In the News: New SFS Music Director, Philip Glass, and Jeremy Denk

In the News:

Esa-Pekka Salonen - the Complete Sony Recordings Sony US | UK | DE

Top News surely the announcement that Esa-Pekka Salonen (as had been rumored) will succeed Michael Tilson-Thomas in San Francisco to be the San Francisco Symphony’s 10^th Music Director. It’s a logical appointment. A stellar conductor with a great reputation, interesting repertoire, and a real feel for the American – indeed Californian – way of being an MD… which is to suggest: naturally good at fundraising. For the very little it’s worth: I should have liked to see the slightly less splashy appointment of David Robertson… not so much because I think that would have been better for the SFS but simply because I want Robertson, whom I consider to be one of the most underrated conductors around, to be more in the limelight and with an orchestra of an international reputation to play with. After all, he’s at an age where one might consider that the once steeply ascendant conductor’s career has petered out, lest he pull a Günter Wand-like golden autumn. (Which would be fine, but I want him now.) Anyway, Salonen is certainly the safer choice and every bit as good (and certainly more glam-inducing) for the orchestra. Here’s the official announcement.

---

P.Glass, Symphony No.11 D.R.Davies / Bruckner Orch. Linz Orange Mountain Music US | UK | DE

Next up: You must get intimations of mortality when a university names a program after you. Case in point Philip Glass and The New School’s College of Performing Arts, which announced today to engage in a landmark partnership with the Philip Glass Ensemble (PGE) and long-time PGE member, Lisa Bielawa (named inaugural Composer-in-Residence and Chief Curator), around the work of Philip Glas, to form a new learning and creative center. Because Glass’ works have been so neglected, the Philip Glass Institute will offer students, faculty, and the public the opportunity to immerse themselves in the work of Philip Glass, other important artists within his circle, and the work of the iconic Philip Glass Ensemble. Facetiousness aside, this is good news for the PGE, which is Glass’ legacy, and the future of which is thereby secured, independently of its namesake… erm, aliveness. Added the composer himself: “At the new PGI we can prioritize a curriculum which doesn’t require critical approval of any period or style...Young composers need to be true to their voices. ‘Coming up’ can be very independent, and this is what will be guiding our work at The New School.” The whole thing will launch on January 6^th at the New School’s Tishman Auditorium.

---

Beethoven / Ligeti, op.111 / Etudes Jeremy Denk Warner US | UK | DE

Combining the topics of San Francisco and schools: Pianist (and once our blogging-colleague) Jeremy Denk has been announced to join the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. As such, he will lead a piano studio beginning in the 2019-20 academic year, joining piano department instructors at SFCM such as Jon Nakamatsu and Garrick Ohlsson. How gratifying (if envy-inducing) to see Denk’s career – not only as a musician but also as a man of letters – blossom like the dickens: MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, Avery Fisher Prize, and most recently his being elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences… and now a great job. Here’s to you, Jeremy, and hats off. Here’s the official announcement.

Follow @ClassicalCritic

Ionarts at Large: Blomstedt and Pires in San Francisco

Many thanks to Robert R. Reilly for this review from Davies Hall in San Francisco.

Bruckner, Symphonies 1-9, Cologne RSO, G. Wand Bruckner, Symphonies, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, H. Blomstedt

Last Thursday, February 25, 2016, I joined a largely geriatric crowd (meant descriptively, not critically, as I myself head toward 70) for a matinee performance of the San Francisco Symphony at Davies Symphony Hall. For some reason, if only from habit, I think of concerts as evening events. However, I was more than willing to turn out on an early afternoon to hear the Symphony’s conductor laureate Herbert Blomstedt, music director from 1985 to 1995, conduct a program of Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto, with Portuguese pianist Maria João Pires, and Bruckner’s Third Symphony. I last had the opportunity of hearing Maestro Blomstedt in 2009, when he conducted the Bruckner Ninth Symphony with the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall. He was then 82. Today, at 88, his artistry is undiminished.

I think of Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto as a largely extroverted affair, filled with joie de vivre. However, anyone who came expecting to be jolted by Beethoven’s electricity might have been disappointed by the relatively low voltage level of orchestral energy. Blomstedt chose, rather, a warm, reflective, mellow approach. It was particularly effective in poetic stretches, but lacked an element of excitement. It served, however, as a perfectly fine setting for the sublime artistry of Maria João Pires, who, remarkably, was making her debut with the San Francisco Symphony. She played with a full range of expression in a way that made the most of every finely articulated note. The first movement cadenza was particularly remarkable. Only a deeply experienced, fully mature artist could play with the level of confidence and nuance she exhibited. If I tried to put it in a nutshell, I would say it was like listening to a female Wilhelm Kempff. In all, the performance perspective of soloist, conductor, and orchestra was toward inwardness, rather than outwardness. It showed a perhaps slightly unexpected side of this relatively youthful Beethoven.

Blomstedt chose the early 1873 Nowak edition of Bruckner’s Symphony No. 3. In fact, it was Blomstedt who premiered this version of the Bruckner Third in the United States in 1998. As awkward as parts of it may be, it is well to keep in mind the remark of the famous Romanian conductor Sergiu Celibidache, who said of the Third Symphony: “This is the first manifestation of great, spacious, broad-plane thinking – incredibly extended – representing the essence of his later symphonic writing.” That is exactly right. In the Third, one can hear Bruckner’s greatness coming right around the corner. And in what does that greatness consist? The excellent Playbill program notes by Michael Steinberg quote Wilhelm Furtwängler to the effect that, “Bruckner is one of those geniuses who have appeared but seldom in the course of European history, whose destiny it was to render the transcendent real and to attract, even to compel, the element of the divine into our human world.” That level of greatness is more promised than realized in the Third, but there is enough of it there to reward attention.

Other Reviews: Georgia Rowe, Blomstedt and Bruckner prove a winning combination on San Francisco's Davies Hall stage (San Jose Mercury News, February 26) Joshua Kosman, Blomstedt makes a halting case for Bruckner (San Francisco Chronicle, February 26)

For the most part, Blomstedt did not aim at exaltation, and he did not make the big moments in the first movement as big as they could have been. If one missed the majestic utterances achieved by a conductor like Günter Wand, one was compensated by the sheer beauty which Blomstedt elicited with his steady, unbroken concentration and the extraordinarily fine playing by the SFS, which sounded as if to the Bruckner manner born. While not completely swept up in the early movements of the symphony, I nonetheless found myself repeatedly saying, “I didn’t realize this part was that beautiful.” Blomstedt’s approach was particularly effective in deftly revealing inner voices. My few reservations were blown away by the vivacity, vigor, and élan with which the third and fourth movements were done. The finale demonstrated that Blomstedt had only been keeping his powder dry in the fortissimo passages of the first movement, which made the closing allegro all the more exciting.

SFO “Summer and the Symphony” – The Beethoven Revolution

Many thanks to Robert R. Reilly for this review from out West.

On Friday, August 1^st, the San Francisco Symphony’s “Summer and the Symphony” series concluded at Davies Symphony Hall with The Beethoven Revolution, featuring the Overture to The Creatures of Prometheus, the Triple Concerto, and Symphony No. 5.

This was my first visit to the series and I had not realized the informality of the occasion. I think I was the only one in the packed concert hall with a tie on. The San Francisco Symphony is obviously trying to engage new, younger audiences, and it seems to be working. In the foyer before the concert began, The Martini Brothers provided dance music and a number of patrons took to the floor. But the evening was to be educational as well as entertaining. Conductor Edwin Outwater began with a standup routine explaining that the first part of the concert would be “conventional” Beethoven on his best behavior, and the second—the Fifth Symphony—the bad boy “revolutionary” part.

Be that as it may, Outwater is an energetic young man who appears to be tightly coiled. He gestures with his hand splayed and his fingers extended as if there were an electric current running through them. From his body language, I began to worry that he might rush through the music and not stop to smell the roses. A decidedly false impression as it turned out.

L.v.Beethoven, Symphony No.7 et al., MTT / SFSO SFSO Media L.v.Beethoven, Triple Concerto et al., N.Harnoncourt / P-L.Aimard, T.Zehetmair, C.Hagen Warner

I was already aware that the San Francisco Symphony knew its Beethoven, as I had been particularly impressed by Michael Tilson Thomas’s recording of the Seventh Symphony in his complete traversal of the Nine. I don’t mean to be taking any credit from Outwater by saying this—in fact, I mean it to give a great deal of credit—but in a blind listening session, I might’ve suspected that it was Thomas conducting the program.

The Prometheus Overture was finely articulated, rhythmically animated, and slightly mellow. The introduction in the Triple Concerto positively glowed with a kind of seamless warmth. In this piano trio cum concerto, there are obviously a lot of chamber music textures, and Outwater kept things beautifully scaled in light of them. The Gryphon Trio (violinist Annalee Patipatanakoon, cellist Roman Borys, and pianist Jamie Parker) played as among friends, with intimacy and eloquence. It doesn’t seem that Beethoven gave Archduke Rudolph, for whom he wrote piano part, quite as much to do as the others; so the Triple Concerto sometimes seems more of a duo concertante for violin and cello, than a concerto for piano trio. In any case, there was a great deal of joy in the Trio’s music making. In particular, that Roman Borys sang his heart out on the cello. It’s not a work I listen to very often, but I heard more to like in it in this performance than I have before. I will revisit it.

Before being plunged into the revolutionary Beethoven, Matthew Guerrieri, author of The First Four Notes: Beethoven’s Fifth and the Human Imagination, addressed the audience in a very casual manner about the historical context of the Fifth. He prepared us for the novelty of seeing displayed on screens at either side of the stage projections of the numbers of times Beethoven repeats the famous four-note motif as the Symphony is played. I am not sure if it was a distraction or an enhancement. You certainly listen differently when you see the numbers flashing before you. In the first movement alone, there were 271 repetitions, and 530 altogether. (Which begged the (equally novel) question: Was Beethoven a proto-Minimalist?)

The Fifth contains an enormous amount of energy, but Outwater was not willing to stampede the music for the sake of it. Yes, he released its power, but there was also some highly expressive playing (particularly in the winds), some delightful pizzicato playing in the strings in the third movement, and a good deal of nuance all around. In other words, Outwater did not strain things to show us how revolutionary the music is. He let it speak for itself, and by doing so displayed its novelty and its exhilarating majesty in a convincing way.

Ionarts-at-Large: Rossini in San Francisco

Many thanks to Robert R. Reilly for this review from out West.

Photo assumed courtesy San Francisco Opera, very possibly © Cory Weaver.

On November 13^th, the San Francisco Opera offered a big valentine to Gioachino Rossini, who was present on stage either in the form of a giant six-foot tall bust at the opening, or as a bas relief on the upper wall, for the remainder of a scintillating performance of The Barber of Seville. At the appearance of the bust, I suspected that this production, which comes from the Lithuanian National Opera (inspired by Emilio Sagi’s production for the Teatro Real), might prove to be too self-conscious, which is fatal for comedy, but it was not—except in a few minor instances. In fact, so infused with fun was this staging that it made the opera seem 200 years young.

Read more »

Ionarts-at-Large: Mefistofele in San Francisco

Many thanks to Robert R. Reilly for this review from out West.

Photo courtesy San Francisco Opera, © Cory Weaver. Detail, click to see entire picture.

Here come the long-term memory problems! I was well into the performance of Arrigo Boito’s Mefistofele at the San Francisco Opera on September 11, 2013, before I realized that I had seen this production before—back in 1989. How could I have not remembered?

Perhaps the reason is that I saw this opera in a different production back in the early 1970s at the New York City Opera, with Norman Treigle, who gave one of the greatest acting/operatic performances that I have ever seen or heard. Perhaps I am not having long-term memory problems after all, because his performance as Mefistofele is still vividly etched in my mind, as are some of the sets and the staging of that production. What more likely happened is that my memories of City Opera crowded out the later San Francisco Opera production, despite Samuel Ramey’s fine singing in the title role.

I actually located the 1989 program booklet, and it contained exactly the same plot synopsis (which I will not repeat here) and the same essay by Julian Budden, as does the current one. Both of them are fine: so this does not present a problem, though I was tempted to locate my old review and simply rerun it, with adjustments for the singing of the current cast. Alas, I could not find it; so readers are spared a regurgitation. Whatever the reasons, I can say that I brought a fairly fresh mind to this performance. Therefore, I was newly disappointed by certain aspects of the production but gained a deeper appreciation for others.

The famous Prologue in Heaven, with which the opera begins, presents a dialogue between the devil and God (as transmitted by the Chorus Mysticus). Boito wrote some of his best music for this 25-minute Prologue and, when done correctly, it should be overpowering. The audience should be enveloped in a womb of sound. This did not happen. The chorus sounded heavenly, but faint, as if set too far off stage. The orchestral textures were muddy. The choral sound was so recessive that it vitiated the impact of the music. When the scrim, on which rising clouds had been projected, comes up toward the end, a theater within the theater is revealed. In it and its multi-tiered boxes are placed the members of the heavenly chorus. (Shouldn’t heavenly choruses be heard and not seen?) Each one is costumed identically in blue and white, wears a mask, and has on a gold crown.

Blue and white are, of course, the colors of Mary. Since Mary is the Queen of Heaven, she is usually depicted with a crown. What are we to make of the presentation of some 60 such Marys? This puzzle was only solved by director Robert Carsen’s note that

Read more »

There she blows: Moby-Dick in the Bay Area

Many thanks to Robert R. Reilly for this review from San Francisco's War Memorial Opera House.

On the evening of October 22, 2012, I was at the San Francisco Opera House, which maintains one of the highest standards of production values in America. In its San Francisco premiere, the presentation of composer Jake Heggie’s and librettist Gene Scheer’s Moby-Dick confirmed this impression.

To say that mounting Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick as an opera is a daunting task is an understatement of considerable proportions. One has to admire Heggie’s nerve in undertaking it. He, his librettist, the director, and the designer have not completely succeeded for the simple fact that no one could. How do you distill a 600-page novel that poses the question as to whether the order of creation is rational or willfully malign, and that deals with the relationships between freedom and necessity, and between providence and the existence of evil, into a three-hour opera?

To succeed, you would have to have created musically and theatrically something as great as Moby-Dick itself. This Heggie and his colleagues have not done. However, in their striving, they have achieved some theatrically striking moments that are indelibly impressed in my memory, even if the entire effort lacks the final metaphysical coherence that Melville’s text demands.

Heggie certainly made some interesting choices. In Bernard Herrmann’s cantata setting of Moby-Dick, Ahab is a bass and Starbuck a tenor. That seems to make the most dramatic sense. Heggie reverses the order and makes Ahab a tenor and Starbuck a baritone. In the program booklet, Heggie explains that playwright Terrence McNally, who was originally supposed to write the libretto, told him that Ahab should be a heroic tenor… just why exactly he never says. Perhaps this was to propose Ahab as the protagonist, with Moby Dick as the antagonist?

This raises the question: Who or what is Moby Dick, anyway? In his program booklet essay, conductor Patrick Summers makes the astonishing statement that “the unseen whale, of course, is God, the biblical whale of Jonah.” Balderdash. Fortunately Summers is a much better conductor than he is a literary analyst. Better hear from Ahab himself, in the quarter deck scene of the novel, concerning the identity of Moby Dick, since it is his conception of the white whale that drives the drama. He speaks to Starbuck thusly:

All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event – in the living act, the undoubted deed – there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike though the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes I think there’s naught beyond. But ‘tis enough. He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him.

Here we have the metaphysical terms of the drama spelled out explicitly. Ahab is a Manichaean. He believes that the universe is, at least in substantial part, ruled by an evil demiurge, personified in Moby Dick. Providence is malignant. In his severed leg, Ahab has been a victim of its evil. It is, he thinks, a willed evil, and Ahab is going to will it back. Counterpoised to this metaphysical madness is the view of Starbuck, the first mate, who repeatedly tries to remind Ahab that Moby Dick is simply a source of whale oil, and nothing more. To think otherwise, he tells Ahab, is blasphemous. Both the novel and the opera are highly successful in dramatizing these two metaphysical views through the relationship between these two men, though the key quote given above is absent in the opera’s libretto. Of course, the larger lesson is that Ahab’s misshapen view of reality leads not only to his own destruction, but to that of everyone around him.

Unfortunately, in the first act of the opera, the quarterdeck scene is not portrayed with anywhere near the dramatic significance and intensity that it bears in the book. It should be overpowering; it is the point at which Ahab overwhelms his crew with the intensity of his desire for vengeance. We, too, should be overwhelmed. I think this was a misstep on Heggie’s part, though one can sympathize with the problem of not peaking too early in the dramatic action. To his credit, Heggie does build the drama effectively throughout the remainder of the first act, especially in the scene in which Starbuck confronts Ahab about allowing the crew finally to undertake the hunt for a sighted pod of whales and in Starbuck’s contemplated murder of Ahab as he lies sleeping.

However, there were many things that were exactly right and extraordinarily well done in terms of presenting the larger significance of the action. Let us begin with the overture. One of the biggest surprises of the evening was the intimacy of Heggie’s writing. He is particularly adept in his use of winds. Where one might have expected Hovhaness-like soundings of subterranean depths in huge orchestral swells, one received instead a kind of shimmering delicacy. This was counterintuitive and, in its way, enchanting. Though Heggie showed later in the opera that he clearly knows how to depict a storm when one arises, he has written remarkably gentle and reflective music for the magnitude of the subject matter. He is particularly gifted in musically capturing the interior monologues of Ishmael, Starbuck, Ahab, but there is an element of manic madness missing.

What was particularly arresting during the overture were the projected graphics. We first see a depiction of stars in a giant galaxy. All of a sudden, lines begin shooting between these points of light. It seems these points are connected. The apparent randomness of the stars is revealed to be something else. A pattern begins to develop, constellations form, and eventually morph into a giant outline of the ship, Pequod, sailing through the universe. The ship is part of the galaxy and connected to it. It is a part of a larger whole. This strongly suggests an overarching meaning and providence in the universe. It is hard to imagine this point being more effectively presented. It was breathtaking, and almost upstaged the ship on which the curtain rises, though that transition itself was very well handled.

While the opera’s culminating scene of Ahab with Moby Dick was anticlimactic, the death of Ahab was handled with a kind of symmetrical brilliance that directly related to the opening. Ahab diminished into a spot, which was then immediately subsumed back into the graphic projection of the larger stellar universe, with which the overture began: Ahab, who railed against the order of things, turns out to have been part of that order.

There were other unforgettable moments – too many to mention them all, but a few deserve the space: When the cabin boy, Pip, seems to be drowning, soprano Talise Trevigne is suspended by an unseen wire mid stage between the floor and the ceiling, against a back projection of the sea as seen from below. Against this image of being below water, Pip, then makes the desperate motions of attempting to swim to the top. Theatrically, the effect was stunning.

Toward the end of the first act, the scene changes to the deck on which the rendering of the whale oil takes place. As a depiction of hell, I have not seen a more powerful such evocation in any other opera. When the crew embarks on whale hunts, the boats are depicted by projections of their outlines against the steeply raked upstage area. The outlines of the boats move with the action of the waves and, when the boats break apart, the crew members tumble downstage. Finally, in the very last scene, Ishmael, the lone survivor, is floating upon Queequeg’s coffin. His moment of rescue is depicted by the descent of a line at the end of which is a large hook. He steps onto it and is drawn upward. Here is the deus ex machina which, at the very end, suggests that the purpose of the universe may not be malign, after all.

Sometimes, as effective as it was, the overall production left me wondering whether Heggie and his team finally understood the significance of Melville’s message at its deepest level. This was especially so given the overemphasis on the relationship between Ishmael and Queequeg, which is not so emphatically present in the novel. What are we supposed to see in this relationship? An ideal? If so, against what is it contrasted? I was not surprised when I read that almost no one in this production had read Moby-Dick before undertaking this effort.

Throughout, the singing was superb. Playing Ahab, Jay Hunter Morris was every bit a heroic tenor. His voice never flagged through the extraordinary demands of his role. Baritone Morgan Smith was equally effective and touching as Starbuck. One of the best scenes in the opera had him and Morris sing tenderly together about their reminiscences of Nantucket and the domestic bliss awaiting them there. Stephen Costello was an effective Ishmael and partnered well with Jonathan Lemalu, the Samoan bass baritone from New Zealand, as Queequeg. Soprano Trevigne was a very affecting Pip. The choral work was first rate.

It should be added that Heggie writes particularly well for the voice. One of the finest pieces in the opera was the choral lament for the lost Pip. The quartet with Ahab, Starbuck, Queequeg and Ishmael, the latter two up in the rigging, was also impressive. The orchestration was unfailingly attractive, but one wonders how much of this music is truly memorable. Some of it was cinematic; some of it verged on the high-end of the American musical. The production was so theatrically arresting and graphically thrilling that we will have to wait to see how well the music holds up on its own in a recording.

Until then, one can see the opera through Friday, November 2. After that one must await a broadcast by PBS, which is recording this production of Moby-Dick for national telecast.

Final praise to director Leonard Foglia, set designer Robert Brill, lighting designer Gavan Swift, and especially projection designer Elaine J. McCarthy who deserves some kind of Oscar or Tony for her stunning work. Bernard Herrmann chose to write a cantata on Moby Dick rather than an opera because, he thought, “the medium of opera seems too limited.” This imaginative production proves otherwise. RRR

All pictures above and below courtesy San Francisco Opera, © Cory Weaver.

Read more »

Ionarts-at-Large: The Loving and Loathing of Don Giovanni in San Francisco

Many thanks to Robert R. Reilly for this review from San Francisco.

With six admirable principals in very impressive ensembles, the San Francisco Opera production of Don Giovanni got off to a good start on Wednesday evening, November 2^nd. The orchestra, under conductor Nicola Luisotti, provided seamless underpinning—so much so that it seldom stood out on its own unless one paid particular attention. This is a compliment, not a criticism.

The problem with the production was its conception of Don Giovanni as a mere thug. Lucas Meacham, in fine vocal fettle, was dressed in black leather, placed against a black background, and sported anachronistic sunglasses—sunglasses of course being a theater-man’s prop of choice to signal “evil!” The error in this production is that it did not make sin attractive. People choose sin not because it is ugly, but because it looks good. Its cloak is that of light, not darkness: We hear this in Mozart's music and we also ought to see it on stage.

W.A.Mozart, Don Giovanni, R.Jacobs / Freiburg Baroque O. Weisser, Regazzo, Pendatchanska et al. Harmonia Mundi

With Don Giovanni so loutish looking, I nearly laughed every time he was referred to as an aristocrat. For women to choose a ‘bad boy’ isn’t an uncommon occurrence, but why love a thug when he isn’t even dashing? This lack of attractiveness undermined the dramatic tension of the plot. If we cannot believe in the Don's irresistible charms, how are we to believe in the women’s succumbing to them? Even in a genre in which we willingly suspend disbelief, this was unbelievable. A moment of ‘what might have been’ did peek through in Meacham's exquisite singing of Don Giovanni's serenade to Donna Elvira’s maid: the sunglasses came off and, for the first time, we could see a believable portrayal of tenderness. Or at least a portrayal of tenderness that a woman could believe. Alas, this came far too late to make the dramatic point it could have. Don Giovanni was also quite active with a large handkerchief, which he repeatedly placed over the faces of the women he was to kiss. If this signaled his dehumanization of the ladies, it also meant he got a mouthful of cotton. Why, then, do it more than once? The symbolism became too painfully obvious.

The principal scenic backdrop was provided by giant ascending and descending dark mirrors, large contraptions 16 by 6 feet in size. Lowered during the overture, they turned out to be a touch of overkill in suggesting the narcissism of Don Giovanni. The program notes by director Gabriele Lavia reveal that he meant them to convey the idea of reflection or, rather, self-reflection. Of course, of the latter there is none in Don Giovanni—which, incidentally, is the Don’s chief problem.

There were other missteps. There are a number of double entendres in this opera, and Zerlina employs many of them in her attempt to mollify her jealous fiancé Massetto. By using sexually explicit poses more appropriate to the Cabaret, Zerlina’s double entendres became, if one may say, single entendres. Making the implicit explicit always looses something—more than was made up for in the cheap laughs that were elicited and duly received.

The scenery, made up of mirrors and minimal sets, gave little sense of place. Exceptions to this were the atmospheric graveyard scene, and the closing banquet setting. Aside from Giovanni donning black, the costumes were in muted, fall colors—seasonally appropriate, if nothing else.

The acting, on the other hand, was particularly fine. Zerlina and Masetto not only looked as if they were from Central Casting, they also acted and sang their parts with particular distinction—outstandingly so in respect to the performance of Kate Lindsey, who has real spark. Shawn Mathey made his exquisitely sung San Francisco Opera debut in the role of Don Ottavio. If he has never actually sung this role on stage before, he has certainly mastered it.

A few less-than-assured moments in the second act did not detract from Ellie Dehn’s fine performance as Donna Anna. Serena Farnocchia began her Donna Elvira projecting weakly from upstage but almost immediately warmed up and gave an affecting performance—somewhat attenuated by her habit of bending at the waist and swaying while singing her arias. As Leporello, Marco Vinco was outstanding; less ‘commedia dell'arte’, more comic Gollum.

The closing, moralizing sextet was omitted (as it was at the 1788 Vienna premiere), presumably to give the interpretation a more “tragic” note. That was not entirely convincing after so much of it had been played so broadly. All in all, a production better heard than seen. The performance is repeated on November 10^th. RRR

Photo courtesy SF Opera, © Cory Weaver

Ionarts-at-Large: Opera in San Francisco

We sent* Robert R. Reilly out West and he enthusiastically reports back from the San Francisco Opera.


The evenings of November 9^th and 10^th brought this fortunate listener back to the San Francisco Opera house for the next to last performance of Franco Alfano’s Cyrano de Bergerac and the first of Leos Janáček’s The Makropulos Case, both early twentieth-century works about the illusions of love and the dramatic displacements that they can cause for those seized by them.

Cyrano teaches that real love can be prevented by illusions, the very illusions that may attract us to love in the first place; The Markopulos Case embraces death as a precondition for love in the sense that love is only possible within limits and through the acceptance of them.

Cyrano de Bergerac

Since a mere lad, I have been enraptured by Edmund Rostand’s brilliant Cyrano play; so naturally I was delighted at the opportunity of hearing Alfano’s operatic treatment, with Plácido Domingo in the title role. It was a production of real panache, eliciting giddy excitement, and easily worth the journey from Washington, D.C.

Cyrano is an Errol Flynn type of work and the Théâtre du Châtelet (which originated this creation) gave it a Michael Curtiz style treatment. In this respect, director-designer Petrika Ionesco was the star of the evening. I have seldom—perhaps never—seen an opera as sumptuously set forth as this; a production three elephants away from being vintage Zeffirelli. The level of stagecraft was breathtaking, the sets and costumes were pure eye candy. I think only of the opening scene in which we are placed upstage of the action, looking over the shoulders, as it were, of the actors/singers in the play within the play, to see Cyrano emerge out of the seventeenth-century theater and audience (which is seated in the real upstage location).

It is often the case today that operas are temporally and geographically dislocated or stripped to a level of abstraction that sense of time and place is lost altogether. Too infrequently does a production dare embrace it’s time-bound origins as does Ionesco with Cyrano. The mustachioed Romanian director fully trusted in the vision of the composer and librettist. This is how it should be done, I kept thinking: this is embracing the illusion and making it real. This is great theater.

But is it great opera? Alfano’s music is almost more a film score than it is what one usually expects from Italian opera (in fact, it sounds more French than Italian). It is mostly measured recitative or parlando in verisimo style, if not subject matter. Alfano’s score is continuous, harmonically rich, and orchestrally gorgeous, but without set numbers or arias, properly speaking. The music seldom calls attention to itself. It more often effectively enhances the action. How many films does one come away from humming the tunes of the film score? Likewise, one may wonder what is musically memorable here.

The effect of Cyrano comes from the total dramatic experience. Does this lessen Alfano’s musical achievement? Since returning from San Francisco, I have been sampling the DG DVD version of Cyrano, featuring the Orchestre de Montpellier. Listening to the music for the second time has increased my appreciation of its quality and of the level of Alfano’s achievement, which is no less than that of a Korngold film score. There was not a moment of this great play to which Alfano’s music was not equal. And it excelled in the balcony scene, at the battlements of Arras, and in the unforgettable death scene at the end.

Now in his late 60s, Plácido Domingo is no Errol Flynn, his dueling as Cyrano was (thankfully) kept to a highly stylized minimum, but his level of maturity gave Cyrano keen poignancy. Vocally, Domingo (along with most others) got buried on occasion by a loud orchestra. He came into his own in the balcony scene with its highly lyrical music and in his death scene at the end.

The performance of the evening, however, was delivered by another Spaniard, soprano Ainhoa Arteta, whose physical and vocal beauty made her an ideal Roxane. She was one member of the cast who was able to project over the orchestra throughout. Her acting was as brilliant as her singing. She could play the petulant teen love for the handsome Christian (sung very well by Thiago Arancam), whose physical beauty dazzled and blinded her, and then capture the tragic realization that it had been Cyrano’s soul she had loved from the beginning. In love with love until suffering refined her, Roxane loses Cyrano at the very moment he finally has the courage to reveal himself as her real soul mate.

The rest of the cast excelled, the chorus was superb, the orchestra and conductor Patrick Fournillier were admirable, except for the balance problem. Production values could not have been better. I think director Ionesco pushed a bit too far by bringing on seventeenth century spot lights (candles backed by silver dishes) to emphasize and comment on the artifice of several moments—Cyrano and Christian plotting their letter-writing scheme, for example. In short, this was one of the most theatrically thrilling evenings I have spent at the opera, or anywhere else. If this production surfaces somewhere else (as surely it will), do not miss this coup de théâtre.

The Makropulos Case

Love of another kind, or its loss, is featured in The Makropulos Case, Janáček’s penultimate opera, and one of his more demanding ones. I first saw it at the New York City Opera in the 1970s. It puzzled me then and still does to an extent. I have since become a fanatic of Janácek’s music. I embrace its peculiarities and stylistic idiosyncrasies. Yet this is one of his most compacted scores, in which his motif style becomes so compressed that it seems fragmented, almost a-thematic or a-melodic at times. This is clear from the kaleidoscopic prelude. What follows is apostrophic, staccato, jagged, and sometimes dissonant. Like Cyrano, The Makropulos Case has no set numbers. Unlike Cyrano, it has no chorus, and the soloists do not sing together as group until the last scene. Only at the end does this abrupt music congeal into a sustained melodic arch that gathers together in a resolution which moves from minor to major illumination.

Thematically, The Makropulos Case is an immortality tale, a sort of female version of The Picture of Dorian Gray. It features the mysterious, seductive Emilia Marty, née Elina Makropulos, a woman who has remained alive for 337 years due to potion concocted by her alchemist father. She is now an enthrallingly beautiful opera star. The effects of the potion are expiring and she must recover the formula, which is secreted in the house of a baron who is a descendent of a former lover. This involves her in a law suit in which she supplies evidence that only an actual witness to events hundreds of year ago could provide. She meets actual descendants who fall in love with her. In fact, everyone becomes obsessed with, and wishes to possess, her. The only one who gets anywhere, Baron Prus, discovers that she has nothing left to give (“like making love to a corpse”). As Janácek wrote, “that beautiful woman of 337 years hadn’t got a heart any more.”

Emilia’s centuries of love affairs and spawning have produced a deadly indifference both to great, great grandchildren and former lovers, one of whom appears and grovels between her legs. (It is a morality tale for anyone interested in cryogenics.) The lesson is that immortality leads to immorality. Janácek tells us that mortality defines life and invests it with meaning. When life is extended indefinitely, it loses shape and definition. If one cannot die, nothing has meaning. Near the end of the opera, in fact, Emilia declares that whether “one is alive or dead makes no difference.” Timelessness leads to the irrelevance of everything. Ironically, immortality leads not to continuity but to its opposite, discontinuity—a break in the generations, wherein a great grandson can fall in love with his great grandmother, a grotesquerie that not even the ancient Greeks had thought of.

This truth is illustrated by a series of relationships that Emilia has, all of which end baldly for the mortals who realize too late that she is not capable of love. She inspires lust, more than love. As an object of lust, she has become dehumanized and in turn treats everyone inhumanely. Rummaging about the floor with her old lover, Count Hauk, between her legs, was just one graphic highlight of that depravity. The combination of Emilia’s beauty and vulgarity appalls. Finally, the sordidness and degradation of her situation leads Emilia to accept her own death, even though she has recaptured the formula for immortality. Her death scene is one of Janácek’s great inspirations.

Only a great actress/singer could pull off a role like this. Finnish soprano Karita Mattila is that person. She plays the role with total conviction and vocal richness. She is imposing, beautiful and vulgar, and just at the right point beyond her prime to make Emilia’s situation seem real. When the old lover appears in her dressing room to remind her of their trysts in Spain, she slithers to some gypsy music as if still taunting him. It is a horrifying moment, brilliantly delivered by her.

Mattila is abetted by a wonderful cast, with especial kudos to Miro Dvorsky, who plays Makropulos’s great-great-grandson, Albert Gregor, Dale Travis as Dr. Kolenaty, and Gerd Grochowski as Baron Prus. As seems the standard with SF Opera productions, the acting was spot on across the board.

Anyone who knows Czech music knows what a hand for it conductor Jirí Belohlávek has, and he had the orchestra playing Janácek as if to the manner born. The stage direction was effective. The only disappointment was the set, a giant drum, on which moved the first act’s law office, which was very well done, but then turned to reveal abstractions that added little to the drama in the last two acts.

The production is dedicated to the late, great conductor, Charles Mackerras, who did so much to reveal the riches of Janácek to the rest of us. This riveting portrayal of The Makropulos Case plays at the San Francisco Opera house through November 28^th.

We didn't exactly send him, but he happened to be there, so we took full advantage of it.

Ionarts-at-Large: Sibelius in San Francisco

Robert R. Reilly was out West and reports from San Francisco.

On Friday evening, November 13th, there was good news and bad news at the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra’s concert, led by the able guest conductor Semyon Bychkov at Davies Symphony Hall. The bad news was that the rare opportunity to hear the seldom-programmed Schumann Cello Concerto was lost because French cellist Gautier Capucon was indisposed. The good news—assuming you like Ravel—was that Pavane pour une infante defunte and La Valse were the substitutes.

The concert began with Henri Dutilleux’s Metaboles. If Dutilleux (b. 1916) was, as the program notes claim, attempting “to escape the influence of Ravel,” whose music he loves, we can be grateful that he did not entirely succeed. Metaboles still sounds impressionistic in its refined, transparent textures and sound world. One is simply less sure of what the music is an impression of: A series of floating gestures and textures, untethered from any specific thing, only occasionally melding together into something (thematically) recognizable. Bychkov notably detected the long line in this music, even where I didn’t and that made the piece far more arresting in this concert than it has been for me from my familiarity with it on Yan Pascal Tortelier’s Chandos CD. Bychkov was rhythmically astute; the orchestra was completely on point in all departments; and together they achieved a superb crescendo at the conclusion.

Next came a lovely rendition of the Pavane, and then La Valse. The various orchestral sections underneath the evolving waltz in La Valse bubbled delectably. Bychkov and the SFO, imbued with a sense of fun, toyed with waltz rhythms in a way that caused smiles throughout the audience. The playing was suitably nuanced and the build to the apotheosis at the conclusion brilliantly done. Not just considering what must have been minimal rehearsal time, this was a crowd pleaser from a virtuoso orchestra that clearly enjoyed what it was doing so well with a conductor with whom it was in complete rapport. Now if only they had played the Ravel before the Dutilleux to help put in perspective what Dutilleux was trying to do in his attempt to escape Ravel’s influence.

Carl Nielsen, Symphony No.5 & Concertos et al., Blomstedt / SFS Decca .com .co.uk .de .fr

The second half of the program was the Sibelius Fifth Symphony. It is the main reason I came, since this is the composition that ignited my rampage through classical music several decades ago. The SFO earned a reputation for Sibelius when Herbert Blomstedt was its conductor, and my expectations were high. Their recordings of the 7 Symphonies for Decca had achieved near-mythical status, going for triple digits on Amazon before they were finally re-issued in a convenient box set. My concert experiences with the Fifth—notably with Sir Alexander Gibson in the 1980s and Lorin Maazel in the 1990s— have generally been good, too. Among more recordings than I care to admit to my wife, my favorite remains the one that first riveted me—Leonard Bernstein’s with the New York Philharmonic (Sony).

As he was composing his Fifth Symphony, Sibelius wrote, “I begin to see the mountain that I shall surely ascend. God opens his door for a moment and His orchestra plays the Fifth Symphony.” Without knowing that Sibelius had said this, that is what I heard and experienced in my first encounter with this work. It shook me. Sibelius is dealing with the forces of Nature and of Nature’s God from which they come. He grasped the harmony of the spheres, and played it for us. The right reaction is one of awe, if not something approximating terror, at the approach of the transcendent. The interpretive danger is to humanize this music, to succumb to its beauties. Beauty should be a by-product of this work, not its center. Sir John Barbirolli had an occasional tendency to get swamped by Sibelius’s beauty, while Bernstein captured its glacial remoteness and complete majesty.

Bychkov and the SFO delved into the deep sense of mystery and excitement in the first movement. The strings were breathtakingly good in their runs. The main theme got precisely the heft it needed. Though Bychkov leaned a bit in the Barbirolli direction of beautification, the work can withstand a less than Nordic approach. In fact, it glowed under Bychkov’s baton and skirted any sense of softness. My lofty expectations were met—except in the last movement where Bychkov sacrificed some grandeur for beauty... not an advantageous exchange in my book. Nonetheless, it was Bychkov’s clear interpretive choice, and it was interesting to see how well it worked on its own terms, even as I missed the frisson. In the magnificent climax, Bychkov and the SFO reached from a terrestrial plane to a celestial one. The playing got there but the interpretation not quite. Still: Next time I hear Sibelius’ Fifth, I will think of Bychkov alongside Maazel and Gibson. RRR

(Gautier Capucon had recovered in time for the Saturday evening performance of the Schumann.)

Ionarts at Large: Mozart & Musorgksy in San Francisco

Our thanks to guest critic Robert R. Reilly for contributing this review of Idomeneo and Boris Godunov from the San Francisco Opera.




Seeing Mozart’s Idomeneo and Musorgsky’s* Boris Godunov back-to-back at the San Francisco Opera on the evenings of October 21 and 22, I did not expect to be struck by the similarity of their themes. What could this Enlightenment opera, penned in Munich in 1781, have to do with the darkness and gloom of unenlightened czarist Russia of 1869?

More than you might think. Both operas deal with the perennial issue of the order of the soul and the order of the city. Both operas ask the central questions: what is the ruler’s relationship to the divine and what difference does that relationship make to his rule; and what is the relationship between the moral character of the ruler and the political order? Not surprisingly – since the family is the foundation of the polis – both operas also deal with families and the relationships within them.

I was left to dwell upon these themes because the excellence of both productions left me free to plumb the meaning of the operas themselves. There were no distractions from poor production values, bad casting, awkward acting, or flubbed notes. More will be said about the obverse of each of these, but the main point is that both evenings were opera at its finest – as one has come to expect of the San Francisco Opera.

Although I am a Mozart fanatic, Idomeneo remains relatively unknown to me. In fact, it was pretty much unknown to everyone from the time of its last performance in 1781 until some point in the 19^th century. San Francisco didn’t see its first production of Idomeneo until 1977; the current production was first offered in here in 1989.

For those used to the teeming life in Don Giovanni and The Marriage of Figaro, the reasons for Idomeneo’s neglect are fairly easy to divine. In the vein of opera seria, Idomeneo is a somewhat heavy classical drama based upon the fictional story of Idomeneo returning from the Greek conquest of Troy. He almost perishes at sea, but is saved by his vow to Neptune to sacrifice the first person he sees on land. That person turns out to be his son Idamante (a part written for a castrato that is now sung by a mezzo-soprano).

Thus the dramatic tension in the opera is centered on whether or not Idomeneo will kill his son. If he does not, will the gods destroy Crete? That sounds exciting but, in fact, most of the major action takes place off stage – the ship wreck, the storm, the monster’s attack on Crete, and Idamante’s slaying of the monster – we are only told about these events. Instead, the characters mostly soliloquize over the dire situations in which they find themselves. In other words, most of the drama is interior. This makes the on-stage action static. The poor director (John Copley) is left having the characters occasionally lurch in one direction or another to express the profundity of their emotions. It is hard to imagine what else he could do – although it would be a director’s job to figure exactly that out. Nonetheless, this is already mature Mozart, and it is so musically rich and sophisticated that one can only be pleased that it has made its rather late entry into the repertoire.

Back to the story: Idomeneo immediately regrets his terrible vow, but seems to have been placed in this situation because he was willing to sacrifice someone else’s life for his own. The tension this sets up is only resolved when others prove willing to sacrifice themselves, rather than see Idamante slain. In a marvelous scene in Act III, Idomeneo realizes his culpability, “I alone sinned,” and offers his own life for his son’s. Idamante, in turn, is clearly willing to give his life to save the people of Crete as he goes out to slay the monster (whose destructive presence seems the embodiment of the dislocation in the relationship between the gods and man). Then Idamante announces that he is ready for Idomeneo to take his life as the necessary sacrifice. Ilia, King Priam’s daughter, who is in love with Idamante, intervenes and offers her life in his place.

With this, the spell of Idomeneo’s vow is broken and Neptune relents. The disembodied Voice proclaims: “Love has triumphed.” However, Idomeneo has forfeited his right to rule. By offering to sacrifice someone else in his stead, he dislocated his relationship with his own son – thereby suggesting that it was wrong to offer anyone in his place. He has lost his legitimacy. Idamante replaces him as king. Thus, order is restored. The legitimacy of the new order, sanctioned by the gods in a presage of Christian kingship, is established by the ruler’s willingness to self-sacrifice. This does not strike me so much as an Enlightenment message as a Christian one.

It would be difficult to praise the orchestra and its conductor, Donald Runnicles, too highly. I would be tempted to call them the stars of the evening were it not for the vocal excellence on display. The playing was echt Mozartian – alert, highly nuanced, especially in the winds and strings, vivacious, lyrical and dramatic as the moment required.

Alice Coote, the British mezzo-soprano, was a standout in the key role of Idamante, which she not only sang well but acted with unflagging concentration and conviction. She was beautifully matched by the Austrian singer Genia Kuhmeier, a completely believable Ilia, who looked and sang just as a Mozartian soprano should. Kurt Streit has a well-deserved reputation for this role as Idomeneo. His anguish and anger at Neptune were completely convincing. Alek Shrader as Abace stood as a peer with the principals, though he is only 25 years old – about the age of Mozart when the opera was finished. Iano Tamar as Elettra sang expressively of her unrequited love for Idamante. Hers is not a big voice, however, and she was swamped in the third act quartet.

There is a good deal of great choral music in Idomeneo and the chorus excelled. Design-wise, the set and costumes emulated the 18th century and how the 18^th century might have conceived of ancient Greece. The mix worked well. The set was suitably archaic looking, with fragments of classical pediments strewn about. The scene of the ruins from the monster’s depredations had a delicious hint of Italian futurism about it. In short, the production was a success that in many ways transcended the limitations of the stilted opera seria genre.

Boris Godunov offers another troubled ruler. At the beginning of his reign as tsar, Boris prays, “may I be good and just like Thee.” This does not appear, however, to be something God can grant or Boris’s conscience allow – because his reign is based upon an act of murder. Unlike Idomeneo, who was only willing to sacrifice someone for himself, Boris actually did so in having the Tsarevich Dimitri killed so that he, Boris, could rule. The consequences of this horrible deed are played out in this original 1869 version of Musorgsky’s opera.

This is one of the truly great portraits of a tortured soul. It is made all the more moving because Boris actually tries to be a good ruler and a good father to his son Fyodor and his daughter Xenia. All is for naught. The opera teaches that regime change cannot be based upon regicide. Boris’s act inevitably gives rise to a pretender, Grigory, a renegade monk who tries to pass himself off as Dimitri, who had been killed 12 years earlier at the age of 7. The appearance of the pretender intensifies Boris’s anguish to the point that he begins to hallucinate; the murdered child appears to him in one of the great ghost scenes of opera. “Oh cruel conscience, too savagely you punish me,” cries out Boris.

Before Boris goes mad, he delivers a prayer for “my innocent children.” That this scene and its music can bring tears to one’s eyes is a measure of Musorgsky’s achievement in presenting the full scope of Boris’s tragedy by showing Boris in his full, though flawed humanity. In counseling his son, he sings, “Keep your conscience clear for it will be your power and strength.” In other words, no one realizes better than Boris that the good order of the ruler’s soul is the foundation of his political strength.

I have not seen Samuel Ramey since he sang Mefistofele 20 years ago at the SF Opera. He was still a young man then. Now he is 66 years old. It seemed to tell a bit in the coronation scene when his voice wobbled a bit. However, that was the only hint, for he had no trouble rising to the big scenes or in delivering a truly searing and terribly moving portrayal of Boris. He has a tremendous sense of stage presence, and his nuanced portrait of the increasing toll Boris’s conscience takes on him was haunting. From the point at which Prince Shuisky tells him of the pretender through to Boris’s death, Ramey was riveting. He played the prayer scene with heartbreaking authenticity. The scene in which the holy fool refuses to pray for Boris because he is “Tsar Herod” was joltingly effective.

The rest of the principals were outstanding as well. John Uhlenhopp as Prince Shuisky was the incarnation of unctuous treachery. Vsevolod Grivnov was superb as Grigory, the pretender, with almost a nasal whine in his voice from envy. Russian bass Vladimir Ognovenko almost stole the show with his performance as Varlaam, the vagabond monk. I was not surprised to see in his bio that he has sung Boris.

The set was stark simplicity itself – a raked stage that wraps up in the rear to the ceiling, and out of which doors opened for various entrances and exits. The gray setting put everything else in high relief. It made the appearance of the icons and rich court costumes in the coronation scene all the more impressive. In a nice touch of irony, Boris was dressed in shocking white. The general darkness and lighting were entirely appropriate to the interior drama that was being played out. The orchestra and chorus once again covered themselves in glory, this time under Russian conductor Vassily Sinaisky.

It seems there is no escaping the connection between the order of the soul and the order of the city. As good a reminder for why we go to the opera, as it is a guide for our own lives.

(Idomeneo plays again on October 28^th and 31^st, Boris on October 30th, November 2^nd, 4^th, 7^th, 12^th, and 15^th.)

* "Mussorgsky" is the most common American spelling of the name - but the transliteration with one "s" is considered to be more appropriate by those who should know. [Taruskin, et al.]

All photos courtesy SF Opera - © Terrence McCarthy