The Best of A Beast: 2012

Napoleon.

It's been quite a year.

If you've read this blog steadily over the last four years, and especially between the lines, I imagine you can't help but notice that this was the year when people and things started disappearing. Penelope, the Femme Fatale, Isabella, the Manhattans, most of the known associates,The Little Chinese Man, and the frequency of posts- where did they go? I've decided not to reveal all of the reasons behind this just yet, but eventually I probably will when I feel enough distance exists. Amidst all of this carnage (and believe me, it was carnage), I didn't even get around to writing posts about two performances listed below, and really didn't do the justice I intended to a third. Having spent most of the last twelve months changing some things and attempting to right others, I can only tell you it is my full intention to remedy this in the new year.

Looking back, it was also a different year for what made the list. Opera, which was nearly absent last time, came back to dominate this year's model, and even though my Number 1 isn't an opera it truly felt like one, so add one more for a total of six of the ten slots being taken by operas.  It was also a good year for Cal Performances, which presented three of the top ten performances and three of the honorable mentions. San Francisco Opera returned to the list after being absent last year, thank goodness, because let's face it- there is nothing better than opera and when SFO is putting junk on the stage life becomes a bit dull. However, it wasn't a great year for theater- at least the theater I saw, though there were some good things going on at Berkeley Rep which got honorable mentions.

I also saw fewer recitals, attended less dance, films, pop, and jazz performances and little of what I did attend in these areas impressed me this year, so there hasn't been much mention of these.  It's not that I'm getting lazy, at least I hope it's not that, but this has been a year of change and transition and I needed to take some time away from attending performances and writing about them to actually sort some things out. So without any further blather on my part, though  reserving my right to elaborate further on any or all of the items mentioned above or below at a future time, here are the best performances I experienced as an audience member during the last year:

1. Napoleon
Rarely, if ever, have I had the pleasure of experiencing something so completely immersing and engaging on every level of artistry. Abel Gance's 5 and 1/2 hour silent film from 1927  is more than a masterpiece- it's visionary, epic in the truest sense of the word, and fascinates from beginning to end. But the experience was really made sublime by the accompanying performance of the Oakland East bay Orchestra under the baton of Carl Davis conducting his own heroic score. To experience it all inside the exquisitely restored art deco Paramount Theatre was just icing on the cake. This not only lived up to the "once in lifetime" hype- it exceeded it by every measure. I really regret not writing a post about this- maybe one day.

2. Nixon in China
Nixon was the best thing San Francisco Opera has put on the stage of the War Memorial since The Makropulos Affair, and easily stands as the highlight of David Gockley's (who commissioned the John Adams work while he was with the Houston Opera) tenure. Superb casting and a production which really brought the opera's nuances to the fore made for one of the most compelling experiences I've experienced in the house. I was lucky to see it twice during the run, and could have easily enjoyed a third viewing. I regret never going back to write about this in-depth because there is so much to say about it, especially the third act, which many observers seemed to view as a throw-away, but I felt was the heart and soul of the work, a beautifully executed denouement where the main characters gather and internally ask themselves "What do we now after we've changed the world?" and can only respond with "What is left to do?"

3. Certitude and Joy
Erling Wold's chamber opera based on the real events surrounding a woman who sacrificed her own children to God by drowning them in the San Francisco Bay stuck in my head for weeks afterward. Wold's compelling score, played by the recently Grammy-nominated Zofo Duet and the earnest commitment of everyone on the small stage to make this work created something which deeply moved me. I'll never forget how I felt when it ended.

4. Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Philharmonia Orchestra's Mahler's 9th
As I mentioned in the original post, this performance brought me to tears. Thinking about its effect still makes my eyes swell.

5. Einstein on the Beach
Cal Performances was instrumental in making this revival of the original production happen and as promised, it was something every opera fan should have seen. Like Napoleon, Einstein lived up to the hype. How lucky are we in the Bay Area to live in a place where not one, but two rarely experienced major works of art appear on local stages in the same year?

6. Lohengrin (no post)
If only every production offered by San Francisco Opera were this good. Brandon Jovanovich was perfect in the title role, with an excellent supporting cast, a thoughtful production, and extraordinary conducting from Luisotti as he popped his Wagner cherry. Magnificent on every level- the company should be quite proud of it.

7. Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Philharmonia Orchestra's Wozzeck
Had this been a fully staged production and taken place at the War Memorial Opera House it would have easily been number two on this list.

8. Joyce DiDonato and the Alexander String Quartet: Camille Claudel: Into the Fire
While I admired Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer's Moby Dick in its San Francisco debut this past fall, I ultimately felt the second act didn't live up to the artistic level and expectations created in its first. It left me wondering what the team could have done with more time to work on the opera, which felt like it was lacking something at its core. On the other hand, this smaller scale work arrived onstage so fully realized in its conception and execution it made me yearn for a larger, full-blown opera to be developed from the material. DiDonato just had what was probably the best year of her career (so far) and in retrospect this concert performance seemed like a harbinger for what was to follow.

9. Christian Tetzlaff and the San Francisco Symphony
The epitome of a rock star performance by a classical musician, and a perfect combination of piece and performer.

10. The San Francisco Symphony's American Mavericks Festival
Last season's Centennial celebration by the San Francisco Symphony had no shortage of highlights, but the return of the American Mavericks festival highlighted so many elements of what makes this organization and orchestra under Michael Tilson Thomas so great. Not every moment worked, but the sum of every concert worked extremely well, with each featuring at least one truly memorable and exciting performance, often much more. Criticized by some for not being mavericky enough in its programming, those who actually attended were thrilled to be a part of it- I certainly was, and the next version can't arrive soon enough.

Honorable mentions (in no particular order): An Iliad, Keith Jarrett, Ojai North!, Nameless Forest, You Killed Hamlet, The Mariinsky Ballet and Orchestra, Hilary Hahn, and Khatia Buniashvili's dress.

On a personal note, I want to thank Isabella- for everything you've given both from a distance and up close. Thank you Sheila, for being a wonderful listener in many ways. And thank you Thaïs, for killing the Femme Fatale and in doing so forcing me to figure out what's next.

And finally, I'd like to thank you, whoever you are, for reading this. See you next year.

The Capulets and the Montagues

Isabella was seated at a table next to the window, her back straightened against the traffic flowing down the street, her dark eyes trained on the door, waiting. Though it had been  nearly five months since I saw her last, it soon felt like a matter of days as we quickly fell into our easy rapport, despite everything that had transpired during this long interlude.  She had been in Prague, among other places, taking in a dreadful Carmen and a sumptuous Traviata amongst other things during her trip, and she had much to say about it all.

I asked her what she was doing now, and she replied "I'm writing a solo piece. It's about Wagner and sex. You figure prominently in it."

After pausing a moment to take this in, I wondered aloud, "Is it comedic, or what?"

Her response straddled the line between prolixity and obfuscation before settling gently on an admission of indecision regarding her direction.

Finally she trained those eyes on me, which now looked like black pools above the pearls roped around her neck and said, "So how are you?"

I looked down at the cup of jasmine tea before me, realizing I could only give her what amounted to a superficial account in the time we had left before we had to make our way across the street, and left most of the story concerning these past months spent in the company of Thaïs for another time, though I knew she curious about it all.

Like many people, I suppose, Puccini's operas were the doorway leading to my love of the form. He was eventually replaced by Verdi as the favorite, who in turn lost out to Wagner. Along the way I developed an appreciation for the works of Donizetti, and an ever-increasing awe for those by Rossini. 

Bellini, on the other hand, never gained a place in the standings. How could he? He composed less than a dozen operas, fewer than half of which are ever heard. However, the quantity really isn't the issue- Bizet, Mascagni, Leoncavallo are just a few of the one or two-hit wonders whose works will get me to the house. No, the problem with Bellini is that everything he did well, and there is much that he did indeed do well, Verdi, and to a lesser extent Donizetti, borrowed and improved upon. Improved upon greatly, in fact, and when one becomes familiar with the work of the original only after digesting that of his more talented successors, well, there you have it. 

Even Norma, his crowning masterpiece, is something I can barely tolerate due to its absurd plot, the most preposterous in all of opera's standard rep.

So it certainly wasn't the opportunity to hear some Bellini which made me want to see  I Capuleti ed i Montecchi (The Capulets and the Montagues), but rather it's the exceptional cast, especially the return of Joyce DiDonato, whose career seems to be hitting its peak right now, and let's hope it's an extended one.

Prior to seeing it for myself, I read the many scornful accounts of this particular production which made it seem just short of being completely incomprehensible or comparable to so-called "Eurotrash," for which some folks seem to have such a distaste (I appreciate Eurotrash, btw, but then again I also appreciate Russ Meyer films and The Spice Girls, so perhaps this shouldn't surprise you).  I found it to be neither trashy nor incomprehensible, and while it's certainly not brilliant, it serves the opera, which is second-rate to begin with, reasonably well.

Comprised of two acts with three scenes in each, this co-production from the Bavarian State Opera wasn't designed for this house, so there are ungodly long set changes between each scene that kill what little momentum there is to begin with and only once seemed worth the wait, when the audience applauded as the curtain rose for Scene III in Act 1, though it's hard to say if the applause was for the tableaux vivant opening featuring a riot of color from costume designer Christian Lacroix, or if the audience was just happy to be getting on with the show.

The opera opens with a chorus of Capulet supporters gathered onstage in the Capulet's palace, suspended above them are  sleek English riding saddles, polished to the point of fetishism (and by all means feel free to insert Marx's theory of commodity fetishism in here if you like), suggesting a climate of aggression and battle, albeit a highly-stylized one. They're just hanging there, a hovering presence signaling something violent is in the air, waiting to come into play.  Tebaldo, performed by Saimir Pirgu in his company debut, gets a couple of  choice arias in this scene, during which he displayed a nice tone but failed to nail it at the top of the range. His stage presence was far from commanding as he vowed to avenge the death of Capellio's son (Juliet's brother). Eric Owens, a singer of terrific talent and ability, is largely wasted in the role of Capellio and he seems to know it- his performance lacked the spark which seemed an inherent part of his stage persona in the previous times I've seen him. Then DiDonato as Romeo enters in disguise, her face so garishly lit from below I though she had on a mask, and blah, blah, blah- you know this isn't going to work out very well for Romeo. During all of this, and for the rest of his appearance throughout the opera, current Adler Fellow Ao Li made a great impression in the role of Lorenzo, the family physician.

Scene 2 opens with a statue of two lovers creating a Pieta suspended above Juliet's almost-bare room. It's a gorgeous effect, and has powerful implications during the scene, which in the one really interesting directorial choice, is played as a mad scene for Juliet. The only thing onstage besides the statue are the walls of Juliet's room and a sink- an ugly one, reminiscent at first of the kind found in a cell, which is anchored into a wall. Juliet sings her song of woe, she slowly makes her way to the sink, then into the sink. At first it looks like she's approaching a fountain, and as the scene unfolds it becomes one of a woman performing an ablution. After performing the ritual she stands in the sink, yearning to touch the Pieta of the lovers, which remains beyond her grasp in every sense. To bash Bellini again, this most beautiful part of the opera was stolen - it's essentially a re-write of "The Willow Song" from Rossini's Otello. Nicole Cabell, making her company debut as Juliet, was radiant and convincing in this scene, and if she doesn't have the type of voice one normally associates with bel canto, it's not a problem here as she unleashed one gorgeous legato line upon another.

Romeo then enters, and here's where Bellini's decision to use the source material of the story instead of Shakespeare's version of the tale becomes problematic for this production. Rather than embrace one another, the two lovers force themselves into separate corners or against opposing walls of the cell/room all while singing of their deep and profound love for one another. The result comes across as two young people lost within in their own individual, personally created isolation and familial alienation, and they are mistaking the resulting confusion and conflict for love. The problem for the audience is that if the kids don't come across as lovers, but instead seemed just confused kids playing at being lovers, the whole thing goes off the rails, and it did, despite the efforts and gorgeous singing of DiDonato and Cabell, who couldn't make it come truly alive.

Scene 3 has the Capulet chorus re-enter with the saddles now on their shoulders, ready for action. There's much congratulating Capellio on the imminent wedding. Romeo vows to stop all of this nonsense, and then his real identity is revealed. Uh-oh. This lasts for about half an hour, and the when the curtain comes down if you feel a bit tired, you should- it's been a long hour and a half so far.

Act II opens with Lacroix-clad female wedding guests doing a walk of shame up bleachers to disappear into another set of bleachers beyond the back wall of the stage. I've read that the women appear onstage with flowers stuffed in their mouths at some point in this opera, and this may be the scene, but I didn't notice- I was too busy looking at the shoes. I have a bit of thing for high heels. I was still thinking about the shoes during part where Lorenzo brings the potion, Juliet drinks it, and then begs Capellio for forgiveness. None of this erased the shoes from my mind. I wanted more shoes.

Scene 5 finds Romeo at looking into a vanishing point on the horizon, singing a lovely aria reflecting his diminishing future options. Then Tebaldo entered the scene and was facing off against our hero, which unfortunately at one point had him (actually her, remember) bending over with his rear facing the audience. I found myself thinking Romeo has a really nice ass. Now Isabella had been given a behind-the-scenes tour of this production and had seen the costumes up close, and knew some details which she had imparted to me during the intermission- the costumes were exquisitely crafted and had many fine touches the audience would never even know were there, including gorgeous undergarments of sheer, luxurious fabric. As Romeo bent over, and I hate to admit this but I will, I found myself deeply engaged in an internal debate on exactly what kind of undergarments Romeo was wearing and this continued to occupy my mind for quite some time.

My attention eventually shifted to the abstract pictures slowly morphing their way into various images  against the backdrop of the walls of the Capulet's palace, which now seemed to be showing a bulimic Geisha who is slowly dying while Romeo is consumed by feelings of abandonment, his despair now equaling Juliet's as Tebaldo declines to kill him.

In Scene 6 Romeo enters Juliet's tomb, where she's unresponsive to his pleas for her to wake up. He's so bummed he takes the poison too. Juliet rises and does the tableaux vivant of the dead, quite well actually, while Romeo sings his heart out. DiDonato was at her best in this scene and Cabell stood motionless with her arms raised in what must have been an excruciating pose. Juliet comes alive, explains it was all a ruse, but it's too late now, of course. The couple sing together beautifully, but again the lack of physical interaction between them undermines the message, rendering them ultimately as pretend adults playing at being lovers. Bellini scored this penultimate moment beautifully, and as the last note of "Giulietta" passed from DiDonato's lips the magic was palpable. That should have been the moment the curtain fell, but unfortunately Bellini then has everyone rush onstage for a crash and bang ending ala Cavalleria Rusticana and absolutely ruins what could have been a sublime ending. Dolt.

Riccardo Frizza did a fine job with the orchestra.

More, please! Joyce DiDonato, Jake Heggie, & the Alexander String Quartet perform Camille Claudel: Into the Fire

Camille Claudel

The Alexander String Quartet celebrated their 30th anniversary by sharing the limelight with others- a trait that probably plays no small part in their longevity as a performing ensemble. Long considered something of a "house band" for San Francisco Performances and San Francisco State University, they marked the occasion at a concert last night at the Herbst Theater which was simply brilliant. In the program notes Jake Heggie, composer of Dead Man Walking and Moby-Dick among other works, relates the story of how SF Performances' Ruth Felt asked him about composing a piece to mark the quartet's upcoming anniversary and how he then managed to involve mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato and librettist Gene Scheer in the creation of a song cycle based on the story of Camille Claudel, about whom Heggie has been interested in creating an opera.

That was a fortuitous bit of networking, judging by last night's resulting program.

It began with Heggie accompanying DiDonato in Reynaldo Hahn's Venezia song cycle, which I heard Christopher Maltman perform just two weeks ago in the same theater. My thoughts on Maltman's recital were mixed, perhaps unenthusiastic, for a performer of obvious vocal abilities and for awhile I wondered if I had been unduly critical of the performance. DiDonato's performance re-assured me I was not- in fact after watching and hearing her sing the same material I think I may have been more generous to Maltman than his performance merited. DiDonato was completely engaged, continuously making eye-contact with seemingly everyone in the house from the moment she began, performing each song with a unique and distinct character, alternating between tenderness in one to bright sass in another. And her voice? Splendid. The last long, lovely legato note of "La Primavera" was gorgeous. Heggie looked like he enjoyed every moment of accompanying her, but more than that I can't say about his performance because DiDonato was so mesmerizing to watch and hear all I really noticed was his ear-to-grin at the conclusion of each song. There's a reason it's recently been said she's at the apex of her career and last night was evidence of it.

Then the Alexanders came onstage to perform Debussy's Sting Quartet in G minor. On paper this seemed like almost too-safe of a choice for the occasion, but they managed to uncover new tones within the familiar territory and delivered an impressively thoughtful performance. Cellist Sandy Wilson brought the morose tone of the first movement to the forefront and it colored everything in its wake. Violist Paul Yarbrough picked up the thread from Wilson in the second movement, adding a quizzical element, and the violins of Zakarias Grafilo and Frederick Lifsitz performed the pizzicato ending with exceptional finesse.

As a unit, they seemed intent to remove the "impressionist" sheen off the composer's reputation, especially in the Scherzo, which sounded uncharacteristically Romantic, and the fourth sounded almost Modernist. But every movement was performed with its own distinct emotional current, with the players cognizant of the themes occurring in each, yet treating each one as a unique entity. It's also the only time I've ever heard it where parts reminded me more than just a little of the late Beethoven quartets.

L to R: Zakarias Grafilo, Frederick Lifsitz, Jake Heggie, Joyce DiDonato, Paul Yarbrough, Sandy Wilson. Photo by Brian Byrne.

While the first half of the concert had been quite good to this point, what followed was truly exceptional. DiDonato and the Alexanders returned, with DiDonato placed in the center of the strings. Camille Claudel: Into the Fire is a song cycle which takes place on the day the title character is taken away to an asylum.  However, it feels much larger than that due to the brilliance of Gene Scheer's lyrics, which manage to convey a complete character arc in just six songs spread over thirty-five minutes (the seven songs include an instrumental). Each song title refers to a sculpture by Claudel (yes, she was a real person) except the last one, which is an epilogue to what's come before.

The devotion to inhabiting the lyrics she exhibited in the Venezia song cycle turned out to be just an appetizer compared to the fully developed character DiDonato brought to Camille Claudel. It made me long to see this work developed into a full-length opera as a vehicle for her.  Beginning with "Rodin," who was Claudel's lover and perhaps artistic rival, Heggie and Scheer have created a portrayal of a woman undone by her lover's abandonment and its subsequent destruction of her mind and soul. "La Valse" and "Shakuntala" carry the narrative forward, the first as lament and the second turning into a mini "mad scene" with an acapella ending which was chilling.

"La Petite Chatelaine" has Claudel turning the anger and rage of "La Valse" upon herself, her own identity cracking under the weight of remorse for the child she aborted at Rodin's request. The song is imbued with conflicted penitence, and while it's impressive on many levels, perhaps its most amazing quality is how the pleas of Claudel over her lost child never become maudlin. Instead, a moment of distinct discomfort is felt through the audience- as if we're complicit in the tragedy by being observers of the result.

Musically, "The Gossips" take the work to a heightened level of intensity as rivulets of notes descend like so many false accusations against Claudel's resigned admissions of "I know. I know." The drops keep falling, and the song closes with a sense of irretrievable loss.

Heggie wisely takes a step back emotionally at this point with an instrumental, "L'age Mur (Maturity)," a fugue begun by the viola, followed by cello, then the violins, evolving into one of the most memorable themes I've heard from a contemporary composer. The theme returns in full at the conclusion of the final song, "Epilogue: Jessie Liscomb visits Camille Claudel, Montevergues Asylum, 1929," which begins with a sprightly dance containing fragments of the theme weaving underneath. The lyrics of the song, and DiDonato's singing of them, are the inevitable conclusion of all that's come before as Claudel, now old and alone, happily receives a visit by an old friend which gives her an opportunity to reminisce, remember, and finally, to regret and submit.

Fantastic. Now can someone please commission an entire opera of this brilliant beginning?

Heggie, DiDonato and the Alexanders returned for an encore of Richard Strauss' "Morgen"- beautifully performed, but also a nice touch given that Heggie noted in the program how he remembered the superb performance of the piece given by this same quartet when he saw them perform for the first time twenty years ago.

San Francisco Opera: the 2012-13 season

Interior of the War Memorial Opera House. Photo by David Wakely

San Francisco Opera's General Director David Gockley has done the improbable and created an upcoming season I'm actually excited about for the first time during his tenure. Eight operas are scheduled for 2012-13 (I'm not including the world premiere co-production with Cal Performances of The Secret Garden since that's being staged at Zellerbach), and though the season largely follows Gockley's established pattern of presenting a stable of recently staged warhorses, he's also included two premieres of contemporary, English-language operas, with another on the way the following year (based on Stephen King's Dolores Claibourne). That's a bold move in the current climate and the riskiest thing he's done in San Francisco so far. After the two premieres, the appeal of 2012-13 is in the well-cast standard rep not seen locally for a long time. It's the best schedule SFO has announced since Rosenberg's era and hopefully it works as well onstage as it looks on paper.

Rigoletto brings back Michael Yeargan's well-worn production ('06, '01, and '97) for 12 performances. The title role is shared by Zeljko Lucic and Marco Vratogna. His daughter Gilda will be performed by Aleksandra Kurzak and Albina Shagimuratova.  Lucic was good the last time the company staged Verdi's La Forza, but the presence of David Lomeli in the role of the Duke of Mantua makes my choice the cast led by Vratogna. On the other hand, Kurzak recently won great accolades in LA Opera's Cosi, so one probably can't go wrong with either cast. It's a dark and claustrophobic production which I've enjoyed the previous times I've seen it. My one question for director Harry Silverstein is will there be breasts this time- or  is the San Francisco audience too provincial? Luisotti conducts one of Verdi's very best.

Bellini's I Capuleti e i Montecchi (The Capulets and the Montagues) has only been seen on the War Memorial stage once before in 1991. Conductor Riccardo Frizza (last year's Lucrezia) returns  to lead an excellent cast featuring Joyce DiDinato, Eric Owens, Saimir Pirgu (another singer well-reviewed in LA's Cosi) and Nicole Cabell, who seems poised for the next level. The presence of DiDonato and Owens are reason enough to attend, even if a Bel Canto version of Romeo and Juliet isn't necessarily your thing.

Jake Heggie's Moby-Dick makes its local debut after receiving a tremendous reception at its world premiere in Dallas. Ben Heppner and Jay Hunter Morris (Siegfried) share the role of the obsessed Captain Ahab. While Heppner's the more more established singer, the quickly-rising Morris is the one to see. Depending on the state of Heppner's voice, Morris may well end up performing more than the two performances for which he's scheduled. Patrick Summers conducts.

Puccini's Tosca was last staged here in 2009 and its the same Thierry Bosquet set and costumes seen previously for what seems like the last 100 years, but is in fact only the fifth time since 1997. Should still seem fresh, right? Twelve performances with two casts and a battle of the divas between Patricia Racette and Angela Gheorghiu in the title role. Racette's the local favorite, but Gheorghiu's appearances are rarer and she strikes me as the more interesting of the two in the role, which neither have sung in San Francisco before. So personally I'd go with Angela, assuming she actually shows up, but if you've never seen Tosca go with Racette- the supporting cast of Brian Jadge and Mark Delevan certainly trumps Massimo Giordano and Roberto Frontali. Luisotti conducts all performances.

Wagner's Lohengrin hasn't seen the War Memorial stage since 1996 and it returns with what may end up being the strongest cast of the season. The marvelous tenor Brandon Jovanovich sings the title role for the first time. The presence of Kristinn Sigmundsson, Petra Lang, and Brian Mulligan in the tale of the lustful knight all bode well, and though Camilla Nylund is an unknown in these parts, she'd have to muck it up pretty badly to keep this from being first-rate all the way around. The production is new to San Francisco and the only iffy thing about it is whether or not Luisotti can conduct Wagner. He did very well with Strauss two years back, so that's a good omen of what will come from the pit.

The allure that Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffmann (The Tales of Hoffmann) holds for many has thus far eluded me, but I've never seen it performed before. This should be an excellent introduction- Natalie Dessay plays the four loves of Matthew Polenzani's title character, with Alice Coote and Christian Van Horn along for the telling. Conductor Patrick Fournillier ably led Cyrano recently and Laurent Pelly's productions are usually a delight (La Fille du Regiment).

Cosi Fan Tutte is the one opera of Mozart's I absolutely love, so who cares if this is the same production from way back in 2005. It was great then and with a young, vibrant cast featuring Ellie Dehn, Heidi Stober, Susannah Biller and Phillipe Sly, it should be quite fun. Luisotti hasn't convinced me yet that he has any facility with Mozart, but if there's one opera where he can prove himself, it's Cosi.

The world premiere of composer Mark Adamo's The Gospel of Mary Magdalene is bound to be somewhat controversial- or at least it should be if it's done well. Mary has a strong cast featuring Sasha Cooke finally appearing on the other side of Grove Street in the title role, barihunk Nathan Gunn as Jesus, and William Burden, whose singing was the only thing I found worthwhile in last year's Heart of a Soldier, as Peter. Everything else is new, including conductor Michael Christie, making his SFO debut. Everything except the story, that is.

Ranking them in order of personal anticipation, top to bottom:
Lohengrin
Moby-Dick
The Gospel According to Mary Magdalene
I Capuleti e i Montecchi
Les Contes d'Hoffmann
Cosi fan tutte
Rigoletto
Tosca

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.