Ercole Amante at Ars Minerva

Ercole Amante is a 1707 opera composed in Paris by an Italian woman, Antonia Bembo, that was never produced onstage until this weekend in San Francisco by Ars Minerva at the ODC Theatre. A concert version was performed in Germany last year, and the Paris Opera is producing it in six months, so it seems Ercole Amante's time has finally come at last. The composer was married young to an abusive Venetian nobleman, and she soon fled with her two sons to Paris where she was saved by Louis XIV, who hired her and housed her in a [presumably upscale] convent. She wrote this only extant opera late in her life, to an already existing libretto, about the abusive demi-god Hercules being an asshole to his wife and son when he decides he wants to swap them both out for his son's fiance. Many gods and goddesses are also involved, and the happy ending has Hercules receiving his karmic due.

Céline Ricci (above left) is an accomplished mezzo-soprano, who created Ars Minerva ten years ago to perform an annual Renaissance era opera, many of which have been stored in European music libraries for centuries. Ercole Amante has long been one of her passion projects since she shares the dual French-Italian origins of the composer and the two musical styles in this opera.

I saw and enjoyed all the Ars Minerva presentations from 2016 to 2021, but hadn't returned for four years because of life rather than disinterest. The projections this year by Entropy were as lovely as ever, although some of the animation became distractingly repetitive. The bare bones staging with anachronistic props by Céline Ricci was its usual mixture of sincere and comic. The tiny original instrument orchestra, conducted by Matthew Dirst at the harpsichord, was reliably splendid. And the costumes by Marina Polakoff were amusingly over-the-top.

The cast had strengths and weaknesses. From left to right: Nina Jones as Licco, the servant to Hercules's wife Deianira, was simply wonderful throughout, while company stalwart Kindra Scharich as that wife with the big hair was superb. Baritone Nick Volkert was a welcome presence in a quartet of roles including Neptune and a dead king, and Aura Veruni as Juno the Goddess of Marriage was a delightful schemer. The disappointment was baritone Zachary Gordin who certainly looked the part of Hercules but much of the role seemed to be written for a bass which was too low for his pleasant voice.

Soprano Lila Khazoum as the fiance Hyllo was lovely but occasionally had pitch problems on Saturday evening, while tenor Max Ary as Hercules's son Hyllo had difficulties with the higher regions of the role which sounded like it was written for a countertenor. Bottomless, deep-voiced contralto Sara Couden, meanwhile, was obviously having a ball playing the comic Page, and her duet with Nina Jones was one of the highlights, positing that only idiots get through love unscathed by Cupid's arrows.

Plaudits also go to Melissa Sondhi in the monster outfit above as Venus, who conspires with Hercules in his dastardly plans. It was a fun evening.

Boy Meets Grail: Parsifal at SF Opera

The new production at SF Opera of Parsifal, Wagner's final opera from 1882, is a happy surprise. The nearly five-hour work has been both worshiped and reviled by everyone from philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche to composer Claude Debussy, and its narrative of an innocent fool redeeming a corrupt world can easily be interpreted as a symbolic, misogynistic paean to White Male Christian Nationalism, which is how Adolf Hitler saw it. (Production photos are by Cory Weaver.)

What nobody disputes is that the opera contains some of the most sublime music in the Western classical tradition, and the performance by Music Director Eun Sun Kim conducting the large SF Opera Orchestra and an accomplished cast of singers was uniformly exquisite. The production, which often looked like a Japanese-inflected version of The Magic Flute, was wonderful, filled with surprising details while remaining clear and unfussy.

Previous appearances at the SF Opera by Korean bass Kwangchoul Youn were not that impressive, but his account of the wise old knight Guernemanz was extraordinary. His 45-minute narration of the back story that begins the opera can be a boring slog, but in this case his deep, mellow voice and composure somehow turned the scene into a fascinating tale.

The Swiss mezzo-soprano Tanja Ariane Baumgartner played Kundry, the only major female character in the entire opera. Like Emilia Makropolous in Leoš Janáček's opera, Kundry has lived a very, very long time. This is because she laughed at "the Redeemer" on the way to his death, and has been cursed to be the embodiment of Female Seductive Evil ever since. The role is usually a showcase for over-the-top scenery chewing, but Baumgartner performed the part cooler and more sympathetically than usual, sounding great in both lyrical and wildly dramatic moments.

Baritone Brian Mulligan returned for another fine outing as King Amfortas, grievously wounded by the holy spear that was inflicted on The Redeemer, after the King gave into his lustful desire for Kundry at the behest of the evil wizard Klingsor. This brings to mind Nietzsche's denunciation of his onetime friend and idol Wagner with a famous quote in his essay Nietzsche contra Wagner: "The preaching of chastity remains an incitement to anti-nature: I despise everyone who does not experience Parsifal as an attempted assassination of basic ethics."

German bass-baritone Falk Struckmann was genuinely scary as Klingsor while using the cursed Kundry as his lure to defile the holiness of the Knights of the Holy Grail who wandered into his enchanted garden filled with Flower Maidens.

Best of all, tenor Brandon Jovanovich performed the heroic, innocent fool who learns compassion in a title role that seemed to be written for him. Since his SF Opera debut playing Pinkerton in Madame Butterfly a few decades ago, Jovanovich has been singing heavy roles in major opera houses around the world, and any worries that his voice might have been run ragged were quickly dispelled. He was a magnificent and deeply sympathetic hero.

The production team of director Matthew Ozawa, choreographer Rena Butler, set designer Robert Innes Hopkins, costume designer Jessica Jahn, and lighting designer Yuki Nakase Link worked wonders together, and even the Flower Maiden scene which can come across as unintentionally silly, was equal parts pretty and mysterious.

Dancing in operas, other than those from the French Baroque period, often looks ridiculous but the movement works well in this production, and even deepens the fairly static narrative. Having a dancer incarnate Parsifal's dead mother worked well, though Kundry wearing the same outfit while trying to seduce Parsifal raised some disturbing questions. "Don't you want to feel what it was like when your father created you?" is a paraphrase of one of Kundry's come-ons.

Our hero resists her seductions, however, and after years of wandering returns to the Grail community in Act III with the holy spear he has wrested from Klingsor, heals King Amfortas with it, and redeems Kundry along with the entire community. In the original libretto, Kundry crumples happily to her release in death, but in this feminist gloss of a finale, she and Parsifal appear to bring yin/yang and male/female back into balance, a hopeful ending for dark times.

American Bach's Grand Tour

American Bach began their 37th Season last weekend with what they were calling A Grand Tour. This was not in reference to the four towns where they were performing (Belvedere, Berkeley, San Francisco, and Davis), but instead were referring to the European cultural journey that an 18th century English gentleman was expected to undertake upon reaching young adulthood. Featuring three of the greatest Baroque composers, we started in London (Handel), then traveled to Liepzig (J.S. Bach), Venice (Vivaldi), and Rome (Handel again).

The concert started with an ode to England's Queen Anne, the 1713 Eternal Source of Light Divine, for five soloists, chorus and a small orchestra playing on original instruments. Especially noteworthy were the flawless performances of Kris Kwapis and William B. Harvey on Baroque trumpets, an almost impossibly difficult instrument to play on pitch. The music and performance from everyone was exquisite, with stellar contributions from sopranos Julie Bosworth and Morgan Balfour, contralto Ágnes Vojtkó, countertenor Kyle Tingzon...

...and particularly bass-baritone Jesse Blumberg (above right) whose deep voice was unusually supple.

This was followed by J.S. Bach's Orchestral Suite No. 1 in C Major, a dance-inflected series of seven movements, highlighted by extraordinary woodwind performances by oboists Stephen Bard and Curtis Foster and bassoonist Georgeanne Banker.

After intermission, there was a thrilling performance of Vivaldi's circa 1715 Gloria in D Major. The chorus was outstanding, and it was fun to watch the soloists step out from the group to the front of the stage for their arias, and then blend back into the chorus when they were not singing solo.

The conducting by Artistic Director Jeffrey Thomas rightly varied in style for each composer, and he prefaced the concert with the statement, "There is a lot of music today, so I'm not going to make any remarks at all." Also performing fantastically all Sunday afternoon at San Francisco's St. Marks Church were the violin section of Tatiana Chulochnikova, Gail Hernandez Rosa, Toma Iliev, YuEun Gemma Kim, and Maxine Nemerovski.

The finale was Handel's wild, gorgeous setting of Dixit Dominus from 1707. At times the music almost sounded like modern minimalist chugging, and its series of delights was a perfect capstone for a gorgeous concert.

Bartok and Ravel at the SF Symphony

It is a joy to hear a major work by a favorite composer performed live for the first time. Last weekend with the SF Symphony was my initial encounter with Béla Bartók's 1938 Violin Concerto No. 2, a thorny, 40-minute masterwork that plays like a dissonant traversal of Hungarian folk tunes. The conductor was the debuting 66-year-old German conductor Jun Märkl who did a fine job with the orchestra all evening.

Since the piece is complex, I listened to a number of YouTube versions featuring different violinists, ranging from old masters like Yehudi Menuhin and Isaac Stern to more contemporary artists such as Patricia Kopatchinskaja who was my favorite (click here). Unfortunately, last weekend's soloist in Davies Hall was the famous Greek violinist Leonidas Kavakos, who was note-perfect but didn't capture the Romani spirit of the music at all, flattening out much of the strangeness and excitement.

The best part was actually the encore, a Bartók violin duet entitled Melancholy where Kavakos was joined by SF Symphony concertmaster Alexander Barantschik.

The second half of the concert was the full, hour-long ballet score of Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé, which he wrote for Diaghlev's Ballet Russe in 1912. Ravel got pissed off at the Russian impresario when, at the ballet's London premiere, Diaghlev cut the wordless chorus that sings "oohs" and "aahhs." It's understandable why that happened because Ravel was already requiring huge orchestral forces for the simple story of boy loves girl, girl is kidnapped by pirates, and girl is saved by the god Pan for a happy ending bacchanale. What was irritating in this performance is that the SF Symphony cheaped out like Diaghalev and also omitted the chorus, which is a vital part of the over-the-top lushness of the musical score.

The orchestra under Märkl sounded superb, except for the horn section which featured a few off-pitch bloopers. This music is probably best heard in one of its two concert suite versions, because at an hour's length it becomes repetitive and a bit dull without beautiful ballet dancers and scenery to focus one's attention. Still, it was an enjoyable, stimulating program.