Sweeney Todd

Conductor: Patrick Summers
Production Designer: Tanya McCallin *

Sweeney Todd: Brian Mulligan
Mrs. Lovett: Stephanie Blythe
Johanna: Heidi Stober
Beggar Woman: Elizabeth Futral
Anthony Hope: Elliot Madore *
Adolfo Pirelli: David Curry *
Tobias Ragg: Matthew Grills
Judge Turpin: Wayne Tigges
Beadle Bamford: AJ Glueckert

The great performers fund of the San Francisco Opera is accumulating money.  Gerald Finley who was supposed to sing here and Diana Damrau who was supposed to sing Lucia have both cancelled to be replaced by less expensive but still very fine singers.  My Brian Mulligan experiences have included an excellent Valentin in Faust, a very nice Marcello in La Boheme, and a less significant role in last season's magnificent Les Troyens.   He was everything you might want in a Sweeney Todd.  The entire cast is made up of excellent American singers.  The star of the evening was the very distinguished Stephanie Blythe.  Heidi Stober and Elizabeth Futral deserve special mention.

The way you tell what is an opera is by including all musical theater that can be performed by an opera company made up of opera singers and an opera orchestra.  Sondheim's Sweeney Todd qualifies.  This work has only recently seeped into the opera house where it can be heard with supertitles.  The libretto, also by Sondheim, is very wordy, and sung quickly with fake English accents.  Tough.  The real Brits Emma Thompson and Bryn Terfel were much easier to understand.  The most fun part was the section where Todd and Lovett are describing the taste of the pies according to the profession of the victim.

I think this was a Sweeney Todd of very high quality, if you like that sort of thing.  As my fourth viewing, I found that I was growing tired of it.

Editorial comment:  the only excuse for doing a musical instead of real opera would be the filling of the seats.  This did not happen.

After the performance Patrick Summers received the San Francisco Opera medal.

27

Composer:  Ricky Ian Gordon
Librettist:  Royce Vavrek
Conductor: Michael Christie
Gertrude Stein:  Stephanie Blythe
Alice B. Toklas:  Elizabeth Futral
Everyone else:  Theo Lebow, Tobias Greenhalgh, Daniel Brevik

27 is short for 27 Rue de Fleurus, the address of Gertrude Stein and Alice B Toklas in Paris. It is also the title of a new opera at Opera Theater of Saint Louis.

Waiting for the before-performance lecture to begin I struck up a conversation with the woman next to me.  We compared notes about being Gertrude Stein fanatics, and about sneaking inside the gate at 27 Rue de Fleurus in Paris.  She was caught and got thrown out, but I made it into the back where the famous atelier still stood and escaped with no one catching me.

I told her of our summer of Steins in San Francisco where many of the art works were on display and Four Saints in Three Acts was presented.  I told her how I had read all the biographies and many of the works.  Perhaps I am over trained for this performance.  I'm trying to think of a biographical opera that isn't about a queen.

I came because I once portrayed Gertrude Stein in an opera.  Her character was much more completely developed here.

Their favorite Stein phrase was "Before the flowers of friendship faded, friendship faded."  This was all I recognized, I must say.

The opera was divided into 5 short acts with the first one the longest.  I very much liked the portrayal of Leo Stein.  Let's start with something good.  I love that the librettist included Basket, Gertrude and Alice's standard white poodle.

Now we get into complaints.

My biggest complaint concerns the portrayal of Gertrude Stein in WWI.  In the opera she whines about being safe and not having any coal.  In real life she drove an ambulance, not really the choice of someone obsessed with safety.

She makes ridiculously insulting remarks to Fitzgerald and Hemingway.  If  she spoke like that to them, why would they keep coming back?  Why would Hemingway remember them so fondly in his memoir?

This is GS for the 21st century.  She constantly calls Alice wife, something I don't really recall.  This could always be just my memory.  I do recall "lovey" and "pussy."  The most favorably portrayed aspect of the real Gertrude Stein in this opera is of her relationship with Alice.

The librettist spent 3 weeks familiarizing himself with Gertrude, resulting in small incidents being blown up into huge parts of the plot.  It is true that after France was liberated, Gertrude announced to the world that she was safe.  This was blown up into a constant whining theme throughout the opera.

We are dealing with a mythical GS.  They may be forgiven for the fact that by the beginning of WWII they no longer lived at 27 Rue de Fleurus.  Also no mention was made of the fact that during the war they lived at their summer home in the French countryside where they were protected by their French neighbors.

One of Gertrude's pre-war friends knew where she lived, and when he became a member of the Vichy government of France, in exchange for not telling the Nazis they were Jews and where they lived, he required her to do translations for him.  Not wanting to be massacred isn't really one of the major crimes in the world.  Admittedly her political views at this period of history were not what today is regarded as politically correct.

Stephanie Blythe is a force of nature and was very convincing in the role.  She dressed as Gertrude between the wars.  Elizabeth Futral successfully suggested Alice.

I enjoyed the music which was very good for singing.  It was dramatically and theatrically coherent enough for the audience to occasionally burst into applause, always at exactly the right moment.  The supertitles were too small. 

This isn't my Gertrude Stein.  This GS is an arrogant, self-aggrandizing, cowardly, disgusting Nazi bitch.  I naturally have a different opinion.  They were focused entirely on making this a fun entertainment, and in many ways they succeeded.
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"Sometimes being a bitch is all a woman has to hold on to"

Conductor George Manahan
Director James Robinson

Dolores Claiborne: Patricia Racette
Selena St. George: Susannah Biller
Detective Thibodeau: Greg Fedderly
Vera Donovan: Elizabeth Futral

Last night at the San Francisco Opera I attended the premiere of Tobias Picker's new opera Dolores Claiborne, which is based on a novel by Stephen King, which I have not read.  According to Picker, King sold him the rights for $1, more a critique of opera than of Picker.

The genre I would choose for this opera is verismo, the realistic portrayal of the lower classes.  It doesn't get lower than Dolores (Patricia Racette) who is a maid for Vera Donovan (Elizabeth Futral shown below).  Dolores hates Vera.

The cozy picture of her family group seen below (daughter Selena, Susannah Biller, husband Joe, Wayne Tigges, and Dolores) would give you no perspective at all of her actual family life.  In this scene Dolores has brought home viewers for an up-coming eclipse, so they can all view it without harming their eyes.  Very domestic, don't you think?

In reality Joe is molesting Selena.  Dolores hates Joe.

The plot summary in the program might lead one to expect confusion, but the constant flashbacks were all handled with intelligent smoothness.  At the apron of the stage we are in the police station where Dolores has been brought for questioning after the death of her mistress.  The flashbacks appear at the back, and some of them are absolutely beautiful.

In one extended scene Dolores and Selena are riding together on the Little Tall Island ferry while boats and islands go by in the background.  It is here that Selena tells her mother that her father is molesting her.  Dolores says "No" but knows the answer is "Yes."  This is graphically dramatized in the final scene of the act.

In the second act is the eclipse when Dolores tricks her husband into falling into a well in the dark.  When he appears to be climbing out, she whacks him with a rock.

Susannah Biller as Selena appears as this character both as a child and as a grown woman.  In her guise as a child she sings a lovely solo to the stars that are visible during the eclipse.  This is the best solo.  The picture below from Opera News is Selena as an adult, perhaps remembering the eclipse she experienced as a child.

At the end of the opera Selena appears as a lawyer for her mother who is accused of pushing her employer down the stairs.  Dolores and Vera sing together the famous line from this story, "Sometimes being a bitch is all a woman has to hold on to."  Vera falls down the stairs--done very convincingly by Elizabeth Futral, a wonderful actress--and dies all on her own.  I'm not sure Selena believes this.

It's a sad, depressing story that you completely get swept into.  Nothing musical sticks in your head.  My opinions are going to go here.  The score in an opera isn't background music--it's music.  If you don't know the difference, I can't help you.  If you need to have it explained to you by Patricia Racette that a singer's voice has something called a "passagio," you are not ready to write an opera.

The singing actors were all incredible.  No one shook the prompter's hand, a good sign when the leading lady, Patricia Racette, stepped in almost 3 weeks ago.  She always seemed secure in her part, but her Dolores is an unhappy but not an evil woman.  At the end you feel you would have done the same.

Futral and Tigges are very fine indeed, just the right amount of arrogant and cruel.  Vera gives all her money to Dolores who doesn't want it, making Selena even more angry.

I would not wish to offend Patricia Recette, but the star of this show was Susannah Biller as Selena.  Her characterization of Selena as a child was complete, and absolutely did not prepare us for Selena as a 40 year old lawyer in high heels and her lawyer power suit.  She was stunning.

The First Emperor in HD

Emperor Qin.............Plácido Domingo
Princess Yueyang........Elizabeth Futral
Gao Jianli..............Paul Groves
Chief Minister..........Haijing Fu
General Wang............Hao Jiang Tian
Mother of Yueyang.......Susanne Mentzer
Yin-Yang Master.........Wu Hsing-Kuo [Debut]
Shaman..................Michelle DeYoung
Guard...................Danrell Williams [Debut]
Principal Dancer........Dou Dou Huang [Debut]
Zheng player............Qi Yao [Debut]

Conductor...............Tan Dun [Debut]
Production..............Zhang Yimou [Debut]

I am a big fan of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, so you can predict where I am going with Tan Dun's The First Emperor from the Metropolitan Opera. What he is trying to do is create a fully integrated western and eastern opera. This is a big chunk. In his own words [more or less] he has included the king of western opera, Placido Domingo, and the king of the Peking Opera, Wu Hsing-Kuo. The latter plays a kind of master of ceremonies, master of yin and yang, who sings and dances entirely in the style of the Peking Opera and introduces us to the characters.

I don't have to tell the plot, do I? Placido is the Emperor who was prisoner as a child with Gao Jianli, also a tenor. He admired his music and wants him to write his coronation anthem. Daughter Yueyang falls for Jianli. Things go from bad to worse.

The blending of east and west occurs at many levels. In the pit we have a standard orchestra with some unusual percussion. I'm sure I saw them playing the 8 tympani with the cover disks left on. Then in a strictly orchestral section between scenes anyone who wasn't playing vocalized short percussive notes.

On the stage is a zheng, a multi-stringed instrument resembling a samisen, which provided the accompaniment to one of Elizabeth Futral's arias. There was also a set of ceramic pots that were struck, rocks played by the chorus, and some kind of dangling pot that was played with a violin bow. The chorus also made a lot of percussive sounds in the first act, while also performing in a very western choral style.

The opera singers sang in a western pointillistic style rather like Lulu,--I thought this was passe--while trying to appear Chinese in their costumes and movements. As I have said elsewhere, pointillistic singing that jumps around to very high and low notes proved not difficult to sing. In the film between the acts Elizabeth Futral said as much.

The movie theater technical issues were much worse this week. Despite the very large crowd, the theater chain didn't seem to think the film needed an attendant in the booth. The sound went out for about ten minutes in the first act, giving us Norah Jones for a brief moment. At the intermission and at the end the lights never came up, resulting in a lot of old people stumbling around in the dark. The sound was too loud again.

My overall impression was positive. The most unfortunate part of this opera is that the dramatic arc is unvaryingly downward. The story becomes grimmer and grimmer, and the music more and more somber. The first half is quite exciting and made a wonderful impression. After that it was mezzo mezzo.
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The Siege of Corinth

I am irresistibly attracted to the serious operas of Gioachino Rossini. For my heart Rossini is perfect exactly the way he is and does not require the "improvements" of Verdi. There is a perfection of lightness in the coloratura that is not improved by the weight of future generations. I am happy to see this style returning to our ears, to hear the wonderfully ornamented da capos done as they were meant to be. Viva Rossini!

I went on Sunday to see the Baltimore Opera Company present Rossini's L'Assedio di Corinto or The Siege of Corinth, an actual historical event which took place in the 1450's. A Christian country is being invaded by Moslems who are heard praying to the prophet, something I am not sure actually happens. Never mind.

The production was traditional with Turks looking pretty much the way they do in Italian Renaissance paintings and the Greeks looking almost antique. I'm not sure my comments about the historical accuracy of costumes can be relied upon so we will assume they are not displaced from their intended setting. The two groups, Greeks and Turks, were easy to distinguish from one another, making the drama easy to follow.

The historical event requires a love theme to make it work as an opera. In preparation for invasion Maometto II has been personally casing the Greek cities, and while looking over Athens, he meets and falls in love with Pamira, daughter of the Governor of Corinth. Her father Cleomene, here sung by Bruce Ford, asks her to marry Neocle, but she refuses, saying her heart already belongs to another. Only during the opera does she discover that it is Maometto II himself that she loves. She vacillates, but ultimately decides on martyrdom with her countrymen over marriage to a foreigner.

The unusual feature of this opera is the presence of chorus in every scene, representing primarily the Greek people. It is a surprise in an Italian opera to hear so much chorus. It is they who carry the spirit of patriotism and martyrdom that is the main theme of the opera. They sing in simple block chords without counterpoint. This was very well done and effective.

Elizabeth Futral as Pamira was in a little over her head. She was better and more secure in the more solid Handel of Semele than here. The more ethereal Rossini caused her voice to become fluttery.

Vivica Genaux in the role of Neocle was a revelation. She did not quite achieve the godlike standards of Marilyn Horne, but definitely merited comparison, as great a compliment as I can imagine for a coloratura mezzo. Brava! And, yes, she looked fabulous.

Siege

The tag team of Elizabeth Futral and Vivica Genaux from Semele are appearing at the Baltimore Opera in Rossini's The Siege of Corinth in October. Bruce Ford is also in the cast. Cool! This sounds really exciting!

See review of Semele here. Note comment about resisting pop influence in ornamentation. I wrote extensively about this last year and still find it interesting that pop is now more ornamented than classical, though in a completely different style.

Semele

Semele by G.F. Handel is supposed to be an oratorio. In Italian it's opera--in English it's oratorio. So in the New York City Opera you see the stage set up like an oratorio. There is a big pipe organ in the center of the stage with pipes all around. "Oh no!" I thought, "they're not actually doing it like an oratorio. How boring!"

There were four music stands spread out across the stage with four chairs (but not four glasses of water. In England there seem always to be glasses of water set up under the chairs.) A man came out, sat down at the organ and pretended to play. I say pretend because the sound is the orchestra. The choir filed in, the soloists took their seats. It's an oratorio.

Then Jove started disapproving and the organ blew up and the choir headed for the wings. When Jove came for Semele, she made a brief appearance in Marilyn Monroe's outfit for Seven Year Itch and did the bit where her skirt blows up. Thank Jove! It isn't going to be an oratorio!

I am amazed to say that I liked Robert Breault, the tenor who sang Jove, best. There is something wonderful about the smooth lyricism of his expression, as if he were saying "Oh, by the way, where e'er you walk cool gales...." It was gorgeous.

Semele was Elizabeth Futral. I have seen her before, apparently, in Streetcar. She and Vivica Genaux are quite good singers and actresses and made for a very lively opera. Both can do the fiorature with ease. But.... I hate saying it, but they have sacrificed legato to diction. I am searching for a certain style of legato that I really only heard in Futral's "Oh sleep." Which was quite beautiful. Her "Myself I shall adore should I persist in gazing," sung while looking at her face on magazine covers, was hilarious and very well sung. Piu legato, per favore. Sempre legato. Those singers across the plaza are there because they understand the legato. That's the main difference between a great and a merely good singer.

Well, I certainly am a bitch. I loved this opera. I loved the Marilyn Monroe imitation, I loved the Juno as Jackie Kennedy in her pill box hat. I loved the Englishness of the music, the love of a good tune, and these were a few of Handel's best. I loved Semele's temper tantrum that expresses itself as intense coloratura.

Well, well. Juno is dressed to look like Jackie, and JFK was a notorious philanderer, so what if Jackie knew about all this messing around and tried to get revenge? And wasn't Marilyn, whom Semele is dressed to resemble, one of JFK's affairs? Curiouser and curiouser. In the last scene Jove and Juno appear together before the press with flash bulbs popping, and just as the curtain goes down, Jove is hitting on another blond.

They didn't have the Kathleen Battle/Marilyn Horne recording for sale in the lobby, a serious mistake, I think. It's definitely the version to own.