By Carol Davis
SAN DIEGO —Every year at this time, I feel that the opera season is ready to give me another early holiday gift. Before we know it, it will be January 28th and opening night of Richard Strauss’ fiery Salomé. In mid February the long awaited west coast premiere of Moby Dick by Jake Heggie will stun theatre and operagoer’s with his very exciting staging and musical adaptation of the Melville ‘whale of a tale’ that takes on, once again, man’s attempt to understand the nature of the whale, a 75-ton marine mammal, and his compulsion to conquer it.
Don Pasquale by Donizetti follows in March and the ever-popular Rossini’s The Barber of Seville rounds out the official season. In between, Renée Fleming will appear in concert on March 24th for a night only special benefit with the San Diego Symphony Orchestra. It is being presented, in part, by a generous contribution from Conrad Prebys and Debbie Turner.
Old, new, tried true has always been the standard by which opera director Ian Campbell has stood by. This year isn’t too different with the exception of the staging of the very new Melville’s prose on Moby Dick which we thought would have been here last year, but for some glitches and budget woes, was postponed 2011. Not to worry, though, some things are just worth waiting for and yours truly is as excited as a kid to see this production.
Jake Heggie is an American composer whose Dead Man Walking, Three Decembers, The End of the Affair and To Hell and Back are listed in his portfolio. He has composed more than 200 songs as well as concerti, chamber music, choral and orchestral works. The San Francisco opera premiered Dead Man Walking in 2000 and it received more than 150 international performances.
Moby Dick made its world premiere in Dallas in 2010 (it was commissioned by the Dallas Opera Company, San Diego Opera Company, San Francisco Opera Company, State Opera of South Australia and Calgary Opera) and according to music critic Scott Cantrell of the Dallas News, “It was a… triumphant world Premiere that captured the elemental forces of the sea, Ahab’s obsession.” The good news for us is that Canadian tenor Ben Heppner will reprise the role of Ahab, which he created for the Dallas production.
Moby Dick will be the second production of the season running Feb. 18th 21, 24, and 26 (matinee). I would get my tickets now, if you haven’t already.
Salomé will star the very exciting Lise Lindstrom. She was the enticing Turandot of last season’s grand opera by Puccini. In this role she will be anything but the ‘ice princess’. She will be the sensuous Salomé who seduces Herod (her step father) in her ‘Dance of the Seven Veils’ to serve up the head of John the Baptist ‘on a platter’. What she couldn’t have in life, she will have in death.
Based on the Oscar Wilde adaptation, published in French in 1891, and brought to life by Strauss’ stirring music, biblical figures the likes of King Herod and John the Baptist come to life. Strauss’ one-act opera was first produced in 1905. To say that at the time of publication the subject matter was more shock value than artistic would be an understatement. Greer Grimsley will play John the Baptist. Salomé will be sung in German with English translations above the stage. It opens the season on January 28th.
The next two operas will trip the light fantastic. Don Pasquale, Donizetti’s comic opera, will star John De Carlo as Pasquale, the old fool who is tricked into believing that he had married the sweet and innocent convent-raised Sofronia who is really Norina, a ‘gun -toting’ shrew who is in love with Pasquale’s nephew. Danielle de Niese making her company debut will sing the role. It’s a perfect love triangle as she is in love with Pasquale’s nephew Ernesto played by Charles Castronovo. Jeff Mattsey is the scheming Dr. Malatesta who pulls the whole farce off.
Needless to say it’s one of those convoluted yarns about money and mistaken identities and scheming fools; older men and younger women, money and plots to keep it and plans for others the take it and it’s all set in the wild and wooly west. The opera will feature beautiful bar girls, a Mariachi Band and Don Pasquale in a bubble bath with his Ten Gallon hat and boots on. “Wild West productions moves the action from Italy to the great American West”.
Rounding out the season is the all time tried and true favorite Rossini’s The Barber of Seville or Seville’s ‘King of Lather and Foam’ as he is called. This is another case of mistaken identity, disguise, word play, matchmaking and sleaze. The list of characters includes Figaro, the matchmaker, Count Almaviva, the young nobleman who woos the beautiful Rosina, Don Bazile as the sleazy music master and Dr. Bartholo, starring Carlos Chausson as her grumpy old guardian who wants her for himself. He keeps her under lock and key in his huge house. Since Figaro is his personal barber, he has access to the house when needed.
Based on the original play by Beaumarchais it was the first in a series of dramas starring the character Figaro. In Rossini’s The Barber of Seville and later in Beaumarchais 1784 Marriage of Figaro made into the opera of the same name by Mozart, Figaro is a man for all seasons. His character is as contemporary as it is roguish in a harmless but unsettling way, yet he is always poking fun at societies mores. Most will hum the very recognizable of all Figaro’s aria ‘Largo al factotum’ (make way for the factotum). “Figaro, Figaro, Fiiiiiiiiigaro!!
Antonello Allemandi will be making his company debut conducting. John Copley will direct. Don’t be surprised if you see flying chairs, a barber pole, fluffy clouds and raining bowler hats. “Barber” will be sung in Italian with English translations. Times are April 21, 24, 27, and 29 (matinee).
Organization: San Diego Opera
Phone: 619-533-7000 (box office)
Production Type: Opera
Where: 1200 Third Ave, San Diego, CA 92101
Web: sdopera.com
Venue: Civic Theatre
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Spectacular Aida at Masada
MASADA, Israel—Last June I had the opportunity to visit my children in Israel. My son in law surprised me with tickets to see Verdi’s Aida at the foot of Masada. Now that’s an experience one can never forget starting out with the bus ride from Beer Sheva to Masada, just adjacent to the Dead Sea. The bus, one of dozens, was filled to capacity with enthusiastic fans, most who made the trek last year to see Verdi’s Nabucco and most likely will venture next year to see Bizet’s Carmen. This, my friends is an evening etched in memory.
In all my years of reviewing both theatre and opera, I can’t count on my fingers how many times I have seen Verdi’s grand opera, Aida. No question that it is an amazing fête of work. The fact that it’s so grand, needs so many in the ensemble; singers, dancers, animals (perhaps) and is so extravagant that it has its constraints for opera companies, particularly now because of costs, budgets and future planning.
The Israeli Opera’s Aida at the 2001 Dead Sea and Jerusalem Opera Festival was a co-production with the Les Choragies de’Orange in France. The amphitheatre, at the foot of Masada Mountain with the 1,400 sheer cliffs as the backdrop and technically a monumental task was pulled off without a glitch, at least that I could see or hear.
When all is said and done, Aida is a tragic love story of grand proportions with every gut wrenching emotion involved accompanied by some of the most beautiful arias ever written. An Ethiopian princess and an Egyptian army officer struggle to keep their love alive under the watchful eyes of his jealous fiancé, the princess of Egypt while the slave girl, Aida plots to save her enslaved father. All the players are big hitters. The drama is BIG and the cast sprawling. In fact everything about “Aida” is grand.
The characters include Amneris who is the Pharaoh’s daughter and princess of Egypt. Radamès, Amneris’s fiancé and a captain in the Egyptian army and next in line to rule Egypt, is Aida’s heartthrob. Aida is Amneris’s slave and a Nubian princess. Radamès captured her father Amonasro along with a throng of slaves, icons and gold in a victory over the Ethiopians. Neither Amneris nor Radamès know of Aida’s station nor do they know that Aida will do anything to save her father. When Amneris finds out that Radamès and Aida are secretly meeting, all hell breaks loose.
Urban legend has it that the opera was commissioned for the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 and /or to open the new Cairo Opera House of that same year. Unfortunately it was not to be. Aida opened in Cairo in 1871 without Verdi in attendance. It seemed he was dissatisfied that the performance was not open to the general public. Nonetheless, it remains the ‘most classical of all Verdi’s stage works’.
This world premiere performance of Aida”by the Israeli Opera, under the baton of conductor Daniel Oren and starring American soprano Kristin Lewis as Aida was attended by about 75,00 people during the six performance duration of the opera and for good reason. Visually the spectacle was breathtaking! Imagine an outdoor stage a little bigger than half the size of a football field flanked on either side with four (two on either side of the stage) gigantic Sphinxes and rising in the background, as the centerpiece, an enormous statute bust of Pharaoh which opened and closed throughout and especially during the last (tomb) scene.
At one point a blue carpet, looking like a peaceful drifting river (The Nile?) slowly spread across parts of the stage framing the scene for Aida and Radamès where they secretly meet once more to declare their love. It was an awesome sight (Emmanuelle Favre designed the sets), one that I can still see if I close my eyes.
One hundred twenty choristers and a 40 member Bedouin dance troupe from Rahat and Arad with Jean-Chares’ Gil’s choreography during the Act II Triumphal March scene was more than impressive. There were 70 extras, 20 multi-national sopranos, and actors, along with the eight principals that comprised the cast of performers. Chills up my spine’ is the effect it left, and more than once.
High-tech video technology with more lighting (Avi-Yona Bueno, Bambi) than can light up a city that brilliantly shone on the mountain backdrop of Masada brought gasps from the audience, and a caravan of seven camels traveling in the desert off in the distance at the opening of Act III brought oohs and aahs. Now that’s a trip back in history even though camels are an every day happening when I am visiting my family in Beer Sheva. In fact there are signs posted on the roads that indicate ‘Camel Crossing’.
And what of the artistic highlights of the opera itself? I’ve never seen an Aida that I have been disappointed in and this is no exception. Before the actual performance we were notified that the only thing that might interrupt the performances were the possibility of high winds. The weather cooperated for the most part and the show went on without a hitch.
Between the music from the pit and the high quality of the voices on stage, especially Kristine Lewis who was making her Israeli Opera debut, that was nothing less than brilliant, the opera will go down in the annals of history as a success. Her big voice wove through the highs and lows of a lover desperate to save her enslaved father while testing the waters of having a secret lover with a very jealous rival nipping at her heels.
A high drama love affair, Verdi’s gorgeous music, highlighted by a nerve tingling Triumphal March, and chance of a lifetime at being at the right place at the right time right in the middle of the desert with about 7500 other audience members watching and listening couldn’t have been a better way for me to start my six-week vacation in the land of Milk and Honey!
*As a side note, The Masada events are also aimed at promoting the Dead Sea in the New 7 Wonders of nature campaign at www.newsevenwonders.com or www.votedeadsea.com.
See you at the Opera.
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Davis is a San Digo based theatre and opera reviewer who may be contacted at carol.davis@sdjewishworld.com