Commentary on Opera Performances Seen in 2002

The most absurd production of Haendel's Alcina is from Stuttgart and opened yesterday at San Francisco Opera. There were even enthusiastic and cheerful (perhaps that was just me) booing at the end when the production designer, Anna Viebrock, came out for her curtain call.

What a self-indulgent, pretentious, inaccessible staging! It wasn't so much the modern dress, or the little junk room with peeling wallpaper, or even the huge and silly frame that was meant to be a mirror that really bothered me. They just made all the characters less than human, doing illogical things like undressing when angry, throwing things while music was going on, scuttling across the stage, and so forth. It made people laugh, when there was beautiful music going on, and seriously detracted from any sort of edification that could be happening.

Catherine Naglestad, as Alcina, had the strongest voice. It has rough edges and her diction isn't the best, but her projection is incredible. She did move like a wounded animal, especially when she first appeared intertwined with Ruggiero, shuffling along the floor. Part of the problem is that Naglestad is an adorably chubby girl with wide hips and skinny calves, so when she was barefoot for most of the production, wearing her innumerable mid-calf length black cocktail dresses, she just looked awkward and inelegant. The line between hip and foot was no good for an enchanting sorceress, however cute. Then they had her shuffling around on the floor for no reason, reminiscent of spiders.

The choreography and staging favored falling or throwing bodies and objects to the ground for no apparent reason, and frenetic stomping, hitting walls, choking, binding, and other such movements. There were also two gunshots fired, that were quite loud and unnecessary.

Alice Coote was a fine Ruggiero, her voice warm and dark, and her movements utterly boyish. On the other hand, Catriona Smith was a prissy Morgana, and her upper range was absolutely shrill. They had her sing some of her part on the floor, and she doesn't have the voice to carry this at all.

The music was sublime. Roy Goodman conducted well, and it sounded very much together.

San Francisco Opera's current production of Leos Janacek's Kát'a Kabanová starts off with words projected on the scrim, from Alexander Ostrovsky's The Storm, on which the libretto of Kát'a is based. This is during the overture, which could not be more than 5 minutes long. I found the staging to be quite ugly, something about it looked institutional, which in all likelihood is intentional. Especially horrid was the ending scene which had a huge metal-looking sculpture shaped like an abstract bird. This sculpture took flight just before Kát'a throws herself in the Volga, which amounted to her flinging herself down into a puddle at the center of the stage. Then doctors and emergency workers came out with a metal bed that turned into her coffin, and the focus was so much on this that it took all the power away from evil mother-in-law Kabanicha's last lines of cold thanks.

The the various projections they used seemed utterly gratuitous.

The stage had a room that was moved across and around. It was even more quiet than the platform in Saint Frances.

The costumes were exceedingly silly. Especially the two servant girls' costumes, Feklusha and Glasha wore fifties styled cafeteria lady dresses, black with yellow trim, and had jackets with black and yellow stripes at a slant. Also, Boris was in a jacket that was too large and of a strange light grey color that stuck out badly.

The opera was terribly brief, not even two hours long but having three acts. The libretto is not paced well, but I doubt that Janacek's music could have been interesting for any longer than two hours. The music was fairly dull, an odd mix of melodic and dissonant. The prettiest music was in the songs of Vanya and Varvara of the second scene in Act II.

Soprano Karita Mattila (Kát'a) has a fine voice, clear but slightly subdued, never shrill in the least. Her movements were a bit awkward, especially when she was rocking in a chair in and when she pretends to be a bird, both in the first act. But she was very good at doing dramatic falls.

Tenor Raymond Very (Vanya) was the only other singer that struck me as having a beautiful voice. Everyone else was adequate.

I have a hard time understanding why a person, or a group of people, would feel the need to vocalize or clap at a television set. But I don't even understand the need to clap before the music is finished at the opera just because the singing is done, as in after an aria, and so forth, and that involves live humans fairly near at hand. So it isn't surprising that I don't understand. It just seems that audiences are very absorbed in themselves, they do not forget themselves and their own part. So interested in themselves and their role as consumers. The commodifaction of art is rather depressing, but nothing new.

Last Sunday's matinee of Die Entfuehrung aus dem Serail was much better attended than the previous Sunday. The bass role was sung this time by Friedemann Roehlig, who is a skinny young man not as well suited to the role of Osmin as Michael Eder. Roehlig lacked gravity, and made the audience laugh quite a lot, which is certainly fine, as it is a comic role. But Eder's performance was more challenging, a little tragic even. More ambiguous. Roehlig's low range was nice, but he sounded uncomfortable higher up. I'm beginning to appreciate how hard that role is, the person it was written for had an impressive range.

Regina Schoerg had the beginnings of influenza, and she was even more strained than before. A few of her high notes in her aria "Marten von alle Arten" were strained, but nevertheless, she did well under the circumstances.

This time I was struck by how nice the choreography was at the very end of the opera, when the chorus is singing as the Europeans take their leave of Pasha Selim. I also noticed that Belmonte's fall after his aria in Act I, "Konstanze! dich wiederzusehen, dich!" is rather absurd. There is another silly part where they have him throw his coat, but I don't remember at what point.

I was asked if I was from Tibet while in the standing room line. I also met some nice opera coots and discussed Monteverdi and Shakespeare.

Olivier Messiaen's only opera, Saint François d'Assise, closed last night at San Francisco Opera after a run of six performances. This production was the first staged one in North America, and there was much to do about it. The house was quite full, as the production received some acclaim. I was curious what all the fluffle was about, as I have heard "Les Mages" from his organ cycle La nativité du Seigneur, which only provoked a fit of hysterical giggling.

The music was often choppy, very chromatic and discontinuous. In addition to a full orchestra, there were five gamelan percussionists and three ondes martenot players. These eight people were visible on either side of the stage in little platforms, apparently there was not enough room for them in the orchestra pit. I found gamelan very odd next to violin & co., to say the least. As for the ondes martenot, the instrument is supposed to have an unworldly sound, but I must say I prefer the harp or organ for this quality. The ondes martenot sounds more like a mobile phone than music from heavenly spheres.

They say that Messiaen was interested in suspending time, subverting the very idea. But I could never get lost in his music, at times the music was indeed dull. But I did like his libretto, which he wrote himself, long as it was it was dramatic enough and not at all unreasonable. The singing was pretty, sometimes sounding very much like an oratorio. I particularly liked the L'Ange, sung by Laura Aikin. The part was eerie, and Aikin moved in a sort of naive and graceful way that was apt. Some of her choreography recalled Martha Graham. Willard White was a convincing Saint François, he has a rich baritone that is kindly. In the seventh scene, when François receives the stigmata, he is lifted on a beam and rends his clothes. At in these moments he looked like a Zeus coming down from the heavens.

As far as the rest of the singing, none of the other soloists stuck out as being either good or bad. The chorus was nice, especially in that seventh scene, the ardent strains of "François! François!" where a relief. The staging was perhaps the prime reason most people could sit (or stand, as in my case) four and a half hours for this opera. The set was sparse mostly involved a spiral path that could be turned. It was fairly quiet for how large it was, making a sort of crinkling noise that could be drowned out by percussion but not voices. The costumes were likewise simple, monks in rough habits, angel in an ultramarine blue body suit with one wing, and the chorus in trench coats, some with hats. All together it felt a bit like a Magritte painting.

There were clever things done with the scrim, with projections, and an especially cunning use of snow on that spiral road.

Before the opera I was asked when Messiaen lived and how Charles Barber's pre-opera lecture was. During the intermissions I was asked a plethora of questions about how standing room in the orchestra section worked, and whether or not one could find a seat. I was also offered seats on two occasions. On my way home I was asked if I was a "Spanish" dancer, and if I thought the opera sounded "eastern."

Mozart's Die Entfuehrung aus dem Serail opened last night at San Francisco Opera, with Peter Schneider conducting, and a whole gaggle of singers, and one actor, from the Germanic realms.

The production seemed to not have confidence in either Mozart's music to enchant or the audience's ability to attend to this music, and the beautiful opening overture was marred by Belmonte coming out onstage and disrobing with the assistance of two servants, and changing into other attire. Other examples of this lack of confidence was seen in the five lines of English given to Blonde, one of which was "Here I am, an Englisher, speaking German to a Turk." These interspersed lines delighted the audience in a certain way, but they were distracting. There was also a ridiculous use of a cut out moon during Belmont's aria "Wenn der Freude Traenen fliessen" in Act II, in which the moon was lowered all the way down, and Konstanze leaned against it as she was listening.

However, the singers all had pleasing voices. Paul Groves was the best tenor I've heard at SF Opera all season, and he sparkled as Belmonte. His voice had good volume and was sweetly supple. His spoken German stood out as non-native compared to the others though. Regina Schoerg as Kontanze, on the other hand, had being Viennese to her advantage. Her voice was a pretty one, though at times it was strained and slightly brittle. Schoerg did well in her back-to-back arias in Act II ("Welcher Wechsel herrscht in meiner Seele" and "Martern aller Arten"), she held back a little in the first one, but the second was simply beautiful.

Peter Bronder (Pedrillo), Jennifer Welch-Babidge (Blonde), and Michael Eder (Osmin) all were adequate in their parts. Welch-Babidge has a bird-like voice that was suited for Blonde. Eder's voice was just didn't quite carry perfectly, just a touch quiet, and he didn't quite get his low notes. Frank Hoffman was a fine Pasha Selim, a speaking part, and they were able to integrate the speaking and singing parts just so, never leaving one horribly confused on why this part is only spoken.

The staging was fairly good. The palace was a cross between a dollhouse and a wedding cake, which was cute, but the peach color added to a cultivated falseness of the set. The outer wall used in Act I was too dark of a mahogany for the lightness of the palace, the colors were not harmonious. The floor was done wonderfully though, blue tile with a vine pattern. The outer screen they used was painted showing the setting from afar, the sea with ships and the land with palace. It looked a bit like a tapestry with hues reminiscent of Chagall.

The choreography was artificial, lots of spinning and dancerly movements. Unfortunately the singers, save for Welch-Babidge, were not good enough dancers to carry this off well. Schoerg looked uncomfortable wearing sandals in Act II, as if she didn't know she had feet before. Bronder shuffled and skipped like a young bird who couldn't stay still. However, Eder had a certain gravity of movement that was particularly good when he was praying. Just with slight but very graceful motions he was able to silence everyone.

The costumes were quite pretty, as usual. One would think that if they could get the costumes in harmonious hues, that they could make the set match.

A production owned by the Washington Opera of Verdi's Otello opened at San Francisco Opera last Wednesday. Tenor Ben Heppner was to sing the titular role, but withdrew earlier in the year. Consequently, the part is now being shared by Jon Fredric West and Timothy Mussard. West's voice is not particularly stunning. West sounded cold especially next to baritone Sergei Leiferkus' fiery Iago. Patricia Racette was an adequate Desdemona, her voice is neither sweet nor passionate, but has a watery quality that is neither here nor there.

The sets were gorgeous and included beautiful arches devised to look like grey stone. The costumes were what one would expect, mostly Renaissance Venetian in character, with some of the chorus in Orientalist garb.

The choreography was carried off well, there was much swooning and Desdemona was thrown to the ground a few times by Otello, and these movements were staged nicely. Catherine Cook as Emilia seemed as though she were on the verge of a seizure even from the dress circle. Her movements were too big and sharp.

A nice production, but not inspired. Maybe I simply do not like Verdi as well as Mozart or Haendel.

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.

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.

Turandot 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

I 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.

Last 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.

The 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 Haendel 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.

Last Friday I attended a performance of Die Zauberfloete 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.

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.

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.

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