West Edge Opera Stravinsky and Schoenberg

West Edge Opera's annual summer festival at Oakland's Scottish Rite Temple concluded with two early 20th century modernist works, Stravinsky's 1914 The Nightingale in Russian and Arnold Schoenberg's Ewartung in German. The Stravinsky is a tricky piece to pull off because there are so many characters and musical themes compressed into three acts over 45 minutes. The costumes by Ralph W. Hoy were delightful but confusing, and the same could be said for the direction by Giselle Ty. (Pictured left to right are Kristen Choi as Cook, Patrick Scully as Emperor, Kevin Gino as Fisherman, Helen Zhibing Huang as Nightingale, Alice Chung as Death, and Chung Wai-Soong as Chamberlain.)

One of the shining stars of the final Sunday afternoon performance was soprano Helen Zhibing Huang as the Nightingale, whose crystalline soprano was breahtaking. You could believe that Death might take a holiday after listening to her sing.

Another astonishment was the large, 30-piece orchestra led by Music Director Jonathan Khuner, with a particular shoutout to Tod Brody playing the flute as the Nightingale's musical partner in the Stravinsky.

The 30-minute Erwartung by Arnold Schoenberg is a monologue for a soprano and huge orchestra (reduction by Khuner) where a woman wanders through a forest having a nervous breakdown after possibly killing her lover. This production transposed the action to a hospital, with a forest hinted at in the background of Mikiko Uesugi's set design.

Mary Evelyn Hangley as The Woman was tremendous in the demanding solo role, tortured one moment and rhapsodic the next.

She was accompanied by six dancers choreographed by Lucas Tischler, who were a bit superfluous during their ballet interludes in The Nightingale but compelling while creating characters and moods with modern dance movement during Ewartung.

West Edge Opera's season is not quite over yet, however. At intermission, I ran into composer Nicolás Lell Benavides who has been composing an opera about the United Farm Workers legend Dolores Huerta. An orchestral run-through is being presented by West Edge Opera this afternoon (Sunday the 13th) at 3PM in the Taube theater in San Francisco's Veterans Building. See you there.