Die Walküre, Verismo Opera, Nov. 23 2013

I have heard it alleged that there are 30 opera companies in the Bay Area, most of which I am unfamiliar with. I found out about Verismo Opera only because my Mohs surgeon at Kaiser mentioned that she has sung in the chorus in their productions of La Traviata and Il Trovatore. So I looked up their web site, www.verismoopera.org, to find out a bit more. Well, what do you know? This little opera company is going to perform a very long, very big, utterly magnificent opera with an orchestra 1/5 the size of what it should be, in a little theater seating only 160 people, in the little town of Vallejo, not exactly known as a center of culture. My surgeon even told me that my expectations shouldn’t be very high. But since I love Die Walküre (the first opera that I ever saw that made an impression on me), I decided to give it a try.

The set met my expectations of a performance in a theater seating 160, with an orchestra of 20, including a piano. At the front of the stage was a rather well-done construction of a rude table and chairs such as you would expect Hunding to possess, and of course there was an ash tree. In back there was a wall with living space behind it (an open doorway hung with beads led to Hunding and Sieglinde’s bedroom); to the right there was the entrance door, on which Siegmund knocked before entering instead of just barging in as he usually does. On the right side of the set was a small stairway up to the second level. There was nothing on the second level, but it was a space on which characters could walk, where Siegmund could bed down for the night, where Hunding and Siegmund could fight at the end of Act 2, and where Valkyries could gather.

There was some unusual stage business, thanks to the director. Most striking was the appearance of Hunding and Sieglinde’s 10-year-old daughter, who greeted her daddy when he came home from the fight to which he had been summoned. She also witnessed Siegmund and Sieglinde’s escape at the end of Act 1, and presumably reported it to her father, who then appealed to Fricka as the goddess of marriage. An interesting twist, not out of place. What was out of place was when Sieglinde grabbed Nothung after Siegmund had pulled it from the tree and went around smashing things in the hut with it. There was a supernumerary who followed Fricka around, carrying a red box about the size of a cigar box. After Hunding killed Siegmund, the super opened the box and showed its contents to Fricka, who appeared to be satisfied. We the audience never learned the significance of the box.

Nearly all of the cast were completely unknown to me. Richard Goodman, founder of Berkeley Opera, sang Wotan in the other cast, but I was unable to attend his performances.
Siegmund: Mark Lin
Sieglinde: Jennifer Rogers
Hunding: Ben Brady
Wotan: Richard Mix
Brünnhilde: Leslie Schipa
Fricka: Cary Ann Rosko
Gerhilde: Cristin Williams
Helmwige: Kyoko Shimozaki
Waltraute: Elinor Gates
Schwertleite: Lindarae Polaha
Ortlinde: Hannah Stephens
Siegrune: Joanne Bogart
Grimgerde: JoAnn Close
Rossweisse: Lori Rogala
Conductor: Michael Shahani
Director: Richard Bogart

This performance was one of the most unusual things I have ever seen. The sets were primitive. The singing was so-so. Siegmund sounded more like a baritone than a tenor. There were fewer than the expected number of horn flubs, but the string section seemed to have a hard time keeping in tune with each other. Nevertheless, something magic happened. At the end of Act 1 I was simply blown away. I was literally speechless for several seconds, before I could croak out a “Wow!” to my companion, and several more seconds before I could croak out an “Amazing!” It was way beyond the sum of its parts. It raises the question, Can there be a bad performance of Die Walküre? I’ve never seen such, but the fact is, while last summer’s Die Walküre in Seattle was far superior in the specific aspects of sets, singing, and playing, it did not wring me out emotionally the way that this one did. There was magic here that I cannot identify.

I will have to paraphrase Sir Denis Forman’s grading of The Ring in his book “A Night at the Opera”: It is impossible to grade this Xtraordinary and Xceptional performance as if it were a regular performance so let me therefore just give it an X. In the coming year Verismo Opera will perform Carmen, Suor Angelica/Cavalleria Rusticana, La Boheme, and La Tosca [sic], and I’ll see whether lightning can strike twice.


 

The Barber of Seville, San Francisco Opera, Nov. 17 2013

The previous productions in San Francisco of Barber of Seville that I have seen were quite successful. There was the “classic” set that portrayed what could easily have been the outside and the inside of a fine home in downtown Seville ca. 1780, and then there was the “rotating house” set with Figaro arriving on an electric Vespa and with all kinds of hilarious stage business to go along with it. But this one was a clunker.

The basic construction of the set was a floor rising from the front of the stage to the back, with the floor half the width of the stage in front (on the right as we viewed it) expanding to the full width of the stage in the back. On the right side of the raised floor was a structure of blank walls and rectangular windows, including a large open window on the second story from which Rosina could “accidentally” drop her aria from The Pointless Precaution. You could imagine that your viewpoint was from the street, looking at the outside of Dr. Bartolo’s house. A few extra props were brought in for Act 1 Scene 2, enough so that you could imagine that you were inside the house. For Act 2, interior walls slid out perpendicularly from the wall that we had been looking at, and chandeliers descended from above, giving a better suggestion of “inside.”

The left front half of the stage lacked any set elements, so this is where Figaro could ride in on a utility tricycle, the rear two wheels bearing a large box containing all the implements of his trade, and Count Almaviva could be brought in in what resembled a rickshaw. Fiorello’s musicians crawled out from underneath the floor, making them look uncomfortably like rats coming out of a sewer. During Don Basilio’s “La Calunnia” aria a large swath of fabric unrolled itself from the floor down to stage level and fans blew the trailing edge across the empty portion of the stage. This action presumably echoed the text, which describes slander as “a gentle breeze” that gathers force little by little. Pretty obvious, trite, and redundant.

Our cast:
Figaro: Audun Iversen
Almviva: Alek Shrader
Rosina: Daniela Mack
Doctor Bartolo: Maurizio Muraro
Don Basilio: Andrea Silvestrelli
Berta: Catherine Cook
Fiorello: Ao Li
Conductor: Giuseppe Finzi
Director: Emilio Sagi

I had a hard time finding much to praise in this performance. Even Andrea Silvestrelli, whom I am a big fan of, seemed a rather pedestrian Don Basilio. Maybe Wagner suits him better than bel canto. I’ll go see the other cast, but only because a good friend recommended it highly. A gamma.

The Flying Dutchman, San Francisco Opera, Nov. 15 2013

Having seen the dress rehearsal, our regular subscription performance, and the performance for which we exchanged our Dolores Claiborne tickets, there was still room for another one. So I took advantage of senior rush and acquired a close-in orchestra seat on the right side, right in front of Senta when she sang her first line.

Our cast: 
The Dutchman: Greer Grimsley
Senta: Lise Lindstrom
Daland: Kristinn Sigmundsson
Erik: Ian Storey
The Steersman: A. J. Glueckert
Conductor: Patrick Summers
Director: Petrika Ionesco

This troubled production simply got better every time.  What particularly struck me this time was the ethereal beauty of Lindstrom’s first notes when, according to the score, “Senta sings softly to herself.” Ravishing! It was well worth seeing Dutchman four times; a strong beta.