Joshua Kosman uses a soufflé metaphor.
The Opera Tattler
Reviews of Performances and their Audiences
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* Notes *
A revival of Johannes Schaaf’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia production from 2003 opened last night on Halloween. Hans Dieter Schaal’s set looked as white and stark as ever, the centerpiece being a German fantasy of the Barbie Malibu Dream House, which Thomas May describes as "Bauhaus inflected." The scene changes do go quite smoothly as the set turns. The construction site complete with manhole and barrier with blinking light in Act I was a bit gratuitous, at least it was off to the right from the orchestra.Perhaps I’m missing something, but Nathan Gunn’s voice is not spectacular. The baritone does cut a nice figure as Figaro, but his voice is a bit light and languid. Mezzo Allyson McHardy (Rosina) has a dark tone, strong, but some of her arpeggios were muddy. I liked her very much as Olga in Eugene Onegin, and it was interesting to hear her as the lead this time around. John Osborn (Count Almaviva) is possibly the loudest tenor we’ve had all season, he has a good deal of vibrato, which perhaps makes his intonation less than perfect. Baritone Bruno de Simone (Dr. Bartolo) enunciated well, his parlando parts were all clear. Baritone Eugene Brancoveanu sang well as Fiorello, and he also was the Sargeant, but there isn’t much singing for the latter. His voice has a notable resonance that Gunn’s lacks.
* Tattling *
A young man was whispering into his cellular phone in standing room during the overture. After he was done with his call, he tried to go to his seat in the orchestra, but the usher would not allow him in. He argued with her for a bit, then tried the usher at the center aisle, who also did not allow him to take his seat.There weren’t that many costumes this year, sadly. The house was not full either.
* Overheard *
The third and fourth people in the standing room line told the house manager that his absence at the final performance of Rigoletto was sorely missed, as there were many people in line and much chaos. They also expressed their disapproval of latecomers who talked in standing room, and the house manager assured them that they were working on having the opera on screens in the lobby.Leave a Reply
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Deutsche Oper Berlin decided to reschedule Idomeneo for two performances before the end of the year. All this controversy certainly is suspect, perhaps it is true that no publicity is bad publicity. I suppose if I were running an opera house in a city with two other major competitors, I might try a few stunts myself. Particularly when the house in question may well be the ugliest one in all the land. The building dates from 1961, as should be obvious. Berlin’s "most modern opera house" is said to have an "elegant retro-design," but I cannot say the concrete block is inspiring in any way. The inside is even more horrid, what with the dated wood paneling and mustard-yellow upholstery. One only hopes that in a few decades the kitsch-factor will become humorous instead of just painful.Leave a Reply
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This season, instead of sending subscribers a yearbook going over all of the operas showing at San Francisco Opera, they sent out a double CD with David Gockley talking about each opera and playing clips. Seattle Opera has been doing this for a few years as well, and this format is useful as one can get a feel for the actual music. Mr. Gockley certainly is entertaining, his tone is unpretentious. The music used is from the San Francisco Opera archive, so there was no clip of Iphigénie en Tauride, as it has never been given here.The preview of the 2006-2007 season has been made into a podcast, along with a September 15, 2006 interview with Deborah Voigt. I must say their suggestions for when to listen are hilarious: Listen while you drive to work, do the laundry, or work out at the gym.
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* Notes *
The Wagner Society of Northern California held a symposium on Tristan und Isolde last Saturday, October 21, 2006. There were seven speakers whose topics ranged from the day-to-day administration of Tristan at San Francisco Opera to a Jungian analysis of Wagner. The turn out was good, about a hundred people.The highlight of the day was the round table with Christine Brewer and Jane Irwin, both were charming. Kip Cranna, who interviewed them, always speaks well. I also very much enjoyed Evan Baker’s talk on Tristan und Isolde in Vienna, not least because of his amusing slides. Particularly interesting were Hoffmann’s watercolors of the original sets for Das Rheingold and Die Walküre, which Baker photoshopped into an engraving of the Nationaltheater München’s stage. This doesn’t seem to have much to with the talk, subtitled "The Iconoclastic Mahler/Roller Production of Tristan und Isolde," but it did show how this Viennese production was a departure. He went on to speak about Adolphe Appia, the Wiener Werkstätte, and the Secessionists, all with plenty of visuals.
* Tattling *
The main purpose of this Wagner society is to wrangle tickets to the Richard-Wagner-Festspiele in Bayreuth. Sandra Molyneaux signed me up for a membership and later checked up on me to see how the day was going. She asked if I was interested in going to Bayreuth, and I must admit it is tempting. The last time I was there was in 1998 for a semester abroad, and naturally I did not have tickets to the Festspiele. It was interesting to see Bayreuth go from the quiet university town that it is most of the year to Wagnerstadt in the summer.Leave a Reply
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* Notes *
The fourth performance of Tristan und Isolde was last night, and it was consistent with the previous performance I saw last week. Thomas Moser (Tristan) started off pretty well in Act I, and he sang beautifully in Act II, but by Act III he was rather quiet.* Tattling *
The audience was at its worst, quite unlike October 10th, I suspect it is because there are no other performances during the work week, and there were four in the prior one. One individual who arrived late was made to sit in standing room, and he talked in a normal speaking voice, dragged the chair about, and refused to be quiet after repeated hushings. For Act III someone gave me his ticket for Z 118, the last row of the orchestra, and at one point all the people immediately around me were asleep. A woman fanning herself with a program spoke during the "Verklärung," to tell her companion (who had been asleep most of the act), "Look he’s getting up!" in reference to the silly choreographic choice of having the dead Tristan rise to stand behind Isolde.* Overheard *
During the first intermission I heard a hilarious exchange between two men, one of which was a graduate student who had lived in Berlin until recently. The graduate student said something about how the San Francisco crowd for Wagner was much gayer than in Berlin, where the people are the type to wear black turtlenecks. I had no idea black turtlenecks and gaiety were mutually exclusive. Also, the other man mentioned that Ms. Brewer would not enjoy Covent Garden, in reference to her weight and the Voigt incident. The graduate student exclaimed that he had never seen a skinny Isolde. I wanted to mention Waltraud Meier in Bayerische Staatsoper’s DVD, but decided it was best not to comment.Before Act II started, a young man was excoriating the King Arthur performance recently in Berkeley as he walked to his orchestra seat with a friend. Apparently he was dragged to Zellerbach without his consent. He said he despised Mark Morris and that there was nothing exquisite in his choreography, that it was tawdry.
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Coloratura soprano Ruth Ann Swenson has breast cancer. Ms. Swenson is a favorite in San Francisco, where she had her 1983 debut as Despina in Così Fan Tutte as a second year Adler Fellow. She was last seen here as the Countess in Le Nozze di Figaro in June of this year. In the picture featured to the left, she is singing the role of Cleopatra with countertenor David Daniels (not pictured) in the Met’s production of Giulio Cesare, which she is to sing again in April 2007.Leave a Reply
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Los Angeles Opera has a podcast.
Press Release [PDF]| Podcast Web Site
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