ArtsSF

REDWOOD CITY, CA—Opera composers are caught in a to-be-or-not-to-be quandary when adapting great novels for the stage. Should the text, consonants and all, be squeezed into librettos of talky vocal lines? Or else just retain the gist and plot (like Giuseppe Verdi) while adding rhymes and all those delectable, soaring vowels that singers love so dearly? Composer Kirke Mechem, 93, audaciously chose the first option in taking on Jane Austen’s classic timeless novel “Pride and Prejudice,” producing his latest opera…

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The future of opera in America points more than ever to small, mobile, no-star troupes like Opera Parallèle. Consider the financial pinch of the vaunted major companies like the Metropolitan Opera (pressed despite orchestra seats running close to $500 a night), and now the San Francisco Opera, which just recently laid off 10 staffers. Here in the Bay Area, the fire is lit by lesser-known, versatile troupes in compact theaters, like the local Opera Parallèle in a rough-and-tumble 240-seat theater…

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PALO ALTO, CA—The miracle here these days is West Bay Opera producing repertory on a par with professional ones in Italian towns. And only a generation ago WBO was still a sleepy troupe presenting mostly honest amateur productions. Yet more surprises: In the current Verdi staging, the singer who saved the night wasn’t even in the cast. And the New-World conductor in the pit performing like a true Italian maestro, with poetic baton and a passion for cuing singers, also…

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Intimate opera flashed and flickered with insight and drama in the world premiere of Allen Shearer’s “Howards End, America,” given by Earplay in San Francisco on Feb. 22. Based on the E.M. Forster novel, it is now updated to mid-20th-century Boston, focusing on racial conflicts and class distinctions. Its unlikely principals are two white sisters, a hard-striving black man as society’s victim, and the millionaire’s family mansion (Has any edifice apart from Valhalla had a starring role in opera before?)….

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SAN JOSE—A very good American opera becomes a great experience through a highly theatrical production currently at Opera San Jose. This is Jake Heggie’s “Moby Dick” (2010) in a super-charged dramatic concept, thanks to both Kristine McIntyre stage director and Gene Scheer, who wrote the visionary libretto. McIntyre, a master of the art, should be giving boundless master classes to conservatories full of budding directors, even those in major prestige opera houses hard pressed to provide her sort of animation….

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The prolific composer Jake Heggie, 57, has amiable music coursing through his veins, resulting in some 300 songs written to date. You may recall Schubert in Vienna, and Brahms in Pörtschach, with so many melodies in the air, all they had to do was write them down. Or so was the claim. And Heggie gets his lyrical inspiration right here in San Francisco. But that make-no-waves facet of his does not transfer readily to composing operas with action, drama, and…

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I’ve heard various “shabby little shockers” in opera, but “Tosca” is not one of them. The late (and revered) Berkeley musicologist Joseph Kerman called it that 66 years ago, dismissing one of the most hot-blooded dramas of the early 20th century, powered by a very current theme of sexual harassment. And, as usually happens, the woman is a victim. Yes, Prof. Kerman, that theme is always a shocker, but far more “elegant, monumental” than shabby in this reprise. “Tosca” is…

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What more could any one want in grand opera—abundant arias, duets, cabalettas and scenas, plus choruses, opulence, a melodious score, and three superlative lead voices? Plus political intrigue and intimations of infidelity. In addition, Queen Elizabeth the First (QE1) played as much as a harridan as a hurricane leading the vocal fireworks in a Maria-Callas-like role. This one scores  A+ in these departments. This was Donizetti’s historical opera “Roberto Devereux” (1837) at the S.F. Opera, a work that curiously was…

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SANTA FE, NM—The Santa Fe Opera’s fascination with 21st-century works came to a head with “Doctor Atomic,” which sold out all six performances up to a month ahead, to the wonderment of all. The box office tsunami for the historical opera about creating The Bomb was partly because of the hot John Adams-Peter Sellars creative team, and partly because its development under Robert Oppenheimer occurred right up the road in Los Alamos during World War Two. As one local put…

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You can blame us music critics for all the long, uncut Wagner opera performances, as in the four “Ring” works currently on the boards. Whenever cuts are actually made in five-hour-long operas, you can bet that some one will complain in print. Well, the Wagner operas can benefit from cuts, which are made even at the holiest of the holy, the Bayreuth (Germany) Wagner Festival. These works are clogged with static narration, particularly recounting of the drama that had gone…

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