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Ariadne auf Naxos is an odd little opera with only one act, but has a prologue that lasts about 30 minutes. It is more or less an opera about opera, and is quite diverting. The juxtaposition of opera seria and opera buffa produced some entertaining effects as well. All together Ariadne pointedly shows the nature of opera to be collaborative. The prologue starts backstage, and the manner of the staging never let one forget that one was watching a performance. This quite reminded me of Bertolt Brecht's theory of drama, especially since I have been reading about his collaboration with Kurt Weill, particularly in the opera Mahagonny.
The staging was done very artfully, and was beautiful. The various pieces of the stage within a stage were nicely painted, and the cloud hung from ropes that Echo sang in was particularly amusing. The costumes were lavish but in subtle colors. The choreography came off very well, Laura Claycomb (Zerbinetta) moved in an especially delightful, lilting manner, and Deborah Voigt (Prima Donna/Ariadne) impressed me with her regal bearing, even turned away from the stage, the way she held her head and back was simply resplendent.
I do wish that they were better at moving the sets more quietly at the San Francisco Opera. It is an opera, sounds are of the utmost importance, one would think. During Bacchus' approach to Naxos, there was a switch of the stage such that the audience was backstage once again, and the clatter that ensued was most indelicate. As for the singing, most everyone in the production was quite good. The mezzo-soprano Claudia Mahnke as the composer was surprisingly wonderful en travesti, she played the over-sensitive, melodramatic role well, and her voice was strong. Deborah Voigt is as accomplished as her reputation would have her. Tenor Thomas Moser is not as renowned as Voigt, but I found his voice well-paired with hers. Laura Claycomb, while quite charming, does not have a voice to vie with these others, it is thin, though pretty it was overwhelmed by the orchestra at times, especially in her higher range.
The somewhat sparse and talkative audience seemed far more moved by the text which they read as supertitles than the music. Unfortunate, since Strauss seems to have a good sense of humor. The music in the prologue was at times humorously overblown. I also quite enjoyed the overture to the opera proper, and by some magic the audience was silent for the whole of it. I believe this is because the curtain was intentionally pulled up as they had supernumeraries fuss around with the stage, perhaps to heighten the sense that the audience is watching an opera. This served to prepare the audience and they were all settled down by the time the music started. I believe I prefer Strauss to Puccini. I also like the audience members in standing room better than in the Grand Tier, as they were more respectful of the artists and the people around them.
Sunday, September 8, 2002Free Shakespeare in the Park is an unnerving experience. There are lots of people basking in the sun and eating copious amounts of food. I'm not sure that a lot of them understand what is going on as far as whatever play is showing is concerned. Be that as it may, perhaps they get something out of sunshine and edibles and Shakespeare all at once. This production of The Winter's Tale was quite likable. Cheerful and merry, despite the brutal beginning half. There was much singing and dancing. They made Bohemia into early California, which didn't work out as terribly as it could have. The whole play is rather fantastical as far as setting goes, it is very difficult for me to understand the Bohemia or Sicilia in this play as having anything to do with the Czech Republic or Italy, not with characters having Greek names and going to the oracle of Delphi.
The way the production juxtaposed Hermione and Polixines together while Leontes had his jealous rages made it seem as if Hermione might have been less than blameless.
I much like the first half of the play better than the second. Leontes has some beautiful lines. Allen McKelvey was very strong as Leontes, his rages and penitences were both done with a certain beauty. I felt that Jacqueline Hillsman seemed hesitant as Perdita, and perhaps this is why I did not like the merry second half of the play as well. Ms. Hillsman just did not seem very prepossessing. Otherwise, the acting seemed just fine, rather charming but nothing exceptional.
Sunday, September 8, 2002Turandot is not my favorite opera, and Puccini is not my favorite composer of operas. For one thing, Puccini's overtures are incredibly quick affairs that only confuse me, and Turandot's were no exception. The set design and costume design of this production was absolutely lurid, perhaps because of the oriental aspect of the setting. The backgrounds that were meant to look faux Chinese were very flat and not unlike paper cut-outs. Everything was very red and green and pink. There were absurd death heads hanging from rafters above in the first act that were a special annoyance to me for some reason. Nonetheless, the singing was very good. Jane Eaglen (Turandot), Patricia Racette (Liu), and Jon Villars (Calaf) all had gorgeous voices. I found the music for Ping, Pang, and Pong rather adorable, and Hernan Iturralde, Jonathan Boyd, and Felipe Rojas did a fine job with the choreography, acting, and singing. They had a good dynamic together.
The libretto is full of holes. In this production Turandot intially looked quite joyed by Calaf's correct answer to her last riddle, and then frightened and enraged only later, which seems like an attempt to make her change of heart in the end more plausible.
I liked the acrobats. This was something that simply thrilled my blood
Sunday, August 25, 2002Troilus and Cressida is such a play of deflation and ambiguity. Greek and Trojan alike are hypocritical, fools all in one way or another. Chad Jones of the Oakland Tribune writes that "You practically need a scorecard to figure out who's who among the 16 actors playing 22 roles." I thought it was pretty clear, personally. The costumes were done thoughtfully, the actors were good, and it isn't as if Shakespeare doesn't have his characters referring to each other, and even themselves, by name. Is it possible to get Agamemnon and Thersites confused? Or Ajax and Paris?
John Hinkel Park was full for the Shotgun Players performance of Troilus and Cressida. The audience was surprisingly well-behaved for a pay-what-you-can play. The costumes were simple, but done with care, they weren't beautiful and they were modern, but it is community theatre, after all. Consistent, at all events.
Pandarus (Reid Davis), Thersites, and Helen (Rica Anderson) were all played in exaggerated style. Particularly when Helen and Pandarus were in the same scene, one felt that the two were fighting to be the center of our coveted attention. Clive Worsley did well as Thersites, even if he was a little too much. I hardly believe it was his first foray into Shakespeare. He played Agamemnon rather well also. Another fellow who had his first role in Shakespeare was Robert Martinez, who did a fine job as Ulysses, perfectly a diplomatic orator, as crafty as anything. John Thomas was a noble Aeneas. His voice is clear and lovely, his bearing regal.
As for our lovers, Tyler Fazakerley as Troilus reminded me of no one so much as Amaya Alonso Hallifax who was the lead in last season's Iphigenia in Aulis, so young and not quite comfortable, which is fitting. Frieda Naphsica de Lackner as Cressida was properly ambiguous. Not quite outright horrible, just weak. Is she in control or not? Naphsica de Lackner does well in the scene when she is brought to the Greek camp and is kissed by various Greeks (Act IV, scene 5), first frightened and overcome, then her tongue sharpens.
Sunday, August 25, 2002Pacific Repertory continues with a second year of Shakespeare history plays during its 20th anniversary season. Last season I had been fantastically impressed by their staging of the recently attributed Edward III, the apocryphal Thomas of Woodstock, and Richard II. Within the first minute of their production of 1 Henry IV, I was very frightened that I would not enjoy it at all. They started it off with dramatic music that evoked film, with Richard II at the center of the stage being deposed and Henry IV being crowned. This in and of itself was not a departure from last season. However, during this wordless visual prologue, there were soldiers in camouflage and toy machine guns which were annoyingly loud, and that's when my heart sank a bit. The rest of the both the Henry IV plays were done with costuming from the current age and from what is ostensibly Shakespeare's age, this being the usual Renaissance Faire sort of garb. The costuming would switch from scene to scene back and forth and does not converge until the rejection of Falstaff in 2 Henry IV.
So there was pool playing, golf, cellular phones, a video camera, a television set, a computer, and all sorts of other props from our current world. This switching back and forth only heightened the disparate nature of the switching back and forth from the court to the tavern to the battlefield, from tragedy to comedy. It was a very obvious and absurd device, and I don't think it enhanced anyone's understanding of the plays. If anything, it made it hard for the audience to tell who was who. In particular, I did not like Act III, scene i of 1 Henry IV done as a golf scene, complete with foam golf balls being shot off into the audience. Lady Percy and Lady Mortimer are cut down to just being in the background, until the end of the scene when they try a bit of golf themselves and there starts the intermission, in the middle of Act III. Despite all this, I much enjoyed this production simply because the plays and the acting were so good. The best actor of all was the one who played Falstaff, which rather surprised me. John Rousseau was a charming Falstaff, he didn't over do it, he was charming without being cloying and just vulgar enough. The rejection of Falstaff was the most beautiful scene of the two plays, and Rousseau was stunningly good in his speech and manner.
Kevin Black did very well as Hotspur, particularly when flying into a rage after speaking with Henry IV and facing Prince Hal at Shrewsbury. The latter had a fantastic fight scene that was rather well choreographed. I would say that this character was perhaps a bit too nobly rendered, too nice for a man who loved to fight and was full of belligerence. This is a fault of direction.
John Farmanesh-Bocca was an adequate Prince Hal, he was perhaps best when pretending to be his father with Falstaff in Act II, scene 4 of 1 Henry IV. Cool as a cucumber. I'd seen Farmanesh-Bocca as Yasha in The Cherry Orchard last season, in which he played the snobby butler to a tee.
James Kiberd was a bit over the top as Henry IV, his performance might be better suited to King Lear than King Henry. Apparently he has fans though, for a pair of ladies behind me seemed to clap for him whenever possible, even before he started speaking.
The stage was a revolving one, and was very cleverly done, even with a television set in one wall which was more often than not hidden by other devices. I was appalled by how the induction of 2 Henry IV was done with the television, Rumor's part was done on many channels, as it were, and by many different actors, all wearing ridiculous wigs, and the part was more or less incomprehensible.
The director was not satisfied with the last lines that John of Lancaster speaks at the end of 2 Henry IV, nor with the Epilogue, so it was ended with Henry V in the center front of the stage packing a suitcase with his doublet, he being in a modern suit. He is sitting on the bed, and on the right side of the stage is Henry IV, to the left is Falstaff. Henry V turns toward his father, obviously indicating his choice.
Monday, August 19, 2002Central Works created a play about Margaretha Zelle through an intensive collaborative workshop. It was staged in a tiny room at the lovely Berkeley City Club, whose architect was Julia Morgan. The building recalls a medieval castle of some sort and has a well-appointed interior.
The play covers the 14 interrogations of Mata Hari by Captain Pierre Bouchardon in 1917. They use only four players for 12 parts, 10 of these are taken by John Patrick Moore and Jeff Wincek, both of whom did a fine job staying in their various characters. They used accents fairly well, only the Russian accent was detectably imperfect. Louis Parnell and Jan Zaifler, develop a fine sort of tension as interrogator and interrogated. Both confused a few lines, Ms. Zaifler more than Mr. Parnell, but their expressions were good. Their ability to tear up at the right moments was impressive.
The themes of orientalism and scapegoating the other figured heavily into the play, making it rather topical. An undertone of the philosophy of language, the nature of truth, and so on. My main complaint is the play could have been edited down somewhat.
Saturday, August 3, 2002This Bay Area event was founded 28 years ago by George Cleve, their music director and conductor. The various concerts are presented in small venues, providing a more intimate setting for Mozart's work. All told, the festival is only eight engagements, though they are performing the Requiem in a special program for the latter half of the year. Program II included the overture of the opera Lucio Silla; Piano Concerto No. 25 in C Major, K. 503; and Symphony No. 39 in E-Flat Major, K. 543.
Lucio Silla was first performed in Milan on December 26, 1772. The libretto is based on the life of Lucius Cornelius Sulla. The overture is resembles a minute symphony, three movements in an Italian manner. It is airy and light, full of cheer. The Piano Concerto No. 25 in C Major, K. 503 was disappointing. Not as far as Mozart is concerned, since I could not even begin to comprehend the music. I don't think I've ever had such a horrible experience hearing Mozart played on piano, my right eyelid actually twitched once during the first movement. Claude Frank was the pianist, and he has a rather distinguished career, having played with many wonderful orchestras all over the globe. However, I found his playing unsuited for Mozart, the notes all ran together in a drippy sodden fashion, made all the worse by incessant humming. I wondered to myself if I just didn't understand what was going on, so after the concert I located a live recording of Alfred Brendel playing the same piece in Strasbourg with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields from 1978. I found that I much prefer Brendel to Frank, to say the least.
Thankfully, the performance of Symphony No. 39 in E-Flat Major, K. 543 was rather better. This symphony is unpopular, the least performed of Mozart's last six symphonies. There is something of yearning in the piece that is very lovely. The third movement, an Allegretto, seemed so strangely short. The symphony's ending also seemed abrupt.
Thursday, June 27th, 2002I managed to get a standing room ticket for last night's performance of Giulio Cesare, though I was somewhat intimidated by figuring out the process for such things. Apparently there are 200 standing room tickets for each performance, and they go on sale at 10 am the day of the performance. They let standees in a particular door 70 minutes before the curtain time, by number, and there is a numbered line painted on the ground outside of the entrance.
Kip Cranna, the Musical Administrator of the San Francisco Opera, gave a talk about Giulio Cesare before the opera. He gave a general history of the composition itself, the historicity of the libretto, and a bit about the musical form. I learned that this opera was originally written for three castrati, and the part of Sesto was actually en travesti, a role meant for a woman to play a young man. I also learned that Cleopatra was the first Ptolemy to actually learn Egyptian, and she spoke six other languages besides.
Apparently the production presented is owned by the Metropolitan Opera, and six arias are cut out of it, as are some of the repeats. Otherwise it would be much longer.
The performance was sublime. It was easier to see the facial expressions of the singers from the orchestra, naturally, and David Daniels is a better actor than I thought. Bejun Mehta was wonderful too, after seeing him twice my opinion has solidified, and I will get a hold of one of his recordings soon.
Wednesday, June 26th, 2002Last night I attended San Francisco Opera's production of Bizet's Carmen with a certain peskfriend. We agreed that the program's cover, which has been used on every program all season, is hideous. The work featured is Diebenkorn's Blue Surround (1982), that involves color aquatint, spit bite aquatint, etching offset, and drypoint with scraping. The dimensions are 55.8 x 48.2 cm for the image itself. Since we are philistines, we do not enjoy such works, and this was discussed even before we got to the opera because on our way we saw an advertisement for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, whose tagline was something like "come be moved."
The opera itself was nice enough. The singing was fine, the music, of course, very familiar. The soprano Maria Bayo (Micaëla) has an exceptionally pretty and strong voice. Tenor Richard Berkeley-Steele did well in his role of Don José, his voice was not disappointing. Bass Denis Sedov was better in his role of Escamillo than as Achilla in Giulio Cesare. His voice was still a little thin. Carmen herself, the mezzo-soprano Marina Domashenko, was appropriate to the role. Her voice was a bit throaty and lacked a certain prettiness, which is just as well.
The choreography was pretty good in this production, people seemed more committed to their movements than in Giulio Cesare. At times I did wish that Domashenko would stand up straighter, sometimes she was simply all shoulders, with her arms akimbo.
They did well with the sets and costumes, everything was pretty and there were no disasters. I must say it was more pleasant to see Carmen at the opera house than at the Civic Center Auditorium, where I last saw this production during the 1996-97 season.
Friday, June 21st, 2002At the beginning of the month I made my way south to hear the Los Angeles Master Chorale perform Händel's Israel in Egypt. The piece, written in 1738, is the first of the English oratorios that Haendel was the one to compose, the most famous being Messiah, though he had around thirty oratorios all together.
Israel in Egypt deals with the Exodus story of the Old Testament, and only from the side of the Israelites. It employs the chorus quite a lot, though there are some duets, solo airas, and solo recitatives. There were four soloists, and two others that rounded out a soprano duet and a bass duet. Most everyone who performed had a beautiful voice. I especially liked the countertenor Steven Rickards. Tenor Jonathan Mack, who also sings at Los Angeles Opera on occasion, was least impressive of all. His voice simply sounded weak in comparison to the other soloists. I just listened to a clip from the prologue of Biggs' Songs Of Laughter, Love, And Tears, in which Mack sings, and his voice isn't bad, it just isn't spectacular either. Jinyoung Jang, who sang in the bass duet, seemed rather pleased to be the subject of our rapt attention. What a ham! His voice was nice though.
For some reason, I was not expecting the text to be in English, which is rather silly of me. But it isn't as if one can really make out the words that well anyway. I quite like the oratorio as a form, it is less disconcerting than opera since there is no set, drama, or choreography to worry about.
In all, it was marvelous. Georg Friedrich Haendel is rather underrated, due to his temporal proximity to the great Johann Sebastian Bach. They were both born in 1685 CE, 50 miles apart from each other, the former in Halle, Saxony-Anhalt; the latter in Eisenach, Thuringia.
Thursday, June 20, 2002The San Francisco Opera performance that I had been waiting for all season finally arrived, and I was not disappointed. Haendel's Giulio Cesare has quite a lot of beautiful and compelling music in it. It is an opera seria that premiered in 1724 at London's Royal Academy of Music, and the title role was created for a particular famous castrato, Francesco Bernardi (known as Senesino) of Siena. The female lead of Cleopatra was written for the soprano Francesca Cuzzoni.
The opera was a bit odd for modern ears, since so many of the main parts are high. One mezzo-soprano, two sopranos, three altos, and only two basses, no baritones or tenors at all. It took me some time to adjust, to figure out which voice went with which part. However the differences between the singers, especially countertenor David Daniels (Giulio Cesare) and the mezzo-soprano Ruxandra Donose (Sesto), were marked. Even though they can sing in the same range, and Daniels even sings a couple of the Sestos arias that on his Händel operatic arias recording. Daniels is simply a much larger person than Donose. The arias in question are "Cara Speme", in Act I, Scene 8 and "L'angue offeso", in Act II, Scene 6. David Daniels and Ruth Ann Swenson (Cleopatra) both have gorgeous voices. Swenson's voice carries better though, and she has a lot of sass. Daniels was more stiff, and his arms sometimes appeared locked in space when he was singing something particularly difficult. Neither of them moved especially well, but Swenson was a better actor. The last time I saw Swenson was in Thomas' Hamlet as Ophelia, which was a much less demanding part.
Bejun Mehta (Tolomeo) and Ruxandra Donose (Sesto) both moved like water, they were very graceful. Mehta has a nice voice, but it is hard to tell since his part was on the small side. Donose was a little breathy and airy, but she sang her main arias well.
Felicity Palmer (Cornelia) was adequate, sometimes her voice sounded quite grand, and other times not so much. She moved stiffly, something about the way she carried her shoulders made her look uncomfortable or old. Denis Sedov (Achilla) did not carry well in his low range, and it made him seem comical.
The set was not horrible except for a screen made of metal fashioned into a map of the Mediterranean. They also had problems with platforms that rumbled far too loudly when moved, even with the orchestra playing and singing, they were quite audible. One of the screens did not come down properly in the third act, it was a landscape of desert, but Swenson played it off rather charmingly.
The choreography was pretty poor, as usual. The movement in general looked unconvincing and unclear. The ballet dancer who played Terpsichore was rather delightful in her lightness though. The costumes were amusing because they were Renaissance mixed with Orientalism, however, they were very pretty.
Wednesday, May 8th, 2002Last Saturday evening we saw the Shotgun Players put on Medea at the crumbling UC Theatre. Shotgun Players was supposed to open Medea at their new theatre in the vaguely scary GAIA building at 2116 Allston Way, but the space was not ready in time.
Born in 484 BCE, Euripides was the first Athenian playwright to use the chorus as a commentator and to use contemporary language in his plays. He wrote about 92 plays, around 18 of which have survived. Medea was first performed 431 BCE along with the tragedies Philoctetes and Dictys, which only exist in fragments, and the satyr play Theristae, of which we know almost nothing. Euripides won third prize in at the feast of Dionysus in the first year of the 87th Olympiad (431 BCE) with these plays, after Sophocles, and Euphorion, a son of Aeschylus. Not a single fragment of Euphorion's work exists today, and only 7 plays of Sophocles remain.
I first read Medea when I was fourteen, and I actually liked it quite a lot. Revenge appealed to me. I also liked Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, also read in that literature class. I particularly liked Portia, Brutus' wife, because of her stoic qualities. She is sort of the opposite of Medea.
The Shotgun Players' production of Medea wasn't great, nor was is terrible. The lead, Beth Donuhue, was quite strong, and the contrast between her and the other players was not to the production's advantage. In particular, Suzanne Voss, as the Nurse, was unconvincing.
Robinson Jeffers' 1947 translation was used, and it is said to be quite liberal. It didn't bother me terribly, though at times it rang rather false.
The play was scored and the music was played live on a pedal reed organ along with singing from the chorus. At times this worked just fine, but when it did not, it was awful, and I felt like I was stuck in some kind of kitschy musical. The chorus had some trouble staying in tune, which only heightened the audience's discomfort and caused laughter at inappropriate moments.
The costuming was reminiscent of Mucha. I particularly enjoyed the headdresses used on the chorus. The stage looked childish though, the skene representing Medea's house was fantastically ugly. A bulbous greenish thing with purple swirls.
Nonetheless, Medea is an incredible play. Despite copious layers of clothing it gave me the chills. Greek tragedy is simply difficult to do well on the modern stage, so it seems.
Last night we went to see Pericles, Prince of Tyre at the lovely La Val's Subterranean Theatre on the north side of Berkeley. Last weekend I recognized the lead on the production's poster as the store manager at Shakespeare & Co., so my curiosity was piqued.
The theatre isn't actually lovely at all, the restaurant was renovated recently, but the theatre remains its dingy self. Nonetheless, it was a pleasant experience, though none of the actors were spectacular. They did a nice job with very little, and since there were only 8 actors for more than 25 parts, they used masks and puppets to fairly good effect.
Pericles isn't one of my favorite Shakespeare plays, but I've not had the opportunity to see it before, I don't think it is a particularly popular play. I was surprised to learn that it was written late in his career, since it reminded me a bit of Comedy of Errors, with the hugely convoluted plot and all. It was very amusing to realize that the Charles and Mary Lamb synopsis of this play completely glossed over the incest and prostitution that figure in rather centrally. Thinking of the Lambs just made me want to laugh, they are so adorable and yet so insane.
In the last month I've seen Herbert Blomstedt conduct the San Francisco Symphony twice. Blomstedt was the Music Director here for a decade, but is currently at the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra (Leipzig is a city in Saxony, Germany). He was born in Massachusetts but grew up in Sweden. He has been knighted in both Sweden and Denmark. Unlike Michael Tilson Thomas, Blomstedt's photograph did not appear on the cover of the programs.
Earlier this month was Bruckner's Fifth Symphony. I know almost nothing about Joseph Anton Bruckner, except that he was Austrian and influenced by Beethoven and Wagner. The piece was beautiful and had a sense of wholeness. It just seemed like its own very self-contained world, and was very consistent with itself. Apparently, Symphony No. 5 in B flat Major was never heard by the composer himself, unless one counts the two-piano reading given in Vienna in 1887.
Last weekend we went to hear Mozart's Symphony No. 35 in D Major. It was gorgeous, and made me quite giddy. I was annoyed, however, when someone's cell phone rung during the third movement. Said person also arrived approximately 1 minute before the performance started and coughed a great deal.
The Mozart symphony was short, and they also played Mendelssohn's Concerto No. 2 in D Minor for Piano and Orchestra, Opus 40. It started off nicely, the pianist, Jonathan Biss, was rather accomplished. The second and third movements were not as nice as the first one, but overall it was enjoyable.
The concert ended with Haydn's Symphony No. 102 in B-flat Major. This symphony is one of the twelve so-called "London" symphonies that were written for his two trips to London, the first of which was from 1791 to 1792 and the second from 1794 to 1795. This was after Prince Nicholas Esterházy, Haydn's patron of almost 30 years, died, and Haydn was more free to explore musically.
This symphony was better than I expected, since I didn't have much of an opinion either way on Haydn before. I especially liked the cello solo in the second movement.
Last Friday I attended a performance of Die Zauberflöte at the Los Angeles Opera. The production left much to be desired. Apparently Los Angeles Opera has the opera confused with something else.
Mozart's last opera is fraught with multiple meanings, but Los Angeles Opera strove to be appealing to the lowest common denominator, to people who don't actually like opera or theatre or classical music. The sets and costumes were mostly absurd, something out of the circus, or Disneyland, or even a science fiction movie. The libretto was not translated particularly well for the supertitles that I tried to ignore. The choreography was horrid, for example, the Queen of the Night wore heels so high that she staggered around on stage like a mechanical bird in Act II. There also seemed to be technical problems with the background.
The audience did not take the performance seriously, there was much chatter, cooing whenever something particularly cute was on stage, laughter and applause at inappropriate moments. The person next to me fell asleep at least once, and I overheard other people talking about how they nodded off as I roamed around after the performance. It was pathetic, since the performance was a mere 3 hours long, with a 20 minute intermission in-between acts. Considering how entertaining the performance was trying to be, and how glorious the music was, I can't really sympathize with people who were so unengaged as to fall asleep.
I'm glad, in a way, that someone is worried about making people like the opera. It just seemed that they were trying very hard, with something that is already very appealing. Though I am glad that this performance could delight people, it was reported that this production got rave reviews from the Los Angeles Times. I can see how it would be good for someone who had never seen an opera before, or for children. Too inaccessible is bad as well, avante garde experiments with staging and such can be much worse than going for a wide audience.
Anyway, truth be told, I was very happy to go to an opera, especially a Mozart one. The music was, of course, delightfully pretty. The singing was all fairly even. Sumi Jo sang the part of the Queen of the Night to great effect, everyone knows the part is very difficult, so she got quite the applause. It was deserved though, her voice seems an impossibility, it is so beautiful and that part showed it to its best advantage. The Korean Americans were out in droves to see her, undoubtedly it brought out some people who wouldn't necessarily go to an opera normally.
Rodney Gilfry's Papageno was indeed lovable, his German was particularly good and his baritone was nice. Andrea Rost made a sweet Pamina, her voice got a bit shrill on occasion, but was mostly just lovely. I found Reinhard Hagen (Sarastro) a bit quiet in his lower range. The three spirits were sung by youths from the Los Angeles Children's Chorus, and the three had voices like angels.
My peskiest friend convinced me and the Bane to accompany her to the ballet yesterday evening. I had very low expectations about the San Francisco Ballet, having seen them in do a rather poor production of Swan Lake sometime in 1996. It was strange to be at the opera house for a non-opera. Notice that the San Francisco Opera has a ballet company, namely the San Francisco Opera Ballet and that the San Francisco Ballet does not have a ballet opera, whatever that would mean. It would be utterly amusing, or surreal, to have a normal ballet with an opera inserted somewhere in the middle.
The ballet was George Balanchine's Jewels, a plotless ballet in three parts, these being "Emeralds," "Rubies," and "Diamonds." This work premiered in 1967 at the New York City Ballet. "Emeralds" is set to Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924), music from his Pelléas et Melisande and Shylock. The music is romantic and the dancing reflected this. It was pretty, delicate, and flowing. "Rubies" was set to Stravinsky's Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra (1949 version), which had a jauntiness to it. The music wasn't fantastic, so it didn't upstage the dancing. There was much swaying of hips, sharp angles, and abandon. "Diamonds" was set to Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 3 in D Major Op.29, but with the first movement cut out since Balanchine didn't think it was good for dancing to. The music was beautiful, I occasionally missed whole parts of the dancing because I was listening to it instead of attending to the ballet. What I saw looked very nice and traditional.
The dancers did not impress me, they did not land quietly and the ladies en pointe had a tendency to squeak from lack of rosin or some such problem. There were also problems of unison and of symmetrical positioning.
The audience acted as if they were watching a sporting event, which was disquieting. They clapped a lot during the dancing, especially if something was particularly athletic, and I found it very disruptive.
I went to see Peer Gynt put on by the A.C.T. Master of Fine Arts Program at Zeum with the Bane and the Norwegian-American accordion-loving friend. We ran into an old acquaintance and his significant other. I've got a propensity for meeting people I already know without proper planning. Maybe it is just my own predictability.
The acting wasn't bad, the set was very clever and minimal, the costumes were also fine. There were some issues with use of accents. The actors spoke very slowly to get them "right", which made them stilted.
The play itself seems like it must be very incredible, though they edited a lot, since the original is about 6 hours long. Judicious editing I hope, and I'm a bit glad I haven't read the play yet.
I was very disturbed by the sixth scene in the fourth act of the play, at least how it was presented in this production. There were dancing harem girls and accents, and talk of Peer Gynt as a prophet. The character of Anitra, the daughter of a Bedouin chief, was quite distressing for me. I had an immediate visceral reaction to the obvious Orientalist themes at play, and it just cut me to the quick. Excuse me if I sound insane, but aren't Bedouins predominately Muslim? Would Muhammad not be considered the last and final prophet in this case?
So Anitra, she was seductive, manipulative, scantily clad, she sang and danced, was child-like, and she was materialistic. It was a bit too insensitive of a portrayal for these enlightened times. Why did they need to put her in a cabaret belly dance costume? Why reinforce existing stereotypes that are particularly not appropriate right now? Of course, Peer Gynt was written over a hundred years ago, and her characterization reflects ideas about the "Orient" at that time. I just find it weird that these portrayals seem to be used without thought, uncritically, as if they were true.
Was that frothing? I'm perfectly calm.
Anyway, the production had its moments of brilliance. The scene of Peer and his dying mother was particularly lovely. All in all, I'm quite glad I saw it, especially since the scene with trolls was very pestiferous and mirthful. There was also a most fortuitous appearance of pesk horns in the insane asylum scene by King Apis, the man with a mummy on his back.
* I believe this means "Is there shyness in your glances? When I beg, can you deny?" as spoken by Peer to Ingrid. However, I do not claim to know Norwegian.
So I managed to go hear the San Francisco Bach Choir perform Johann Sebastian Bach's Mass In B Minor. It was at St. Ignatius Church, built between 1910 and 1914 in a style reminiscent of the Baroque. The inside is very pretty, and the nave reminds me of the Pantheon in Rome.
Mass in B Minor is simply an amazing work. It is very balanced, symmetrical, and whole. The work is in seven keys, not just in B minor, these others being G minor, F# minor, A major, D major, E minor, and G major.
Unfortunately, it did become apparent during the performance that the SF Bach Choir is a community based art organization with volunteer singers. Most obvious to me were the problems of timing, though there were some intonation problems as well. However, mezzo-soprano Miriam Abramowitsch has a fine voice, the best of the leads, though she was a tad quiet.
Last Monday I went to see Prokofiev's War and Peace at the Metropolitan Opera. Ordinarily I would avoid Prokofiev (1891-1953) altogether, his music is too modern for my conventional sensibilities. Also, Tolstoy himself despised opera, calling it a pernicious, corrupt art form, an ungainly mixing of different modalities of art. However, my friends wanted to go to the opera, and they could not afford to go to Le Nozze di Figaro, as the inexpensive tickets were sold-out for the particular evening we were in town. The only other option was War and Peace, which P had been reading. The funny thing was the C started reading War and Peace and decided that she couldn't go to the opera after all, because she wasn't finished in time and she loved it too much to spoil it in the middle. They both read it in French, apparently half the book is in French, and they are both native speakers of French, so there you are. Seeing this opera made me want to read the book itself, but it has to wait for now.
The opera was very impressive in scope, as it calls for about 60 roles, a huge chorus and a ballet. Just seeing that many people on stage is really incredible in and of itself. It was also the longest opera I have seen thus far, a mere 4.5 hours. The Metropolitan did the whole thing in one night, with only one intermission, which I thought was commendable. The music was not nearly as bad as I thought it would be, it was not particularly memorable though. Anna Netrebko does have a most lovely voice, though I believe her role in Falstaff at SF Opera showed her voice more to her advantage than this opera. Again, the Metropolitan had wonderful singers all around, good staging, clean choreography, and pretty costumes. The sets were very clever, the stage was set at an angle so that upstage was actually up from downstage, and there was a circular part of the stage that could spin about, like a gigantic Lazy Susan, except flush with the rest of the stage, not raised above it. The whole experience wasn't nearly as good as Le Nozze, which goes to show that the music is essential to this opera business.
My favorite part of the opera was when they were having a celebration in the second part of the opera, and they had a huge red chicken made of cloth, it was like an enormous puppet. There were also red sparkles at this part. I couldn't believe I was seeing this in real life, it was awfully surreal.
Naturally, we must include the obligatory complaint about certain audience members. There was a lady and her child who was around 12 or so. The child ate elaborate chocolates that she unwrapped from cellophane for the second half of the first part of the opera. It was very loud, the people in front of her turned around to give her dirty looks, and my companions both noticed and were disturbed. Unfortunately, she was not directly next to me, or else I would have had her stop immediately. I had to wait until the intermission to ask, kindly as I could manage, that they not eat during the opera as it was distracting. One of the ladies in front of them smiled on me approvingly, so I felt a bit more justified in my request. They were quiet the rest of the opera, which was very nice. Why people cannot manage to do one thing at one time boggles the mind. Is there not a time and a place for different things?
Le Nozze di Figaro at the Metropolitan Opera was quite simply the best opera I have ever been to. Everything was amazingly marvelous. The difference between the San Francisco Opera and the Met is vast, despite the fact that they get some of the same singers and conductors and so forth.
First of all, Mozart is my favorite opera composer, and I've seen Le Nozze before in San Francisco. It simply blew me away, because it was just so much better than Puccini, Bizet et al. It was the longest opera I had seen at that point, yet I was fully engaged in it. So I was perfectly willing to see it again at the Met.
The Metropolitan Opera lives at the Lincoln Center. The building is, sadly, quite ugly, and also gigantic, though the acoustics seem to be good. They don't have a projection screen for supertitles, which great because I never need that kind of distraction. Instead they have a small screen on the backs of the seats, which one can leave on the off position. I don't understand why one can't just read the libretto, or learn Italian, but I'm crazy.
Money cannot buy happiness, so they say, but it can buy very good opera seats. Our seats were center third row orchestra, and we managed not to sit behind giants, so the view of the stage was good and the sound was good there. I could even see and hear the conductor, which is a rarity for me. I've been to operas that Donald Runnicles has conducted at San Francisco Opera, but I've never seen him up close. He looks very different than the photograph that he uses in the programs.
All of the singers were consistently good and at the same excellent level. This was a striking difference between the Met and SF operas. The singers were as good as the ones at the Volksoper in Vienna. Rebecca Evans was charming as Susanna, her voice was sweet, warm, and clear as ever. I've seen this Welsh soprano as Adina in the San Francisco production of L'Elisir d'Amore, in which she was also brilliant. Melanie Diener had the part of the Countess, and her voice was colder and airier. It was a nice foil, actually. Ferruccio Furlanetto also did a splendid job as Figaro, he also has a warm rich voice.
As far as the sets and costumes went, they were all very traditional. The rooms looked like real rooms in a residence, just in greyish tones, nothing too fancy. The costumes were very beautiful and pompous, everything one could wish for in a Mozart opera. They did a wonderful job with the lighting, the sunshine through the windows of the scene in the Countess' rooms was particularly nice. Though they did do some silly things with colored lights at the end.
Another aspect of this production that floored me was the incredible choreography, and the acting ability of all these opera singers. All of the singers moved so beautifully onstage, the movement was convincing, and they owned it in their bodies. I was very impressed by Angelika Kirchschlager's ability to move like a male youth, she was a fine Cherubino, the perfect image of the boyish amorous page. Speaking of which, the audience members didn't seem totally confounded by the fact that Cherubino was played by a woman (en travesti), which was the case at San Francisco Opera, where people whispered and muttered when Cherubino make his (her?) first appearance. It was great fun to see Kirchschlager play a boy dressed as a girl, she did a fantastic job.
All in all, it was a lovely and subtle opera production. It was the kind of thing were you completely lose your sense of self, and it becomes so clear that the individual is nothing, that art can transcend everything. It is probably a good thing that I didn't like War and Peace nearly as much, or else I might just run off and live in New York.
Saturday we went to the San Francisco Symphony to hear Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde with a friend and another beautiful girl. Yet another lovely girl in an absurd magenta velvet gown lost her shoe on the stairs in front of me, which I caught and handed to her. Girls wear impractical shoes. Why is that?
Unfortunately, I was not aware that the program included Schoenberg, or maybe I just forgot. It doesn't seem like something I would forget, but memory is a strange thing. My opinion on Schoenberg has been solidified. His music made the bones on the left side of my face ache. In a way, this is probably for the best, or else I would have to control my mirth and scorn. A person behind me would chuckle softly in between movements. I must say that the audience was very quiet and well-behaved.
Before the regular program began, we were treated to a performance of Schoenberg's Opus 43b, Theme and Variations. Opus 43a was originally for band, and it could be heard. Then they played Schoenberg's 5 Pieces for Orchestra, Opus 16.
Das Lied von der Erde consists of songs with words from six poems translated from a French translation of Chinese into to German by Hans Bethge, published in 1907. I am told that this work is more symphonic than a song cycle. The singing is traded off between a tenor and a baritone (or sometimes an alto). The tenor, Michael Schade, was a little low on volume, and seemed overwhelmed by the orchestra. The baritone, Thomas Hampson, sang well, though his pronunciation of the German wasn't as perfect as Schade's. Not surprising, Hampson is from Spokane, Washington, and Schade is a German-Canadian.
As for the music, I especially liked the second movement, "Der Einsame im Herbst." The final movement was somewhat tedious, disconnected, and a strange way to end.
We went to see Manon at Opera San Jose. It was very small and pretty as a production, with clever and simple sets. The opera had speaking parts in French, which I did not anticipate. It was especially strange when the audience clapped after these parts, as if it had been some wonderful aria. This only really happened in Act III, which had me very confused as it was, since they took out the first scene of it. Act III is supposed to start off in a park at the Cours-la-Reine, where Manon learns that Des Grieux has become an abbé, and only later does the scene change to the sacristy at St. Sulpice. At any rate, French spoken by American opera singers is considerably worse than French sung by said singers. Or at least, the accent is more obvious.
Manon was played by Sandra Rubalcava, who had a nice voice that was occasionally shrill, but mostly just in Act I. She was wonderful in her aria "Adieu, notre petite table" in Act II and at L'Hôtel de Transylvanie in Act IV. The music was pretty, but not very memorable, though there were very pleasant overtures for all the acts. The word "Manon" was used an incredible amount. The character of Manon says her own name many times, and her dying words are "Et c'est là l'histoire...de Manon Lescaut!"
I enjoyed that the San Jose Opera asks its patrons to please unwrap their candies before the performance begins. This was not terribly effective, however. Apparently, I have very sensitive hearing, because a lady sitting next to my pesky friend was unwrapping and eating candies for the first ten minutes of the opera, and I could hear not only the cellophane wrapper noise, but the clicking of the candies against her teeth. She had eaten about five candies before I asked her as politely as I could to desist. I also received a scathing look in the ladies' room from a middle-aged lady putting on her makeup. Her friend was gushing about how gorgeous the lady in question was, and I merely glanced up at her in the mirror, and was met by the most caustic of looks. It was very entertaining. I must remember to be so pleasant when I get older.
Went to see Dance Theatre of Harlem last night with a certain pesky friend. They performed three ballets, the first of which was Viraa, choreographed by Laveen Naidu to the music of Ernest Bloch's Concerto Grosso No. 2. It was the most ballet like of the three that we saw, and included 14 dancers. Andrea Long and Eric Underwood were the principal dancers, and they were very elegant.
The second ballet was Augustus van Heerden's Passion of the Blood, a dramatic ballet in six scenes set to Jesus Villa-Rojo's Cello Concerto No. 2, Francesco Tarrega's Capricio Arabe, and Issac Albeniz's "Sevillanas" from Suite Espanola. The story line is from Bodas de Sangre by Garcia Lorca, which accounts for why the whole thing reminded me of David Wood's piece based on The House of Bernarda Alba. As dance, Passion of the Blood wasn't really to my taste, mixing up too much drama with ballet weakens both arts. But it was pretty and the dancer who played the part of groom was incredible. Ikolo Griffen was graceful even when standing still. As an aside, during the applause a person behind us kept calling the dancer who played the betraying bride a "dirty heifer." It was hilarious, especially since she was the tiniest dancer of the whole show, she was petite and ultra-thin.
The last ballet was Return choreographed by Robert Garland, set to music by James Brown and Aretha Franklin. It had a lot of sass. I liked how ballet technique blended into jazz, break dancing, swing, it worked in a way that was appealing. It is rare when a blend of disparate elements come together in a way that doesn't bring each part down to some lowest common denominator. Perhaps part of the reason is that ballet often lacks a kind of humanness.
Ballet is definitely a conundrum. It depends on the human body in a most basic way, you can't have dance without humans, and yet, dancers try very hard to beat their bodies into submission. There is a certain line of the body that is appreciated in ballet that is extreme. Some dancers wish embody pure movement, and go through quite a mortification of the flesh in order to get there.
Anyway, I must have enjoyed myself, because I felt completely disoriented and
dizzy afterwards, and I had a dramatic fall outside of Zellerbach.
The weekend concert featured the soprano Alison Buchanan and the baritone Abraham Lind-Oquendo, accompanied by piano. The baritone sang an aria cut out of Così fan tutte, some Schumann and Strauss, and Ravel. The soprano sang an aria from Handel's Samson, some Schumann, and some Poulenc. Together they sang from Rossini's Il Barbiere di Siviglia.
Lind-Oquendo's voice was quiet, but he had a charming stage-presence. Buchanan's voice was beautiful, and she had good control of her volume. Her singing of Handel was the highlight of the evening. I dislike both Ravel and Poulenc, this is not surprising, though I had no definite opinion before. We left at the intermission because the rest of the concert included Copland and Gershwin.
Predictably enough, we sat in front of a child of near the age of 8. She talked, played with the Velcro on her jacket, sang along, and finally fell asleep.
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