Recently in Performances

ETO Autumn 2020 Season Announcement: Lyric Solitude

English Touring Opera are delighted to announce a season of lyric monodramas to tour nationally from October to December. The season features music for solo singer and piano by Argento, Britten, Tippett and Shostakovich with a bold and inventive approach to making opera during social distancing.

Love, always: Chanticleer, Live from London … via San Francisco

This tenth of ten Live from London concerts was in fact a recorded live performance from California. It was no less enjoyable for that, and it was also uplifting to learn that this wasn’t in fact the ‘last’ LfL event that we will be able to enjoy, courtesy of VOCES8 and their fellow vocal ensembles (more below …).

Dreams and delusions from Ian Bostridge and Imogen Cooper at Wigmore Hall

Ever since Wigmore Hall announced their superb series of autumn concerts, all streamed live and available free of charge, I’d been looking forward to this song recital by Ian Bostridge and Imogen Cooper.

Treasures of the English Renaissance: Stile Antico, Live from London

Although Stile Antico’s programme article for their Live from London recital introduced their selection from the many treasures of the English Renaissance in the context of the theological debates and upheavals of the Tudor and Elizabethan years, their performance was more evocative of private chamber music than of public liturgy.

A wonderful Wigmore Hall debut by Elizabeth Llewellyn

Evidently, face masks don’t stifle appreciative “Bravo!”s. And, reducing audience numbers doesn’t lower the volume of such acclamations. For, the audience at Wigmore Hall gave soprano Elizabeth Llewellyn and pianist Simon Lepper a greatly deserved warm reception and hearty response following this lunchtime recital of late-Romantic song.

The Sixteen: Music for Reflection, live from Kings Place

For this week’s Live from London vocal recital we moved from the home of VOCES8, St Anne and St Agnes in the City of London, to Kings Place, where The Sixteen - who have been associate artists at the venue for some time - presented a programme of music and words bound together by the theme of ‘reflection’.

Iestyn Davies and Elizabeth Kenny explore Dowland's directness and darkness at Hatfield House

'Such is your divine Disposation that both you excellently understand, and royally entertaine the Exercise of Musicke.’

Paradise Lost: Tête-à-Tête 2020

‘And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven … that old serpent … Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.’

Joyce DiDonato: Met Stars Live in Concert

There was never any doubt that the fifth of the twelve Met Stars Live in Concert broadcasts was going to be a palpably intense and vivid event, as well as a musically stunning and theatrically enervating experience.

‘Where All Roses Go’: Apollo5, Live from London

‘Love’ was the theme for this Live from London performance by Apollo5. Given the complexity and diversity of that human emotion, and Apollo5’s reputation for versatility and diverse repertoire, ranging from Renaissance choral music to jazz, from contemporary classical works to popular song, it was no surprise that their programme spanned 500 years and several musical styles.

The Academy of St Martin in the Fields 're-connect'

The Academy of St Martin in the Fields have titled their autumn series of eight concerts - which are taking place at 5pm and 7.30pm on two Saturdays each month at their home venue in Trafalgar Square, and being filmed for streaming the following Thursday - ‘re:connect’.

Lucy Crowe and Allan Clayton join Sir Simon Rattle and the LSO at St Luke's

The London Symphony Orchestra opened their Autumn 2020 season with a homage to Oliver Knussen, who died at the age of 66 in July 2018. The programme traced a national musical lineage through the twentieth century, from Britten to Knussen, on to Mark-Anthony Turnage, and entwining the LSO and Rattle too.

Choral Dances: VOCES8, Live from London

With the Live from London digital vocal festival entering the second half of the series, the festival’s host, VOCES8, returned to their home at St Annes and St Agnes in the City of London to present a sequence of ‘Choral Dances’ - vocal music inspired by dance, embracing diverse genres from the Renaissance madrigal to swing jazz.

Royal Opera House Gala Concert

Just a few unison string wriggles from the opening of Mozart’s overture to Le nozze di Figaro are enough to make any opera-lover perch on the edge of their seat, in excited anticipation of the drama in music to come, so there could be no other curtain-raiser for this Gala Concert at the Royal Opera House, the latest instalment from ‘their House’ to ‘our houses’.

Fading: The Gesualdo Six at Live from London

"Before the ending of the day, creator of all things, we pray that, with your accustomed mercy, you may watch over us."

Met Stars Live in Concert: Lise Davidsen at the Oscarshall Palace in Oslo

The doors at The Metropolitan Opera will not open to live audiences until 2021 at the earliest, and the likelihood of normal operatic life resuming in cities around the world looks but a distant dream at present. But, while we may not be invited from our homes into the opera house for some time yet, with its free daily screenings of past productions and its pay-per-view Met Stars Live in Concert series, the Met continues to bring opera into our homes.

Precipice: The Grange Festival

Music-making at this year’s Grange Festival Opera may have fallen silent in June and July, but the country house and extensive grounds of The Grange provided an ideal setting for a weekend of twelve specially conceived ‘promenade’ performances encompassing music and dance.

Monteverdi: The Ache of Love - Live from London

There’s a “slide of harmony” and “all the bones leave your body at that moment and you collapse to the floor, it’s so extraordinary.”

Music for a While: Rowan Pierce and Christopher Glynn at Ryedale Online

“Music for a while, shall all your cares beguile.”

A Musical Reunion at Garsington Opera

The hum of bees rising from myriad scented blooms; gentle strains of birdsong; the cheerful chatter of picnickers beside a still lake; decorous thwacks of leather on willow; song and music floating through the warm evening air.

OPERA TODAY ARCHIVES »

Performances

24 Sep 2015

Sweeney Todd at the San Francisco Opera

Did the iconic “off-beat” and “serious” American musical hold the stage of the War Memorial Opera House? The excited audience (standees three deep) thought so and roared their appreciation.

Opera Theater Around San Francisco

A review by Michael Milenski

Above:Brian Mulligan as Sweeney Todd. All photos copyright Cory Weaver / San Francisco Opera

 

This production by British stage director Lee Blakeley (same sets, costumes, stage direction) was originally done at Paris’ Théâtre du Chatelet in 2011. The Chatelet is a 2500 seat horseshoe theater that has hosted much revered and some esoteric music theater over the years, like for example Alfano’s Cyrano de Bergerac as a flashy vehicle for Placido Domingo that was brought to SFO. Director Blakeley in fact has staged four Stephen Sondheim musicals at the Chatelet — Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods and A Little Night Music.

Chatelet productions are big and lavish and loved by Parisians.

The original Sweeney Todd 1979 Broadway production by Hal Prince was fairly modest with even a bit of avant-garde (for the time) theatricality, a reaction to the then customary razzle dazzle of musicals. The first opera company to take on Sweeney Todd was the Houston Opera in a Hal Prince production in 1984. This was the period when there was a concerted rapprochement of opera and musicals, Hal Prince directing a Madama Butterfly for Lyric Opera of Chicago in 1982, a production San Francisco Opera General Director David Gockley revived not so long ago in San Francisco.

SweeneyTodd_SF2.pngProduction design by Tanya McCallin

Hal Prince went on to stage Phantom of the Opera in 1986 and the bloated production scope of that show changed forever what we now consider a Broadway musical.

The 2011 Chatelet Sweeney Todd was big, and in San Francisco perhaps even bigger from the first moment when splendid digital technology recreated the huge acoustic of a pipe organ exponentially amplified to actually shake the War Memorial Opera House. And thus to get our attention in a reversal of the oft used theater trick of focusing attention ever smaller to make one aware of even the tiniest sound.

So we were warned that it was going to be a loud three hours in the opera house, and indeed it was. All the voices were hugely amplified thus creating an unrelenting loud, flat soundscape for the duration, embellished by some shattering electronic ringing when throats were slit. It was sometimes disconcerting when you were unable to place a voice you heard in the general sonic melee with a face you knew was somewhere — but where — on the stage.

Perhaps the orchestra sound was electronically manipulated as well, if so it will have served well to let us in on the subtleties of the orchestrations by Sondheim’s musical collaborator Jonathan Tunick, and onto the compositional complications that raise the level to what seems to be seriously sophisticated big music.

Biggest of all in San Francisco was the Sweeney Todd himself, baritone Brian Mulligan who is often miscast in secondary baritone roles at SF Opera. Here Mr. Mulligan fully inhabited the role wrenching every possible nuance within the limited emotional confines of the role and finally moved us. Equally big was the pie baker Mrs. Lovett, a star turn performance by veteran mezzo soprano Stephanie Blythe. Big is not the correct word — it was a huge performance in which her relish at pushing her chest voice was deliciously apparent.

The romantic lead Anthony Hope was sung by baritone Elliot Madore who knew how to take the postures of the cardboard musical comedy lover to the extremes of ardent, melodramatic (caricatural) proportion, and of course exactly the same may be said of Johanna, the damsel in distress, sung by soprano Heidi Stober.

SweeneyTodd_SF3.png TMatthew Grills as Tobias Rogg, Stephanie Blythe as Mrs. Lovett

Of special interest was the role of Tobias Rogg sung by tenor Matthew Grills. He earned the biggest ovation, and it was huge, for his song “Not While I’m Around.” This song is the one moment in the musical where what might pass for real feelings or emotions seemed to enter the catalogue of occasions for a musical number. Mr. Grills sang it softly and sweetly indeed, and the human scaled volume seemed to say that he meant it.

The gamut of casting was perfect to voice and character. One wishes that this degree of care would extend itself to the casting of the operas at San Francisco Opera.

Houston Opera’s artistic and musical director Patrick Summers was in the pit, taking the orchestral proceedings very seriously indeed. Mo. Summers is a singers’ conductor, his care in supporting these opera singer artists in music that requires more conviction than technique contributed enormously to the success of their performances.

This day included the announcement of David Gockley’s former Houston Opera assistant Matthew Shilvock as the new General Director of San Francisco Opera. Mr. Shilvock has been a part of the San Francisco Opera’s administration during David Gockley’s entire tenure.

And thus the Houstonization of San Francisco Opera continues.

Michael Milenski


Casts and production information:

Sweeney Todd: Brian Mulligan; Mrs. Lovett: Stephanie Blythe; Johanna: Heidi Stober; Beggar Woman: Elizabeth Futral; Anthony Hope: Elliot Madore; Adolfo Pirelli: David Curry; Tobias Ragg: Matthew Grills: Judge Turpin: Wayne Tigges; Beadle Bamford: A. J. Glueckert. Chorus and Orchestra of the San Francisco Opera. Conductor: Patrick Summers; Stage Director: Lee Blakeley; Production Designer: Tanya McCallin; Lighting Designer: Rick Fisher; Choreographer: Lorena Randi. War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco, September 23, 2015.

Send to a friend

Send a link to this article to a friend with an optional message.

Friend's Email Address: (required)

Your Email Address: (required)

Message (optional):