Die Walküre, Metropolitan Opera HD, June 1 2011

We had to miss the regular May 14 broadcast of Die Walküre because we were at Spannochia, near Siena, in Tuscany. But we were back in time to catch the encore broadcast. This being the Robert Lepage production, the stage was dominated by the 45-ton “machine,” the one with the 24 rotating planks. Here, the machine was put to the best use yet: during the prelude, Siegmund runs through the trees, represented well enough by planks held vertically or almost vertically so that Siegmund can run in front of some and in back of others. Images of tree trunks were projected on the planks. You wouldn’t confuse them with Seattle’s trees, but it worked. As Siegmund enters the hut (“Ein Quel! Ein Quel!”) all planks but one rotate to form the ceiling of the hut, and a lightly varnished wood color is projected on them. The one that remains vertical is, of course, the ash tree, and there is a sword sticking out of it—a convenient place for Hunding to hang his coat when he arrives. During the episodes in which Siegmund tells his history, some silhouetted figures representing the action (mainly, running one way or the other, or stabbing another figure) are projected. And they ran quickly—very distracting.

In Act 2, there was a stage prop that I had not seen before. The stage directions call for Fricka to arrive in a chariot drawn by two rams. Here, Fricka is seated in a large chair; the front of the armrests are carved in the shape of rams. Since Fricka dominates Wotan in this scene, she and her chair are placed on the planks, above Wotan, who is at stage level. For the second part of Act 2, we are back to the planks-as-trees theme.

The Ride of the Valkyries opens with the Valkyries riding bucking planks (rotating first one way, then the other), and holding reins that are connected to the fronts of the planks. Later the planks serve as a surface on which to project abstract images. When Wotan puts Brünnhilde to sleep, a double is suspended head down from a central, vertical plank.

Our cast:
Siegmund: Jonas Kaufmann
Sieglinde: Eva-Maria Westbroek
Hunding: Hans-Peter König
Wotan: Bryn Terfel
Brünnhilde: Deborah Voigt
Fricka: Stephanie Blythe
Conductor: James Levine
Production: Robert Lepage

The performances were uniformly excellent, but I was particularly struck by:

• Jonas Kaufmann’s cries of “Wälse! Wälse!” This is what it means to be a heldentenor.
• Hans-Peter König’s superb tone as Hunding, although he had the appearance of a kindly grandfather.
• Deborah Voigt’s anguished, dejected entrance for the Annunciation of Death scene. Just in her acting, it was obvious that she was about to do something she really did not want to do.
• Bryn Terfel’s towering rage at the Valkyries in Act 3 Scene 2. Never before have I seen a Wotan so beside himself with anger.
  

A very solid beta—would have been even better without the distractions of the machine.

La Boheme, Opera San Jose, April 30 2011

Il Trovatore in the morning, La Boheme in the evening—life is so rich! Where to go from here, except to see the same opera morning and evening?

This La Boheme had the same sets reviewed earlier; the difference was the singers. Opera San Jose presents eight performances of each opera, with four performances by each of two casts, and we arrange to see both casts. This evening we saw:

Marcello: Krassen Karagiozov
Rodolfo: Christopher Bengochea
Colline: Silas Elash
Schaunard: Daniel Cilli
Benoit: Paul Murray
Mimi: Jouvanca Jean-Baptiste
Musetta: Jillian Boye
Alcindoro: Stephen Boisvert
Parpignol: Lee Steward
Conductor: David Rohrbaugh
Director: Timothy Near

The standout this time was Silas Elash. I’m a sucker for the beautiful bass tones that he produced in “Vecchia zimarra,” otherwise known as the overcoat aria. I was wondering how they were going to make him up, make a person of his age appear to fit with the other Bohemians, but they did very well. They gave him a mass of shoulder-length, wavy red hair, and a big bushy red beard to match—it was hard to find the “mature” gentleman underneath.

But again, just like Thursday night, I did not manage to get emotionally involved with Mimi, and the eyes barely moistened. A bit better than a gamma.

Il Trovatore, Metropolitan Opera HD Live, April 30 2011

According to Enrico Caruso, and repeated by hostess Renee Fleming, all you need to do to put on Il Trovatore is to hire the four best singers in the world. “Best” is a matter of opinion, but the Met lavished star power on this production:

Manrico: Marcelo Alvarez
Leonora: Sandra Radvanovsky
Count di Luna: Dmitri Hvorostovsky
Azucena: Dolora Zajick

All were superb, but I have to give top billing to Dmitri Hovorostovsky, whom I found especially effective. Stefan Kocan’s Ferrando wasn’t too shabby either.

The set was familiar; we had seen it in the San Francisco opera house and at the ballpark in 2009. It turns out that it is a joint production of San Francisco, the Met, and Chicago Lyric. It features a rotating stage, the better to preserve momentum by not ringing down the curtain for a scene change. The circle is divided into three 120° sections by tall concrete (or “concrete”) walls. The first scene features a long concrete staircase proceeding high up the right-hand wall. The Anvil Chorus scene and the final prison scene have something that looks like a rocky shell overhanging what looks like the entrance to a cave; in the prison scene there is a thick, charred pole with manacles, clearly echoing the backstory of Azucena’s mother being burned at the stake. The scenes for the convent and Leonora outside the prison use the third section of the rotating stage, with large steel grates separating one side from another—like a portcullis, except that they don’t move.

Rodvanovsky and Hvorostovsky also performed in San Francisco in 2009, and that production was the highlight of the season. The Met’s production was certainly strong, but did not quite reach the intensity of San Francisco’s. Perhaps the difference can be attributed to the conducting: San Francisco’s superb Verdi/Puccini conductor, Nicola Luisotti, as compared to the Met’s Marco Armiliato.

A very strong performance; a very solid beta.

La Boheme, Opera San Jose, May 28 2011

After having given three previews on La Boheme, which involved deeper study than I have previously given the opera, I was ready for an emotionally draining experience in the opera house. (I even had to cut out pieces from the talks I gave, figuring that it wasn’t good form for the speaker to lose his composure, especially over a fictional character.) Instead, I got one of those rare experiences: a dry-eyed La Boheme. Nothing particularly went wrong, but very little went right either.

The sets were, of course, traditional. The Bohemians are clearly living at the top of the building, with gigantic wooden beams and their supports running across the top of their garret. There is an easy chair and a stove. There is no table, but there is a copper bathtub, with wheels artfully concealed beneath it. When the Bohemians need a table, they wheel the tub out to center stage; Colline gets in the tub and a plank is laid across the tub, above his feet, and the comestibles are served on top of it. The largest object on stage is an artist’s scaffold, a large wooden structure with steps on one side and vertical on the other, the sort of thing that Cavaradossi might pull up next to the painting of the Madonna that he is working on, but rather out of place in the Bohemian’s garret, even though Marcello is working on a large (at least 6 feet on a side) painting of “The Crossing of the Red Sea.” Marcello’s painting technique is most unusual—the term “slapdash” comes to mind. He is taking broad swipes at what looks like a finished painting; he looks more like he is dusting the painting than creating it. And how he is going to get that monster out the door and down the stairs is something that he will leave to the stagehands to figure out. In the front right corner of the stage (from the audience’s viewpoint) is a small structure enclosing a large window that can be opened to permit Rodolfo (and later, Colline) to step out onto a small balcony.

The Act 2 set garnered applause as the curtain went up. It’s a small Parisian plaza, with the Cafe Momus to the left, a charcuterie (think butcher shop) behind the Cafe, and to the right a brasserie and another shop. On the backdrop are convincingly painted the buildings in the background, and there is a broad alley in the center for the entrances of Parpignol and Musetta. Of course, there are lots of people milling about.

Act 3, at the gates of Paris, has a large steel fence in the center, with the customs official’s shack immediately to the right and Marcello and Musetta’s inn on the left; the inn has an external brick staircase to the second floor. Sad to day, the brick staircase was not all that stable, and wobbled noticeably when Rodolfo or Marcello used it. There is no evidence of the repurposed “Crossing of the Red Sea.” Act 4 is back in the garret, looking just like Act 1, except that the copper tub has been pushed to one side to make way for a bed.

Our cast:
Marcello: Torlef Borsting
Rodolfo: Alexander Boyer
Colline: Isaiah Musik-Ayala
Schaunard: Daniel Cilli
Benoit: Paul Murray
Mimi: Jasmina Halimic
Musetta: Sandra (Rubalcava) Bengochea
Alcindoro: Stephen Boisvert
Parpignol: Lee Steward
Conductor: David Rohrbaugh
Director: Timothy Near

It was a pleasure to hear Sandra Bengochea again. She continues to sing beautifully, and brought all of the spunk that Musetta needs—perhaps too much. When she complains about her foot hurting, places her foot on a chair, and hikes up her skirts, she hikes them way up, so much so that Alcindoro feels compelled to place his top hat in a certain place. I presume that was a directorial decision, and just one of several misfires:

• Rodolfo leaves the door to the garret open as he escorts Mimi to the Cafe Momus.
• Mimi begins her Waltz sitting on a “throne” made by placing a chair on a table, with four young men very close by gazing at her unrealistically.
• The maid whom Mimi asks to go fetch Marcello has just emptied two chamberpots into a large barrel in the middle of the plaza.
• As Act 4 opens, Marcello is painting a smaller picture, but he’s holding it in one hand (no other support) while dabbing at it with the other.
• Colline sings “Vecchia zimarra” from the small balcony.
  

One directorial decision was right on. The street sweepers pass the inn just as Musetta (offstage) sings a wistful version of her Waltz. One sweeper pauses to listen, enraptured, to one of the few touches of beauty in his life, and then moves on.

On the whole, competently performed, but not much more. A gamma, or a bit better.

Capriccio, Metropolitan Opera HD Live, April 23 2011

This performance of Capriccio reminded me of a friend’s opinion that “the first act of Götterdämmerung is the shortest two hours in all of opera.” The opera was billed as running 2 hrs 45 min (that there would be no intermission was not made clear), actually ran 2 hrs 30 min, but when the curtain came down I found myself thinking "Was that a typo? Hasn’t it been more like 1 hr 45 min?" But it was, for sure, 12:35 pm, and the time had for the most part flown by—though I confess having fallen victim to a wandering mind a few times.

I have to credit the performers with doing a lot with a little bit of material. There is a love triangle, with the composer and poet both contending for the attention of the Countess, but it must be the most cultured, most refined love triangle on any stage. The two men attempt to woo the Countess by exercising their respective crafts, to write the music and the words for an opera, and to let the Countess decide which is the more important, the music or the words. A couple of others also get to have their say: the stage director, who will actually make the opera happen, and the comical prompter, who insists that without him it wouldn’t actually happen.

So it’s something of an opera within an opera, although the inner opera is never presented. Although it’s a love triangle, that is really a subplot (or stand-in) to the primary issue: music or words? It’s a vehicle for Strauss and and his co-librettist Clemens Krauss to engage in self-referential horseplay; it’s an opera about opera. There is a particularly unsubtle bit of self-reference when the principal characters exit the stage and the chorus of servants comes in to straighten things up as they comment on what they have overheard. One of them observes that “the next thing you know, they’ll be putting servants in opera.”

There’s not much to say about the set; it’s pretty much what you would expect: an elegant drawing room with sofas and easy chairs and small tables with lamps, and a piano. And a harp, which Renee Fleming (as the Countess) certainly appeared to be playing herself.

Our cast:
Countess: Renee Fleming
Flamand: Joseph Kaiser
Olivier: Russell Braun
Count: Morten Frank Larsen
Clairon: Sarah Connolly
La Roche: Peter Rose
Conductor: Andrew Davis
Production: John Cox

Renee Fleming was her usual luminous, wonderful self. The remainder of the cast acquitted themselves well, especially Peter Rose, who sung the bass role of the stage director superbly. I could be a Peter Rose fan, if he stays away from Osmin. When I saw him in Abduction from the Seraglio a few years ago, the lowest notes were not within his grasp. It was an embarrassing display of opening his mouth and no sound coming out.

Capriccio is not a great opera; it’s not even a great Strauss opera. It’s an acceptable vehicle for a world-class soprano; it’s pleasant enough; thankfully, it is no Domestic Symphony. In this performance, it’s not quite a beta.

Le Comte Ory, Metropolitan Opera HD Live, April 9 2011

The local theater was fuller than expected for this Rossini rarity, in its first-ever production by the Metropolitan Opera. Were these people who have a commitment to see all of the broadcasts? Were they Rossini devotees? Were they people who have seen their fill of Bohemes and Traviatas and are excited by something new? I can only speculate. A bit of all of the above apply to me.

Le Comte Ory was Rossini’s last-but-one opera, followed only by William Tell. The plot is somewhat similar to The Barber of Seville: the tenor desires to get into the lady’s house, and adopts a couple of disguises to do so. But here, he fails in his quest. He also has a rival for the lady’s affections: his page, Isolier, who actually first has the idea of disguise.

The production was of the “play within a play” sort. On the Met stage, we saw ... a stage, a low-rise contraption of boards and planks and stairs with a few steps, on which secondary stage the action takes place. Stage machinery, including a large winch operated by a supernumerary, was clearly visible to the left of the stage. Other supers performed set changes by moving potted trees and other props, in full view of the audience. It was a workable concept, though a far cry from a “stunning” production.

Our cast:
Count Ory: Juan Diego Florez
Isolier: Joyce DiDinato
Countess Adele: Diana Damrau
Ragonde: Susanne Resmark
Raimbaud: Stephane Degout
Tutor: Michele Pertusi

I have yet to join JDF’s fan club. The high notes that he is famous for sound strained to me. For me the standout performer was Diana Damrau, whose high notes were positively beautiful. Michele Pertusi also acquitted himself well as the Tutor, and Joyce DiDinato made a very believable Isolier. Lots of fine singing, but it failed to redeem the lackluster music and staging. A gamma or perhaps a shade better.

Dialogues of the Carmelites, San Francisco Conservatory Opera Theater, April 3 2011

Another “new” opera for me, one that I hadn’t seen before, one that I counted among the important operas that I had not seen. (What’s still on that list? Der Freischutz, Die Frau ohne Schatten, Rienzi, Maria Stuarda, From the House of the Dead, Sicilian Vespers, Orfeo, ... But I’m in good company—my friend who teaches at SFCM had never seen Carmelites either. And San Francisco Opera has not performed it since 1982.) I’ve read about the impact of the final scene, and this one delivered.

The performance was given at the Cowell Theater at Ft. Mason Center, and it was fairly well attended: roughly 80% of the seats were occupied. The foundation of the set was three large “stone” pillars that could easily be used to represent the wall of a mansion or a church or a public square, depending upon what was inserted between the pillars: a fireplace or an altar or a steel gate. The opera is in three acts of four scenes each, and the scene changes were effected by having the characters on stage move the equipment around.

The most notable moments of acting and stage direction came at the ends of acts 1 and 4. The end of act 1 is the agonizing death of the mother superior, conforming to its description as “the most realistic death in all of opera.” Kristen Choi as the mother superior writhed convincingly. At the end of act 4, all of the nuns in the convent are guillotined. Dressed in simple white muslin, they gathered to the left and sang a hymn of praise, Salve regina. One at a time, they walked across the back of the stage, up a ramp, off the stage, and then we heard the sickening sound of the guillotine—and then there is one fewer voice singing. Ultimately the chorus is reduced to a quartet, then a trio, then a duet, then Blanche goes to her death singing Deo patri sit gloria. Schlliicckk goes the guillotine, and no one is singing. Truly a theatrical masterstroke.

There are 20 named parts, 31 if you count the individual nuns, so I will only mention
Blanche de la Force: Julia Metzler
Old Prioress: Kristen Choi
Father Confessor: Dominic Domingo
Conductor: Michael Morgan
Director: Richard Harrell

The performance by the SFCM students, both singers and orchestra, was fairly respectable. I was struck by the confident baritone of one young man, whether he was one of the two “officers” or one of the two “soldiers” I couldn’t tell, but I would like to hear him in more than a tiny role. The Father Confessor has a long way to go before being compared to his famous grandfather. Overall, a gamma or bit better.