I CAPULETI ed I MONTECCHI (The Capulets and the Montegues).     Vincenzo Bellini is the master of bel canto melody, lyric line, and drama. This is definitely one of his masterpieces (he only wrote 11 operas before he tragically died at 34)… think NORMA, Bellini’s undisputed finest opera and among a handful  of the finest operas ever written.  Many opera composers have used Shakespeare’s   Romeo and Juliet as the basis for an opera (Gounod, Zandonai, Bernstein, etc.) and Bellini’s is most satisfying.  San Francisco has perhaps the greatest bel canto mezzo of our time, Joyce DiDonato, in the role of Romeo,  Cardiff Singer of the World winner, Nicole Cabell as Giulietta, the great bass, Eric Owens, is Capellio and Saimir Pirgu, a much heralded new tenor making his debut, is  Tybaldo.  To top it offer Ricarrdo Frizzi, a top notch conductor leads the cast.  The last time San Francisco presented this opera was in 1991, and  there are only 6 performances between 9/29 and 10/19.  I suspect the run will be completely sold out.

LOHENGRIN    Richard Wagner’s early opera on the mythic legend of the Knights of the Holy Grail.  Though he was  such a different composer than Bellini, Wagner admired the Italian composer’s ability to write melody and beautiful lyrical lines. Wagner’s Lohengrin (1850) borrows from Italian opera and  starts  Wagner’s march to his ultimate  compositional style that took the opera world by storm. Lohengrin is infrequently performed due to its demand on singers for vocal strength, stamina, and projection over heavy orchestration.  It requires 3 great singers to bring off the characters of Lohengrin, Elsa and Ortrud. Today’s dream cast, in my opinion,  would include Jonas Kaufman, Anja Harteros, and perhaps Karita Mattila. The greatest cast of our time included Placido Domingo, Anna Tomowa- Sintow and Eva Marton (or perhaps Leonie Rysanek).

San Francisco’s cast is cautiously promising: Brandon Jovanovich, tenor, is Lohengrin, Petra Lang, soprano, is Ortrud and Camilla Nylund, soprano, is Elsa. The first two singers are known quantities in San Francisco with Petra Lang, the strongest in my opinion. Camila Nylund is unknown to me except from You Tube and other on- line clips. She is a beautiful woman, and hopefully she has what it takes to be the ultimate nightmare of anyone’s honeymoon. There are 7 performances from 10/20 to 11/9.

RIGOLETTO  Verdi’s warhorse returns to San Francisco after an absence of 5 years. It opens the opera season on 9/7 and runs in 12 performances through 9/30 with alternating casts. Other than being very popular, why revise Rigoletto unless you have a great Rigoletto? Well there have been no great Rigolettos for a couple of decades now.  There are many who sing it ( a few with distinction ) but none who seem to make it their own and a calling card; after all, it is one of the great  baritone roles to which most of that fach aspire.  San Francisco’s casts alternate with Zeljko Lucic / Marco Vratogna as Rigoletto,  Alexandra Kurzak / Albina Shagimuratova as Gilda and Francesco Demuro  / David Lomeli as the Duke. I recommend both casts since all are promising, and there are discoveries to be made.

Lucic will most likely be the Rigoletto at the Met in 2012 and the choice ( also I am guessing )for their HD broadcast. Based on that hunch, I would prefer to see Vratogna, who has impressed in the past.  Alexandra Kurzak is an established star and since I have only heard her on broadcasts, I will give her the nod even though she does not strike me as a Gilda.  The Duke is a dilemma.  I know nothing of Francesco Demuro, while I have followed David Lomeli‘s promising career since he was an Adler fellow in San Francisco. He is an outstanding young  tenor.   Based on several You Tube performances with Demuro, I find him of greater interest in this role. He has a bright, beautiful, Italianate voice and seems comfortable with it. He is at the start of what may become a serious voice and exciting career. I want to hear him live.

See what you think. Perhaps the only answer is to see Rigoletto  twice.

Francesco Demuro, tenor as the Duke, Rigoletto

TOSCA:    Basta Tosca!! Please, not another one, when there hasn’t been a world class, phenomenal Tosca at San Francisco Opera since 1972.  In that year, not only was there one, but three of the greatest voices of many decades  rotating in the role of Floria Tosca: Montserrat Caballe, Dame Gwenyth Jones and last but hardly least (& arguably the greatest Tosca of all time) Magda Olivera! So it’s pretty hard to get excited about yet another Tosca.

Well I feel a modicum of excitement,  since at least San Francisco Opera is presenting the two reigning divas of the iconic Role in rotation starting 11/15 and ending 12/2.  Angela Gheorghiu  (of small, beautiful voice and astounding temperament ) and Patricia Racette, (a solid, under appreciated voice and excellent actress) are both great singers in their own way and each is likely to bring very different takes on this iconic character.  This alone is enough to recommend it and the only reason to see it AGAIN.

MOBY DICK    Jake Heggie‘s operatic translation of the Herman Melville classic. Moby Dick had its premier in 2010 in Houston with much the same cast that will be in San Francisco. It received ecstatic reviews at best for a new opera and qualified reviews at worst for an new opera when compared to centuries of its operatic lineage. It has gone on to a number of production since,  this year both in San Diego and San Francisco.  Heggie’s best known opera and greatest success thus far is Dead Man Walking which premiered in San Francisco in 2000 and has been a hit around the globe.  Moby Dick is sort of like Romeo and Juliet and Shakespeare, … a classic tale by an iconic author (Melville)  how can one go wrong?  The cast is strong, but I am most interested in hearing Stephen Costello, tenor in his San Francisco debut in the role of Greenhorn (Ishmael in the novel).

Stephen Costello as Greenhorn (Ishmael)  Moby Dick

I’ll have more to say about the Summer Season in my class this Fall.

The main difficulty of rolling out a Lohengrin is the role of Lohengrin itself.  The famous tenors of history for whom there is a recorded history and who sang it with distinction and frequency are few. Lauritz Melchior, Sandor Konya (my favorite “heldentenor” sound in this role)  Jess Thomas,  Peter Hofmann,  Placido Domingo and now Jonas Kaufmann, just to name a few.

Perhaps Lauritz Melchior sang it more than any other tenor in recent history, a regular at the Met year after year and an early Lohengrin at San Francisco Opera in 1937. Melchior’s is a heldentenor voice:  powerful,  steely, trumpeting,  declamatory and the norm for the Wagnerian sound for many years.  When Placido Domingo opened the 1984 Opera Season at the Met with Lohengrin, it was almost scandalous.  Domingo’s  voice was considered too light and too lyrical for the role and most critics were correct. I heard that performance live from the Met on Radio in 1984 and recorded it on tape. Domingo brought an Italianate  lyricism to the role as though he were singing Verdi or Puccini. It was a revelation for me and many.

I have never connected with the “Wagnerian voice”. It can be thrilling in its power, but lacks color and nuance to my ears. Domingo opened my ears to Wagner. In the final notes of In fernem Land, Lohengrin’s aria at the end of a 4.5 hr opera, Domingo’s voice cracks and you sense his exhaustion. The unintended crack fits beautifully, however, as does the exhaustion.  Lohengrin, in the previous scene, has  just emerged from a 25 minute harangue by his new wife, Elsa, on their wedding night which devastates the Knight and requires his return to his noble past.

I am not suggesting that Domingo inserted the cracked note to emphasize his despair…it was a symptom of an overly taxed voice. Indeed,  many felt the role would damage his voice.    Domingo  went on to sing Lohengrin for a number of years, but with caution and sparingly at selected, smaller theaters. He was wise;  and he continued to perform well for 25 years as a top tenor.

Now we have Jonas Kaufmann as Lohengrin, who like Domingo sings many lyrical Italian and French roles and is starting to mix in Wagner.  Kaufmann’s Lohengrin is like Domingo’s in its beautiful, unique and lyrical sound, making the character all the more human and identifiable. Kaufmann, like Domingo, seems to be selecting his venues very carefully for Lohengrin and it is doubtful that he will sing it at the cavernous Met anytime soon.

The San Francisco cast perhaps holds a bit of promise but is unproven. Brandon Jovanovich appears to be debuting his role of Lohengrin in San Francisco:  but, unlike Domingo and Kaufmann,  Jovanovich does not have firmly under his belt any of the great Italian or French roles and certainly none of those that require stamina. While he was outstanding as Michele in Puccini’s one act opera, Il Tabarro, in San Francisco a couple of seasons back, a quick inventory of his recorded live video performances  of  full operas makes one wonder how we will get through Lohengrin when he has trouble with Don Jose in Carmen.  Jovanovich seems to have much promise, and I like his voice; but like so many singers today, he is either rushing himself or others are rushing him into taking on such a daunting role as Lohengrin. I hope I am proved wrong.

In any case, I am looking forward to Wagner at his most glorious, and if the singers excel and the production does not distract from the performance, this could be an exciting evening.

Lauritz Melchior as Lohengrin

Placido Domingo as Lohengrin

Jonas Kaufmann as Lohengrin

So with that in mind, I am looking forward this Sunday, 1/22/12 in seeing Jonas Kaufmann ( Ideally cast) in Don Carlo (favorite opera) from the Bavarian State Opera in Munich (some 3000 miles and 9 time zones away, an ideal location but within reach).  Thanks to streaming, Herr Kaufmann is appearing in my living room on a fairly large screen (not by some standards, however)  in surround sound, live from Munich. I shall be riveted to the screen, taking in every glorious moment of an opera, that otherwise, I would know only through reviews, blogs or a future DVD release).  Am I suggesting that this is as good as  flying to Munich and seeing Kaufmann and a great cast live in one of my favorite operas?   Well…..no, but the new technology brings its own kind of excitement, that in some ways, even enhances the experience that one would have in the opera house.

Technology is the curse and blessing of live performance these days. I predict it may ultimately be the death knell of many an opera company, that finds it hard to compete with home screens, great sound, perfect seating and sight line that costs nothing other than the price of technology. (at least, at the moment).

For those interested here is the website to access the Bavarian State Opera and the live Stream this Sunday:

http://www.bayerische.staatsoper.de/866-ZmxhZz0xJmw9ZW4-~Staatsoper~bso_aktuell~aktuelles.html

Enjoy and thank you Munich!

Atalla Ayan, a young 26 y.o tenor from Brazil, has my attention via you tube and other buzz on the internet from critics I respect. While this video is from a 2008 performance of La Boheme in his native Brazil, Ayan made his Met debut earlier this year as Gastone in La Traviata and is scheduled to sing Rodolfo this summer at the prestigious Glyndebourne Festival. From the video, he reveals a beautiful lyric voice, ideally suited to the Puccini role, and a hint of greatness to come. See what you think:

With a name like Pretty Yende, she is half way to opera fame if her name is telling the truth. And is it ever! She is an absolutely beautiful South African Zulu who hangs out at La Scala these days, earning well deserved accolades in small roles. She was a big winner at the 2011 Operalia Competition in Moscow. She is 25 years old, greatly talented and a singer who will sound AND look great in HD. Here she sings Rusalka’s Song to the Moon.