The Met/Lepage Gotterdammerung

Although it drew an almost universal chorus of disapproval from the first note of Das Rheingold which never let up until the world burned across its planks almost a year and a half and 15 hours later in Gotterdammerung, in the end the "Machine" proved its worth to the Met's new Ring cycle. This may not have been true for those seated in the house, who complained about creaks, squeaks and malfunctions, but if you saw it from the seat of a movie theater like I did during the HD broadcasts, what started out as an extravagantly expensive contraption became an icon by the time it was all over. I say that because alongside some gripping performances, it's the imagery of this Ring that rests firmly in the mind and was elemental to its most appealing moments. That's not to take anything away from the singers or the orchestra (whether conducted by Fabio Luisi or James Levine), but there are three things from this cycle that people will be talking about years from now: Eric Owens' amazing Alberich in Rheingold; Jay Hunter Morris' Siegfried; and the Machine, which was used to greatest effect in Gotterdammerung. At least that's how it came across in the theater (and I can't stress this enough), where the camera angles were dazzling and the sound was perfectly mixed, creating an experience wholly unlike that of those who heard and saw it in the house.

The Prologue featuring the Norns (Heidi Melton, Elizabeth Bishop, Maria Radner) weaving their rope of destiny was the only part of the production visually lacking. True, three women weaving a rope doesn't obviously lend itself as inspiration for a scene rife with dramatic tension, but many have found a way to do it. Luisi didn't pull the tension and dread from the score, and though each of the singers were fine (Melton especially), the scene was little more than perfunctory explication of the back story.

The first scene of Act 1 began with the only serious miscue as far as blocking- something which has plagued the other operas but seemed much better in Gotterdammerung- by having Brunnhilde and Siegfried make their entrances approaching one another from opposite ends of the stage. This is their "morning after" moment, so it doesn't make sense- where did Siegfried wander off to that he is now returning from? This underlines the one serious flaw in Lepage's production; he really doesn't have much insight into these characters and what to do with them. Luckily, this time around he's saved by the cast, who are fully invested in giving dramatic portrayals. However, one has to wonder what subsequent casting in future cycles will yield.

But for now, the issue remains in the background since there's so much visual splendor going on- and well, there's the music of course.

Deborah Voigt seemed to struggle with Brunnhilde more than in the earlier segments- perhaps because she was ill earlier in the week, but weak vocal moments aside I remain impressed by how fully she inhabits the role. Jay Hunter Morris' Siegfried was as visually and vocally exciting as he was the last time out. The lightness of his voice, probably more evident in the house, isn't an issue in the broadcasts and if there was ever an opera singer born to be on the big screen he's the one. When he waved to the Rheinmaidens the entire audience I was with guffawed in delight. Overall however, his impression was less powerful than in Siegfried and again I'll assign this to Lepage not knowing what to do with the character nor with a singer who seems like the most perfect fit for the role currently living. There was way too much silliness with striking poses with Notung. Waltraud Meier was excellent in the one superfluous scene of the opera, as were the all three Rheinmeaidens- Erin Morely, Jennifer Cano and especially Tamara Mumford, whose bewitching gaze seemed to reveal a palpable desire to have Morris all to herself, which was pretty amusing.

As the sibling pawns Gunther and Gutrune, Wendy Bryn Harmer and Iain Paterson faced the one of thee bigger challenge in making two almost faceless characters come to life without any direction and to their credit both succeeded, with Paterson especially making the most of it.

Although onstage for roughly only eight minutes, Eric Owens' Alberich was once again a perfect interpretation of the role vocally and dramatically.

Hans-Peter Konig's Hagen was a different story. His voice is fantastic- that's obvious, but his portrayal struck me as all wrong. Hagen should ooze menace visually and vocally from the moment we first see him and Konig has none. Add to this his towering physical presence over the other performers, and the heart of what makes Gotterdammerung so dramatically involving goes wholly missing. He's a huge bear of a man who is absolutely non-threatening. Strange, since he managed to give the opposite effect so easily as Hunding in Die Walkure. The moment when he summons the Gibichungs, which should be one of the most musically thrilling in the entire cycle, went flat, though the Met chorus sounded sensational.

Luisi led the orchestra in a rushed manner through the first two acts, and though he slowed it down a bit in the third, overall he didn't make the most of the score's lushness.

All of this hardly mattered in the end though, as the Machine created one gorgeous mise en scène after another. The Lepage Ring isn't insightful and it's certainly not bold (see Freyer for that) in its obstinately traditional approach, but it is quite beautiful to watch.

A Hero is born: The Met's Siegfried

On the Intro page of Jay Hunter Morris' website he writes:

"... I don't have one of those voices, ya know, where I can just open up and be glorious. But I am stubborn and persistent and one of these days just maybe I will ... for me, there probably won't be some big break, some new production or role... that just brings it all together and I'll be a great tenor and in great demand and will possess a flawless technique and I will behave properly and have panache and be clever and artsy and thin and everyone will love me."

JMo, you may want to consider rewriting that page because I think all that's just changed for you, thanks to yesterday's Met Opera Broadcast of Siegfried. 

I was in the house (front row) for Morris's debut in the role at San Francisco Opera back in May. I liked the performance, especially his presence, but felt his voice lacked the necessary heft to truly own it. Furthermore, he was overshadowed by David Cangelosi's strong turn as Mime and undermined by Francesca Zambello's scatter shot direction. Still, Morris gave a memorable performance and I heard he got stronger as the run progressed.

Now, six months later he's living "a star is born" moment as the last-minute replacement for Gary Lehman (a replacement for Ben Heppner), who fell ill during late rehearsals. Morris was his understudy and just like in the movies, got his big break. And he killed it.

From the house my friend Brian tweeted to me that Morris still sounds "a tad underpowered," but in theaters across the world where the performance was shown to tens of thousands of people, he was simply fantastic on every level, giving new life to a Ring Cycle which had seemed somewhat adrift until now. Morris' presence, coupled with conductor Fabio Luisi's magnificent, transparent account of the music, seemed to ignite the entire cast to a heightened level of execution, easily making this the best part of director Robert LePage's Ring so far.

At least that's how it came across in the theater, where the perfect sound mix and well-executed camera angles greatly influence one's perception of what's actually taking place live in Lincoln Center, not to mention all of the backstage action shown to the audience- which also influences our perception- especially when you have someone as likable offstage as they are on it, such as Morris, who came across as one of the nicest guys in the world during the intermission segments. Yes, it's manipulative and designed to sell the Met and its performers to the audience, and yesterday it all worked exceedingly well. The only thing I'd like to quibble about is the camera lens they used for Renee Fleming's introduction, which wasn't very flattering to her.

As for the show itself, LePage's vision for the cycle has a confidence in Siegfried I found lacking in Walkure and Rheingold. The monolithic "Machine" doesn't distract from what's taking place onstage (the noise it makes was only noticeable in the first act and wasn't a serious intrusion), but finally works to serve the entire work and not just create set pieces. The use of it in the third act when Siegfried goes through the fire was a superb use of it, though I'm not sure Morris' stumble was choreographed. The opening video work by Pedro Pies was gorgeous, creating a vivid tableaux both mysterious and alluring.

Gerhard Siegel's Mime was well-acted, but more importantly, beautifully sung. He doesn't fall into the common habit of accompanying Mime's unattractive physical and personal qualities with a whining tone, as is often the case. Siegel sang Mime as if he himself were Siegfried, making the character more complex. While his interpretation doesn't make Mime sympathetic (which even if it was desired would likely be impossible), Siegel makes him interesting and for once, a pleasure to hear.

Morris was born to be on a movie screen- his good looks only added to his superb vocal and physical performance. There's nothing really likable about the character of Siegfried- he's a violent, insolent, self-absorbed teenager- an unpleasant hero if there ever was one. While few can sing the role, fewer still can make him truly a sympathetic hero onstage. Morris can do both- and does, giving Wagner's brat truly heroic dimensions and depth- especially in the second act. Amazingly, he seemed to gather strength as the afternoon progressed and it was only toward the very end, when he had to go up against the freshly awoken Brunnhilde, that anything resembling fatigue became evident in his voice. Still, it didn't effect his sound, which remained clear and bright- but his volume seemed to diminish slightly against Voigt's formidable strength. It's going to be difficult for anyone who saw this to think of someone better for the role. It's your now, JMo- run with it.

For the first time in the cycle I really enjoyed Bryn Terfel's Wotan/Wander. Looking like Rick Wakeman, Terfel's presence in Siegfried is infused with resigned authority. He possesses a confidence with the character at this junction I couldn't see in Rheingold or Walkure, which diminished the impact of his vocals in the earlier segments. The voice, as could be expected, was marvelous, but it was his characterization which left the biggest impact. His best moments came in the third act, where he gave powerful depth to Wotan's moment of doubt. For just a moment, Wotan seemed like he was about to refuse to yield to the future he himself created. His costume also served him to much greater effect here than it did in the earlier opera.

Speaking of costumes, Deborah Voigt looked radiant and visually the pairing of her with Morris turned out to be serendipitous to the production- they truly looked like they belong together. In fact they should have been placed closer together onstage- at points they seemed too far away from one another. Vocally, she impressed again and her greeting of the sun upon awakening was one of the most beautiful moments I've heard from her.

The rest of the cast were also strong- in fact everyone was "on" for this particular performance. Though Eric Owens' Alberich didn't have the ferocity he displayed in Rheingold, that only reflects the story arc, as Alberich is now a diminished presence, even if there's nothing diminished about the strength and power of Owens' formidable voice. Mojca Erdmann's Forest Bird was pleasing but with the character's presence represented by an animated bird (which didn't look great on the screen), it didn't create much of an impact. Neither did Hans-Peter Konigs turn as Fafner, at least until we got to watch him die, because the dragon was the only misfire of the entire production- essentially an inflatable snake, it looked wholly out of place and from an entirely different show- as if its creation was an afterthought. Patrica Bardon's Erda was well sung, but the interpretation of Erda in this Ring continues to confuse me- what exactly is she supposed to be? Her scene with Wotan makes no sense as staged here.

Finally, James Levine's absence from the podium isn't going to hurt this Ring in the least if yesterday was a hint of what's to come. Though Luisi's conducting felt restrained at times, he clearly was leading the orchestra in service to the singers and the score. The result was a transparency which revealed leitmotifs I've never noticed before and taken as a whole, the orchestra's performance was a major contribution to the success of yesterday's performance.

Encore dates for the screening have not been announced as of today.

LePage's Die Walkure from the Met

The first thing one can say about the Met's broadcast of Die Walkure yesterday is that it should finally silence those idiots who've been talking smack about Deborah Voigt for the last year. Voigt's performance carried the extremely long afternoon and left no doubt that not only can she sing the role, but it re-affirms her status as one of the leading sopranos of the day. Too bad such a triumph was unfolding in what turned out to be a pretty mediocre production that left me thinking perhaps the Schenk museum piece wasn't so bad after all.

The singers, individually, were in superb voice, but Walkure is a series of conversations and conflicts between two characters and what caused this production to be such a failure from my perspective is that each pairing failed to work on a dramatic level. Everyone seemed mismatched in some way and none of the scenes, except for the showdown between Fricka and Wotan (more on this in a moment), was convincing. This was only magnified by the talent onstage and seeing it all unfurl larger than life on the big screen in HD.


Taking it from the top, James Levine led the orchestra through a musically thrilling first act- superbly paced, the details in the score coming through with a slicing precision I've seldom heard anywhere else that made the listener pay attention. Sadly, that precision disappeared during the second act ("Du hehrstes Wunder, herrliche Maid!" came and went with no impact at all) and only sporadically returned during the third, mostly in the conclusion. The orchestra wasn't bad by any means, but the heights achieved during the first act weren't heard again.


Kaufmann and Westbroek, both offering fantastic phrasing, tone and diction, looked like a great pairing of the Walse twins on paper but the reality was quite different. Kaufmann seemed tentative with Westbroek, as if he wasn't quite sure how far he should go with her, and his performance lacked a necessary passion and desire, though his voice is simply amazing. This hesitancy on his part made his Siegmund have less stature onstage than Westbroek's Sieglinde, rendering their entire pairing something of a dramatic mismatch. As Hunding, Hans-Peter Konig's entrance, delivering a devastating side-ways glance perfectly cued to the music (albeit lifted straight from Hunding's entrance in the Copenhagen Ring- the first of many "borrowed" ideas in this production), was the kind of subtle touch wholly missing from Kaufmann's performance.


In Act II Voigt and Terfel started off with a playfulness similar to what Francesca Zambello is doing with her "American" Ring about to unfold in its entirety in San Francisco later this month. This would be the first of two moments during the afternoon which made me think director Robert Lepage has been seeing every Ring Cycle he can, searching for ideas because dramatically he has none of his own (more on this later). Voigt's first "Heiaha" immediately served notice to the doubters that she was going to be on. While hers wasn't a display of endless range, she was in complete control and remained so throughout the performance. On top of that, despite the ridiculous costumes she and everyone else had to endure, she looked and acted the part.


The highlight of the second act, indeed of the entire show sadly enough, was Stephanie Blythe's Fricka. Making a fantastic entrance on a throne with prominent goat-horns as armrests (this reference to cuckoldry would be only thoughtful piece of set-design we would see all day), Blythe's eighteen minutes onstage were devastating in more ways than one. Completely emasculating Terfel's Wotan, Blythe turned this Die Walkure on its head in a way I'm not sure was intentional because it never recovered afterward. Her imperious, take-no-prisoners Fricka not only slices off Wotan's balls during their scene together, but Terfel seemed so beat-down by her that his character couldn't seem to shake his newly imposed impotence for the remainder of the opera.

And that's a problem because while we all know Wotan is weak in many ways, there has to be moments during the rest of Walkure where we see that weakness cast aside and he reclaims the anger and gravitas which make him such a compelling figure. Sadly after this scene, Terfel's Wotan has this air of "my mom just cut off my balls" about him that never goes away and makes him seem pathetic and powerless, which LePage's stage direction does nothing to ameliorate, example one being when Wotan steps in to break Siegmund's sword and the net impact was "really- is that all there is to that?" Ho-hum, check off another plot point. Some of this is also exacerbated by Terfel coming across as appearing much younger than Blythe and Voigt- another downside of casting in the current era where every nuance and detail is illustrated in HD. Compared to them, he seems to possess no maturity. On the upside, he sang beautifully, though after the marvel of the singing in Act 1, there was a noticeable difference in the diction of the native Germans versus the non evident in Act 2.


Act 2 also featured the second of LePage's pilfering of ideas from others- the eyeball, which 20 years from now might seem like a neat homage to the brilliance of Achim Freyer's LA Ring of last year, but in this context seems one-step shy of plagiarism. Furthermore, this reminder of the LA Ring brought into full relief what's missing in LePage's- a concept or vision. There simply isn't one at all. Where in the LA Ring everything onstage made the audience think about the connections and relevance to the characters and story, there isn't anything going here at all- it's just the Machine doing its tricks and the singers moving around it. Sure there are some glorious visuals- the hunting of Siegmund through the trees, and the forming of the Ash tree- both in Act 1, and the final visual of Brunnhilde on the rock was visually gorgeous and arresting, but beyond that? Nothing.


Even the "Ride of the Valkyries" felt flat and unexciting, even though this was the closest thing we'll likely ever see of them making their entrances riding their steeds through the air. This, of all moments, should have been the one where the Machine silenced its critics with the amazing theatricality LePage brought to La Damnation de Faust, which caused me to get all excited about him doing this Ring in the first place. But like everything else except the scene with Fricka, it remained unconvincing and devoid of drama.


There were two priceless moments during the broadcast- the first came during the first intermission when Joyce DiDonato was interviewing the Met's stage manager about the 45 minute delay in the start due to some mechanical malfunction with the machine- as she ended the interview, she said to him "Thanks for getting it up today!" to which the guy looked completely flummoxed and any response he may have had was drowned out by the uproarious laughter from the audience in the theater. The other was the sight of Jonas Kaufmann drooling a six-inch long bit of goo off his lower lip which will probably be edited out of the DVD release so it doesn't become a YouTube sensation following him through the cyber world for the rest of his life.


I'm pleased for Voigt's triumph in this, but dismayed that this Walkure not only made me lose interest in what's to come in the following installments, but surprisingly, it made me see Zambello's production in a kinder light- I don't like most of what she's doing with her concept- but at least she has one.

In the House for Another Fanciulla

CC and I caught tonight's performance of San Francisco Opera's La Fanciulla Del West from our usual orchestra seats and there were some noticeable differences in what I heard from last week's performance, attended in the balcony. At the first intermission we ran into Jim, whose encyclopedic knowledge and experience are always a delight, and he was sitting quite closer to the stage than we were. Jim thought Deborah Voigt was not as familiar with the role as she should be, since she was constantly looking at Luisotti for either help or cues. As the night progressed, having heard it before, I began to doubt this was the case. I suspect Voigt was looking Luisotti thinking "turn it down, how am I supposed to sing over this?" because I have never heard the SFO orchestra play louder than they had this evening.

My impression, largely gleaned from the previous performance and a knowledge of Voigt's professionalism, comes from hearing the orchestra repeatedly go way over all the singers in tonight's performance. Maybe the difference is in the acoustics between the balcony and the orchestra, but I've sat in this hall enough to doubt it. Tonight it was loud- too loud for Puccini. It was Wozzeck-level loud, which one doesn't need for this kind of music, but is great for Berg. Even Timothy Mix was buried in Luisotti's wall of sound.

Other observations- maybe someone read my previous post, because Licitra and Voigt seemed to make more of an effort at the "chemistry" so lacking in last week's performance; Licitra has a great voice, but a minimal amount of stage presence; Sherriff Jack is probably the most poorly-developed character in an opera ever- not bad enough to hate like Scarpia, not sympathetic enough to even consider he may have a shred of decency ala Pinkerton- fail.

The music of the second act sounds so far ahead of its time. This is the foundation for soundtracks to almost every Western made in Hollywood for the next fifty years and it's pretty mind-blowing to hear how much this score influenced Copland and the multitudes who scored AFI's list of the best Westerns ever made. The seeds for all of those soundtracks are found here, written in 1910 by an Italian. Amazing when you really think about it, which I obviously am. The core of what came to be known as the soundtrack of the American West, so deeply rooted in the consciousness of North Americans- courtesy of Puccini?

The horse didn't work for me the second time around, either.

And to the usher who told CC she had to put her gummy bears away as we were walking back to our seats- was that really necessary?

In the Golden West

San Francisco Opera's current production of Puccini's La Fanciulla Del West ("The Girl of the Golden West") is a surprising success. Don't let SFO's sophomoric and moronic marketing of this as "The Original Spaghetti Western" put you off- there is some operatic gold being mined in this production, courtesy of a strong cast, well-designed sets by Maurizio Balo (this is a co-production with Teatro Massimo Palermo and Opera Royal de Wallonie) and superb conducting of the SFO orchestra under music director Nicola Luisotti. It also doesn't hurt that although Fanciulla is the least-performed of any of the composers major works, it just may be his richest score. It doesn't have any show-stopping arias like those found in Tosca, Boheme, Butterfly or Turandot, but musically, this is Puccini at his best and Luisotti led the orchestra through a flawless performance of the score.

Onstage things were pretty fine as well. Act 1 opens with a tavern called the Polka being assembled onstage while various miners mill about singing this and that and it's all fine and good though on this particular night I thought the chorus was weak and a bit of a hash. Deborah Voigt, singing the role for the first time, enters by firing a pistol three times and with her white-blonde wig and red leather get-up, immediately becomes the beating heart of the show. I'll admit to being a Voigt partisan and while I may not want to watch her as Salome at this point in her career, I'd happily listen to her anytime. The constant chatter about the quality of her voice over the last few years is just annoying to me. Voigt can still sing- and she sings very well. She's also one of the better actresses appearing on opera stages. Minnie suits her- Voigt has a tremendous personal warmth when you meet her that is genuine and this role calls for that same warmth to make it believable. The score doesn't give Minnie any big arias even though she's the central character, odd for Puccini, but in place of that are three acts of melodic beauty which Voigt executes with clarity and precision.


Salvatore Licitra, making his first appearance with SFO (finally!) has also taken a beating since bursting into the opera world's consciousness when he filled in for Pavarotti at the Met a few years back and hit it out of the park. This was my first time hearing him and he sounds like an Italian singer should- which is to say he reminded me of a younger Pavarotti, something one doesn't encounter much these days. He has a rich, full voice and his performance was vocally magnificent as bad boy Dick Johnson.

Oddly however, he and Voigt have zero chemistry together onstage and this becomes a distraction by the end, where they ride off into the sunset together while holding hands at the greatest distance possible. I can't believe this is called for by stage director Lorenzo Mariani, so if anyone has any backstage dirt on this, feel free to leave it in the comments.

Roberto Frontali fared less well as Sheriff Jack Vance but not because he couldn't sing well, which he can- he just doesn't look comfortable with the role. This may or may not be his fault as the Sheriff's role isn't quite rendered correctly in the libretto. He's not a bad guy, but he is a jerk, and as the third side of a love-triangle it just doesn't work.

The supporting roles were well-sung, with two singers making notable impressions: first, Timothy Mix's Sonora was a tremendous success. This is his first time at SFO and he'll be back again in the fall in Cyrano, which I'm sitting on the fence about seeing. I hope Gockley has the good sense to bring him back regularly.

Second, although she only sings for about a minute and a half, current Adler fellow Maya Lahyani's voice filled the house and is quite impressive for such a young singer at this point in her career. As I mentioned previously, I think she has the goods to be the next Netrebko. I know, that's complete hyperbole, but when she's famous ala Netrebko maybe she'll remember I was an early advocate for her and she'll get me really good seats for her inevitable Met debut and an interview for this blog. I really, really want to see her as Carmen.

A last note on the horse: I was disappointed the horse was led by two handlers when it makes its entrance. It kills the effect and makes it a bit of silly staging. And unfortunately, the horse didn't live up to its name.

See this one and listen closely- it's well worth it.

Production photos by Cory Weaver, lifted from SFO's website.

Did the fat lady sing?

It's been almost six years since The Royal Opera House unceremoniously fired Deborah Voigt over "the little black dress," creating headlines around the world and starting a worldwide conversation about what opera singers should look and sound like that has yet to fully subside in some circles. A year later, with the assistance of a surgical procedure she had already decided she would undergo before the incident, Ms. Voigt lost 100 lbs. Four years later, she donned the same dress she was deemed too fat to wear and triumphed at Covent Garden in Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos, in one way bringing the matter to a close (for her) and yet, in other ways Voigt's triumph has had some interesting repercussions throughout the opera world.



To this day, people who have seen Voigt thin and not almost cannot help but comment on how her voice sounds now as compared to then. Regardless, Ms. Voigt is still one of the world's leading sopranos and she continues to thrill audiences around the world. She's happy, she's working, and she's a svelte beauty with enormous talent. However, she has probably changed how people perceive opera singers for at least a generation in ways that would have been unthinkable a few years ago. Deborah Voigt killed the fat lady. In all but a few roles, it's over for them as far as opera is concerned.

Patrick and I discussed this over lunch the other day and he pointed out that people in general are in better shape than they used to be, so the slimming down of opera singers may be more of a natural evolution paralleling changes within the culture at large. That's a keen observation though I'm not convinced that's the entire story. I watched "The Audition" the other night on PBS, a documentary about eleven young singers competing for the Met's National Council Auditions in 2007. There's a moment in the film where the judges are discussing the future prospects of the singers and one of them weighs in on the size of one of the females, implying her size will be an impediment to her career. Of the the five women competing, two were slender and three were not. Interestingly, the winners ended up being the larger women but none of the female contestants has set the world aflame yet.

The most popular singers (including men at this point) are largely people who are increasingly very good-looking by standards that could not be considered operatic. Anna Netrebko, Renee Fleming, Angela Gheorgiu, Nathan Gunn, Juan Doego Florez and Rolando Villazon are all slim people, good-looking people. Well, Rolando actually looks like a Latin Mr. Bean, but he's skinny. So what you say. Why am I prattling on about this? Well, when I started to consider the female stars for San Francisco Opera's upcoming season I realized that it was full of young, gorgeous women in the lead roles. Sure, the locals who know her talent can't wait for Heidi Melton to sing Sieglinde in the 2011 Ring cycle, but for the most part when you put a heavy women onstage nowadays, unless it's Christine Brewer or Stephanie Blythe in certain roles (i.e. German opera or as a malevolent supporting character), the audience is increasingly going to say "What? Really? Why couldn't they get ______ for the part- she looks so much better."

Maybe we aren't there yet, but seriously- it is just around the corner. The Royal Opera's gaffe has turned into a standard casting practice across the world, validated by the Met's Peter Gelb and quietly being implemented in places like San Francisco and Los Angeles. For me, I think this is a positive trend, and I really don't think a women needs to be Jane Eaglen's size to fill the house with sound. After all, Mimis, Carmens and Violettas are much more convincing when they don't look like the well-fed wives of the King. Opera fans of the "voice is everything" school will view such thoughts as anathema and ridiculous, but I've never understood why those people don't just attend lieder concerts and shut up about opera. Opera is a combination of music and drama- it doesn't work without both and when the people onstage look and sound the part (and can act as well as sing) it is only then that the true power of the Western world's most potent art form fully comes to life.

Below are the sirens of the 2010 San Francisco Opera season. Six reasons to applaud Operavision in the balconies, or justification to buy really good seats. Either way, although the programming for next season is very conservative, in some ways the coming season never looked so good. A fluke? No way. Thanks Deborah- we owe more than we can possibly express and look forward to your first Minnie this summer. Photo below of John Marcher and Deborah Voigt, taken outside of the Met on a cool November night in 2009.


Here are the hotties:

Michele Capalbo, Aida



Ainhoa Arteta, Roxane (Cyrano de Bergerac)



Karita Mattila, Emila Marty (The Makropoulos Case)

Photo of Mattila by Richard Avedon

Svetla Vassileva Cio Cio San, (Madama Butterfly)

Elina Garanca, Charlotte (Werther)





Danielle de Niese, Susanna (The Marriage of Figaro)
I could easily skip Aida, but the rest? I want to see them as well as hear them.