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.
The Santa Fe Opera has announced its season for 2021. There was much conversation about resisting COVID19, which I will not repeat. So here is the list.
Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro. The production is by Laurent Pelly. Harry Bicket will conduct.
The world premier of Corigliano's The Lord of Cries with a libretto by Mark Adamo. James Darrah will provide the production. Johannes Debus will conduct. This will star Anthony Roth Costanzo and Susanna Phillips. It seems to be a joining of Euripides and Bram Stoker. It sounds like fun.
Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin has Alessandro Talevi as the producer. Nicholas Carter will conduct. Nicole Car will portray Tatiana and her husband Etienne Dupuis will sing Onegin.
Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream done in a fantasy production by Netia Jones. She has imagined it in the specific surroundings of the Crosby Theater in New Mexico. It sounds exciting. Harry Bicket will conduct. Erin Morley will sing Tytania.
Angel Blue in concert. John Fiore will conduct the orchestra.
Harry Bicket is the music director of the Santa Fe Opera. This film played with the announcement.
Conductor - Nicola Luisotti
Director - Gabriele Lavia
Attila, King of the Huns - Ferruccio Furlanetto
Uldino, Attila's Breton Slave - Nathaniel Peake*
Odabella, daughter of the Lord of Aquileia - Lucrecia Garcia
Ezio, a Roman general - Quinn Kelsey*
Foresto, a knight of Aquileia - Diego Torre*
Leone (Pope Leo I) - Samuel Ramey
The San Francisco Opera reran last weekend Verdi's Attila from 2012. It is a fabulous baritone feast with Furlanetto, Kelsey and Ramey. I'm sorry if you missed it.
The sets all relate to interiors of theaters. You may feel free to make up a reason for this. This version seems to be shortened. A film played in one of the theaters, and this has been omitted. In house one sees everything in full screen, while in a film a full screen is unusual. This diminishes the effect of the theater interiors and increases the importance of the singers. It's much better this way.
Musical Direction - Antonello Manacorda Production - Hans Neuenfels
Bassa Selim - Christian Nickel (spoken)
Konstanze - Lisette Oropesa (soprano)
Konstanze - Actress - Emanuela von Frankenberg
Blonde - Regula Mühlemann (soprano)
Blonde - Actress - Stella Roberts
Osmin - Goran Jurić (bass)
Osmin - Actor - Andreas Grötzinger
Belmonte - Daniel Behle (tenor)
Belmonte - Actor - Christian Natter
Pedrillo - Michael Laurenz (tenor)
Pedrillo - Actor - Ludwig Blochberger
Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail (The Abduction from the Seraglio), 2020, comes to us from the Wiener Staatsoper. It is directed by Hans Neuenfels, one of the more scandalous regie producers. One of his characteristics is to dress the chorus all in the same outfits. Here in spite of the fact that they are a mixed chorus, they are all dressed as men in black.
This is a Singspiel, which means it comes with spoken dialog in German. In the original version of the opera there is a character, Bassa Selim, who does not sing. Everyone else both sings and speaks. So Neuenfels has seized on this and doubled all the rest of the cast. So in addition to the singers, he has cast a whole other cast who play the rest of the roles and only speak. He has also added more words. This is hard to follow. Two people in the same outfits are the same person. You get a lot of easy to understand German from the actors and beautiful singing from the singers. The actress Blonde occasionally speaks English. "Me too."
Lisette is singing a very serious aria, and a young man in his underwear is holding a giant snake. Huh? What you would want to keep from this is Lisette and her arias. "Martern alle Arten" is especially great. She changes the opera completely. Suddenly it is enormous.
I can think of only one semi-legitimate reason for this double casting. Singers have careers that take them all over the world. This is why the performing of operas originally in other languages but sung in the local language of the opera house is a practice that has pretty much died out. We perform Hansel and Gretel and Magic Flute in English, but that is pretty much it. The singer learns the role with the original text and then sings it everywhere with only some brief rehearsal.
So Neuenfels wanted to add a lot of new German dialog, and in order to have extended rehearsals, he assigns these new words to local people he can rehearse for a long time. This is the only thing I can think of. We don't care about this added dialog. Maybe Neuenfels doesn't really like opera.
They love only Lisette. As do I. Serious booing for Neuenfels.
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.
This is what I wrote about Erin when I first saw her at the Santa Fe Opera in 2007.
"Since she was by far the best singer at Santa Fe, (Daphne in Daphne)
I thought it would be nice to know more about Erin Wall. She's from
Alberta, Canada, and has competed in the Singer of the World in Cardiff." The full review is here.
Conductor- Constantin Trinks Director- Christof Loy
Euryanthe- Jacquelyn Wagner, soprano
Count Adolar, her betrothed- Norman Reinhardt, tenor
Eglantine- Theresa Kronthaler, soprano
Count Lysiart- Andrew Foster-Williams, baritone
King Louis VI- Stefan Cerny, bass
Weber's Euryanthe, 1823, comes to me from Operavision. The performance is Theater an der Wien, Vienna, in 2018. It's unusual for an early German language opera because there is no spoken dialog. We seem to be getting orchestral recitative.
Women's costumes are from the 1950s. We are in a large room with windows on the left and a door at the back, containing only a small hospital bed and a grand piano.Throughout the opera a super plays the queen.
Adolar loves Euryanthe and praises her purity. Lysiart says purity is not to be found among women. They argue and make a bet. The King must hold the proofs of the bet. They all just look like business men in dark suits.
A blond woman enters and sings about her Adolar. She must be Euryanthe. And the dark haired woman must be Eglantine. Euryanthe has rescued Egalantine, but despite this she still tries to ruin Euryanthe's life by betraying her. Because she too loves Adolar. The music is very serene. If you didn't know what was going on, would you guess it was this? Egalantine has a nice rage aria to liven things up.
At the beginning of Act II we have an extended male nude scene with Lysiart. The lighting and camera angles are carefully managed to blunt the effect of this. Why do it if you can't see it? This is an opera about violent jealousy. The two villians, Eglantine and Lysiart sing an extended duet where they swear revenge on Euryanthe. At the end of Act II Eglantine is seen banging away theatrically on the piano. I don't really hear a piano. They blame Euryanthe for revealing a secret she has sworn to keep, and she runs out. Even Adolar rejects her. The secret is personal, so I don't see what the fuss is about. Adolar's sister Emma has killed herself and her ghost still roams. She needs the tears of an innocent to put her soul to rest.
Act III same room, no furniture. They're supposed to be outdoors and attacked by a giant serpent. Instead we're still in the same white room. There are no hit tunes in this opera, but there is a very nice hunting chorus with horns. This is Weber, after all.
The scene changes, and the hospital bed is back. This production explains nothing. Eglantine is marrying Lysiart, who appears to love her. They sing about roses, but the flowers appear to be lilies. Eglantine is killed, and Euryanthe marries Adolar. Emma goes to her rest.
The women have all the fun in this opera. The villain is a woman. Small people with evil passions, but good wins in the end.
Disclaimer. The contents of this list comes from Opera Wire. I hope it is accurate.
Oct. 9, 2021 – Boris Godunov by Mussorgsky.
The opera will be presented in its original 1869 version which appears to have no role for Marina. This opera was presented at the Met in the longer version in 2010 in the same production which also starred René Pape in one of his greatest roles.
Production - Stephen Wadsworth
Conductor - Sebastian Weigle
René Pape - Boris
Alexey Markov
Stanislav Trofimov
David Butt Philip
Ain Anger
Maxim Paster
Oct. 23, 2021 – Fire Shut Up in My Bones by Terence Blanchard, libretto by Kasi Lemmons. This opera had its premier in 2019 at Opera Theater of St. Louis.
Production- James Robinson and Camille A. Brown
Conductor- Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Angel Blue, Destiny/Loneliness/Greta
Latonia Moore - Billie
Will Liverman- Charles
Dec. 4, 2021 – Eurydice by Matthew Aucoin. This is a new Orpheus opera having its Met premier. The world premier was at the LA Opera 2/1/2020 just before everything shut down.
Production- Mary Zimmerman
Conductor- Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Erin Morley _ Eurydice
Joshua Hopkins, baritone - Orpheus
Jakub Józef Orliński, countertenor - Orpheus' alter ego.
Jan. 1, 2022 – Cinderella
by Massenet is usually called Cendrillon, but will here be presented in an English-language translation. We had this with the same production in French with Joyce DiDonato in 2018. This is a shorter, more family oriented version.
Production- Laurent Pelly
Conductor-Emmanuel Villaume
Isabel Leonard - Cinderella
Jessica Pratt - Fairy Godmother
Emily D’Angelo - Prince Charming
Stephanie Blythe - MMe
Laurent Naouri - Pandolfe
Jan. 29, 2022 – Rigoletto
by Verdi. No more Rat Pack. This is a new production by Bartlett Sher. I am so pleased we will all get to hear Quinn Kelsey's wonderful version of Rigoletto.
Production - Bartlett Sher
Conductor - Daniele Rustioni
Rosa Feola - Gilda
Piotr Beczala - Duke
Quinn Kelsey - Rigoletto
March 12, 2022 – Ariadne auf Naxos by Richard Strauss. This is for Lise Davidsen, of course. I am very happy with this choice. When Brandon Jovanovich comes out at the end, we will know he is a god.
Production - Elijah Moshinsky
Conductor - Marek Janowski
Lise Davidsen - Ariadne
Brenda Rae - Zerbinetta
Isabel Leonard - The Composer
Brandon Jovanovich - Bacchus
March 26, 2022 – Don Carlos by Verdi. Met Opera audiences will get a chance to see Verdi’s famed opera in its original French version for the first time in its history. Elina and Sonya were in a version from Paris in 2017.
Production - David McVicar
Conductor - Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Elina Garanca - Eboli
Matthew Polenzani - Don Carlos
Sonya Yoncheva - Elisabeth
Étienne Dupuis - Rodrigue
Günther Groissböck - Philippe II
John Relyea - Grand Inquisitor
May 7, 2022 – Turandot by Puccini. This is the traditional Zeffirelli production, and Anna Netrebko's Met role debut.
Production - Franco Zeffirelli
Conductor - Marco Armiliato
Turandot - Anna Netrebko
Calaf - Yonghoon Lee
Liu - Michelle Bradley
May 21, 2022 – Lucia di Lammermoor by Donizetti. This is a new production, but I loved the old one. The ghost at the fountain was genius.
June 4, 2022 – Hamlet by Brett Dean which had its world premier at Glyndebourne in 2017.
Production - Neil Armfield
Conductor - Nicholas Carter
Brenda Rae - Ophelia
Rod Gilfry - Claudius
Allan Clayton - Hamlet
Dame Sarah Connolly - Gertrude
Sir John Tomlison - Ghost
Our list includes 3 new operas, and new productions of Rigoletto and Lucia di Lammermoor. In addition we can count the Met premier of the original French version of Verdi's Don Carlos. This is pretty interesting stuff.
Things we are missing:
Die Meistersinger with Lise Davidsen and Antonio Pappano. This is something I would really like to see. Otto Schenk is their current production. And Tosca with Sondra Radvanovsky.
