![Angela Gheorghiu as Tosca and Massimo Giordano as Cavaradossi [Photo by Cory Weaver courtesy of San Francisco Opera]](http://www.operatoday.com/03--Tosca-G.gif)
16 Nov 2012
Tosca in San Francisco
Operatic train wreck in San Francisco, hopes crushed for 3000 opera-goers, impresario’s grand scheme derailed.
Excellent programming: worthy of Boulez, if hardly for the literal minded. (‘I think you’ll find [stroking chin] Beethoven didn’t know Unsuk Chin’s music, or Heinrich Biber’s. So … what are they doing together then? And … AND … why don’t you use period instruments? I rest my case!’)
On a recent weekend evening the performers in the current roster of the Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan Opera Center at Lyric Opera of Chicago presented a concert of operatic selections showcasing their musical talents. The Lyric Opera Orchestra accompanied the performers and was conducted by Edwin Outwater.
On April 6, 2018, Arizona Opera presented an uncut performance of Richard Wagner’s Das Rheingold. It was the first time in two decades that this company had staged a Ring opera.
The 2018 London Handel Festival drew to a close with this vibrant and youthful performance (the second of two) at St George’s Church, Hanover Square, of Handel’s Teseo - the composer’s third opera for London after Rinaldo (1711) and Il pastor fido (1712), which was performed at least thirteen times between January and May 1713.
The Moderate Soprano and the story of Glyndebourne: love, opera and Nazism in David Hare’s moving play
Well, it was Friday 13th. I returned home from this moving and inspiring British-themed concert at the Barbican Hall in which the BBC Symphony Orchestra and conductor Sir Andrew Davis had marked the centenary of the end of World War I, to turn on my lap-top and discover that the British Prime Minister had authorised UK armed forces to participate with French and US forces in attacks on Syrian chemical weapon sites.
This seemed a timely moment for a performance of Stravinsky’s choral ballet, Perséphone. April, Eliot’s ‘cruellest month’, has brought rather too many of Chaucer’s ‘sweet showers [to] pierce the ‘drought of March to the root’, but as the weather finally begins to warms and nature stirs, what better than the classical myth of the eponymous goddess’s rape by Pluto and subsequent rescue from Hades, begetting the eternal rotation of the seasons, to reassure us that winter is indeed over and the spirit of spring is engendering the earth.
This performance of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas by La Nuova Musica, directed by David Bates, was, characteristically for this ensemble, alert to musical details, vividly etched and imaginatively conceived.
In 1969, Mrs Aristotle Onassis commissioned a major composition to celebrate the opening of a new arts centre in Washington, DC - the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, named after her late husband, President John F. Kennedy, who had been assassinated six years earlier.
This is a landmark production of Hans Werner Henze's Das Floß der Medusa (The Raft of the Medusa) conducted by Ingo Metzmacher in Amsterdam earlier this month, with Dale Duesing (Charon), Bo Skovhus and Lenneke Ruiten, with Cappella Amsterdam, the Nieuw Amsterdams Kinderen Jeugdkoor, and the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, in a powerfully perceptive staging by Romeo Castellucci.
This was the first time, I think, since having moved to London that I had attended a Bach Passion performance on Good Friday here.
It was a little early, perhaps, to be hearing ‘Easter Voices’ in the middle of Holy Week. However, this was not especially an Easter programme – and, in any case, included two pieces from Gesualdo’s Tenebrae responsories for Good Friday. Given the continued vileness of the weather, a little foreshadowing of something warmer was in any case most welcome. (Yes, I know: I should hang my head in Lenten shame.)
‘In order to preserve the good order in the Churches, so arrange the music that it shall not last too long, and shall be of such nature as not to make an operatic impression, but rather incite the listeners to devotion.’
The white walls of designer Peter McKintosh’s Ikea-maze are still spinning, the ox-skulls are still louring, and the servants are still eavesdropping, as Fiona Shaw’s 2011 production of The Marriage of Figaro returns to English National Opera for its second revival. Or, perhaps one should say that the servants are still sleeping - slumped in corridors, snoozing in chairs, snuggled under work-tables - for at times this did seem a rather soporific Figaro under Martyn Brabbins’ baton.
Time was I could hear the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge almost any evening I chose, at least during term time. (If I remember correctly, Mondays were reserved for the mixed voice King’s Voices.)
Lyric Opera of Chicago’s innovative, new production of Charles Gounod’s Faust succeeds on multiple levels of musical and dramatic representation. The title role is sung by Benjamin Bernheim, his companion in adventure Méphistophélès is performed by Christian Van Horn.
Shakespeare’s Macbeth is a play of the night: of dark interiors and shadowy forests. ‘Light thickens, and the crow/Makes wing to th’ rooky wood,’ says Macbeth, welcoming the darkness which, whether literal or figurative, is thrillingly and threateningly palpable.
Daniel Catán’s widely celebrated opera, Florencia en el Amazonas received a top tier production at the wholly rejuvenated San Diego Opera company.
Four singers were awarded prizes at the inaugural Glyndebourne Opera Cup, which reached its closing stage at Glyndebourne on 24th March. The Glyndebourne Opera Cup focuses on a different single composer or strand of the repertoire each time it is held. In 2018 the featured composer was Mozart and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment accompanied the ten finalists.
It’s sometimes suggested that it was the simultaneous decline of the popularity of Italian opera seria among Georgian audiences and, in consequence, of the fortunes of Handel’s Royal Academy King’s Theatre, that led the composer to turn his hand to oratorio in English, the genre which would endear him to the hearts of the nation.
Operatic train wreck in San Francisco, hopes crushed for 3000 opera-goers, impresario’s grand scheme derailed.
Now that I’ve got your attention.
There were even advance whispers that something dramatic might happen. Well, no surprise given the cast of characters, character that is — Romanian soprano Angela Gheorghiu.
Huge anticipation was in the air for the American premiere of Mme. Gheorghiu’s Tosca, a role Opera Today’s London critic said she was born to play, the quote trumpeted all over San Francisco. Most of the world knows more about Mme. Gheorghiu marital dramas than it knows about her artistry. But luckily here in San Francisco we do know her charming Rondine and her touching Mimi as well. Adding all this up we were indeed prepped for a dynamite Tosca (after all maestro Luisotti was in the pit).
Angela Gheorghiu was born to play Tosca. The Floria Tosca that entered Sant’Andrea della valle exuded layers of histrionic complexity, her voice was soft, her presence lost, a fiery diva in a sanctuary where women are pure. Her duet with Cavaradossi was fraught with interior conflict that exploded from time to time in full voice, detailing movements of emotion that would prepare her spiritually for what we already knew she must do — in full voice — as the evening unfolded.
Nicola Luisotti drove his orchestra full throttle, the voice of operatic verismo, searching for a depth of histrionic orchestral tone, ignoring the forward dramatic thrust of the words themselves. Often an open conflict between the pit and the stage instigated by this maestro results in inspired music making, a duet of conductor and singer that is exponentially richer than voice alone. But famously la Gheorghiu avoids rehearsing, and perhaps this precipitated the musical error (an early entrance) that passed unnoticed by most (or was accepted as diva histrionics), but certainly unsettled this temperamental diva in performance.
Meanwhile stage director Jose Maria Condemi well exposed the machinations of Scarpia that would fulfill his lust for the actress Tosca. Italian baritone Roberto Frontali relished the role, making the predatory Baron less powerful and more insidious than we have usually seen in San Francisco and elsewhere, aided in no small part by the maestro who gave him huge volume and color to work with. Mr. Frontali has a sizable, not beautiful voice and the musical confidence to contend with the Luisotti pit.
Roberto Frontali as Scarpia and Angela Gheorghiu as Tosca
Well, this leaves Cavaradossi, Massimo Giordano. Mr. Giordano is a flawed singer who has loud high notes that he only seems to effect if he attacks them from above. This places an accent where usually there would be a smooth line. While this mannerism could be used for dramatic effect it became obvious that this was central to his vocal technique. While it was jarring in the first act at least we hoped it might be just an amusing tenorial affectation, if used without taste or discretion.
Mo. Luisotti, Mr. Frontali, the San Francisco Opera Orchestra and Chorus erupted in a Te Deum that completely enveloped the War Memorial Opera House. The curtain fell, the audience roared, and the evening ended.
Not that the performance did not in fact continue. Mme. Gheorghiu pulled out, physically distressed (intestinal flu we were told), though the suspicion lingers that it was vocal distress, and certainly a large dose of emotional distress must be included. We waited while the cover singer, Melody Moore, was costumed. Mlle. Moore is a promising young singer who does not have the spinto capabilities demanded by the role. She was painfully ill-suited to follow the diva footsteps made by Mme. Gheorghiu in the first act, nor did she seem coached or rehearsed to do so. It is indeed strange that San Francisco Opera had not anticipated such an occurrence, hardly unexpected from la Gheorghiu.
Thus impresario’s David Gockley coup de theatre (not just one, but two Tosca divas) gone up in smoke.
Michael Milenski
Cast and Production
Floria Tosca Act I: Angela Gheorghiu; Floria Tosca Acts II and III: Melody Moore; Mario Cavaradossi: Massimo Giordano; Baron Scarpia: Roberto Frontali; Angelotti: Christian Van Horn; Spoletta: Joel Sorensen; Sacristan: Dale Travis; Sciarrone: Ao Li; Jailer: Ryan Kuster; Shepherd Boy: Etienne Julius Valdez. San Francisco Opera Orchestra and Chorus. Conductor: Nicola Luisotti; Stage Director: Jose Maria Condemi; Production Designer: Thierry Bosquet; Lighting Designer: Christopher Maravich. San Francisco War Memorial Opera House. November 15, 2012.