Madama Butterfly, Opera San Jose, Feb. 23 2014

Back to San Jose a week later to see the other cast than the one we saw on Feb. 16: 

Cio-Cio-san: Jennifer Forni
Suzuki: Nicole Birkland
BF Pinkerton: Christopher Bengochea    
Sharpless: Evan Brummel
Goro: Robert Norman
Commissioner: Silas Elash
The Bonze: Matthew Anchel
Prince Yamadori: Torlef Borsting
Kate Pinkerton: Carin Gilfry
Trouble: Owen Neuendorffer
Conductor: Joseph Marcheso
Stage director: Brad Dalton

Forni sang the role of Butterfly very very well, but in some indefinable way lacked the passion that López had brought to the role a week earlier. A beta.

Madama Butterfly, Opera San Jose, Feb. 16 2014

When you get into the story of Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, you can find a great amount of very interesting history. The opera is about a young Japanese woman who rents herself out as a “temporary wife” to an American sailor for a few months. The tragedy is that when he leaves, he tells Butterfly that he will return when the robins nest again. But when he does return, 3 years later, it’s with his “real” American wife. The story is based on the play Madame Butterfly by David Belasco, which was based on the novella Madame Butterfly by John Luther Long, which was in its turn informed by the novel Madame Chrysantheme by Pierre Loti. In each case, the story concerns a sailor, a young woman in Nagasaki, and a temporary marriage. This practice can be traced as far back as 1597, when Francesco Carletti observed it in Nagasaki, and later reported on it in his book My Voyage Around the World.

The set for Madama Butterfly, as presented by Opera San Jose, consisted largely of a shiny rectangular black platform raised a few inches above the stage, with half a dozen narrow silver concentric rectangles drawn near its edges. In front, like a step preceding a porch, was a similar shiny black rectangle, with a one-foot-by-twenty area next to the main platform, filled with rocks. The black back wall was actually a picture window of sorts, with sliding walls that could be drawn aside to reveal the stripes of an American flag, a starry sky, an abstract design, and other directorial choices. The little house on Higashi Hill was quite simple, just three shoji screens that could be raised and lowered as needed, plus a little bit of furniture.

Our cast: 
Cio-Cio-san: Cecilia Violetta López
Suzuki: Lisa Chavez
BF Pinkerton: James Callon
Sharpless: Zachary Altman
Goro: Michael Mendelsohn
Commissioner: Silas Elash
The Bonze: Matthew Anchel
Prince Yamadori: Torlef Borsting
Kate Pinkerton: Carin Gilfry
Trouble: Sammy Tittle
Conductor: David Rohrbaugh
Stage director: Brad Dalton

This was one of the most moving Butterflys that I have seen. According to a person who is in a position to know, the Butterfly in the other cast has a bigger voice, but López emotes more—and she certainly did. We were all drained at the end. David Rohrbaugh’s conducting was, as always, exemplary; we’ll miss him when he retires at the end of this run. For some reason one of the company’s finest basses ever, Silas Elash, was assigned the tiny role of Commissioner rather than the Bonze. The part of the Bonze isn’t much larger, but Anchel could barely be heard. Overall, a very strong beta, nearly an alpha.

Rusalka, Metropolitan Opera HD Live, Feb. 8 2014

Rusalka is the ninth of Dvorak’s ten operas, and frankly the only one of those that you are ever likely to see. Its plot has a strong similarity to that of The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Anderson, in which a water creature gives up the power of speech in order to consort with a human prince, but ultimately the prince marries someone else. Rusalka is one of these one-hit wonders, known mainly for the “Song to the Moon” aria in Act 1, which Renee Fleming made famous.

Act 1 was a dimly-lit woodland scene surrounding a small pond in which the water nymph Rusalka and her father the Water Gnome live. Looming over the pond is the tall stump of a dead tree; Rusalka climbed to the top of the stump to sing her Song to the Moon. Near the front of the stage and to the right was the cave that served as the home of Jezibaba, the witch who will brew the potion that will turn Rusalka into a (mute) human.  Act 2 was similarly dimly lit, with the windows and balcony of the main floor of the Prince’s mansion visible at the rear of the stage, and a curving staircase descending to stage level. In front of the mansion was a smaller pond with a big rock in the middle, serving as a home away from home for the Water Gnome. Act 3 was back at the pond of Act 1.

Our cast:
Rusalka: Renee Fleming
Water Gnome: John Relyea
Jezibaba: Dolora Zajick
Prince: Piotr Beczala
Foreign Princess: Emily Magee
Conductor: Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Production: Otto Schenk

That’s a lot of star power to lavish on a rarely-performed opera, but I will venture that it was produced at the request of Renee Fleming. There was fine singing from all of the principals, but the one who really stood out was a singer previously unknown to me, Emily Magee. “Where did she come from?” No idea, but I hope to be able to hear more of her. The star power balanced the uninvolving story and (aside from the Song to the Moon) rather ordinary music; a beta.

The Barber of Seville, San Francisco Opera, Dec. 1 2013

San Francisco Opera presented 11 performances of The Barber of Seville in the space of 19 days. That’s a very ambitious schedule for a single cast, so in a fashion similar to Opera San Jose, the principal roles were shared by two singers. Having reported earlier on another performance, no repetition of the staging is needed.

Our cast:
Figaro: Lucas Meachem
Almviva: Javier Camarena
Rosina: Isabel Leonard
Doctor Bartolo: Alessandro Corbelli
Don Basilio: Andrea Silvestrelli
Berta: Catherine Cook
Fiorello: Ao Li
Conductor: Giuseppe Finzi
Director: Emilio Sagi

The different cast, even with a few bigger names, didn’t make much of a difference. Still a gamma.

Hansel and Gretel, Opera San Jose, Nov. 26 2013

Back in San Jose to see Hansel and Gretel  with the other cast than the one seen two days earlier:

Hansel: Kindra Scharich
Gretel: Sara Gartland
Mother: Buffy Baggott
Father: Krassen Karagiozov
Sandman: Antonia Tamer
Dew Fairy: Christine Capsuto
Witch: James Callon
Mother Nature: Rita Elizabeth Horiguchi
Conductor: Andrew Whitfield
Director: Layna Chianakas

Sara Gartland, a former Adler Fellow with San Francisco Opera, distinguished herself as Gretel. I usually think of witches as thin; Marc Schreiner in the other cast certainly looked the part. James Callon is not thin but he adapted well to the role—even holding his hand over his “cleavage” for his curtain-call bows. A beta.

Hansel and Gretel, Opera San Jose, Nov. 24 2013

According to operabase.com, Engelbert Humperdinck’s fairy-tale opera Hansel and Gretel is the most-performed opera by a German composer. (Remember that Mozart and Johann Strauss are Austrian. Richard Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman takes second place among operas by German composers.) This position on the operatic hit parade may be due to the fact that Germany is responsible for 30% of all recorded performances, and that Hansel and Gretel at Christmas in Germany is the moral equivalent of The Nutcracker ballet in the US.

Opera San Jose last presented Hansel and Gretel in the Montgomery Theater in 1986, just before I started attending. This production was in the much larger California Theatre. The sets were charming. In Act 1, we saw just one wall, the back wall, of Hansel and Gretel’s home, with a small raised platform for a floor. Furniture (a bunk bed and a table and chairs) was built from natural-looking branches that a woodcutter might have found in the forest and stripped of their bark. The forest outside the house was represented by a series of flat drops on the left and right sides of the stage, each drop painted to look like a tree, darker trees in front and lighter-colored in the rear. The effect was like a long tree-tunnel, and conveyed just a bit of a sense of the foreboding forest. For Act 2, the house was removed, leaving just the tree-tunnel. The 14 angels called for in the score were children dressed in dark gowns and accompanied by the figure of Mother Nature in a lovely green gown. For Act 3, the witch’s gingerbread house was another flat dropped onto the stage, with candy canes and frosting, and two rows of child-size gingerbread men. The staging challenge of having the witch fly around the stage on her broom was met by having the witch ride around the stage on her Segway scooter, which brought the expected chuckles from the audience. Another highlight was the oven that the witch tried to get Gretel to climb into. The basic concept came from a species of deep sea fish with lots of prominent teeth. The witch’s oven looked like a giant head mostly given over to tremendously long black teeth, and two glowing eyes on top; these eyes went dead when the oven blew up after the witch had been tricked into it and Gretel shut the oven door (the teeth) on her.

Our cast:
Hansel: Lisa Chavez
Gretel: Cecilia Violetta Lopez
Mother: Nicole Birkland
Father: Evan Brummel
Sandman: Chloe Smart
Dew Fairy: Christine Capsuto
Witch: Marc Schreiner
Mother Nature: Rita Elizabeth Horiguchi
Conductor: Andrew Whitfield
Director: Layna Chianakas (yes, the former resident artist)

You may have heard of “pants roles,” in which a woman, typically a mezzoo-soprano, sings the role of a young man such as Cherubino, Octavian, or Prince Orlofsky. Well, here we have a “skirt role,” in which a man sings a woman’s part, the witch. Schreiner was very effective in this role. Horiguchi was beatific as Mother Nature, a non-singing role not actually in the score but created for this production by the director. The remainder sang well, though the musical interest in this opera lies mainly in the orchestra. Humperdinck was a disciple of Richard Wagner, and made extensive use of the leitmotif concept. A worthwhile afternoon, but barely a beta.

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.

Tosca, Metropolitan Opera HD Live, Nov. 9 2013

We’ve seen this Tosca before in the HD Live series, but that was four years ago, beyond the scope of these commentaries. This was the controversial Luc Bondy production, successor to the much-loved (at least by the audience), grandiose Franco Zeffirelli production.

Act 1 takes place in the church of Sant’Andrea del Valle. We saw what looked like the inside of a church nearing completion. Walls of dark gray brick rose out of sight, so the basic structure of the church was complete, but it had not yet been decorated with all of the artwork so characteristic of Italian churches. Cavaradossi was beginning that task, painting a picture of Mary Magdalene on what would turn out to be paper. The nave of the church, where pews would later be installed, was completely bare except for some bits of broken rock or brick. A few folding chairs were off to one side.

Scarpia’s office, the setting for Act 2, was similarly plain, with flat plaster walls and large windows. Three prostitutes in R-rated costumes lounged on 1950s-modern sofas and occasionally pawed at Scarpia. This made no sense at all. Scarpia told us that he seeks violent sexual conquest; he’s hardly the kind of guy to pay for it.

The top of the Castel Sant'Angelo, for Act 3, seemed to be an echo of the church of Act 1, being built out of dark gray brick. The center of the stage was occupied by a walkway; to the right, the building receded into the distance with a structure on top of it, with stairs leading to its upper reaches. Part of that structure formed a 90° angle in which Cavaradossi positioned himself for the execution.

Our cast:
Tosca: Patricia Racette
Cavaradossi: Roberto Alagna
Scarpia: George Gagnidze
Angelotti: Richard Bernstein
Sacristan: John Del Carlo
Conductor: Riccardo Frizza
Production: Luc Bondy

Patricia Racette has had a busy autumn. She was Marguerite in Mefistofele and stepped in at the last minute to learn the role of Dolores Claiborne for the world-premiere production. (And she’ll be back in San Francisco in June for Madama Butterfly and Show Boat.) She sang well enough but not astoundingly so. Roberto Alagna also sang well, but didn’t budge my meter as far as Marcelo Alvarez did in the previous broadcast. George Gagnidze’s Scarpia was even more impressive than in that previous broadcast. It was a production worth seeing the encore of, but with no one to come with me, it was easy to opt out of. A beta.

The Flying Dutchman, San Francisco Opera, Nov. 7 2013

Having seen the dress rehearsal of Dolores Claiborne, and concluding that a story even more sordid than Rigoletto (domestic violence, child sexual abuse) needed Rigoletto-quality music but didn’t get it, I traded our Dolores Claiborne subscription tickets for an additional performance of The Flying Dutchman. No regrets.


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

Things seemed to have been settling into place as this difficult production (the one in which the director was fired a week before the opening) found its bearings. No significant changes in the sets or the stage action, and the singing was a bit better. A beta.

The Flying Dutchman, San Francisco Opera, Nov. 3 2013

 This will turn out to be my second of four trips to see San Francisco’s Flying Dutchman: one dress rehearsal, one regular season subscription, one as a result of exchanging my Dolores Claiborne ticket for something much more worthwhile, and one senior rush ticket. The sets are described in the report of the dress rehearsal.

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 was the production that was beset by a number of problems, most notably the dismissal of the director a week prior to the dress rehearsal. General Director David Gockley told us at the dress rehearsal that we could expect to see the production fine-tuned as the run went on. There were probably some subtle differences between today’s performance and the dress rehearsal, but none were particularly noteworthy. We still had Daland’s ship backing into the fjord, the projections of astronomical photographs, half the women sweeping while the other half spun, etc.

Greer Grimsley sang well enough as the Dutchman, but wasn’t particularly remarkable. Lise Lindstrom’s Senta sounded a bit underpowered. My favorite of the principals was bass Kristinn Sigmundsson, the Icelandic biology teacher. A. J. Glueckert, as the Steersman, baffled me with his action of threatening the Dutchman with a pistol just as the Dutchman began to explain himself to Daland. Wonderful music, good enough singing, sort of cockeyed production ... not quite a beta.

The Nose, Metropolitan Opera HD broadcast, Oct. 26 2013

The Nose was Shostakovich’s first opera, written at the age of 20. (He would go on to write Lady Macbeth of the Mtensk District plus an operetta and two incomplete operas.) The plot of The Nose is derived from a satirical short story by Nikolai Gogol, in which a petty bureaucrat loses his nose to a barber’s razor. The nose takes on a life of its own, the bureaucrat pursues it and ultimately restores it to his face, suffering a number of absurd indignities along the way. This short story has been adapted in a number of other ways, perhaps most curiously as a puppet show at the Moscow Museum of Erotic Art, with the victim being Vladimir Putin. (The Russia of today is a far cry from the USSR of the 20th century!)

According to the intermission interview, Peter Gelb wanted to have the noted artist William Kentridge design an opera for the Met, and allowed Kentridge to choose the opera. He chose The Nose, and created a production based on his signature technique of animated films. Rather than smooth, 24- or 30-frames-per-second animations characteristic of Walt Disney cartoons, Kentridge uses a speed of only 4 to ½ frame per second, rendering the animated figures in rather jerky motion. And for the most part, that’s what we saw: singers toward the front of the stage, with jerky animations projected above them to the rear of the stage. Occasionally there was a more conventional set with singers and walls and decorations and props, such as for the scene in which the barber discovers the nose baked into a loaf of bread, and for the scene in which Kolvayov finds that his nose is missing.

Our cast:
Kovalyov: Paulo Szot
Police Inspector:  Andrey Popov
The Nose: Alexander Lewis
Conductor: Pavel Smelkov
Production: William Kentridge

There are no fewer than 78 sung roles in this opera, not counting the speaking roles and the chorus, so the Met’s synopsis listed only three of the singers. The New Grove Dictionary of Opera describes the music as a “deliberate experiment,” “astringent and angular, grotesque in its emphasis on musical parody and the clash of tone-colour extremes” with “no pretence at immediate mass accessibility.” Quite so. I feel the same as Rossini did after seeing Lohengrin: “One simply can not judge Wagner’s Lohengrin after a first hearing. Pity I don't intend hearing it a second time.” But I’ll judge The Nose as a delta, and don’t intend hearing it a second time.

Falstaff, San Francisco Opera, Oct. 24 2013

My first San Francisco Opera Falstaff of the current season was viewed from a seat somewhat left of center of the Grand Tier (the first balcony), courtesy of senior rush. This time, courtesy of exchanging tickets from our regular subscription performance day, I wound up in the third row of orchestra center. Whether it was the closer-in seats, or the benefit of the performers having had in effect two additional rehearsals, it was a better experience.

The set remained the same as that of the first time, but this time we got to hear the advertised Nannetta: Heidi Stober had been ill on Oct. 15. So, 

Our cast: Falstaff: Bryn Terfel
Bardolfo: Greg Fedderly
Pistola: Andrea Silvestrelli
Dr. Caius: Joel Sorensen
Ford: Fabio Capitanucci 
Fenton: Francesco Demuro
Nannetta: Heidi Stober
Meg Page: Renee Rapier
Alice Ford: Ainhoa Arteta
Dame Quickly: Meredith Arwady
Conductor: Nicola Luisotti
Director: Olivier Tambosi

Everyone continued to sing well, but the sparkle of the Opera San Jose performances continued to be missing. A bit higher than the beta of the first performance.

The Flying Dutchman (dress rehearsal), San Francisco Opera, Oct. 19 2013

An invitation to the dress rehearsal of The Flying Dutchman was a benefit of my volunteering in an official capacity for the East Bay Chapter of the San Francisco Opera Guild. We were treated to a luncheon beforehand, complete with remarks by San Francisco Opera general director David Gockley. Gockley informed us that the production had been beset with a number of problems, and he had (finally) had to fire the director and set designer, Petrika Ionesco, who filled both roles. As near as I can tell, the production was getting to be just too weird. For example, the Dutchman was supposed to arrive in a rocket ship. This production was based on the production at Opéra Royal de Wallonie-Liège. To see that production’s staged overture, which takes place in a graveyard, see YouTube.

So we were wondering just what we were going to get. Three productions prior, in 1988, it was the Jean-Pierre Ponnelle production, famous for interpreting the story as the fantastic dream of the steersman. That staging was one of the most visually impressive that I have ever seen. Most notably, the arrival of the Dutchman’s ship was represented by the sudden turning-on of stage lights that illuminated the blood-red sails of the Dutchman’s ship, with dead bodies hanging from the cobweb-like rigging. Awe-inspiring! Then we got the no-ship production, where all we could see was a wharf and a long rope leading out of sight. And Senta had no picture of the Dutchman to concentrate on. Most recently, the ship returned, but just the outline of the ship: its ribs, and the lowermost deck of the ship, just above the keel.

This time, the audience found itself on the deck of a ship, complete with a hatch to below-decks and a structure at the back of the stage that included a large smokestack (?) and a balcony from which the helmsman could steer the ship. Projections  to the left, right, and back showed the ship entering a fjord with tall snowy peaks all around. The disconcerting thing was that the ship seemed to be backing into the fjord, with the helmsman facing opposite to the direction of motion.

A lot happened with these projections. In addition to the peaks surrounding the fjord, at various times throughout the opera we also saw astronomical photographs of the center of a spiral galaxy; just the closed eyes of a face, presumably the face of the Dutchman; and the surface of the open ocean. Only partially successful.

For the second act, the projection screens to the right and left were replaced by two-story, balcony-like structures. The only women “spinning” were on that upper balcony level, and they weren’t so much spinning as they were winding the spun yarn onto spindles. On the main floor, the other women were either mopping the floor, or dyeing large sheets of cloth, either bedsheets or sails. The hatch to below-decks was still present; it served as the place from which a large triangular sail could be raised, and projections on that sail accompanied Senta’s Ballad and the subsequent action of Act 2.

For the third act, the projection screens returned to the right and left; to the rear was the wall of a large brick building. For the finale, the brick wall went away, to be replaced by a projection screen; all of the screens showed the surface of the ocean, and Senta leaped to her death from the back end of the raked stage. Then the projections changed to the spiral galaxy, with two bright stars moving in to the center from the left and right, finally merging into one even brighter star.

This being a dress rehearsal, comments on the performance will have to wait until a regular subscription performance.

 

Falstaff, San Francisco Opera, Oct. 15 2013

It’s quite a season for Verdi’s final opera: it’s on the schedule for Opera San Jose, San Francisco Opera, the Metropolitan Opera, and the Los Angeles Opera. San Jose performed Falstaff in September; now it’s San Francisco’s turn.

The staging was a bit unusual without being completely off-the-wall. The stage was dominated by two elements. The first was the walls that surrounded the stage, left, back, and right. For the most part the walls were flat, but with slight protuberances and light drawings on them so that they could give the audience the appearance of being either inside or outside, depending upon how you looked at them. The second element was a gigantic trap door in the middle of the raked stage. The trap door was opened to the maximum for the scenes at the Garter Inn (the first scene of each of the three acts); when opened the underside of the trap door supported a number of bright-red planks. At the right, toward the rear of the trap door opening, was Falstaff’s favorite chair. The trap door and its bright-red color scheme reminded me (too much) of the final scene of Don Giovanni in at least one production that I have seen, in which the Don is dragged off to hell via just such a trap door that opens in his dining room.

The set for Act 3 Scene 2 was the most effective of the evening. The back wall was removed to reveal what at first appeared to be just a black night sky with stars. Then a gigantic full moon rose, very slowly, and as it rose we could see more and more of the silhouette of Herne’s Oak.

Our cast:
Falstaff: Bryn Terfel
Bardolfo: Greg Fedderly
Pistola: Andrea Silvestrelli
Dr. Caius: Joel Sorensen
Ford: Fabio Capitanucci
Fenton: Francesco Demuro
Nannetta: Lisette Oropesa
Meg Page: Renee Rapier
Alice Ford: Ainhoa Arteta
Dame Quickly: Meredith Arwady
Conductor: Nicola Luisotti
Director: Olivier Tambosi

Bryn Terfel was every bit as good as Scott Bearden of the Opera San Jose cast; Ainhoa Arteta was superb as Alice Ford; but perhaps the most impressive was Meredith Arwady, who sang a true contralto that not many women can reach. Andrea Silvestrelli, one of my all-time favorites, sounded wonderful, but he seemed to have been under-directed, frequently having nothing to do but just stand around. Overall, the performance lacked the sparkle that Opera San Jose had brought to the same opera just a few weeks before. A beta, but no more.

Carmen, Livermore Valley Opera, Oct. 6 2013

It was over the hills to Livermore for a performance of Carmen by one of the area’s fine opera companies, where I’ve enjoyed some good performances. Unfortunately this was not one of them.

There was no problem with the sets; they were true to the time and place. The first act featured a fairly small town square of adobe buildings to the right and left, with brick quoins. To the rear was a low wall, beyond which we could see more distant buildings. The tobacco factory was hidden out of sight to the left, and the cigarette girls made their entrance in the gap between the building on the left and the low wall at the rear. Act 2 in the tavern continued the adobe-and-brick theme, with a rustic table and a couple of chairs in the middle. Act 3, the smugglers’ camp, was set among rocks, with some of the brick-and-adobe corners left over from the previous acts. Act 4, at the bull ring, was dominated by a large steel double gate set within an archway. Completely conventional, nothing dramatic, but nothing offensive either.

Our cast: 
Carmen: Cybele Gouverneur
Don Jose: Christopher Bengochea
Escamillo: Eugene Brancoveanu
Micaëla: Christie Hageman
Zuniga: Efrain Solis
Le Remendado: Michael Desnoyers
Le Dancaïre: Bernardo Bermudez
Morales: Juan Donyea Dunn
Frasquita: Elena Galvan
Mercedes: Nikola Printz
Conductor: Alexander Katsman
Director: Eugene Brancoveanu
 
This was the first time that I had heard Christie Hageman after she took second place in the 2013 Irene Dalis Vocal Competition. Her first-act aria was meltingly beautiful. Eugene Brancoveanu was a powerhouse in the Toreador Song, which he finished with a back flip off the table. Christopher Bengochea was an effective Don Jose; Cybele Gouverneur sang well as Carmen, but lacked the sultriness of the best Carmens. 

These fine singers did their best to salvage what was otherwise a marginal production. The chorus was notably understaffed. My primary recollection will be the “chorus” of Act 1, with ten men. It sure looked (and sounded) as though only three of them were actually singing. Furthermore, a lot of cuts were made. Recollection says that all of the spoken dialogue was missing, which would explain the sudden transition in Act 2 from the opening dance directly to the arrival of Escamillo. Some of the introductory music of Act 3 was missing, as was much of the crowd scene at the beginning of Act 4. Despite a good performance by the principals, the overall effect was no more than a gamma.












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Eugene Onegin, Metropolitan Opera HD Live (encore), Oct. 9 2013

This was the second time that the Met had presented Eugene Onegin on the HD Live series, the previous time being in February of 2007 in a production that was pretty stark and sterile. This new production’s second half retained the stark and sterile, but the first half was more visually appealing.

The first act was set in a room in the Larin mansion that seemed to be a transition from “inside” to “outside.” The back wall of the set comprised about half a dozen panels of large windows, with pull-down shades in front of each window. One panel was omitted, which permitted us to look out into the garden beyond, said garden consisting of birch trees. Inside was some fairly simple wooden furniture, the kind that wouldn’t get hurt too much if subjected to the elements. To the right, a short flight of painted wooden steps led into the house proper. For Tatiana’s letter scene, the curtain came down, stagehands pushed things around to no great effect, and the curtain came back up on a room that looked pretty much the same, just darker. Then the stagehands put things back the way they were for the final scene.

Act 2 Scene 1 was set in the ballroom of the Larin estate. This time we saw back to the rear wall of the ballroom, with a large opening (the width of several doors) to another large room. A few windows in the back wall, and a few upholstered dining chairs completed the set. For Scene 2, the duel, we returned to stark and sterile, not that the previous scenes had been particularly lavish. The ground was black and shiny, and dotted with a few small leafless trees; a larger, fallen leafless tree occupied much of center stage. Well, it’s winter, that’s OK.

In Act 3, several years later, we were at another ball, this time in St. Petersburg. The ballroom dancers needed to navigate among a number of wide marble columns that rose out of sight. An simple but elegant upholstered dining chair was positioned in front of each of the forward columns. Scene 2 dimmed the lights, removed the chairs, retained the columns, and added a small leafless tree and falling snow. 

Our cast:
Eugene Onegin: Mariusz Kwiecien
Tatiana: Anna Netrebko
Olga: Oksana Volkova
Lenski: Piotr Beczala
Prince Gremin: Alexei Tanovitski
Conductor: Valery Gergiev
Production: Deborah Warner
Director: Fiona Shaw

Most of the principals sang well, although the general mood seemed subdued; Anna Netrebko, whom I have been following for nearly 20 years, was more suited to the matronly role of Mrs. Gremin than to the young woman who fell head-over-heels for Onegin. Alexei Tanovitski must have been having an off day. I’ve not heard him before, but his aria for Prince Gremin in Act 3 fell flat, I’ve heard better from regional opera companies. I doubt that this performance will have any staying power at all in my memory, so it’s short of a beta.

Mefistofele, San Francisco Opera, Sept. 29 2013

I wish that I could have seen every performance of Boito’s Mefistofele, but other things got in the way. The music is wonderful, the sets were magnificent, the entire performance was “beyond spectacular” in the words of a friend who sings bass for Opera San Jose. But I only got to see the dress rehearsal, the performance of Sept. 20, and this penultimate performance. This cast was the same as the cast of Sept. 20, with the exception of Elena.

Our cast:
Mefistofele: Ildar Abdrazakov
Faust: Ramon Vargas
Wagner: Chuanyue Wang
Margherita: Patricia Racette
Elena: Marina Harris
Conductor: Nicola Luisotti
Production: Robert Carsen

 Again, a fabulous afternoon in the theater, but Samuel Ramey still owns the role of Mefistofele for all time. Almost an alpha. It was 19 years between productions in San Francisco; I hope we don’t have to wait that long again.

Falstaff, Opera San Jose, Sept. 17 2013

Back to San Jose to see Falstaff again, this time with the other cast than the one that we saw on Sept. 12. (Opera San Jose presents eight performances of each opera, four performances by “Cast 1” and four by “Cast A”.) The sets and direction were the same as before, just different singers. 

Our cast (Cast 1):
Falstaff: Steven Condy
Fenton: Marc Schreiner
Alice Ford: Rebekah Camm
Ford: Evan Brummel
Bardolfo: Chris Coyne
Pistola: Johann Schram Reed
Meg Page: Buffy Baggott
Dame Quickly: Patrice Houston
Dr. Caius: Michael Desnoyers
Nannetta: Sarah Duchovnay
Conductor: Ming Luke
Director: Jose Maria Condemi

Again, the performance was highly enjoyable, though it didn’t quite reach the level of Cast A. My friends who saw only Cast 1 were very pleased with what they heard. I’ll leave it with a strong beta.