slice of the opera stage through the prompter’s box, with space underneath; to the right, a slice of the orchestra seating area with about ten individual seats scattered about. Above the seating area were the three levels of balcony seating.

Our cast:
Prospero: Simon Keenlyside
Ariel: Audrey Luna
Caliban: Alan Oke
Miranda: Isabel Leonard
Ferdinand: Alek Shrader
King of Naples: William Burden
Antonio: Toby Spence
Trinculo: Iestyn Davies
Conductor: Thomas Adès (the composer)
Production: Robert Lepage
Set Designer: Jasmine Catudal

The most memorable performance was that of Audrey Luna’s Ariel. The part is composed for very high soprano; she was in the stratosphere most of the time. Her high tessitura, and her spending most of her time above the stage, were supposed to suggest that she was “not of this world.” For the most part, that meant that she could not be understood; supertitles were essential. This isn’t to say that I enjoyed her music—it was more a remarkable demonstration at what she was capable of doing with her voice. Alan Oke sang particularly well in a short aria for Caliban in act 2. But overall the character that I would have liked to have heard more of was Gonzalo (not credited in the Met’s handout), who displayed a very fine bass voice.

But the music was not interesting. The libretto was made almost in its entirety of rhyming couplets, some short, some long. I managed to commit one to memory: “Driven insane/They’ll know my name.” Perhaps the weak or false rhymes (there was also an attempt to rhyme “ships” with “gifts”) are fashionable, but they didn’t work for me. Nor did an entire evening of rhyming couplets. The staging wasn’t outrageous (no witches with hula-hoops), it just seemed pointless. I don’t need to see this one again either. A gamma.

Die Fledermaus, Opera San Jose, Nov. 25 2012

What a difference a change in cast can make! Or maybe it was simply that this was the last performance of the run. Or the fourth performance, which I have been told is often the best. It wasn’t that anyone sang particularly better than his/her counterpart in the other cast; rather, things just seemed to be more lively and sparkling than before. Maybe they’d had a bit of the champagne before going on.

Our cast:
Gabriel von Eisenstein: Alexander Boyer
Rosalinde, his wife:  Cecilia Violetta Lopez
Adele, their chambermaid: Elisabeth Russ
Ida, Adele’s sister: Catherine Brady
Alfred, an Italian tenor, Rosalinde’s former flame: Michael Dailey
Dr. Falke, “the bat”: Jo Vincent Parks
Dr. Blind, Eisenstein’s lawyer: Michael Mendelsohn
Frank, the prison warden: Isaiah Musik-Ayala
Prince Orlofsky, a wealthy Russian: Rebecca Krouner
Frosch, the jailer: Kelly Houston
Conductor: David Rohrbaugh
Stage Director: Marc Jacobs

 I’ll give pride of place to Elisabeth Russ’s Adele this time—her third act aria, “Spiel’ ich die Unschuld,” was what has kept running through my head for days. An excellent time was had by our entire party. A strong beta.

Tosca, San Francisco Opera, Nov. 18 2012

It’s “dueling Toscas” in San Francisco. There will be a total of 12 performances, half of them with Angela Gheorghiu and half of them with Patricia Racette, each of them with her own Cavaradossi and Scarpia. This page reports on Angela Gheorghiu; I have yet to see the Patrica Racette cast.

The current production dates from 1997, which itself was intended to echo the set of the Tosca that opened the War Memorial Opera House in 1932. As such it was a perfectly traditional set, even looking as though it had been used a few times and somewhat faded with age. The first act, in the church of Sant’Andrea della Valle, looked like an Italian church whose walls were covered with faded frescoes. To the right were two chapels with locked steel bars, and the requisite statue of the Madonna was just outside them. To the left was a wooden platform with stairs and guard rails where the artist Cavaradossi could stand to work on his painting of Mary Magdalene. Partway upstage was the nave of the church, with another recess behind it.

Scarpia’s office in act two had everything that you would expect: to the left, an open window through which the music of the floor below could be heard; Scarpia’s desk; in the middle of the stage, the sofa on which Scarpia intends to have his way with Tosca; to the right, Scarpia’s dining table and the door to the torture chamber. The surprising element was the male nudes painted on the square columns that supported the ceiling of the office.

In act three we saw the topmost level of the Castel Sant’Angelo, a flat plaza with walls to the left and right, and stone stairs rising a few feet to the parapet from which Tosca took her final leap. Just to the left of the parapet was a statue of St. Michael Archangel drawing his sword. On the back wall was a painting of the Roman skyline, dominated by the dome of St. Peter’s, with smaller domes in front of it. Since act three begins at 4:00 am, the sky was a deep blue with stars twinkling in it; as the act progressed, the stars faded, the blue lightened, and rosy hues of sunrise appeared. Gheorghiu as Tosca took a proper swan dive from the parapet.

Our cast:
Floria Tosca: Angela Gheorghiu
Mario Cavaradossi: Massimo Giordano
Baron Scarpia: Roberto Frontali
Angelotti: Christian Van Horn
Spoletta: Joel Sorensen    
Sacristan: Dale Travis    
Sciarrone: Ao Li    
Jailer: Ryan Kuster
Shepherd Boy: Etienne Julius Valdez
Conductor: Nicola Luisotti
Director: Jose Maria Condemi    
Production Designer: Thierry Bosquet

This was Angela Gheorghiu’s second Tosca of the current run. Her first had been cut short after the first act due to an intestinal upset, and her cover Melody Moore performed acts two and three to rave reviews. I wish I had seen that performance—this afternoon Gheorghiu sang adequately, but not up to the level of her “Vissi d’Arte” on YouTube. Giordano also made an adequate Cavaradossi, although his “E lucevan le stelle” in the third act drew no applause whatsoever. Frontali’s Scarpia was my favorite of the three principals. Van Horn sounded wonderful in the small part of Angelotti. I had seen Dale Travis as the sacristan three months ago in Santa Fe; his overacting had been toned down a lot. The entire effect came up somewhat short of my expectations, somewhat short of a beta. I’ll go again, but only because the Patricia Racette cast has gotten outstanding reviews: “What a difference change in principals can make!” I’ll go see for myself.

Die Fledermaus, Opera San Jose, Nov. 15 2012

As one who cut his operatic teeth on Wagner, even the best Viennese operetta by the Waltz King Johann Strauss Junior (a.k.a. Johann Sebastian Strauss—I have to believe that the first Waltz King, his father Johann Strauss Sr., had Bach on his mind) failed to excite me when the current season was announced. But as I delved into studying the operetta for potluck preview, I discovered that Strauss had written lots of delightful music, well worth hearing. Yes, it’s light, and frothy, and bubbly, but it’s well worth listening to.

The sets for acts one, two, and three all comprised the same “shell” along the back wall and the legs. They gave the impression that the action was taking place in a giant solarium, made up of numerous panes of glass a foot square set in steel frames of various thickness according to the needs of the structure. The legs were similarly made from foot-square panes of glass, set in double doors through which characters could enter and exit. It was somewhat reminiscent of the Crystal Palace on a small scale. The performing space of the first act was outfitted with a sofa and a dining table and other accoutrements of the residence of a wealthy Viennese banker. There is a big crowd at Prince Orlovsky’s party in act two, so there was not much in the way of decoration other than a fanciful structure with mirror-image curlicues perhaps ten feet tall. Act three, set in Frank’s prison, featured large steel jailhouse bars separating upstage from downstage. The bars bore a wooden sign, “MINISTRY OF JUSTICE.” To the right was Frank’s desk, to the left was an armoire in which he hung the fancy jacket that he had worn to the party in act two.

Our cast:
Gabriel von Eisenstein: James Callon
Rosalinde, his wife: Melody King
Adele, their chambermaid: Jillian Boye
Ida, Adele’s sister: Tori Grayum
Alfred, an Italian tenor, Rosalinde’s former flame: Michael Dailey
Dr. Falke, “the bat”: Zachary Altman
Dr. Blind, Eisenstein’s lawyer: Michael Mendelsohn
Frank, the prison warden: Silas Elash
Prince Orlofsky, a wealthy Russian: Nicole Birkland
Frosch, the jailer: Kelly Houston
Conductor: David Rohrbaugh
Stage Director: Marc Jacobs

As is typical, the music was sung in German and the dialogue was in English. David Scott Marley, he of Berkeley Opera’s Bat out of Hell, a wonderful spoof of Die Fledermaus, was commissioned to prepare a new English translation of the dialogue. I had hoped that it would be as hilarious as Bat out of Hell, but no, it was a fairly straight translation. The greatest liberty taken was to place the action ca. 1890, with Dr. Falke being a student of Dr. Freud’s. The opening of act three, which is usually the occasion for an extended comic scene by a superb actor, “far gone in drink” according to the libretto, turned out to be far shorter than customary, and Kelly Houston was stone-cold sober. Something of a let-down.

Zachary Altman continues to impress with his rich baritone; the company has traditionally done very well with baritones. I hope that as his training progresses that we’ll be able to mention him along with Douglas Nagel, Mel Ulrich, Brian Leerhuber, and Nmon Ford-Levine. Also outstanding, as expected, was Silas Elash as Frank. Jillian Boye as Adele uncorked some marvelous coloratura. The playing from the orchestra was superb. But the parts didn’t quite add up to a resounding whole; it was a beta.

Lohengrin, San Francisco Opera, Nov. 6 2012

What with Lohengrin being infrequently performed, and a generally excellent cast in the current production, it was an easy decision to go back to San Francisco Opera for another performance, in spite of the less-than-successful staging. The performance of Nov. 6 was essentially the same as the one seen earlier—same sets, same cast, same outstanding Brandon Jovanovich and Petra Lang, same Gerd Grochowski coming into his own at the beginning of the second act. A swell evening in the theater, and still a strong beta.

Lohengrin, San Francisco Opera, October 31 2012

Lohengrin in a three-piece suit and Brabantine soldiers carrying AK-47s—at least director Daniel Slater stopped short of “regietheater run amok.” The idea behind the production, as we learned at an “Insights” panel discussion, was that Elsa’s trial in Act 1 is similar to the Communist show trials in which the verdict was predetermined. So this Lohengrin was set in an unnamed Eastern-bloc country of the 1950s or 60s, or perhaps particularly in Hungary in 1956.

The “miracle of music” prelude to Act 1 was staged, with Elsa kneeling downstage under a spotlight. Lohengrin entered from upstage, sat down at a strictly functional wooden table, and at the climax of the prelude put a chain with a medallion symbolizing his mission around his neck. As the stage filled with Brabantine and Saxon soldiers (in contrasting uniforms), Lohengrin simply stood up and walked offstage, trying to be inconspicuous.

Act 1 was set in what looked like a large library. The rear wall was made up of bookshelves imbedded in a white plaster wall, and the legs to the left and right of the stage were similar plaster walls enclosing bookshelves. The unnamed Eastern-bloc country must have had funds to build the building, but very limited funds to stock it, for there were very few books on the shelves. Or maybe the populace was exceptionally well-read and had checked out almost all of the books. The wide-open central space had about four steps separating upstage from downstage. As necessary, more simple wooden tables were brought in. Telramund and Ortrud sat at such a table during Elsa’s trial. Lohengrin arrived, not in a boat pulled by a swan, but in front of a 10-year-old boy sporting swan wings; he also simply walked offstage after Lohengrin’s “Nun sei bedankt, mein lieber Schwan.” Lohengrin had the ring and the horn, but lacked a sword. As the trial by combat approached, I wondered whether it was going to be hand-to-hand combat, but at the last moment the props guys found the swords and brought them in, in a case from which Lohengrin and Telramund pulled their weapons.

Act 2 began outside the castle. We saw a fairly bare wall punctuated by square windows, some of which were missing. It looked like a decrepit factory wall. There was one large cutout in which Elsa appeared to sing of her joy, and from which she could call down to Ortrud. When day broke and the second scene began, the factory wall was lifted out of sight to reveal the inside of the library. To turn it into a festive venue suitable for a wedding, streamers were thrown from the balconies in front of the bookshelves at the rear down to soldiers on the main floor, who attached the other ends to the bookshelves right and left.

The raising of the curtain for Act 3 elicited chuckles from the audience. During intermission stagehands had erected a small motel room in the middle of the library, its floor about five feet above the stage, and with left, right, and rear walls and a ceiling above. It reminded me of a production of La Boheme, in which the Bohemian’s tiny garret was a small room similarly suspended above the vast Opera House stage. Lohengrin and Elsa’s room was furnished with a brass bed with a white bedspread, and a dining table-style armchair. As the curtain went up, we saw Lohengrin and Elsa standing a foot or two apart, both facing the audience, holding hands just like Ken and Barbie atop a wedding cake. This is where Lohengrin’s three-piece suit came into play: during Act 2 he had shucked the traveling clothes he arrived in (simple pants and sweater with a long leather overcoat—no shining armor in 1956 Hungary) and appeared in the three-piece suit to greet Elsa and her bridesmaids. Again, where was the sword that he would use to slay Telramund? Telramund entered the motel room with a dagger; Lohengrin overpowered him and drove his hand clutching the dagger into his abdomen. He fell on the white bedspread and bled profusely. For the second scene, the curtain fell while the stagehands dismantled the motel room, then rose to bring us back to the library. When it came time for Lohengrin to depart, the wall of bookshelves upstage parted to reveal the 10-year-old with the swan wings. In some staging sleight-of-hand the “swan” was replaced by the young Gottfried, who when presented with Lohengrin’s sword found it far too heavy for him. The tip of the sword hit the ground, but then Gottfried got the better of it and hoisted it on high. Elsa then proceeded to die of an unspecified cause, just as called for in the score.

Our cast: 
Lohengrin: Brandon Jovanovich    
Elsa von Brabant: Camilla Nylund
Ortrud: Petra Lang    
Friedrich von Telramund: Gerd Grochowski    
Heinrich der Vogler: Kristinn Sigmundsson    
King's Herald: Brian Mulligan    
Noble: Nathaniel Peake    
Noble: Robert Watson
Noble: Joo Won Kang    
Noble: Ryan Kuster
Conductor: Nicola Luisotti    
Director: Daniel Slater

Do we ever have a heldentenor! Brandon Jovanovich sang magnificently, and he looked like a Greek god to boot, even if he wasn’t in shining armor. His words to Telramund after vanquishing him in the Act 1 combat, “God had delivered your life into my hands,” rang with truly stentorian authority. Petra Lang made a menacing Ortrud; Gerd Grochowski’s Telramund sounded a bit underpowered in Act 1 but he came into his own at the beginning of Act 2.  Kristinn Sigmundsson stumbled a few times as King Henry in Act 1. Camilla Nylund had the most challenging role, according to some; her Elsa suffered slightly in comparison to Lohengrin. This was Nicola Luisotti’s first Wagner opera. In the noiser sections, he unleashed wonderful sound from the orchestra, but the feeling and nuance of the Act 1 prelude escaped him. Brandon Jovanovich gets an alpha, but the performance overall is only worth a strong beta, thanks in large part to the unsuccessful staging.

Moby-Dick, San Francisco Opera, Oct. 30 2012

What’s the chance that I’ll ever get to see Moby-Dick again? It’s definitely worthy of entering the standard repertoire, but there’s a lot of competition for relatively few slots in San Francisco Opera’s schedule, and it probably requires more resources than an regional company can muster. So, back to the War Memorial Opera House, this time in less-expensive seats that nevertheless have great sound.

The staging, of course, was the same as reported earlier.

Our cast:
Captain Ahab: Jay Hunter Morris (a.k.a. Jayhab) 
Greenhorn (Ishmael): Stephen Costello
Starbuck: Morgan Smith     
Queequeg: Jonathan Lemalu 
Pip: Talise Trevigne 
Flask: Matthew O’Neill     
Stubb: Robert Orth     
Conductor: Patrick Summers     
Director: Leonard Foglia     
Set Designer: Robert Brill

And the performance was very much the same as reported earlier, with the exception that I came away even more impressed by Morgan Smith’s Starbuck. I’d sure like to hear him again in a more familiar role. Give it a notch above a beta.

Otello, Metropolitan Opera HD Live, Oct. 27 2012

We found a new theater for this broadcast, in Gig Harbor, Washington, 20 minutes from my sister’s home. In contrast to our regular theater, where we arrive an hour early to claim our favorite seats, we arrived 40 minutes early to find one person in line and a locked door. We were admitted at 9:30 to find a theater very much like our regular one, with just-as-good audio and video.

Otello opens with some of the best, that is most violent, storm music in all of opera. We saw the residents of Cyprus standing on three levels of a castle wall-like structure, the darkness of the staging suggesting the severe storm that nearly caused Otello’s ship to crash on the rocks. After he had disembarked, the wall slid out of sight to reveal a large plaza made of stone, with many large columns supporting who-knows-what out of sight in the rafters, and the outside walls of numerous monumental buildings.

In Act 2, the columns remained, but upstage was a small garden with grass and walking paths in which Desdemona and Iago’s wife could stroll, as mentioned in the libretto. Downstage there was a large table where Otello could conduct the affairs of state. The columns stayed in place for Act 3, but now we were clearly inside a large building, with a very large painting upstage forming a backdrop. For Act 4, Desdemona’s bed was set on a ziggurat with three levels, amidst the columns, with a different very large painting behind the bed.

Our cast:
Otello: Johan Botha
Desdemona: Renée Fleming
Iago: Falk Struckmann
Emilia: Renèe Tatum
Cassio: Michael Fabiano
Lodovico: James Morris
Montàno: Stephen Gaertner
Roderigo: Eduardo Valdes
Herald: Luthando Qave
Conductor: Semyon Bychkov 
Production: Elijah Moshinsky



No question about it, superb singing all around. Botha, Fleming, and Fabiano were particularly impressive, and Morris sounded wonderful. The only problem was Botha’s physical appearance. He is a very large man, and lying on the floor at the end of Act 3 does not show him off to his best advantage. The HD cameras showed more perspiration on his face than we usually see in other HD closeups, and his acting skills appear to be limited. But sonically, he was fabulous. A strong beta.

Moby-Dick, San Francisco Opera, Oct. 18 2012

How do you make an opera out of a novel that’s almost as long as War and Peace? Well, War and Peace and Anna Karenina (which is almost as long) have been turned into operas. In the case of Anna Karenina, the composer stated that the first thing you do is to throw away 300 pages extolling the virtues of farm machinery. In the case of Moby-Dick, Jake Heggie and his librettist Gene Scheer decided to set the opera completely at sea, on board the Pequod, and to concentrate on the interpersonal relationships. Our pre-performance speaker, Desiree Mays, told us that Heggie had said that it was not necessary to read the novel before attending the opera—but that he hoped that attending the opera would encourage you to read the novel. To satisfy such urges, the opera shop at the War Memorial Opera House is stocking no fewer than four books: the novel itself, Nathaniel Philbrick’s In the Heart of the Sea (about the sinking of the whaling ship Essex by a whale, which inspired Herman Melville), the actual memoirs of the sailors who survived the sinking of the Essex 2000 nautical miles west of the South American coast, and Philbrick’s Why Read Moby Dick? Sigh ... more books to add to the list of “books I want to read some day.”

The production served the opera very well. As the orchestral prelude evoked calm seas far from land, stars appeared on the black curtain, and we were spiraled into the depths of the galaxy. Soon lines were drawn from star to star, as though to outline constellations, but I found no recognizable constellations. The number of lines increased, and before long they seemed to suggest the mast and rigging of a tall ship. The lines began to curve and increase in number, and we saw a line drawing of a whaling ship that advanced toward us and passed us at very close quarters, almost running us over. Exceptionally effective!

When the curtain went up, we saw the deck of a whaling ship, with a huge mast in the center of the stage, lots of ropes strung at various angles, and two steel booms (like crane booms) made out of triangulated tubing held vertically or nearly vertically. When the libretto called for a sailor to ascend a mast, he would climb up one of these booms. Sometimes the rigging was deployed right at the front of the stage; the amount of rigging changed from scene to scene. At the back of the stage was a curved surface of 1 x 4 planks, looking like the hull of a ship as seen from inside. On this wall were three sets of small seats, which singers could climb up to and sit upon while the projected image surrounded six men on their seats with the outline of the small dinghy used in the actual harpooning of a whale. Although the seats were stationary, slight movements in the projected dinghies adequately conveyed the idea of the boats being tossed by the waves.

After a whale had been harpooned and brought back to the Pequod, a center section of the wall of planks was lowered. Through this hatch we saw part of the body of the whale being rendered in the tryworks. Underneath the platform created by opening the hatch was Ahab’s quarters, just a solid block that served first as a table where Ahab studied his charts, and later served as his bed.

In the encounter with the great white whale, the men resumed their positions on the small seats and their dinghies were projected. As Moby Dick smashed each dinghy, the projections scattered into myriad planks, and the men jumped off their seats and slid down the wall of planks, then ran offstage. Then the Pequod itself was projected, and it sank. At the very end, the hatch came down again, and Greenhorn (the sole survivor) was seen resting, exhausted, on the coffin that Queequeg had ordered built for himself. Through the hatch we saw blue sky and clouds as Captain Gardiner of the Rachel called out to Greenhorn, “Who are you?” and Greenhorn replied, “Call me Ishmael.”

Our cast:
Captain Ahab: Jay Hunter Morris (a.k.a. Jayhab)
Greenhorn (Ishmael): Stephen Costello
Starbuck: Morgan Smith    
Queequeg: Jonathan Lemalu
Pip: Talise Trevigne
Flask: Matthew O’Neill    
Stubb: Robert Orth    
Conductor: Patrick Summers    
Director: Leonard Foglia    
Set Designer: Robert Brill

My experience fell short of what I expected based on reviews and talking with people who had already seen the opera. The orchestral music fit the story without being particularly memorable, with the exception of the prelude. My primary reservation had to do with the driving, propulsive force of the music. It was good music, there was just too much of that kind of music. I wished for more lyrical interludes, more of the kind of music that we heard at the end of Act 1, where Starbuck decides not to shoot Ahab in his sleep. We did get more lyrical interludes in Act 2; I wish some of them had leaked into Act 1. The vocal lines also failed to impress me. There were a number (fortunately not a large number) of single syllables set to multiple notes that seemed to jump about randomly—not as randomly or as disjunct as I have heard in other modern operas, but nevertheless not as musical as I would have liked. To the credit of the librettist, I heard no trite phrases of the form “Who was that on the telephone?” or “I’ll have to give you a geography lesson.” Two passages will stick in my memory: the prelude and the choral number “Lost in the heart of the sea.”

One person I had talked with earlier opined that the role of Captain Ahab was better suited for Ben Heppner than for Jay Hunter Morris, and indeed the role was written for Heppner. I have an immense amount of respect for Morris, whose Siegfried Siegfried for the Met was nothing short of amazing, but I can imagine that a heavier, darker voice would have been more appropriate for Ahab.  Morgan Smith was outstanding both in the quality of his tone and in his diction. Talise Trevigne did nicely as the cabin boy Pip. She sang for a while with Opera San Jose, and I wish she had stuck around longer. Orchestral playing was superb.

I had hoped that Moby-Dick would be even more impressive than Dead Man Walking, at which I remember thinking about 10 minutes in, if this keeps up, it’s going to be standing ovation time. Well, it did and it was—it was highly effective and tremendously moving. In contrast, at this performance of Moby-Dick, very few people rose to their feet until Heggie himself came out to take a bow. Was it an off night for the performers? Perhaps; it happens. But based on what I saw and heard, it was only a beta. But I’ll give it another try. And I would like to read the novel.

I Capuleti e i Montecchi, San Francisco Opera, Oct. 16 2012

We saw the fifth of the six scheduled regular performances of Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi on Tuesday evening. To the earlier report of the staging, I should mention that in Act 1 Scene 2, there was what appeared to be a white plaster cast of two intertwined flying figures, suspended high above the stage. In Act 2 Scene 2, the left and right walls and the back wall formed a trapezoid similar to Act 1 Scene 1, while the floor was the triangular shape of Act 1 Scene 2. In the space between the triangular floor and the back wall there was a chord of a circle, perhaps representing a sun that had almost set. At first it was illuminated with white light, and later with pink light. For the final scene, the triangular walls were fit with the triangular floor. Giuletta simply lay limp on the floor, still dressed in her bridal gown, with overclothes lying beside her. At one point Romeo lifted her to her feet, where she remained standing, motionless, with her arms akimbo, for eight minutes. It’s the opposite of athleticism, but holding such a position for such a long time is nevertheless a considerable demand to make of anyone.

Our cast:
Giulietta: Nicole Cabell
Romeo: Joyce DiDonato    
Tebaldo: Saimir Pirgu
Lorenzo: Ao Li    
Capellio: Eric Owens    
Conductor: Riccardo Frizza    
Director: Vincent Boussard   
Set Designer: Vincent Lemaire

Cabell and DiDonato sang magnificently, even better than they had in dress rehearsal. Pirgu displayed a nice clear tenor voice, though it got a bit shrill near the top of his range. Li impressed with his Lorenzo, and Owens did justice to Capellio. Many aspects of the production remained a mystery. I heard from a super that Cabell and DiDonato were “strong supporters” of the production and that the director had spent a lot of time with them explaining its meaning. I wish that we, the audience, could have benefited from some of those insights. David Gockley reported that the production “divided the audience.” I give the production a gamma at best, the women get alphas, and the entire experience a beta or maybe a bit more.

L'Elisir d'Amore, Metropolitan Opera HD Live, Oct. 13 2012

Somebody at the Met loves Donizetti—not that there’s anything wrong with that. HD Live has presented at least one Donizetti each year since 2008 (Don Pasquale, Daughter of the Regiment, Anna Bolena, and two Lucia di Lammermoors), with Maria Stuarda scheduled for Jan. 19 2013. For 2012, it’s  L'Elisir d'Amore. Can we expect Roberto Devereux, the third of the “three queens,” before too long?

We saw a new production by Bartlett Sher. During the overture, Nemorino wandered out in front of the curtain and finally knelt beside a bench to write something in a little booklet. Was it a check? An entry in his pocket calendar? Even with HD closeup, I couldn’t tell. Either way, I didn’t get it when Adina later pocketed (or bodiced) it. Nothing more was seen of it.

In Act 1 Scene 1, we saw a Tuscan countryside in the background, gentle hills in the background with a couple of villages atop the hills. In the foreground were obviously cardboard cutouts of large trees and stalks of grain, and a small table at which Adina sat and read her book about Tristan. After a “curtain down” pause, Scene 2 was a plaza in such a Tuscan village, with a large church looming in the back and smaller buildings left and right. Dr. Dulcamara arrived, as is typical, in a large covered cart on four wheels, from which he emerged to deliver his “Udite, i rustici.”

Act 2 sure looked like Act 1 of the Met’s production of La Fanciulla del West, set inside a large wooden barn with a balcony area to the left; an onstage band performed from the balcony at the beginning. In front was a long table at which the principals of the wedding party sat. An intermission feature described the real food, chicken and spaghetti with a bit of oil, that the singers actually ate on stage. Before Gianetta and her friends appeared to describe Nemorino’s newly-inherited wealth, chorus members had taken off the tables and chairs, and the rear wall of the barn had been removed to one side. By the time of “Una furtiva lagrima” the balcony portion had also been slid offstage, leaving just the background painting of the Tuscan countryside and the stalks of grain.

Our cast:
Adina: Anna Netrebko
Nemorino: Matthew Polenzani
Belcore: Mariusz Kwiecien
Doctor Dulcamara: Ambrogio Maestri
Conductor: Maurizio Benini
Production: Bartlett Sher
Set Designer: Michael Yeargan



What a cast! Ambrogio Maestri was not a name I knew, but I could certainly stand to hear him again; he projected a wonderfully sonorous bass voice. Mariusz Kwiecien impressed with his singing and his lively acting. I’ve heard rumors that Boito’s Mefistofele is coming to San Francisco in the near future, and I’ve been wondering who would sing Mefistofele in such a production with anywhere near the impact that Samuel Ramey had in 1989. If the role is not too low for Kwiecien, he has my vote.  Matthew Polenzani sang well enough for most of the opera, then he uncorked a fabulous “Una furtiva lagrima” that was applauded at such length that he seemed to have trouble staying in character. And Anna Netrebko was her usual superb self. A solid beta.

La Boheme, Livermore Valley Opera, Oct. 7 2012

Yet another La Boheme? Why? Simple: Eugene Brancoveanu and Marie Plette. And more, as it turned out.

The curtain opened on the Bohemian’s garret, the first one that I have seen with beds for all four Bohemians, in the form of two iron-framed bunk beds, one left, one right. In the center was a very large window that provided a view of the snow-covered rooftops of Paris. In front of the window was a clothesline running from right to left, supporting (in addition to clothes) two frying pans and a number of sheets of paper—I guess Rodolfo’s ink must have been of the cheap, slow-drying variety. And on the far left, the stove that received Rodolfo’s play (although the flames weren’t particularly well-coordinated with the music).

Acts 2 and 3 were presented with just a “pause” between them, with projections displayed on a large surface against the back wall and two narrower but equally tall surfaces on each side. There were of course a few tables and chairs at the Cafe Momus; interestingly, when Musetta and Alcindoro were seated, their table was roped off on one side. The “pause,” which I was told was director’s choice, was inexpertly handled. It’s fun to watch the Metropolitan Opera scene changes, as they wheel around immense sets, but here the details of plugging in the streetlight and taping down its electrical line should have been done behind a curtain. Act 4 was back in the garrett. Were they really going to lead Mimi to one of the lower bunks? As it turned out, during the fight that immediately preceded Mimi’s entrance, one of the mattresses was removed and thrown to center stage, there to receive the body of one of the Bohemians (Schaunard?) who had been “injured” in the “duel.”

Our cast:
Mimi: Marie Plette
Rodolfo: David Gustafson
Marcello: Eugene Brancoveanu
Musetta: Kristin Clayton
Schaunard: Krassen Karagiozov
Colline: Philip Skinner
Conductor: Alexander Katsman
Director: Eugene Brancoveanu

This was, undisputedly, Eugene Brancoveanu’s show. His Marcello was so ably and powerfully sung that one might venture that the show should have been called Marcello. He was also the director, and he gave his character some extra, atypical, things to do. Keying off of his line “Which of you pretty ladies would care for a bit of love?” at the beginning of Act 2, two streetwalkers responded to his call. At the end of Act 3, he slugged the man that Musetta had been dancing with, and finished the act by walking offstage with one of the streetwalkers after slipping her a $5 bill. (No francs or euros to be had?)

Philip Skinner, the veteran of 375 performances at San Francisco Opera was also a highlight. It was too bad that he got to sing to his overcoat for only two minutes. It was a pleasure to see Krassen Karagiozov, former resident artist at Opera San Jose, again. All of the principals sang well enough; the minor characters, not so much. As is often the case with “regional” orchestras, the playing was a bit rocky to start with, but did manage to reach an even keel before too long. A beta.

I Capuleti e i Montecchi, San Francisco Opera, Sept. 27 2012

Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi is being advertised as The Capulets and the Montagues, but since it is sung in Italian I’ll use the proper Italian title. It is not “Romeo and Juliet;” the plot is drawn from the same source that Shakespeare used. Shakespeare told the story with his modifications, while Bellini and his librettist Felice Romani made theirs. In this opera, the action takes place within a span of 24 hours, Romeo and Giulietta are already in love before the curtain opens, and Friar Laurence is a doctor because the stage was not permitted to portray religious characters. Nevertheless, it is prime bel canto opera, the first of Bellini’s successful works.

As presented in this dress rehearsal, the production is a modern one, not entirely successful but not as outlandish as others. Each of the two acts was divided into three scenes. In Act 1 Scene 1, the main feature was the trapezoidal performing space: left and right walls slanting back to a rear wall that was substantially less than the width of the proscenium. On these walls were projected abstract designs of a vague and nebulous nature. Suspended above the chorus were seven rows each containing four saddles, whose purpose escaped me.

In the second scene, the trapezoidal space was replaced by a triangular space, with the intersection of the left and right walls occurring somewhat to the right of center. On the left wall, approximately in the middle of the entire left-right distance, was a porcelain sink. The presence of this sink confused all of the reviewers that I have read, but I think that my law-enforcement friend nailed it. He said that it was just like a San Quentin prison cell; the set is supposed to suggest that Giulietta is imprisoned in a gilded cage. At one point she climbed up, stood in/on the sink, and reached as high up the wall as she could, suggesting an escape attempt. Also notable was the floor: highly reflective, as good as a mirror. I wondered what it was actually made of.

In the third scene, we were back to the trapezoidal space, but this time the trapezoid was filled with bleachers. There was a rectangular opening in the back wall, and the bleachers continued through this opening and back as far as the eye could see.

Act 2 Scene 1 was the bleachers again, but this time the front of the stage was occupied by four giant cylinders, arranged like a picture frame. Scene 2 was the triangular space, and scene 3 was the trapezoidal space, with a low platform for Giuletta’s tomb.

Our cast:
Giulietta: Nicole Cabell
Romeo: Joyce DiDonato    
Tebaldo: Saimir Pirgu
Lorenzo: Ao Li    
Capellio: Eric Owens    
Conductor: Riccardo Frizza    
Director: Vincent Boussard   
Set Designer: Vincent Lemaire

I don’t normally comment on the performances at a dress rehearsal because the singers may not be singing at full voice. Nevertheless, at this dress rehearsal both Nicole Cabell and Joyce DiDonato were magnificent. I will be very very happy if they sing this well at the regular performance.

Moby-Dick, San Francisco Opera, Sept. 25 2012

I was fortunate enough to be invited to a “sitzprobe” for the first San Francisco production of Jake Heggie’s new opera, Moby-Dick. (Note the hyphen, not a space, between the words; that is how he spells it.) I wasn’t sure what a sitzprobe was. It turned out to be a musical rehearsal of most of the opera: an orchestra in the pit; soloists lined up at the front of the stage, with sheet music in their hands and folding chairs to sit in when they weren’t singing; and the chorus in rows of folding chairs behind the soloists. There were no costumes, and the set was that of Rigoletto. It was strictly the music being rehearsed.

Patrick Summers, the conductor, started by taking the orchestra through some short passages, just a few measures long, that he had chosen to concentrate on. After several minutes of that, everyone launched into music starting at the first measure and went for an extended period of time. Then after a short pause it seemed that they skipped ahead a bit and performed another long section of the opera. There were two breaks, based on the time spent so far rather than the music’s division into acts.

This being a rehearsal, I’ll comment on the music rather than the performance, except to note that Jay Hunter Morris sounded fabulous as Captain Ahab. The music has many lovely passages; I was particularly struck by a choral number on “lost in the heart of the sea” or something like that (no supertitles). Some passages reminded me of La Mer or Ports of Call or the Sea Symphony. There were some passages that were sort of noisy, sounding more like “modern music,” but my hope is that they served what would be in the libretto or on stage at the moment. Without supertitles and without acting, it was hard to know just what was going on at all times. All the singers are male, with the sole exception of the cabin boy Pip, sung by Talise Trevigne. Her vocal line was the only one that struck me as jumping wildly from note to note; all of the other vocal lines were essentially lyrical. And I heard no banal lines such as “Where’s the men’s room?” or “I’m going to have to give you a geography lesson” that I’ve heard in other modern operas in English. Based on the reviews I’ve read of the initial productions, reports from friends who saw the opera in San Diego, and now my own ears, I expect the performances Oct. 10-Nov. 2 to be a triumph. I’m going to pick up a second performance, in addition to my regular season ticket—no telling when it will come to San Francisco again.


SYNOPSIS 

ACT I 

Day One: The Whaling shlp Pequod hos been at sea for one week Captain Ahab stands alone on deck in the hours before dawn. Below deck, while most of the crew sleeps, the harpooner Queequeg prays and wakes Greenhorn, a loner and newcomer to whaling. Dawn breaks and the call is made for “All Hands!” Whlle the crew is raising the ship’s sails, Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask talk about Ahab, whom no one has seen since the ship left Nantucket. 

The crew sings of whales, wealth, and home when suddenly, Captain Ahab appears. He tells them of Moby Dick, the white whale that took off one of his legs, then nails a gold doubloon to the mast and promises it to the man who first sights him. This is the real reason they have sailed, he explains: to search the globe to find and destroy this one whale. His rousing call of “Death to Moby Dick!” excites everyone but the first mate, Starbuck. To no avail, he confronts Ahab about what he sees as a futile and blasphemous mission. 

Starbuck instructs Greenhorn about the dangers of whaling. When he ponders never again seeing his wife and son, he is overcome with emotion and orders Queequeg to complete the lesson. Stubb sights a pod of whales, but Ahab will not allow the eager crew to hunt since they have not yet found Moby Dick. Starbuck orders the crew to sail on and sends Greenhorn up to the lookout on the masthead, joined by Queequeg. 

As the sun begins to set, Ahab looks over the wake of the ship and mourns that his obsession deprives him of any enjoyment of beauty; all is anguish to him. At the masthead, Queequeg and Greenhorn look over the world, while Starbuck, on deck, bemoans Ahab's madness. 

Day Two: Three months later After three months without a single whale hunt, Stubb jokes with the young cabin boy Pip about the sharks circling the ship. The song ignites a dance for the full crew, but rising tensions take over and a dangerous racial fight erupts. When Greenhorn suddenly sights a pod of whales, Starbuck is at last able to persuade Ahab to let the men hunt. Starbuck and Stubb harpoon whales, but Flask’s boat is capsized and Pip is lost at sea. 

On board the Pequod, an enormous whale is being butchered and the oil rendered in the burning tryworks. Flask tells Ahab that the search for Pip is under way, but Ahab thinks only of finding Moby Dick. As they butcher the whale, the crew imagines Pip lost and struggling in the heart of the sea. Flask tells Starbuck that many oil barrels are leaking and he goes below to tell Ahab they must find a port for repairs. 

Ahab is unmoved by Starbuck’s report, and is concerned only with the white whale. When Starbuck refuses to leave, Ahab grabs a gun and orders him to his knees. From afar, Greenhorn shouts that Pip has been found. Ahab orders Starbuck out of the cabin. 

On deck, the crew listens to Greenhorn describe how Queequeg rescued Pip. As the men return to work, Greenhorn pleads with Starbuck to get help for Pip. But the first mate ignores him. Greenhorn observes how life really works on the ship and decides to befriend Queequeg. 

Starbuck returns to Ahab’s cabin, where he finds the captain asleep. He picks up the gun with which Ahab had threatened him and contemplates what he should do. Pull the trigger and he may survive to see his wife and child again. When Ahab cries out in his sleep, Starbuck replaces the gun and leaves the cabin. 

ACT II 

Day Three: One year later   An enormous storm is approaching, but Stubb, Flask, and the crew sing a jolly work song. From the mastheads, Greenhorn and Queequeg talk of traveling together to his native island. Greenhorn wants to learn Queequeg’s language and write down their adventures. Suddenly, Queequeg collapses. The crew gets him down and Ahab announces he will take the masthead watch himself. 

Below deck, Queequeg tells Greenhorn that he is dying and asks that a coffin be built for him. Pip enters from the shadows and sings a lament, joined by Greenhorn. 

The massive storm now surrounds the Pequod. As Ahab sings defiantly to the heavens, bolts of lightning engulf the ship and the masts glow with St. Elmo’s Fire. Ahab demands that the men hold their posts, promising them the white flame is a sign from heaven to guide them to the white whale. The crew is inspired once again by the captain, much to Starbuck’s distress. 

Day Four: The next morning  The ship has made it through the storm. From afar, the voice of Gardlner, captain of the Rachel, calls out. He pleads with Ahab to help him search for his twelve-year-old son who was lost in the storm, but Ahab refuses. Pip, who has gone mad, shouts to Gardiner of the Pequod’s own lost boy. Pip cuts himself and gets blood on Ahab’s clothes. The captain orders the ship to sail on, leaving Gardiner behind. Ahab contemplates the heartless God who devastates so many lives and baptizes his spear wlth Pip’s blood. 

Below deck, Greenhorn sees Queequeg’s newly built coffin and contemplates the madness that seems to surround him. 

On deck, Ahab and Starbuck gaze over the horizon. Ahab describes his forty years at sea and all he has left behind. And why? He cannot say. But he sees in Starbuck’s eye a human soul, and it touches him deeply. Starbuck seizes the moment and persuades Ahab that they should return to the wives and sons who wait for them in Nantucket. 

Just has Ahab appears to relent, he sights Moby Dick on the horizon. Great excitement ensues and the whale boats are lowered. Ahab looks again in Starbuck’s eye and orders him to stay on board. The crew declares its loyalty to Ahab. During the chase, Moby Dick destroys two whaleboats in succession, drowning their crews. Then, the Ppequod is rammed and sunk, killing all aboard. Ahab’s boat is then attacked and all but the captain jump or fall off. Finally alone with the white whale, Ahab cries out and stabs at Moby Dick before being dragged down into the sea. 

Epilogue: Many days later   Greenhorn floats on Queequeg’s coffin, barely alive, softly singing his lost friend's prayer. Gardiner call from afar, thinking he has at last found his missing son. Instead, he learns that Ahab and all the crew of the Pequod have drowned, except for this one survivor.