Manon at San Francisco Opera

The 1731 novel Manon Lescaut by Abbé Prévost depicting the rise and fall of a pleasure-seeking young woman in Paris has spawned adaptations galore over the centuries, from French films to a full-length ballet by Kenneth MacMillan and two major operas, one by Puccini and an earlier 1884 version by Jules Massenet. The San Francisco Opera is currently presenting the Massenet version in a revival of Vincent Boussard's stylish, minimalist production from 2017 with soprano Amina Edris as the title character and Music Director Eun Sun Kim leading the orchestra in an exquisite, colorful rendition of the musical score. (All production photos by Cory Weaver.)

The story begins with the teenage Manon being sent off by her family to be shut away in a convent. She is met at an inn by her cousin Lescaut, a neglectful young guardian who is more interested in drinking and gambling than looking after her. Meanwhile, the rich old Epstein Class of the time, depicted by Stephen Gaertner as De Breigny and Steven Cole as Guillot de Morfrontaine, take notice of the beautiful teenager and offer her enticements to join them and their entertaining harem trio consisting of Sofia Gotch as Poussette, Laura Krumm as Javotte, and Taylor Raven as Rosette.

Coming to the rescue is a young student, the Chevalier des Grieux, who is outraged that Manon's family is cruelly shutting her away, and the pair impulsively escape to Paris together where they cohabitate in a barely furnished garret while apparently making love day and night.

It is here in Act Two that Pene Pati sings a famous aria, En fermant les yeux (Le rêve), where he relates his daydream of living in a cottage in a forest with his beloved. Pati's rendition was so achingly beautiful, singing softly over the simple, wave-like accompaniment of the orchestra, that I burst into tears, especially knowing how the rest of the tale plays out. He is kidnapped soon after by a group hired by his father, the Comte des Grieux, sung powerfully by bass-baritone James Creswell, and Manon goes off with De Bretigny to be a rich man's courtesan.

Act Three begins with Lescaut, sung by the handsome Brazilian baritone Vitor Bispo, leading fellow bon vivants at Paris's boulevard Le Cours-la-Reine, where Manon makes a spectacular entrance involving a high wall and balloons. It was at this point that Amina Edris seemed to falter vocally and dramatically. The role requires a high, sparkling soprano voice (think Beverly Sills or Ruth Ann Swenson) and a surfeit of charm. Edris is beautiful and an accomplished singer, who was totally believable a few years ago as Cleopatra in John Adams's Antony and Cleopatra opera, but she didn't convince as Manon at all for me, even though she's sung the role in France to acclaim a few times.

The performer who stole every scene in which he appeared was the 77-year-old character tenor Steven Cole as the rich, lecherous Guillot de Morfontaine, who's had his eye on Manon since the beginning of the opera. He was by turns funny, creepy, charming, and authoritative, and it's amazing that he's still performing at such a high level.

Meanwhile, des Grieux has taken vows to become an abbé, musing that his only misgiving is his still smoldering love for Manon. Usually, the character of des Grieux comes across as a sap while Manon, for all her flaws, is the vital center. However, in this production, Pati is so sympathetic as an actor and singer that you end up caring more about him than his gold digging ex-lover.

During the St. Sulpice scene, with its Flying Jesus overhead, Manon seduces des Grieux and comes across as a greedy person who wants it all, both riches and true love.

When Manon urges a reluctant des Grieux to gamble so they can live in the style to which she has become accustomed, the scene just feels nasty, and her final death scene as a prisoner marching to Le Havre had me muttering, "Well, she deserves it," which is not the intended emotional response. The production is definitely worth seeing, though. Besides the glorious orchestra, there are dozens of small roles capably filled, and Broussard's direction of the chorus was brilliant. Instead of clunkily moving on and off the stage, they were used abstractly and with wit. Above all, the Pene Pati performance is instantly legendary.

Vote Fascists Out to End the Nightmare

During last weekend's very warm Saturday afternoon, I made my way to the top of Dolores Park to see about joining yet another No Kings march to Civic Center.

There were a number of delightful people who showed up for the same purpose, but compared to the tens of thousands at previous marches, the crowd was small.

Dolores Beach, however, was quite crowded...

...with sun worshipers showing off their beautiful young bodies.

Having too many skin cancers over the years after growing up on Southern California beaches, I decided to get out of the sun.

Besides, the fun protest looked like the concurrent human signage at Ocean Beach imploring us to VOTE! TO END THE NIGHTMARE.

A Superstar Piano Trio at Davies

In my experience, chamber music in San Francisco's Davies Hall tends to get overwhelmed by the largeness of the theater, but last Thursday there was a major exception. The Thibaudet/Batiashvili/Capuçon Trio consists of three global superstar soloists, with Jean-Yves Thibaudet on piano, Lisa Batiashvili on violin, and Gautier Capuçon on cello. Putting soloist egos aside, the three have been playing together since 2018 and their joy in collaboration is obvious to behold.

They started a cross-country tour of the United States last week with a delightful program, starting with the rediscovered Piano Trio No. 1 in C Minor that a lovesick 16-year-old Dmitri Shostakovich composed in honor of a beloved. What's amazing is that the 15-minute work is instantly identifiable as Shostakovich, and like most of his early compositions, it's a complete delight.

Next was another rediscovered Piano Trio in G Majorr by Claude Debussy, written when he was 18 years old, and it sounds nothing like the composer of La Mer and Pelleas et Melisande. Scott Foglesong, the program annotator, notes: "Anyone expecting to hear a lost Debussy masterpiece is likely to be disappointed, for this lovely trio evokes the pastel elegance of Massenet and Delibes." Thibedaut in particular was masterful on piano all evening, shaping the tempos and never drowning out his two string colleagues.

After intermission, they played a big, serious 45-minute work, Antonin Dvorak's 1883 Piano Trio No. 3, and it was such a gripping performance that the audience burst into applause after three of the four movements. Thankfully, they also remained silent at the end of the heavenly third Poco Adagio movement before exploding at the finale. The trio never played too loudly to fill up the hall, but their sound was forceful enough to be heard even at its softest.

I have somehow missed Gautier Capuçon's many appearances with the SF Symphony over the years, but was always amused by how his publicity photos made him look like the ultimate French matinee idol. To my utter surprise, he actually looked the same in real life, and both his solo moments and interplay with the luminous Lisa Batiashvili were sublime. If you have a chance to catch the trio anywhere on this stateside tour, do so.

Early Voting

Walking up Van Ness Avenue early Tuesday evening I heard loud chants echoing through the streets that sounded like a protest but turned out to be dueling electoral supporters of Scott Wiener and Connie Chan. The two Congressional candidates were scheduled for a debate that night at the Sydney Goldstein Theater at the corner of Hayes and Franklin. For a report on the actual debate, click here for Yujie Zhou's post on Mission Local.

Either candidate would probably be a fine congressperson, at least in comparison to the vast majority of their future colleagues, but there is a huge division in their local support. Wiener is the favorite for the local Democratic establishment and tech sector, raking in millions of dollars in contributions, while Chan is the upstart candidate from the neighborhoods. The most intriguing mystery of the race is why retiring congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, whose seat they are vying for, endorsed Chan rather than Wiener in the race. What did Wiener do that so pissed her off that she's bucking her own political allies? Nobody is saying.

Meanwhile, I received the above email from California's Secretary of State advising that my midterm ballot had been sent to the Post Office on October 2nd and that I should be receiving it in a mailbox between October 5th and 7th.

However, by Wednesday, October 14th, no ballot had appeared so I walked to San Francisco City Hall to vote with a new ballot.

Paranoid from multiple stories about the US Postal Service screwing with the elections for the criminal federal regime, I asked an elections clerk if there had been an uptick in "lost" ballots from the USPS, and she assured me that so far it was the usual amount of missing strays. There was hardly anyone beside myself at the City Hall basement Voting Center except for a male couple having a loud argument, ending with the older gentleman repeatedly screaming "Don't use my address!" before storming out of the building.

With its roster of judges, school board members, state and county propositions, local and state and federal candidates, the California ballot this year is overwhelming so I sat down with the printed guide at the disabled seating area and actually did a speed read through all the candidate statements before filling the ballot out.

One of the joys of visiting San Francisco City Hall is that there is a daily weddingpalooza occurring under the dome, and on Wednesday morning there were at least eight wedding parties scattered around stairways, balconies and alcoves.

I voted for Connie Chan, by the way, and realized after reviewing my finished ballot that most of the candidates I had chosen were Chinese-American, which made me feel mildly virtuous. Asians are a foundational community in San Francisco but they have been treated like crap by the presiding power structure for over a century. It's lovely to witness a sea change.

Prokofiev and Rachmaninoff at the SF Symphony

Last week's all-Russian SF Symphony program was an enjoyable grab-bag led by guest conductor Karina Canellakis. It started with a 15-minute tone poem from 2003 by Victoria Borislava-Oslos entitled The Kingdom of Silence, where presumably the Kingdom is Death. The piece begins delicately with a duet between celesta and glockenspiel, slowly involving the rest of the large orchestra, followed by a number of noisy episodes that didn't seem at all connected to each other. Finally, the music returns to the soft violins, celesta and glockenspiel, not leaving much of an impression.

The next piece was Prokofiev's 1935 Violin Concerto #2 with the Scottish soloist Nicola Benedetti in a bright red jumper on Saturday evening. Sergei Prokofiev is one of my all-time favorite composers, from his early avant-garde music in Paris to his later Socialist Realist music in the Soviet Union. This violin concerto is liminal, when Prokofiev was on the brink of returning to Russia after fleeing the country during the Revolution. It also has a collection of his finest melodies intertwined in interesting ways that sound extremely tricky to get right.

Nicola Benedetti was wonderful, dancing along while sawing away virtuosically, and she conveyed the sweetness in the melodies of the first two movements without overdoing it. Canellakis also did a fine job conducting, although she didn't quite manage to blend the medium-sized orchestra and soloist, with their devilishly competing rhythms. Still, the performance worked and the wild final movement with its slashing rhythms embroidered with castanets was a gas.

After intermission, Canellakis conducted the best live version I have heard of Rachmaninoff's 1940 Symphonic Dances, bringing out all the lushness and color of the music. Unfortunately, while my fellow audience members were swooning at the familiar melodies and rich scoring, the work has never done anything for me. My loss.

Mary, Queen of Scots at SF Opera

I saw Mary, Queen of Scots, a 1977 opera by the Scottish composer Thea Musgrave, at its 1979 West Coast premiere at the Curran Theater. Nearly fifty years later, it has been revived at the SF Opera in a bare bones, modern dress co-production with the English National Opera, and it's a happy surprise to report that the piece has aged brilliantly. The libretto, written by the composer, takes place during the six years of Mary's return to Scotland as an 18-year-old widow of the King of France before she has to flee for her life to England. (All production photos are by Matthew Washburn.)

Baritone Thomas Mole sang well and was smoothly convincing as Mary's Protestant, illegitimate half-brother James Stewart who offers her loving counsel while while not so secretly seeking the Scottish crown for himself.

There are quite a few current and former Adler Fellows in the cast and they all acquit themselves well, especially tenor Thomas Kinch in a powerful, frightening performance as James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, the Catholic military man who in this telling brutally rapes Mary before becoming her third and final husband.

He also threatens her second husband, Lord Darnley from England, in a wonderfully weaselly performance by tenor Christopher Sokolowski. Instead of supporting the queen, he looks to gain power for himself and when Mary does not cede it, he becomes a dissipated mess.

Lord Darnley is also deceived by an Iago-like plot, and drunkenly murders Mary's devoted friend, David Riccio, handsomely sung by baritone Hadleigh Adams.

The indestructible bass-baritone Philip Skinner gives a powerful performance as Mary's only true supporter, Lord Gordon, and he is central to the final moments of the opera involving James, Mary's baby with the deceased Lord Darnley.

The musical score is in the sound world of Benjamin Britten, but very much Musgrave's own style, which is dramatic, spiky, and constantly surprising. Her setting of the English text is also remarkable, often making the supertitles superfluous. The orchestra sounded sensational under debuting conductor Clelia Cafiero, and the staging by director Stewart Laing felt like the antithesis of director Claus Guth's work in Simon Boccanegra. Mary's complicated political narrative with many conspiring characters was clear and compelling, although it took a while to adjust to the chorus garbed in Pacific Northwest puffer jackets hiking through a British Baking Show tent guarded by police stanchions.

Although the opera pretty much disappeared after its first five years of performances, this revival makes it clear that it deserves to have a long life. Key to the production's success is soprano Heidi Stober in the title role. I have heard Stober in multiple roles at the SF Opera, from Handel to Poulenc, but this was the greatest performance musically and dramatically that I have seen from her. She was victim, tyrant, mother, and politician from one scene to another, while being sympathetic as all of them, and I hope she gets to perform the role again. This revival makes it clear that the opera deserves to have a long life.

Simon Boccanegra at SF Opera

Verdi's 1857 opera Simon Boccanegra, revised and expanded by the composer in 1881, has always been an overcomplicated, narrative mess but there is also lots to love. It starts strangely with a half-hour prologue that sounds like a Russian opera with baritones and basses butting heads in 14th century Genoa. There is also a long, magnificent father-daughter duet scene bathed in love rather than the controlling creepiness of Rigoletto, and in an unusual twist the soprano heroine and tenor hero are still alive and happily united at the finale. Above all, the music is Verdi at his considerable best, and it's a joy to report that the orchestra under Music Director Eun Sun Kim sounded magnificent throughout, and the large cast was superb, without any weaknesses. (All production photos are by Cory Weaver.)

However, the 20-year-old staging by German director Claus Guth for the Hamburg Opera was Euro Konzept at its most deliberately alienating and ridiculous. The overarching premise is that Simon Boccanegra, dying from an assassin's poison, reviews his life in his last moments, so there are people walking backwards, supernumerary doubles, a giant mirror and painting acting as transparent scrims, and a meteor peeking through the roof of a palatial room that serves as the unit set.

The prologue is set in the midst of political warfare between the upper-class patricians and the lower-class plebians, culminating in Boccanegra's elevation to Doge, ruler of the city-state Genoa. It's impossible to distinguish between the warring groups because the colorless, modern costumes all look the same. Baritone Gabriel Natal-Baez made a fine main stage debut as Pietro, taking orders from Paolo, the politically scheming bad guy sung forcefully by Aleksey Bogdanov. The title character is sung by the Mongolian baritone Amartuvshin Enkhbat, who is not a particularly expressive actor but whose voice is perfection in this role.

The two young lovers, Amelia and Gabriele, were sung by Italian soprano Elenora Buratto and U.S. tenor Joshua Guerrero in their dual debuts at the house. Buratto began a little unsteadily but recovered quickly for a splendid performance while Guerrero was a lovely surprise with a creamy, even, surpassingly beautiful voice that helped balance out all those bass-baritones.

Christian Van Horn played the major character of the exiled patrician Fiesco (sitting above), grandfather to Amelia, and mortal enemy of Simon. Vocally it was a great performance but the director had everyone walking about the stage like expressionless zombies, so there wasn't much he could do dramatically. This was particularly irritating during the scene where Simon and Amelia realize that they are a long-lost father and daughter duo after 25 years of separation, and instead of embracing and acting out the joy of the reunion, they awkwardly walked around a huge table in a trance, ruining the emotional moment.

The long first act ends with the Council Scene which was added to the opera during the 1881 revision, and it's a thrilling finale. A mob storms the palace, there's a debate about whether to go to war with Venice or live in peace, and Simon gives a stirring speech about healing old wounds and uniting as one people. The chorus sounded great, but none of the staging made much sense.

When the curtain was raised after intermission, the symbolic meteor had moved halfway from roof to floor, and the audience burst into spontaneous laughter at the absurdity. More achingly beautiful music was sung while dastardly plots and hopeful reconciliations were being devised.

At the end of act two, the curtain came down with a supertitle advisory for the audience to stay in their seats for a brief pause. This was the third scene change of the evening involving the same un-brief pause, all so the roof and meteor could be swapped out for new positioning. The audience laughed again as the black object was now plopped on the floor, just like the dying Simon whose poison in Act Two was finally kicking in during Act Three.

It was a treat hearing this favorite opera live again after an absence of a few decades, but the cold, grey Northern German take on a warm, colorful Italian subject just felt perverse, and I missed the beauty of the Mediterranean Sea that is woven throughout the score. There are only two more performances left, due to the orchestral strike that delayed the season's opening, and it's very much worth attending to listen to the opera in such a sturdy musical performance. Just close your eyes and think of Italy.

Ferry Dreaming

Last Thursday afternoon was gloomy in San Francisco, so on a whim I bused to the Ferry Building, bought a sandwich at Acme Bread, and ran for a ferryboat to Larkspur just for the hell of it.

I was also hoping the sun would appear in Marin County, and those hopes were fulfilled, even leaking over to San Francisco on the return.

Ferryboats are my favorite means of transportation, and I would love to explore the world documenting them...

...everywhere from Southeast Asia to the Mediterranean.

In the meantime, a new ferry terminal at the Berkeley marina is being proposed, and though neighbors are of course objecting, it's a wonderful idea. Every town on San Francisco Bay should have a docking station of some sort, and in a perfect world there would even be connecting public transportation. I have a dream.