Linda di Chamounix from Firenze

 

 

Conductor - Michele Gamba

Production - Cesare Lievi

 

Linda - Jessica Pratt
Pierotto - Teresa Iervolino
Carlo - Francesco Demuro
Antonio, Linda's father - Vittorio Prato
Maddalena, Linda's mother - Marina De Liso
Il Marchese di Boisfleury, Carlo's uncle - Fabio Capitanucci
Il Prefetto - Michele Pertusi
L'Intendente del feudo - Antonio Gares

Maggio Musicale Fiorentino brings us Donizetti's Linda di Chamounix, 1842.  There are subtitles, but they are in Italian.  The chorus and orchestra are wearing medical masks, so we may assume this performance is current, last week.  

Our heroine has just made her entrance and sings "O luce di quest'anima," the hit tune of this opera.  Well done.  Pierotto is a pants role, and his song does not appear to be part of the story.  Nevertheless, it's good.

There is a stereotypical plot element in this opera.  A male member of the upper class pretends to be poor so he can flirt with girls from the lower classes.  La Donna del Lago.  Rigoletto.  These are some other examples.  Linda is the daughter of tenant farmers in Chamounix, France, though her father is played as far too feeble to be a farmer.  Her boyfriend Carlo is the nephew of  the Marchese who owns the land where Linda's parents farm.  She, of course, does not know this.  I have no idea how Pierotto fits into the plot.

 

The Marchese wants Linda for some reason and will evict her parents if he cannot take her back to his palace.  This is a new twist.  The Prefetto tells her she must go to Paris with the boys for the winter to escape the Marchese.  Pierotto will take care of her.

The music is very beautiful.  In Act II Linda and Pierotto have a charming duet.  He explains to her that he has not been with her because he has been ill.  She explains that Carlo has been there to help her.  Pierotto leaves, and the Marchese arrivcs and tries to get her to go with him to his palace.  After he has gone, Carlo appears in a military uniform, and they sing of love.  He goes over to her and starts unbuttoning her clothing.  She falls on the floor and appears shocked.  Duet.  He leaves.  

It is convenient how each person appears one at a time.  Next comes padre.  She thinks maybe she should button her clothes before he recognizes her.  She reveals herself, he gets angry, Pierotto tells him and her that Carlo is the Viscount.  He gets really angry, curses her and leaves.

Enough plot.  People aren't behaving as they should.  The role of Linda is HUGE.  It all has a happy ending, which makes it lots less interesting than Lucia, I guess.  There's lots of talking.  You shouldn't expect it to enter standard repertoire any time soon, but it's enjoyable.  Lovely cast.

 

The Elixir of Love

 

Conductor:  Bruno Campanella
Director:  James Robinson

Giannetta: Ji Young Yang

Adina: Inva Mula

Nemorino:  Ramón Vargas

Belcore: Giorgio Caoduro

Dr. Dulcamara: Alessandro Corbelli

 

This version of Donizetti's L’Elisir d’Amore from 2008 at the San Francisco Opera is completely new to me.  How is this possible?  We are in Napa in California before the US entrance into WWI.  Uncle Sam is recruiting for the army.  For people from California this completely works.  Farms, wine, a rich lady farm owner.  Yes.  Adina and Nemorino are singing and eating ice cream.  They just nibble, or we would worry. 

 

Ramon Vargas is the perfect Nemorino, overflowing with cheerfulness..  This performance includes the greatest of all comic Italian baritones--Alessandro Corbelli.  He seems like the ideal con man.  This is charming and fun.  This is Inva Mula's only appearance at the San Francisco Opera.  She is not my favorite Adina but projects the too good for Nemorino aura required.  Stylistically she is dead on.

There is an ice cream truck and a motorcycle with a side car.  Belcore has boxing gloves instead of a uniform.  All the young men put on military uniforms as volunteers for the war.  It's fun and transfers effectively to Napa.

Lucia di Lammermoor in San Francisco

ConductorJean-Yves Ossonce†
Production designer-Paul Brown

Normanno-Matthew O'Neill
Enrico Ashton-Gabriele Viviani †
Raimondo Bidebent-Oren Gradus
Lucia-Natalie Dessay
Alisa-Cybele-Teresa Gouverneur
Edgardo Ravenswood-Giuseppe Filianoti
Arturo-Andrew Bidlack

This is Natalie Dessay in San Francisco in 2008 singing Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor.   I attended and reviewed at that time.  This is Donizetti's most popular serious opera, but perhaps I only like the comedies. 

I've seen 6 different productions of this opera by now, and my favorite by a wide margin is the Zimmerman version with the fountain and the ghost.  The ghost is my favorite.  I understand they are retiring it, which seems very sad to me.  This one from San Francisco is rather dull.

I am enjoying Filianoti more this time.  The singing is fine. I have only seen 6, so from the ones I've seen, I prefer the one with Lisette and Javier I saw in 2018.  I apologize for all this comparing.

Lucrezia Borgia

Conductor - Riccardo Frizza

Director and Production Designer - John Pascoe

Michael Fabiano - Gennaro

Renée Fleming - Lucrezia Borgia

Vitalij Kowaljow* - Duke Alfonso

Daniel Montenegro* - Rustighello

Ryan Kuster* - Astolfo

Blanche Hampton* - Princess Negroni

Elizabeth DeShong - Maffio Orsini

The most fun part of Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia from the San Francisco Opera is Michael Fabiano in a wild blond wig.  We are used to him bald, but with hair he is completely gorgeous.  Sigh. 

I was present at the original performance series in 2011.  Hearing it again, I am most impressed with the ensembles.  Musically it is a joy, and with a film acoustic and balance problems are fixed. 

The production and singing are enjoyable, but it is clear that Lucrezia creates her own tragedy.  She has searched for Gennaro and has finally found him in Venice.  He shows her a letter from his mother.  No matter how dire the circumstances, she never tells anyone that she is his mother.  Not even him.  She's willing to risk killing him but not this.  She would not risk her own status.  It's ok for men to have illegitimate children, but not women.  So everyone dies.  One does not identify with this story.

Don Pasquale from Covent Garden

Director Damiano Michieletto
Conductor Evelino Pidò

Don Pasquale Bryn Terfel
Norina Olga Peretyatko
Ernesto Ioan Hotea
Doctor Malatesta Markus Werba

Occasionally operas from the ROH play in a local movie theater here.  This time we saw Donizetti's Don Pasquale with Bryn and Olga Peretyatko.  This is an excellent role for Bryn.  This is regie, of course.  When Norina receives a message from Ernesto, it is by way of her mobile phone.  Ding.

This opera works pretty well in a modern setting.  She's not an imprisoned woman like in so many other Italian comedies.  Instead it's the young man who is being disinherited for wanting to marry the girl he loves.  In Italian comedies love always will out.  One tires of the young people tricking the nasty old man plot.  One is after all old oneself.

Whitsun 2020 - Cancelled

Pauline Viardot-Garcia

Cecilia Bartoli's Whitsun Festival at Salzburg in 2020 will be an homage to Pauline Viardot-Garcia (1821 – 1910), the sister of Maria Malibran.  Viardot's voice did not precisely mesh with Cecilia's, which explains why she has not featured her before.

The Pfingstfest as curated by La Bartoli usually features a fully staged opera starring herself that is presented twice.  Next year it will be Donizetti's Don Pasquale sung in a version ornamented for Viardot and directed by Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier.  This should be fun.

Berlioz created an arrangement of Gluck's Orphée et Eurydice for Pauline which she sang over 150 times.  This will be the second opera and will not feature Cecilia.  I once reviewed this arrangement from a DVD here.

The remainder of the festival generally involves concerts.  One will feature the great choral works the Fauré Requiem and the Brahms Alto Rhapsody, both works which I love very much.  There will be a staged song matinee with songs by Viardot and starring mezzo-soprano Vivica Genaux.

The festival will end with a gala concert designed as an homage to the entire Garcia family:  Cecilia Bartoli as Maria Malibran, Varduhi Abrahamyan as Pauline Viardot, and Javier Camarena as Manuel García.  There is much to love.  I haven't been traveling for health reasons, but perhaps I should at least consider this.  The dates are May 29 - June 1.

P.S. Cecilia Bartoli has extended her Whitsun Festival contract to 2026.

La Fille du Regiment

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Conductor..................Enrique Mazzola
Production.................Laurent Pelly

Marie......................Pretty Yende
Tonio......................Javier Camarena
Marquise of Berkenfield....Stephanie Blythe
Sergeant Sulpice...........Maurizio Muraro
Hortentius.................Paul Corona
Duchesse of Krakentorp.....Kathleen Turner

Today's HD from the Met is Donizetti's La Fille du Regiment, a revival of the Laurent Pelly production.  I didn't think this was possible, but it was even more fun than with Natalie Dessay.

Tonio is a Tyrolean, and Marie is a found child raised by a regiment of the French army invading Tyrol.  Marie does laundry and peels potatoes.  She also wanders off into a neighboring village where she meets Tonio.  Pretty Yende does the best job ever of seeming to be a young woman raised by a troop of soldiers.  She swears, though I noticed they didn't translate this.

This was also an historic occasion:  we had the first bis (encore) in any HD performance.   Of course this was for Javier Camarena's performance of "Ah mes amis" with the famous 9 high Cs.  So with a bis that makes 18 high Cs.  Dare we say it?  He is the new king of the high Cs.

This is such a marvelous cast with gorgeous singing and lively acting that swept us along.  We laughed and cried and rejoiced when aunt/mother allows Marie and Tonio to wed.  Wonderful.

I missed the sprouted potato found with Marie's souvenirs in previous performances.

Roberto Devereux in San Francisco

👍🏻
We were discussing the current queen of opera Sondra Radvanovsky, and I suggested we sing "God Save the Queen" when she came out for her bow, forgetting entirely that the opera starts with that same tune.  I am speaking of the current production of Donizetti's Roberto Devereux from the San Francisco Opera, a wonderful performance of a less than entirely wonderful opera. 

Conductor: Riccardo Frizza
Director: Stephen Lawless

Elisabetta (Elizabeth I): Sondra Radvanovsky
Roberto Devereux, Earl of Essex: Russell Thomas
Sara: Jamie Barton
Duke of Nottingham: Andrew Manea [Adler]
Lord Cecil: Amitai Pati [Adler]
Walter Raleigh: Christian Pursell [Adler]

This opera is questionable from a plot perspective.  The above listed characters are all members of the British upper class.  It is fairly easy to describe the relationship aspects of the story.

Elizabeth and Roberto have a secret relationship.  Since Nottingham knows nothing about it, we may assume that this is truly secret.  Then before leaving England to lead a war in Ireland, Robert starts a love relationship with Sara, a young woman in the court.  Robert goes off to war, and while he is away, Sara's father dies.  An upper class woman cannot be left free in the world, so Elizabeth arranges a marriage for her with the Duke of Nottingham.  No one is aware that she is in love with Essex.

Essex returns from war where he has been unsuccessful to find that Sara is married.  Meanwhile Elizabeth hopes that he still loves her.  An emotional mess ensues, the kind of emotional mess that can only happen in an Italian opera.  Long ago Elizabeth gave Robert a ring which he was to send to her if he was ever in danger.

Robert goes to see Sara.  So why isn't he locked up in the Tower of London?  She gives him a love token which her husband recognizes.  

The part of the plot that makes no sense is the political part.  In real life Essex is supposed to have tried to overthrow the queen, which would make nonsense of her part in the emotional, operatic plot.  So the charges are trivial and relate to him being overly merciful toward the Irish.  So he is executed for no apparent reason.  The ring doesn't arrive in time. It's even more complicated than what I have described.

This is Queen Elizabeth's most vulnerable moment, and it happens in her old age.  She died in her 69th year.  It is mysteriously wonderful how Sondra Radvanovsky fits this role.  She is tall and regal, and has a large, commanding voice.  You believe that she is the absolute monarch who has fallen in love in her old age.  It is difficult to imagine any other soprano bringing this role to such spectacular heights.  She should sing it in your city, too.

The production which comes from Canada made the complex plot very clear, clearer than the recent Met production.  Sondra's supporting singers, primarily Russell Thomas, Jamie Barton and Andrew Manea, rose almost to her magnificence.  I don't think this is a great opera, though it is leading the path to Verdi, but it is a great opera for Sondra Radvanovsky.  Brava.

Lucia from Madrid

👍🏻
Conductor: Daniel Oren
Director: David Alden

Lucia: Lisette Oropesa
Edgardo: Javier Camarena
Enrico Ashton: Artur Rucinski
Raimondo Bidebent: Roberto Tagliavini
Lord Arturo Bucklaw: Yijie Shi
Alisa: Marina Pinchuk
Normanno: Alejandro del Cerro

I've never actually seen a live bis in an opera before (they do them all the time in concerts in Italy, usually of something you'd rather not hear again).  When I realized what it was, I burst into tears.  And an ensemble, the sextet, on top of it.  I'm seriously loving this.  Everyone is a shit except Lucia.  She's already pretty insane before the mad scene.   We had a glass harmonica.

I am speaking, of course, of Gaetano Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor streamed live from Teatro Real Madrid.  The set is like your high school gym.  There's a radiator.  I think the theme is "you'd go nuts too if everyone you knew was this awful."  We're doing a play within a play.  At the end of the mad scene the chorus claps very slowly.  It's not at all like the loud shouting from the real audience.  The production does nothing to explain the opera but focuses entirely on the atmosphere.

The singing and for me also the acting were very good.  I love Lisette, but she will need to stay light in this role.  I came for Lisette and Javier, two of my favorites of the young singers, and they did not disappoint.  Javier wears a kilt in this, a first for me.

Lisette has also performed the ROH Lucia which I reviewed with Diana Damrau.  This version will be available on OperaVision for a while.  If you missed the live stream, watch it now.

I have to add a comment.  Lisette's physical training gives her a kind of absolute control over the phrase.  It's stunning.

Opera in Disguise

Sacramento State Opera Theater presented two short operas with a common theme:  one or more characters are in disguise.  The great disguise opera is La Cenerentola where the Prince and his valet exchange places. Both roles are well developed.

There is a small orchestra positioned behind the singers.  I have been in this theater when it had a pit, and the remnants of the pit are still visible.  So why don't they use it?  The supertitles were virtually invisible, and other signs of disrepair were all around.

Conductor:  Ryan Murray
Director:    Omari Tau

Le Jeu de l'Amour et du Hasard (1946) by Pierre Petit

Sylvia, a young Parisian    Angela Yam, soprano
Lisette, her maid                Tatiana Grabcluc, soprano
Dotante, a young Parisian  Nathan Halbut, baritone, guest artist

Sylvia is expecting a visit from her betrothed, a man named Dotante.  They are betrothed but have never met, apparently.  Sylvia and Lisette change places, which consists primarily of putting the maid's outfit onto Sylvia.  When a young man arrives, he claims to be Dotante's servant.  The two pretend servants get along very well and decide once the disguises are revealed that marriage would be a good idea after all.

This is a relatively modern piece and is therefore through-composed.  The music was sweet and charming.  I liked both of the young women in this work, and would have liked to hear more of Tatiana.  Angela is beautiful and appeared also in the next opera.

Il campanello di notte (1836) by Gaetano Donizetti

Serafina, a young bride                       Angela Yam, soprano
Don Annibale Pistacchio, an apothecary  Justin Ramm-Damron, bass
Enrico, Serafina's cousin                      Jordan Krack, baritone, opera theater alumnus
Spiridione, Don Annibale's servant      Jacob Burke, tenor
Madama Rosa, Serafina's mother        Valerie Loera

Don Annibale, an old man, has just married Serafina who is much too young for him.  Their family members are celebrating the nuptials.  A cute bit of business occurs when Don Annibale and his new mother-in-law dance together and she leads.  Enrico arrives and has a long duet with Serafina for the most operatic section of the piece.  She is not encouraging, and Enrico leaves after toasting the groom.  This scene would have been improved with visible supertitles.

Don Annibale dresses for bed with his new bride, but before anything can happen, Enrico arrives in three disguises, each needing a prescription.  From here it is a major slapstick tour de force for Enrico.  He looks and acts like an idiot in all three of his disguises.  The audience screamed.  The most amazing thing about this opera and probably the explanation for why you have never seen it lies in the lines for disguise number 3:  they have a long list of ingredients for the prescription which they recite like a patter song.  How is this even possible?  Jordan Crack carried this entire opera.

It was Donizetti and therefore featured extended sections of secco recitative played on an electric piano.  It was too loud.  I always say sing with the music, not the conductor.  Here there was no choice.  The conductor faced the musicians at the back, even when playing the electric piano.  The singers either faced each other or the audience.  No one got lost or confused.

This is fun, and you will never see either of these operas again.

L’Elisir d’Amore in HD

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CONDUCTOR:  Domingo Hindoyan
PRODUCTION:  Bartlett Sher

ADINA:  Pretty Yende
NEMORINO:  Matthew Polenzani
BELCORE:  Davide Luciano
DULCAMARA:  Ildebrando D'Arcangelo

We saw in HD today the excellent Bartlett Sher production of Donizetti's L’Elisir d’Amore.  I've seen this production before and know that the top hat worn by Adina proclaims that she is the landlord of this country property seen at the beginning of the opera.  Matthew was Nemoriino the last time.

Something happened this time that hasn't happened for me:  in the second scene in town before Dulcamara arrives Adina and Nemorino tease and play with one another.  Clearly she already has eyes only for him.  What we with our egalitarian perspective don't notice is that penniless Nemorino is far too much lower in class for land owner Adina.  I felt tremendous rapport between Pretty and Matthew in this performance, and it changed the dynamic of the opera for me.  Pretty is charming and beautiful.

This is the sixth time I have blogged about this opera, and I think I have enjoyed this one the most.  It was extremely cheerful, and I think I prefer it that way.  The prompter's arm was seen as he struggled with the elixir. Lidia Bastianich appeared in the intermission to tell us about her new pasta dish called "pasta d'amore."  Food and opera are her great loves.  She did standard opera bragging by telling that her first live opera was Aida at the old Met with Leontyne Price and Franco Corelli.  Dulcamara ate the pasta on stage.

La Favorite

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Conductor: Karel Mark Chichon
Production: Amélie Niermeyer

Léonor de Guzman: Elīna Garanča (mezzo)
Fernand: Matthew Polenzani (tenor)
Alphonse XI: Mariusz Kwiecień (baritone)
Balthazar: Mika Kares (bass)
Don Gaspard: Joshua Owen Mills (tenor)
Inès: Elsa Benoit (soprano)

We are experiencing a live stream of Donizetti's La Favorite, in French, from the Bayerische Staatsoper. 

If you have Elīna Garanča, Matthew Polenzani and Mariusz Kwiecień, you do La Favorite.  These three are a marvelous trio of singing actors.  We get the full on masculine pig behavior from Mariusz, perhaps in honor of our American pig candidate.  This is, of course, Regietheater.  You know, mostly black modern clothing, no particular set.  There is a section in Act II where Léonor and Alphonse are alone and seem to be watching television together.  This can only have been a ballet.  So he responds in a very manic way to what he's seeing alternating with pawing her.  She finds the whole thing boring.  At one point they laugh.  She tells him that she came to him from her home expecting to be married.

This story conflicts with its presentation in this production.  Alphonse is constantly molesting Léonor in every possible context.  It is simply unbelievable that Fernand does not understand what this means.  She marries in black.  Too many clues, Fernand.  We're not buying it when you "suddenly" understand.  He's claiming his honor is lost.  She's saying his soul knows the truth, so why is his pride so inflamed?  Now she's slinking off in her slip.  The chorus is pommeling her with flowers.

Fernand returns to the monastery and Léonor prays.  All three of our singers are wonderful.  She's back, but this time she has on a black watch cap and another black men's suit.  I am seriously loving the singing here.  The ending is marvelous.  One loves most of all the sounds of their voices, which were beautiful together.

Ten years ago I said about this opera:

"It is only recently that women have broken out of their categories. Before that there were good girls and bad girls, angels and whores. It makes a whole opera plot that a whore is mistaken for an angel. You can't always tell, you know.

"In opera angels are sopranos and whores are mezzos. We realize there are exceptions, such as Manon, but generally whores are mezzos. Carmen, Dalila, Maddalena, and Leonor in Donizetti´s La Favorite. She is the king's mistress, and when Fernand falls for her, she refuses to tell who she is. She deliberately lets him think his whore is an angel.

"The opera has a simple beginning--a priest who has not taken his final vows falls for one of his parishioners--and a simple ending--she saves him from hell by dying. In the middle it gets pretty complicated. The king wants to divorce his wife to marry his mistress in spite of the pope's opposition. Fernand also wants her, and when the king promises to grant him any wish, Fernand wishes for Leonor. The courtiers still consider her a whore and tell Fernand now that it is too late and he has married her that he has lost his honor. From there everything just goes to hell. "

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Don Pasquale

Dr. Malatesta, Norina, Don Pasquale, Ernesto

Conductor: Giuseppe Finzi
Director: Laurent Pelly

Don Pasquale: Maurizio Muraro
Norina: Heidi Stober
Ernesto: Lawrence Brownlee*
Dr. Malatesta:  Lucas Meachem

I knew there was something that looked familiar about this production of Donizetti's Don Pasquale.  It is shared with the Santa Fe Opera.  In Santa Fe there are no overhead flies and things often slide out from the sides.  Well that's what this does.  The colors are drab in the extreme and only brighten up later through the introduction of colored chairs and flowers.  I thought it was functional but drab.  Drab in a comedy doesn't make much sense to me.  Laurent Pelly retained his credit but did not come out to bow.  I suspect this is not actually his production.

The highlight of this performance was the company debut of Lawrence Brownlee as Ernesto.  He had the most slapstick comedy and performed it expertly.  Besides being a fabulous singer.  We loved him.  He was well matched to Heidi Stober, by now a company favorite.  Larry, please come back.

It was in fact a fabulous cast.  Everyone met and exceeded expectations.  This is my list of where I have seen these people.

• Maurizio Muraro SFO live (Don Pasquale, Barber of Seville) London (Manon Lescaut, I due Foscari) Met (Cosi fan tutte)

• Heidi Stober SFO live (Don Pasquale, Show Boat, Xerxes, Falstaff, Un Ballo in Maschera, Sweeney Todd) at Santa Fe live (Platée, Arabella, La Boheme) Berlin live (vocal recital)

• Lawrence Brownlee* SFO live (Don Pasquale)  Met (La Cenerentola, Armida, Barber of Seville)

• Lucas Meachem  SFO live (Die Tote Stadt, Le Nozze di Figaro, Don Pasquale, I Pagliacci, Barber of Seville) Santa Fe live (Don Giovanni)

For me the fabulous singing actors saved this.  But then don't they always?  The intermission was extended by about 20 minutes without explanation.

Footnote:  the program cover showed a picture of Gina Lollobrigida.

Lucia di Lammermoor from ROH

Conductor: Daniel Oren
Designer: Vicki Mortimer

Lucia: Diana Damrau
Edgardo: Charles Castronovo
Enrico: Ludovic Tézier
Arturo: Taylor Stayton
Raimondo: Kwangchul Youn
Normanno: Peter Hoare
Alisa:  Rachael Lloyd

The notorious Lucia di Lammermoor from the Royal Opera Covent Garden played last night in my local movie theater.  It was a not to be missed.

This is Lucia with all the details left in and then more details added.  The stage is divided into two sections for every scene, allowing the character Lucia to be on stage throughout the opera.

The opera begins at the haunted fountain where Enrico and his cohorts are searching for clues to an intruder and ultimately find a message from Lucia to Edgardo hidden in the fountain.  The ghost of the fountain is there, but the men do not notice her.  On the other side of the stage Lucia is in her dressing room preparing to go out disguised as a man.

We are still at the fountain when Lucia enters with her maid, also disguised as a man.  She sees the ghost who goes up to her and kisses her.  Lucia seems to be the only one who notices the ghost.  She sings "Regnava nel silenzio" and describes the ghost to Alisa.

Edgardo arrives for the love duet.  They undress each other and fuck while singing bel canto, to mysterious effect.  I wonder if the porn industry has thought of this.  Edgardo must leave for France, and they exchange rings.

Roberto Devereux in HD

Conductor: Maurizio Benini
Production: David McVicar

Elisabetta: Sondra Radvanovsky (soprano)
Sara, Duchess of Nottingham: Elīna Garanča (mezzo-soprano)
Roberto Devereux: Matthew Polenzani (tenor)
Duke of Nottingham: Mariusz Kwiecien (baritone)

Roberto Devereux by Donizetti completed Sondra Radvanovsky's tour de force trilogy of Donizetti's three queens in a single season.  For my money this is the opera that most suits her gifts.  Overheard talking to myself, "But this is a wonderful opera."  Perhaps it is wonderful because a constantly enraged queen suits so perfectly the voice of Sondra Radvanovsky.  I did not see in Sondra's portrayal the nonsensical pseudo-butch portrayal of Bette Davis, but saw instead someone with difficulty walking and deteriorating health.

Each of the four stars listed above gets wonderful music, perhaps also perfectly suited to their gifts.  Benini found the drama in the singing. 

What a mess of a plot.  Perhaps Roberto once truly loved the queen as she clearly thought he did.  And then he fell in love with the decades younger and still unmarried Sara.  He goes off to war and after clearly winning it, he is accused of being a traitor.  While he was away, Sara with the queen's help married the Duke of Nottingham because her father died. Women at that time required the protection of a man, either husband or father.  The opera opens with her clear unhappiness.  It is not clear if she is unhappy because Roberto is returning, or if perhaps it is her marriage to someone she does not love and who seems also not to love her.

The queen marches down into her tomb and dies at the end.  This is a poetic rather than a historically accurate ending.  The opera plot more closely resembles the movie The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex than it does historical fact.  It's important to remember that opera is about love, and historical accuracy is irrelevant.

Debbie Voigt announced it as a play within a play, but this is only true if you count the fully costumed chorus clapping when the audience clapped.  In the bows the characters turn and bow to the chorus.  This was all discrete and not at all annoying.  It provided a context for the frequent choruses.  In the period there would have been courtiers standing around watching.

I loved it.  It was filled with both beautiful singing and overwhelming dramatic intensity. 

And yes, that was indeed "God save the Queen" in the overture.

Lucia in San Francisco

Conductor:  Nicola Luisotti
Director:  Michael Cavanagh

Enrico Ashton, Lucia's brother:  Brian Mulligan (baritone)
Lucia Ashton:  Nadine Sierra (coloratura soprano)
Riamondo Bidebent, Lucia's tutor:  Nicolas Teste (bass)
Edgardo, Lucia's fiance:  Piotr Beczala (tenor)
Arturo Bucklaw, man Lucia is forced to marry:  Chong Wang (tenor)

The San Francisco Opera presented a new production of Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor before I was tired of the old one.  There were some interesting features.  The female ghost appeared.  I believe this feature was introduced by Mary Zimmerman in her production, but now it is treated as an ancient tradition.  When Lucia sings about the woman killed in the fountain, her ghost appears.  Nothing else resembled Zimmerman who evoked the Scottish moors and retained the traditional giant staircase.  Here everything either resembled an interior or moved to something like outer space.

This picture is the scene of Edgardo and Enrico quarreling in the clouds.

The mad scene in Act 3 was the creepiest ever.  Everything is covered with blood.  Then Lucia pulls her blood-stained train toward us, revealing Arturo lying dead on the bed.  I was sitting next to someone who was once a super, and we agreed that this was perhaps the great super role.  He must lie there quietly with his pants pulled down halfway and his butt sticking out while Lucia sings her heart out.  Very impressive.  There was an entertaining interplay between the soprano and the flute here that we enjoyed very much.

Nadine Sierra performed this role previously in Zurich and seems to have benefited beautifully from the coaching there.  I felt that both her singing and her facial expressions were a treat.  I liked this Lucia, though her voice is somewhat small for the War Memorial. 

Brian Mulligan, our Sweeney Todd, successfully made the transition to serious opera.  He was if anything even scarier here than his previous outing.  I love Piotr, but his voice may also be a bit small for our acoustically challenged opera house.

There are basically 3 ways to establish a costuming period for an opera.  First is the stated period, here the 17th century; second is the period of the first performance of the opera, here 1835, and last is something vaguely modern.  Curiously, our program says "TIME AND PLACE:  Scotland in the near-future."  This means category 3 and anything goes.  Most of the time Lucia wears a big dress like you see in the era of the American Civil War.  The men wear modern looking suits, sometimes uniforms.  Occasional kilts were seen, always in dark colors.  In the wedding scene the women all wore giant hats such as one might see at a British royal wedding.  People like to think they can pick a fashion period, but that seemed impossible here.

Luisotti was great.  This is the first opera I have actually liked this season.

At the end as Edgardo kills himself, Lucia appears as the ghost to escort him to heaven.  If this is a new tradition, I think I like it.  If it turns out to be an old one, let me know.

Poliuto from Glyndebourne

I'm glad I saw Donizetti's Poliuto from Glyndebourne.  It sounds mysteriously like Verdi only not as good.  Nothing is ready to become a hit tune.

Paolina:  Ana María Martínez
Poliuto:  Michael Fabiano

The weight of this very heavy opera is carried by these two singers.  Both of them shined very brightly.  I was particularly happy to see Michael in a role that truly showed off his voice.  It was an excellent performance of a pretty monotonous opera.  Lots of percussion.

The plot is that they are Christian martyrs in the time of the Roman empire.  Not surprisingly, it was censored in Italy.

This is a complex story about love, faith, country, loyalty and oh so many things.  The music emphasizes almost exclusively the anger, betrayal, disloyalty parts of the story, saving the softer parts for a bit at the end.  It didn't attract me.

L'Elisir d'amore from Munich

Giannetta, Nemorino, Asher Fisch, Adina, Belcore

Conductor: Asher Fisch
Director: David Bösch

Adina: Ailyn Pérez (soprano)
Nemorino: Matthew Polenzani (tenor)
Belcore: Mario Cassi (baritone)
Dulcamara: Ambrogio Maestri (bass)
Giannetta: Evgeniya Sotnikova (soprano)

I commented a few times on line during the live stream of Donizetti's L'Elisir d'amore from the Bayerische Staatsoper.  "It's in Ailyn's contract that she must look gorgeous."  Now I realize that this role was originally played by Anna Netrebko, and that it is probably she who has this in her contract.  Her Nemorino was also Matthew Polenzani.

"Die Öde verschlingt ihn," also popped into my head when the set was revealed.  This means the wasteland engulfs him and is a line from the Alto Rhapsody.  We're in Somalia, or somewhere war ravaged and deserted like that, but nevertheless, Adina always looks gorgeous.  Everyone else looks terrible.

Above are Adina and Nemorino early in the opera.  Though I have searched for quite a while, I have not been able to find a picture of Belcore's soldiers who in this production are in combat fatigues with lots of guns and gear.  They gang up on Adina in a very threatening way, and only when Belcore threatens to kill Nemorino does she agree to marry him.  In all of the versions of Elixir that I have seen this one makes it clearest that Adina always adores Nemorino and is just messing with him. 

The oddest thing in the whole production has to be:

Nemorino singing "Una furtiva lagrima" while up a telephone pole.  Poor Matthew.

I don't quite know what to say about this production with all its aura of menace.  The women's chorus tried to make it all light and entertaining, but for a while in the first act it got pretty creepy.  Area 51?

Don't get me wrong.  The cast was fabulous, with magnificent singing and acting from beginning to end.  Ailyn Pérez is becoming a great singer.  She got the biggest applause.

Pavol

And this is Pavol Breslik in Lucia di Lammermoor from the live stream from the Bayerische Staatsoper. 

Lucia Streamed from Munich

This is Diana Damrau with her pistol in Lucia di Lammermoor streamed from the Bayerische Staatsoper.  There was a film with a young woman explaining the production.  Does the plot of Lucia, where a young woman kills her newly wedded husband because he isn't the one she wants, still work if it is a modern woman?  I have to conclude that it does, even with the trusty hand gun.  Toward the end of the mad scene a young girl comes out and holds the gun for a while.  This isn't explained.  I was fine with it until then.

Diana is wonderful in this, but my head was completely turned by the tenor Pavol Breslik.  We have this nice selfie of him: