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.

SF Opera to Flower Piano

The San Francisco Opera traditionally opens its annual season on the Friday after Labor Day concurrent with a huge society fundraising dinner and ball. Because the beginning of Rosh Hashanah fell on that date this year, the opening was moved to Saturday, September 12th. However, because of a threatened strike by the SF Opera Orchestra over a new contract, the gala was moved to Thursday, November 12th in case negotiations didn't work out.

The opening featured what is reportedly a dark, Euro Konzept production of Verdi's Simon Boccanegra, a complex, narratively confusing, musically gorgeous opera with lots of roles for dark bass and baritone voices, rather like Don Carlo or Macbeth.

The final dress rehearsal was early Tuesday evening, and I went to the Veterans Memorial Park next door where Sid Chen was practicing his 24-minute pre-opera talk that attempted to explain the baroquely complicated narrative along with the cultural and political setting. Sid did a masterful job unraveling all those strands but it was truly a near-impossible task.

Meanwhile, orchestral musicians were on the sidewalks of Van Ness Avenue and Grove Street with protest signs decrying the deep cuts to compensation in an era where inflation is out of control, particularly in the Bay Area.

On Saturday evening, the parking lot for Opera House workers was full at 7PM, and tuxedoed patrons were arriving at the Opera House, but there was still no official word of a settlement from either side. I usually go standing room to the opera opening every year in the same spirit as sports fans go to the opening game of the SF Giants baseball season, which both start with a rendition of The Star Spangled Banner. "Let's play ball/let's sing!"

Instead, this year I went to the SF Conservatory on Saturday evening for a concert by the Bay Area Rainbow Symphony, an amateur orchestra staffed mostly by the gay community. It was an interesting program of Barber (The School for Scandal Overture), Respighi (Ancient Airs and Dances Suite 2), Korngold (Cello Concerto), and Chausson (Symphony No. 1). On my way home, I ran into a pair of men in tuxedos walking down Franklin Street, and asked them if the opera had gone on. "No, about ten minutes before the curtain was supposed to open, they canceled the performance, with everybody in their seats waiting for it to start."

On the Sunday afternoon following the opening, the SF Opera company traditionally puts on a free performance in Golden Gate Park of operatic hits that attracts thousands of people. This was canceled too so many of the would-be operagoers walked to the nearby SF Botanical Garden for an eleven-year-old festival called Flower Piano, and the line to enter stretched for over a block. Thankfully, the location is huge and the dozen different locations for concerts are spread across the gardens, so it wasn't claustrophobic. The festival runs daily through September 20th and is free if you have San Francisco proof of residency. (Click here for more information.)

I ran into friends who had been in the Opera House the night before and who had changed their Opera in the Park plans for Flower Piano, where they had already seen Spencer Day perform at one location and SF Symphony musicians performing chamber music at another.

We met at the Great Meadow where pianists Sarah Cahill and Regina Myers were performing a dual piano concert. The Berkeley pianist Cahill has been a star attraction from the event's inception (click here for a 2016 account), and it was a joy seeing her again.

Plus, their matching floral jumpers were the perfect look for a beautiful day.