Tosca

 

 

Conductor - Riccardo Frizza
Director - Jose Maria Condemi

Mario Cavaradossi - Brian Jagde
Floria Tosca - Lianna Haroutounian
Baron Scarpia - Mark Delavan

When this performance of Tosca first played in San Francisco in 2014, I must have missed it.  It is being streamed today from the San Francisco Opera.  I saw Brian sing Cavaradossi in Santa Fe in 2012, and may have felt it was to soon to see him again.

There are some fun things in this production.  From the evidence, Tosca seems to be the most conservatively dressed female in all of Rome.  In the Te Deum we have men in uniforms of the Swiss guards.  In Act II we see that the walls are painted with figures, as they would be in the Palazzo Farnese,  but the lighting is too dim to allow us to see them.  In general they have done a wonderful job of creating the atmosphere of Rome.  A little more light would have been nice.

Mark Delavan is fine but not really snarly enough for Scarpia who needs to project evil in the sound of his voice.  But then I've seen Thomas Hampson in the role, and he isn't snarly at all.

Brian is lovely, handsome and romantic.  Better than at Santa Fe. And Lianna Haroutounian plays the Diva with charm and intense jealousy.  She's trying to make the best of a bad situation, and ultimately fails.  She presents the varied emotions of the character vividly.  I like her very much.  She is why you would want to see this.  She crosses herself before jumping.  Of course.

Korngold's Das Wunder der Heliane

Conductor: Marc Albrecht 
Stage director:  Christof Loy  

Heliane: Sara Jakubiak
The Ruler, her husband: Josef Wagner
The Stranger: Brian Jagde
The Messenger: Okka Von der Damerau
The Doorman: Derek Welton
The Blind Judge: Burkhard Ulrich
The Young Man: Gideon Poppe

From Deutsche Oper Berlin from 2018 on Medici.tv we have Korngold's Das Wunder der Heliane, 1927.  I am watching it because Lotte Lehmann said Heliane was her favorite role.  It is the outer extreme of post Romanticism.

In Act I there are three characters:  The Stranger, the Ruler and his wife Heliane.  She is the only one with an actual name.  The Ruler is pissed because his wife doesn't love him.  So he kills anyone who seems happy, including The Stranger who wanders into town and cheers people up.  While he is in jail awaiting his execution, Heliane comes in to comfort him.  She announces herself as the Queen.  This is one of the wildest scenes in opera.  At The Stranger's request she first takes down her hair, then takes off her shoes, and finally takes off everything else.  Is this part of comforting?  So did Lotte like the nudity?  Husband comes back and things go from bad to worse.  The music is very intense.

In Act II Heliane is tried for being unfaithful to her husband.  The blind Judge enters, and both The Ruler and Heliane call him Father.  He speaks to Heliane as though she were a child, so I presume that he is her father.  She testifies in a long amazing aria "Ich ging zu ihm."



The Stranger comes into the courtroom and asks to be left alone for a moment with Heliane.  The King and the Judge allow this.  Our Stranger is very persuasive and gets Heliane to kiss him "for the first and last time."  She does, and he stabs himself and dies.

The chorus enters complaining that The Stranger has been taken from them.  She tells her husband she is pure and he decides that if she is pure she will bring The Stranger back to life.  The act ends with her swearing that she will.

The ending in Act III is complex.  The Stranger rises from the dead, but this only enrages the King who stabs his wife.  You should know it has a happy ending.  What is one to make of such a thing?  They played it very low key, but the music is large and soaring.  I'm glad I took the time to see it.

Turandot in San Francisco

Conductor Nicola Luisotti
Production and Design David Hockney

Turandot: Martina Serafin
Calaf: Brian Jagde
Liù: Toni Marie Palmertree
Timur: Raymond Aceto
Ping: Joo Won Kang
Pang: Julius Ahn
Pong: Joel Sorensen
A Mandarin: Brad Walker
Emperor: Altoum Robert Brubaker *

Puccini's Turandot played at the San Francisco Opera last night in the wonderful David Hockney production.  One of the reasons it's so wonderful is because it doesn't look at all Chinese.  Because the story isn't actually Chinese.  It should reasonably be regarded as a fairy tale.  I'm a sucker for the story, although I enjoyed it more before I could remember the answers to the riddles.

The chorus was particularly spectacular.  Brian Jagde seemed very intense.  With Turandot it is as much the spectacle one comes for rather than the fine details.  Let's just say it's one of the hardest operas to cast in the repertoire.

Carmen

Conductor: Carlo Montanaro
Production: Calixto Bieito

Lillas Pastia (speaking): Yusef Lambert
Moralès: Edward Nelson †
Micaëla: Ellie Dehn
Zuniga: Brad Walker † *
Manuelita: Jamielyn Duggan
Carmen: Irene Roberts
Don José: Brian Jagde
Escamillo: Zachary Nelson *
Frasquita: Amina Edris † *
Mercédès: Renée Rapier
† Adler

The bare bones production of Carmen currently playing at the San Francisco Opera seems to be placed in the present.  When Micaela and Don Jose meet in the first act they take a selfie together.  Now a selfie requires a digital camera where the display screen points in the same direction as the camera lens.  You can only do that with a phone, I think.

At the very beginning of the opera a man dressed in a white suit, Lillas Pastia we decided, comes out and says "Love is like Death."  This means we are doing the original version of the opera with spoken dialog.  There is a lot of silly business in this production.  Micaela says Don Jose's mother tells her to deliver a kiss from her.  She then plants a serious one on him.  He follows this kiss with staring into the distance and reminiscing about his mother.  Micaela knows that she is toast.

When the other girls come out together from the cigarette factory smoking cigarettes (no smell of tobacco), no one can find Carmen.  She is in the phone booth making a call.  So why doesn't she have a mobile phone like every other modern girl?  The phone booth is the only scenery besides a flag pole and flag.

A half naked, and possibly also completely naked, man (sorry, forgot binoculars) appears for no discernible reason.  I thought as a message to gay pride celebrators outside, "hey, I bet we have more naked men in here than you do out there."

Cars.  Five of them in one scene.   A line marking machine appeared and drew a circle. 

The music was very lively, fast paced and fun.   I enjoyed this for no reason that I could explain.  Brian Jagde is far sexier than our Escamillo, so we are confused about why Carmen doesn't prefer him.  Ellie Dehn was a lovely Micaela, and I enjoyed Irene Roberts as Carmen.

Brian Jagde at Mondavi

Brian Jagde claimed that last night at Mondavi Center was his first full recital as a tenor.  I have to say he started at the top.  What exactly does that mean?  Did he used to be a baritone?

It was announced that he was somewhat under the weather, something that seemed only a small problem in the slower, softer selections.  He wanted to sing anyway.  He called the selections "deep."  I thought that perhaps he had chosen repertoire that he truly loved.  I always advise this.  Love the music you are singing and sing it with all the love you have.

The first group was a set of German Lieder, one each by Schubert (the famous serenade), Schumann (Stille Traenen), Brahms (Mainacht), Wolf and Mahler (Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen).  I love all these songs, and he was not afraid to allow his voice to soar to almost operatic proportions.  Perhaps he's been listening to a certain German who does not hesitate to do this.

Next he performed the Holy Sonnets of John Donne by Benjamin Britten.  These are true sonnets on deeply religious subjects, rare in the world of great poetry and even rarer in the world of classical recitals.  Brian brought the required serious intensity to these wonderful songs which were completely unfamiliar to me.

Next he did 5 songs of Rachmaninov and ended with 4 songs by Richard Strauss, Traum durch die Daemmerung, Breit Ueber mein Haupt, Allerseelen (a personal favorite) and Zueignung (another favorite).  He sang big and was most successful when he did so.

His accompanist Craig Terry laid his music down on the piano instead of using the stand, creating the impression that he wasn't using music.  He seemed to be having a lot of fun and enjoying how much the audience was loving it.

The first encore was dedicated to Barbara Jackson who sat up high near the stage.  The hall is named after her.  He sang for her "Recondit armonia" from Tosca, and it was glorious.  This is what he really sings, of course.

The second encore was "Be my love."  Let's just say I think you need actually to be Mario Lanza.  It was a bit anticlimactic.

This was the most fun I've had at a recital in a long time.  Bravo.  Sing what you love.

Tosca at Santa Fe

This picture in a somewhat wider and more decrepit version is the decoration for Act II of Tosca at the Santa Fe Opera.  Its title is "Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne" by Annibale Carracci, and it is indeed in the Pallazzo Farnese in Rome.  Only there it's on the ceiling while here it's on the wall.  A lot of that sort of thing goes on in this production.  (Please note the tie-in to Dionysus in King Roger.  This cannot be a coincidence.)

 
This shot shows the inside of the church dome with Cavaradossi's painting lying on the floor for Act I.  People walk all over it.  Bizarre.  And who are these lovely people?  Brian Jagde sang Cavaradossi and  Amanda Echalaz was Tosca, both big soaring, romantic Puccini singers.  Amanda was best in the intense scenes, and I liked very much her "Vissi d'arte." 

Brian is a replacement for the arranged singer.  I knew the name sounded very familiar.  He has been an Adler Fellow for 3 years, and he just won Operalia (I even managed to remember this.)  He needs to work this role into his voice more completely before he sings it in San Francisco in November.

The third person in this production was Thomas Hampson as Scarpia.  He is very sophisticated and casual about his evilness.  A lot of women think Hampson is very handsome, so what exactly is Tosca's problem?  We may never know the answer.  He died with a lot of flailing around.  He was booed in the bows and made a comical gesture--Moi?

Opera productions of the most popular operas become like established rituals.  The picture hangs here, Scarpia dies here, Tosca jumps here, but occasionally it is interesting to see something slightly different.  It is nice not to have to explain the opera.

[See Kinderkuchen History 1890-1910]