Baggage

2010 San Francisco Fringe Festival
Baggage: A Non-Musical Romp Through One Catholic Gay Man's Dating History
By Shaun McCarthy

EXIT Studio
Thur Sept 16 7:00 pm

This is the simplest of SF Fringe shows. For an hour, Shaun McCarthy, a trim athletic Canadian in t-shirt & jeans, is a talking head in a monologue about searching for, finding & losing love. We get some humor & some pathos. Despite the piece's subtitle, there is a bit of music, & Mr. McCarthy wears his Catholic background & sexuality very lightly. He comes across as genuine, amiable & persistent. Even though he was the one baring his romantic life, I felt a bit exposed to be one of only 17 in a venue that seats about 40.

SF Opera Free Simulcasts Pay Off

According to an article in the Wall Street Journal on Thursday, SF Opera has figured out that the free ball park simulcasts have brought in about $880,000 in new-patron tickets. Since it spent about $800,000 for the past 4 simulcasts, this is a small profit. The key is holding the event in a venue instead of an open-air plaza or park. The opera can thus monitor attendees by collecting information about them when they register on-line for early admission.

Compared to some of its rivals, SF Opera is doing well financially. Attendance was up for the 2008-09 season. Its deficit of $1.3 million is modest compared to the $14 million emergency loan that Domingo had to take out for the LA Opera.

30,000 are expected for the Friday, September 24th simulcast of Aida. For a chance to sit in the field, advanced registration is a must.

Unbound

Unbound

A National Exhibition of Book Art

July 11 - September 19, 2010

Bedford Gallery, Walnut Creek

Yesterday I took BART over to Walnut Creek to see this is exhibit of book arts at the Bedford Gallery in the Lesher Center of the Arts. The show includes a diverse range of works by over 60 artists. Many of the works are homages to the form of the tradition printed book. The show opens with a whimsical toy train made of sawed-up books sewn together, with wooden spools as wheels. There are simulacra of books made of ceramics or wood. Pamela Paulsrud sanded old books down to palm-sized stones that feel like they have been polished smooth by tides. David Stein created specimens of an Unlikely Library, with titles like the "Obsolete Technology Bulletin" & "Remaining Vigilant Against Cooties" by Jean Piaget.

I liked Cara Barer's color photographs of books whose pages have been molded into beautiful biomorphic shapes. I also like the dense forest atmosphere of Alison Yates's Quell, a 3-D story book about a hunter & his prey. A small number of the books can be handled. I enjoyed leafing through Sas Colby's collage books made of discarded & arcane printed materials, such as a German planner for accordion lessons. I was surprised to see a picture book by Andy Warhol, complete with a pop-up can of Hunt's Tomato Paste.

The exhibit closes this weekend, & I am glad I made the trip to see it. Unfortunately there is no catalog for the show, but the gallery has an on-line slideshow.

Domingo on the Half-Shell

An article in the New York Times today, titled something like "Met Offers Pastry" in the print edition, reports on an operatic pastiche called “The Enchanted Island,” which will open at the Met on Dec. 31, 2011. Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch are assembling the work from music by Handel, Vivaldi and Leclair. William Christie will conduct a cast including Joyce DiDonato, Danielle de Niese, Luca Pisaroni, Lisette Oropesa, Anthony Roth Costanzo & David Daniels. According to the article, "The cast is led by Plácido Domingo, as Neptune, who will make an entrance on a giant seashell." I have been soul-searching, & I still don't know if I want to see this.

Harnoncourt does Gershwin

Sony Masterworks is releasing a live recording of Porgy and Bess conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt, of all people. Harnoncourt is famous for his early music performances & his rigorous preparation, but I have never thought of him as being able to swing. Simon Rattle's recording already sounds too European to me, so I imagine that Harnoncourt will sound even more foreign. The performance comes from the 2009 Graz Festival & features the Arnold Schoenberg Chor & Chamber Orchestra of Europe. Isabelle Kabatu & Jonathan Lemalu are in the title roles. The recording is officially released on September 21st.

Opera in the Park

Opera in the Park

San Francisco Opera

Overture

Le Nozze di Figaro, Mozart

Non so più cosa son, cosa faccio

Le Nozze di Figaro, Mozart

Michèle Losier

Non più andrai

Le Nozze di Figaro, Mozart

Luca Pisaroni

Giunse alfin il momento

Le Nozze di Figaro, Mozart

Danielle de Niese

La luce langue

Macbeth, Verdi

Dolora Zajick

Avant de quitter ces lieux

Faust, Gounod

Brian Mulligan

Nemico della Patria

Andrea Chénier, Giordano

Marco Vratogna

Pourquoi me réveiller?

Werther, Massenet

Ramón Vargas

Quartet

Rigoletto, Verdi

Brian Mulligan, Heidi Stober, Maya Lahyani, David Lomelí

Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Rossini

Overture

Largo al Factotum

Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Rossini

Lucas Meachem

Là ci darem la mano

Don Giovanni, Mozart

Luca Pisaroni, Danielle de Niese

La donna è mobile

Rigoletto, Verdi

David Lomelí

Vissi d'arte

Tosca, Puccini

Micaela Carosi

Viene la sera

Madame Butterfly, Puccini

Brian Jagde, Leah Crocetto

Nessun dorma

Turandot, Puccini

Marcello Giordani

O Sole Mio

Marcello Giordani, Brian Jagde, Ramón Vargas, David Lomelí

Brinidisi

La Traviata, Verdi

Tutti

September 12, 2010 at 1:30pm

Sharon Meadow, Golden Gate Park

I was in doubt about the weather for Sunday's annual Opera in the Park, but I eventually decided not to miss it, & the weather turned out to be fine. Plus, I could sit in a spot close to the stage simply by joining a friend who had been camped out since 9am. I later found out that a party even closer to the stage had arrived at 7am to claim their spot! The event is sponsored by the San Francisco Chronicle, whose reps greet attendees by selling them $2 programs. Since I am too cheap to buy a program, the listing above is my reconstruction of the event. General Director David Gockley, casually dressed, hosted the show & announced a discount code of "SFOPARK" for 50% off tickets from the SF Opera Website.

All the singers sounded wonderful & got into the jolly spirit of the afternoon. The opening excerpts from The Marriage of Figaro made me very excited for an actual performance later this month. I have never been so close to Danielle de Niese before, & I may have uttered something uncharacteristically trivial when I first saw her that afternoon. The crowd cheered Dolora Zajick even before she started singing. She probably did not need to be miked. Ramón Vargas displayed an astonishing amount of vocal control & shading in just a couple of minutes in his aria from Werther. Lucas Meachem used Figaro's aria to flirt shamelessly & hilariously with the crowd. Brian Jagde & Leah Crocetto were so completely enrapt in the love duet from Madame Butterfly that even the chatty woman next to me, who talked through everything else, paid attention. The excerpts from Andrea Chénier & Rigoletto are apparently hints at up-coming seasons.

Many jokes were made onstage. When Mr. Gockley incorrectly announced one of the arias, Maestro Luisotti exclaimed, "He doesn't know the season!" Before singing La donna è mobile, David Lomeli went up to the podium to confer with Luisotti first, after which Luisotti told the audience, "He forgot the text!" At the choral section of Nessun dorma, Marcello Giordani gestured at the crowd & said, "Sing along!", & a few people with operatic voices actually did. As an encore, Marcello Giordani, Brian Jagde, Ramón Vargas & David Lomelí did the 3 Tenors one better with a 4 Tenors version of O Sole Mio, complete with competitive high notes.

The afternoon proved wacky in other ways as well. A woman in our party wore a large floppy hat & attracted the attention of a press photographer. & at the very start of the event, I discovered that a dog had gobbled the deli sandwich I negligently laid at my feet when I stood for the National Anthem. Such are the hazards of opera al fresco.

Opera San José : Anna Karenina

Opera San José

Anna Karenina

libretto: Colin Graham

music: David Carlson

Conductor: Stewart Robertson

Stage Director: Brad Dalton

Anna Karenina: Jasmina Halimic

Kitty Scherbatsky: Khori Dastoor

Dolly Oblonsky: Betany Coffland

Princess Betsy: Megan Stetson

Countess Lydia Ivanova: Kindra Scharich

Agafia Mihailovna: Heather McFadden

Konstantin Levin: Michael Dailey

Stiva Oblonsky: Christopher Bengochea

Alexei Vronsky: Krassen Karagiozov

Prince Yashvin: Paul Murray

Alexei Karenin: Kirk Eichelberger

September 11, 2010, 8pm

California Theatre

On Saturday night I was at the opening night of Opera San José, which presented the west coast premiere of David Carlson's Anne Karenina. The company has put a lot of resources behind this show, scheduling 8 performances with 2 casts. The musical idiom is modern, yet tonal, & the sound palette is often glassy & eerie. The music constantly propels, with lots of repetitions of short motives. There are no places for the ear to rest, which is sometimes fatiguing. The libretto covers much of the novel's plot, so the work is in many short scenes that are primarily exposition. I often felt like I was watching a play. Only in 2 brief inner monologues for Karenin & in a final mad scene for Anna does the action stop to explore an emotional state & become truly operatic. Conductor Stewart Robertson was a bit metronomic, but the hard-working orchestra sounded confident in its playing of this very busy score.

That was much fine singing. Soprano Jasmina Halimic has a large, steely voice, & she fully identified with the character of Anna. Kirk Eichelberger has a deep & powerful sound & was dramatically convincing as the stuffy & proper Karenin. Unfortunately, I found myself identifying with his character, which is surely not right. Michael Dailey has an unusual, cushy tenor voice, which was fitting for nice-guy Levin. I also liked tenor Christopher Bengochea, with his clear diction, secure sound & lively characterization of the hapless Oblonsky.

The excellent staging by Brad Dalton was the strongest element of the production. The costumes, furniture & backdrops firmly establish the period. I liked how the characters interacted in naturalistic ways, for instance always facing each other when in conversation. The frequent scene changes were rapid & precisely choreographed. The fully-employed supers not only adroitly shifted props but also established a social context by playing mute servants or train station crowds. The director even found clear & effective solutions for the 2 suicides by train that must occur onstage. Scenes set in the countryside are performed against a particularly gorgeous painted backdrop which has just the right amount of blurry detail.

I enjoyed being with this opening night audience, which was warm & supportive & gave Ms. Halimic a standing ovation. Mr. Carlson was present & looked dazed when he was brought onstage for a bow. I missed hearing the pre-performance recital on the lobby organ, as the person I rode down with mistook the address of Opera San José's office for the California Theatre venue. The neighborhood around the theater is quite active at night. My opera companion & I had to politely turn down nightclub invites as we walked down the block.

SFO: Aida Dress Rehearsal

Aida Dress Rehearsal
San Francisco Opera
Final dress rehearsal for Aida

Conductor: Nicola Luisotti
Director: Jo Davies
Production Designer: Zandra Rhodes

Aida: Micaela Carosi
Amneris: Dolora Zajick
Radames: Marcello Giordani
Amonasro: Marco Vratogna
Ramfis: Hao Jiang Tian
The King of Egypt: Christian Van Horn
Priestess: Leah Crocetto
Messenger: David Lomelí

7 September 2010, 1:30pm
War Memorial Opera House

I was part of the sizable audience for this final dress rehearsal of Aida, which opens the fall season this Friday. The colors of the sets & costumes are bright & sunny, dominated by light blue, yellow & gold. The scenic designs are flat & child-like. The performers wear elaborate outfits & often look like toys. The maids in Amneris's room are an army of Cleopatras. 4 little girls entertain Amneris with a twirling dance. For Triumphal Scene spectacle we get plenty of exotic costumes, 6 on-stage trumpeters dressed as King Tut, a troupe of acrobats & a life-size blue elephant puppet, straight out of The Lion King. In the tomb scene Radames is lowered to the stage in a metal cage that looks like something David Copperfield would escape from in a Las Vegas show. The production is often visually dazzling, but it does not fit the tragic tone of the opera.

Maestro Luisotti's conducting is fluid & tasteful. He never overplayed the music. There were beautiful solos from the woodwinds & the 1st trumpet. Marcello Giordani will no doubt be a reliable Radames with his Italianate voice & clear high notes. His Aida, Micaela Carosi, seemed to be saving her voice, so I did not get much of an impression of her performance. Hao Jiang Tian has a low & even voice as Ramfis. Dolora Zajick makes Amneris the most prominent personality in the opera, & she will probably bring down the house in the judgment scene in Act III. Marco Vratogna as Amonasro impresses me with his masculine, taut sound & ease when moving on stage.

There is only one intermission, & the curtain has to come down for 2 scene changes that take several minutes, during which the audience naturally becomes restless. The dress rehearsal audience reacted boisterously to the performance & especially Ms. Zajick. During the curtain calls, Adler Fellow David Lomeli raised a laugh when he performed the "We are not worthy" gesture as Mr. Giordani came out for his bow.

Two Gentlemen of Verona

Two Gentlemen of Verona
Free Shakespeare in the Park

Directed by Kenneth Kelleher

David Abad (Antonio, Thurio, Outlaw)
Sofia Ahmad (Julia)
Brian Herndon (Launce, Outlaw)
Emily Jordan (Silvia, Panthene)
Gary S. Martinez (Duke, Host)
Alex Moggridge (Proteus)
Michael Navarra (Valentine, Eglamour)
Katie O'Bryon (Lucetta, Outlaw)
Jeremy Vik (Speed, Outlaw)

Monday, Sept 6 - 2:30 PM
The Presidio's Main Post
Parade Ground Lawn

People must really make a day of this, because when I got to the Presidio Parade Ground at 2:15pm, the lawn was pretty much full of picnickers who looked like they had been there for quite a while already. The sunny weather made this an ideal day for this outdoor show from the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, & we got a leisurely, straightforward performance of the Two Gentlemen of Verona. Before each scene, an actor announced the setting & the characters. It was like getting on-stage CliffNotes. The costumes & music evoked the mod 1960's. Between scenes the actors lip-synched & danced to a playlist of music of that era, which held up the action. Following this logic, this also meant that we got a version of "Who is Silvia?" with words by Steve Winwood instead of Shakespeare.

Because of the outdoor setting, the actors are heavily miked, & it took me a while to get used to searching the stage for each speaker. Brian Herndon channeled Richard Dreyfuss for his portrayal of the clown Launce. His dog Crab was played by a life-sized stuffed dog on a leash. Most everyone sounded American, except when adopting comic accents, so I was initially both confused & impressed by Silvia's convincing British accent, until I read actress Emily Jordan's bio & learned that she actually comes from Britain. But I still do not know why the cast consistently pronounced "Milan" with the stress on the 1st syllable.

Though the atmosphere was laid-back, the audience was fully engaged in the story. There was spontaneous applause when Valentine beats up the badly behaving Proteus & when the Duke finally bestows Silvia on good-guy Valentine. Sofia Ahmad made me feel the pathos of Julia's plight when disguised as a boy. The reconciliation at the end, demanded by the plot, is hasty, so it seemed right that in the closing moments of the production Julia flinched at Proteus's embrace. Sometimes it's just plain lousy to be in love.

SF Zine Fest 2010

September 4–5, 2010
County Fair Building, Golden Gate Park

On Saturday afternoon I was in Golden Gate Park for SF Zine Fest 2010. The event was small but busy. I saw no empty tables as I did last year, & I even met a couple of exhibitors from the UK. A few enterprising people were peddling food outside as well.

I could not pass up Map of Fog, an old-school zine of stories of living in San Francisco, beginning with the line "San Francisco is a city of nerds." Paper Dummy had a story that was ingeniously packaged inside a cassette tape case, but its creator annoyingly refused to reveal the sealed contents, & $20 was just too steep for me. I liked MilkAndTea's The Kitchen, a book inspired by craigslist postings from restaurant workers, the quotes cleverly formatted as menus. This brief book is spare, thoughtful & bold, & it has nothing good to say about the food service industry.

Even though he has written his last zine, John Marr was tabling, in the hopes of unloading his remaining stock of Murder Can Be Fun. I felt lucky to get the last copy of Robert Kirby's new anthology, Three, from the hands of Joey Alison Sayers, a contributor to the issue. Void Where Prohibited sat at a portable manual typewriter on which he offered to write a 30-second story for 25¢. Before starting, he asked me for a name or a situation. I said "Axel", & that was all he needed to hammer out this story:

The Fisher Collection

Calder to Warhol
Introducing the Fisher Collection
SFMOMA
June 25 - September 19, 2010

First thing Monday morning I was at the SF MOMA to see the Fisher Collection show. Its size alone is impressive. It completely occupies the 2 upper floors plus the sculpture garden, & apparently this is just a fraction of the collection. If nothing else, the show makes clear the meaning of collecting "in depth." Alexander Calder, Gerhard Richter, Agnes Martin, Chuck Close & Andy Warhol each get 1 or even 2 galleries to themselves. It's as if some artists' work were like potato chips to Fisher.

In a video playing in a small room, Mr. Fisher opines that "Museums are elitist, & they shouldn't be." I found all the works in his collection accessible. I even sat through the video pieces by William Kentridge & Shirin Neshat, though I usually get impatient with time-based works. Antony Gormley's Quantum Cloud VIII was a nice discovery for me. It's a life-size figure, seemingly made of floating match sticks. The best way for me to experience the huge Chuck Close portraits was to take off my glasses & squint. The Claes Oldenburg pieces are characteristically humorous. His Inverted Collar & Tie - Third Version turns a tie into a giant striking cobra. The Study for Typewriter Eraser: Final Position - ROSC Version has an extra layer of meaning now that its subject is an obsolete office tool. Perhaps it would be fun to exhibit it with the museum's collection of portable Olivetti typewriters, which is displayed on the 2nd floor.

I wonder what it means to "own" a Sol LeWitt drawing, which is installed by making marks directly on a wall according to prescribed steps. I also wonder if it was OK for one of the guards to walk on Carl Andre's Copper-Zinc Plain, which is a checkerboard of metal tiles laid on the floor. I watched him do this twice. In another gallery, while I was copying information from a label, another guard came up to me & handed me a golf pencil. I was taking notes with a pen, which is not allowed.

The Norman Conquests

Shotgun Players

The Norman Conquests
By Alan Ayckbourn

Table Manners
Directed By Joy Carlin

Living Together
Directed By Molly Aaronson-Gelb

Round & Round The Garden
Directed By Mina Morita

Zehra Berkman / Annie
Sarah Mitchell / Ruth
Mick Mize / Reg
Kendra Lee Oberhauser / Sarah
Josiah Polhemus / Tom
Richard Reinholdt / Norman

The Ashby Stage
August 29, 2010

On Sunday I attended Shotgun Players' first marathon performance of all 3 parts of The Norman Conquests. This started out as a one-time staged reading early in the year, & it was so successful that they decided to mount a full production. Going in, I was worried about getting tired of the characters, who all behave pretty badly over the weekend depicted in the plays, but fortunately all 3 performances skated along with great comic momentum, & I never lost interest. Even a stage hand gets some laughs while clearing the set between scenes.

The cast is uniformly fine, & certainly no one ever tired. I liked Mick Mize as a goofy, wide-eyed Reg. He looks funny even when he's not doing anything. Sarah Mitchell is brilliant with her strong characterization of the over-confident Ruth. She is hilarious from her 1st appearance, making her way near-sightedly through breakfast, looking like a mole. She nails the comic climax in Act II of Round & Round the Garden just by the way she enters & spots Annie & Norman rolling on the ground.

After the 1st play, my theater companion & I sat on some steps at the side of the building to eat our sandwiches, but this turned out to be the stage door, & I found myself getting up several times to make way for cast members going out for a walk. The sold-out house on Sunday was enthusiastic & laughed loudly & evidently held a lot of Ayckbourn fans. A man next to us had seen the New York production last year. After each intermission there was a raffle, though the prizes were mockingly meager, being things like a single-serving box of Cheerios, a piece of a rug, & a small toy cat. During one of the breaks, my theater companion had his fortune told by a man in a fez sitting in a booth outside the theater. The trilogy has been extended through September 12th, though the only other marathon peformance next weekend is already sold out.

Birth of Impressionism

Birth of Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay

de Young Museum

through September 6, 2010

I'm coming late to the party, but last night I finally went to the de Young & saw the blockbuster Birth of Impressionism exhibit during extended hours. My gallery companions thought it was not crowded, but I found it competitive to get close to some of the paintings & was jostled quite a bit. There is not a lot of space between paintings, so it felt cramped in general. The exhibit is organized as an evolutionary progression, starting with Academic & Realist paintings to set context. Bouguereau' s hairless fantasies make me itch, but I get the point. I really enjoyed seeing Caillebotte's photo-like Floor Scrapers again. I found Courbet's dying La Truite to be somehow violent & pathetic. I am not familiar with Jean-Francois Raffaelli, but I liked his strange group portrait of peasants from Plougasnou, which prefigures Van Gogh's potato eaters & photojournalism in general. Another unfamiliar artist to me was Alexandre Falguière, whose masculine painting of Wrestlers is one of the biggest canvases in the show.

The exhibit has plenty of star power, though, with characteristic works by Manet, Monet, Renoir, Degas & Cezanne. Whistler's Mother is here, & fortunately she turns out to be unexpectedly fun, funny & rewarding to see in person, despite being over-exposed through reproductions. The final rooms contain pictures of the sort that one commonly associates with the Impressionists: pleasant outdoor views filled with vibrating colors. Monet's large canvas of strutting turkeys is unexpected & humorous. Impressionism is the first modern art, &, judging by the approving crowds, the most popular. I guess public taste is only about 150 years behind the times.

Merola Grand Finale

Merola Opera Program
Conductor – Dean Williamson
Stage Director – Ted Huffman
San Francisco Opera Orchestra

“The woods are green...Here I stand”
The Rake’s Progress by Igor Stravinsky
Ann Trulove – Janai Brugger-Orman
Tom Rakewell – Alexander Lewis
Father Trulove – Kevin Thompson
[Harpsichord – David Hanlon]

“Or dove fuggo io mai?...Ah! per sempre io ti perdei”
I Puritani by Vincenzo Bellini
Riccardo – Ao Li

“Quoi! Vous m’aimez?”
La Fille du Régiment by Gaetano Donizetti
Marie – Abigail Santos Villalobos
Tonio – Eleazar Rodríguez

“O loss of sight...Total Eclipse”
Samson by George Handel
Samson – Kevin Ray
[Harpsichord – Michael Spassov]

“Connais-tu le pays?”
Mignon by Ambroise Thomas
Mignon – Robin Flynn

“I see their knavery...”
A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Benjamin Britten
Tytania – Hye Jung Lee
Bottom – Thomas Florio
Peaseblossom – Valentina Fleer
Cobweb – Nadine Sierra
Moth – Robin Flynn
Mustardseed – Abigail Santos Villalobos
[Harpsichord – Natalia Katyukova]

“Ah, je suis seule...Dis-moi que je suis belle”
Thaïs by Jules Massenet
Thaïs – Rebecca Davis

“Appressati, Lucia...Il pallor, funesto, orrendo”
Lucia di Lammermoor by Donizetti
Lucia – Valentina Fleer
Enrico – Sidney Outlaw

“Wie schön ist die Musik”
Die schweigsame Frau by Richard Strauss
Sir Morosus – Kevin Thompson
[Organ – Michael Spassov]

“Monseigneur! Ophélie!...Doute de la lumière”
Hamlet by Thomas
Ophélie – Abigail Santos Villalobos
Hamlet – Dan Kempson

“Sgombra è la sacra selva...Deh! Proteggimi, o Dio”
Norma by Bellini
Adalgisa – Renée Rapier

“Sie hält ihn für den Todesgott”
Ariadne auf Naxos by Strauss
Zerbinetta – Hye Jung Lee
Composer – Colleen Brooks
[Piano – Jenna Douglas; Harmonium – Natalia Katyukova]

“E il dottor non si vede! Pronta io son”
Don Pasquale by Donizetti
Norina – Janai Brugger-Orman
Malatesta – Benjamin Covey

“Wie Todesahnung...O du mein holder Abendstern”
Tannhäuser by Richard Wagner
Wolfram – Ryan Kuster

“Va! Je t’ai pardonée...Nuit d’Hymenée”
Roméo et Juliette by Charles Gounod
Juliette – Nadine Sierra
Roméo – Daniel Montenegro

“Pian, pianin le andrò più presso”
Le nozze di Figaro by Mozart
La Contessa di Almaviva – Rebecca Davis
Susanna – Valentina Fleer
Cherubino – Robin Flynn
Barbarina – Hye Jung Lee
Marcellina – Renée Rapier
Basilio – Eleazar Rodríguez
Don Curzio – Kevin Ray
Il Conte di Almaviva – Sidney Outlaw
Figaro – Ryan Kuster
Bartolo – Thomas Florio
Antonio – Kevin Thompson
Servitori – tutti Merolini

Saturday, August 21, 7:30pm
War Memorial Opera House

This concert at the Opera House is a sort of graduation recital for the Merolini, & since everyone needs to have a turn in the spotlight, the event ran to a longish 3 hours. The stage was bare but for 4 skinny cypress trees. The singers wore formal evening dress & acted out their scenes with minimal props & lighting changes, though the stage was often dimly lit. Everyone was obviously well-prepared, & the succession of excerpts flowed flawlessly.

I liked Ao Li's beautiful, resonant baritone & the warmth of his stage presence. There was a great flute solo at the beginning of the Mignon excerpt, & I continued to listen for this flute sound for the rest of the evening. Rebecca Davis, with her big sound & slightly metallic edge, sounded magnificent as Thaïs. In the scene from Lucia, baritone Sidney Outlaw was such a convincing actor that I was almost on Enrico's side. The excerpt from Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream came the closest to feeling like a complete dramatic scene, & Britten's twinkling orchestration stood out. I liked baritone Thomas Florio's big, relaxed sound & his ease when moving on stage. His braying & yawning were wonderfully musical. I am totally unfamiliar with Strauss's Die schweigsame Frau, but I was delighted by the pleasingly languorous music & by the huge bass of Kevin Thompson, who held an impossibly low note for an impossibly long time at the close.

There were a lot of French numbers whose music I found unmemorable, but the scene from Roméo et Juliette with soprano Nadine Sierra & tenor Daniel Montenegro was a clear audience favorite. The music was even held up at one point because of applause. Besides sounding lovely together, both singers make an uncommonly good-looking romantic couple. The evening ended with the finale of Le nozze di Figaro. The audience was startled by the loud & realistic sound when the Countess slapped Cherubino. During the final bars, all the Merolini came forward to form an impressive chorus line stretching across the edge of the stage. The Opera Tattler, surely the Merolini's biggest fan, was spotted going downstairs into the paid reception afterward. She arrived laden with flowers & cards for the performers.

photo: Daniel Montenegro & Nadine Sierra
credit: Kristen Loken

442 – Live with honor, Die with dignity

This afternoon I ignored the Nihonmachi Street Fair in Japantown & instead sat with a packed audience in the Viz Cinema. We saw 442 – Live with honor, Die with dignity, a documentary by Junichi Suzuki about the famous 442nd infantry regiment. The film consists mainly of interviews with surviving soldiers, now all well into their 80's. There is also archival footage of the War & modern-day visits to battle sites in Italy & France. There is no new information here, but I like the documentary's point of view, which understands the distinctively Japanese cultural forces that motivated the soldiers. Concepts of duty, honor & shame made them recklessly self-sacrificing yet usually reluctant to talk about their experience. Daniel Inouye is a consummate interviewee. His description of first seeing the ground shot up by machine gun fire is straight out of The Charterhouse of Parma.

The Viz Cinema is not large, & the 2:50pm screening was completely full. The staff had to bring out folding chairs to accommodate everyone. The audience was probably largely the same age as the children of the veterans in the film. The film plays through Thursday, along with a companion documentary about the Japanese American internment called Toyo's Camera, which I also want to see.

Boot Camp for Belters

Today's Wall Street Journal has a nice article by David Littlejohn about the Merola Opera Program. The article describes the intense schedule & includes many soundbites from past & present Merolini. Dolora Zajick says, "Merola was one long audition." Mr. Littlejohn also briefly reviews the recent production of L'Elisir d'Amore, though he prefers "to avoid reviewing individual nonprofessional performers unless they're surprisingly good."

Mystery Reader

The Nob Hill Gazette's Mystery Reader for the month of August actually looks familiar to me, though I probably blew my chances of winning by publicizing him here.

Legend of the Ring

Berkeley Opera
Legend of the Ring
Adapted by David Seaman

Conductor: Jonathan Khuner
Stage Director & Production Designer: Mark Streshinsky

Wotan, Wanderer, Gunther: Richard Paul Fink
Froh, Siegmund, Siegfried:Jay Hunter Morris
Woglinde, Freia, Sieglinde, Forest Bird, Gutrune: Marie Plette
Fafner, Hunding, Hagen: Dean Peterson
Wellgunde, Brünnhilde: Christine Springer
Alberich, Fasolt:Bojan Knezovic
Loge, Mime: Stephen Rumph
Flosshilde, Fricka: Valentina Osinski

Sunday, August 8, 2:00 p.m.
Performing Arts Theater, El Cerrito High School

Going in, I was already skeptical about this 3½-hour adaptation of Wagner's Ring. Like Melville's Moby Dick & Michaelangelo's David, the size of The Ring is part of its content, so the whole endeavor seemed suspect to me. But I eventually attended the final performance by Berkeley Opera on Sunday so that I could be censorious from firsthand experience. This version presents The Ring as a continuously unfurling, dynastic story. Anything that does not advance the plot is dropped. This means skipping every musical highlight of the cycle, so no Wintersturm, Ride of the Valkyries or Funeral March, for a start. As a result there are no big pay-offs, & by the middle of the 2nd half I was finding it tedious. The orchestra is reduced to a band of 17 that does not even include violins, oboes or bassoons. The resulting sound was anemic. I was also bothered by the use of sampled harp sounds instead of the real thing. On Sunday there were many tentative entrances & intonation problems, especially in the 2nd half.

The huge-voiced cast of 8 was great. Richard Paul Fink's singing was strong & weighty. Besides being a commanding Wotan, he seemed to enjoy playing a very mousy Gunter. Jay Hunter Morris sounded very Wagnerian as well. His tenor sound is heavy, but with a bright & slightly gritty edge. I liked the fullness & depth of Marie Plette's soprano, & her characterization of a chatty Forest Bird talking on a cell phone was a welcome comic highlight.

The production made good use of stage-filling projections in lieu of sets. The Rhinemaindens cavorted with swimming fish & collected floating balls of gold. Siegfried's bear was implied by projections of paw prints. Some of the action took place in silhouette behind the screens, which was also visually effective. The costumes were contemporary rather than mythological. Wotan wore the obligatory suit. Alberich, in torn jeans & flannel shirt, looked like a homeless man. Fasolt & Fafner were maintenance men in overalls, though Fasolt would probably have looked more threatening if he were not wielding a paint roller.

The performance was well attended, & I was able to get a ticket only because balcony seats were made available after the main floor had sold out. There were random conversations throughout the hall all during the show, though I do not think that anyone was bored by the performance.

White Light/Black Rain

I was amazed to read that this is the 1st year the U.S. government has sent an official envoy to Hiroshima for the anniversary of the 1945 bombing. It was therefore quite appropriate for Viz Cinema to show White Light/Black Rain, Steven Okazaki's 2007 documentary about hibakusha. I went to the midday show yesterday, & it predictably left me low-key & phlegmatic for the rest of the day. It's comprised primarily of interviews with 14 survivors of the Hiroshima & Nagasaki blasts & has a just-the-facts tone, avoiding overt political statements. I like that it focuses on the aftermath of the bomb as well. I was made very uncomfortable by excerpts from a 1955 episode of This Is Your Life which brought together a Hiroshima survivor & a pilot on the Enola Gay.

Viz Cinema is a small, modern & comfortable theater, & there was a moderately sized audience for the screening. This month's schedule features WW II documentaries & feature films as well as Kurosawa classics.

Merola: L’Elisir d’Amore

Merola Opera Program
L’Elisir d’Amore

Conductor - Martin Katz
Director - Nicola Bowie

Nemorino - Alexander Lewis/Daniel Montenegro
Adina - Valentina Fleer
Giannetta - Abigail Santos Villalobos
Belcore - Ao Li
Dulcamara - Sidney Outlaw

Friday, August 7, 8:00 PM
Cowell Theater at Fort Mason Center

On Friday night I attended the 2nd performance of Merola Opera's unashamedly cute production of L’Elisir d’Amore. Even a major cast replacement halfway through act II could not dampen the bright spirit; it simply made the evening more exciting. During the 1st act, Alexander Lewis as Nemorino had to stop momentarily to cough, but, despite signs of trouble, I was completely taken in by his terrific character acting. In the 2nd act he nearly lost his voice, & an announcement was made from the stage that Mr. Lewis was indisposed & that Daniel Montenegro would be stepping in. Mr. Montenegro came on as if he had been singing for us all night. I feel bad that Mr. Lewis had to forgo his big aria, & I hope he will be back in good voice for Sunday's show.

Valentina Fleer's Adina is a steady & confident woman with a voice to match. In the 2nd act she hit a ridiculously high note with seeming ease. Her final duet with Mr. Montenegro's Nemorino was a highlight & got long applause. Apparently, it was the 1st time they had sung it together onstage! Even though Belcore is supposed to be a bullying jerk, Ao Li's cheerful & loose performance made him big-hearted & adorable. I liked his round, comfy sound. Sidney Outlaw, whose Dulcamara sports a great Don King hairdo, really reaches out to an audience & seems to be a theatrical personality by nature.

The production is set in the 1940s, with nice period costumes & hairstyles for the women. Like last year's Così, it starts as a play-within-a-play, but the concept did not make sense to me. The 2nd act takes place against a backdrop of the Bay & the Golden Gate Bridge, which made the occasional sea gull cries from outside seem like ambient sound effects. Cowell Theater continues to be a problematic space for opera. The orchestra basically sits in the auditorium with the audience, making it difficult to play together & to not overpower the singers.

Still, it is pretty much impossible to spoil the fun of this production, with everyone on stage looking like they are having a ball. At the end of the opera, streamers are shot from the wings & confetti flutters down on the audience. When conductor Martin Katz strikes up the orchestra to accompany the curtain calls, it feels like the party is just getting started. & as if the opera itself were not sweet enough, I had mini-cupcakes foisted upon me during intermission by Ms. Ames, in the most pleasant company of The Opera Tattler, ced & Dig Dug. I also had a brief chat with Oboeinsight, who had to endure an errant hearing aid for much of the performance.