Handel's Orlando, San Francisco Opera

Sasha Cooke, left, as Orlando; Christian Van Horn, right, as Zoroastro, in Handel's Orlando

Photo: Cory Weaver / San Francisco Opera

Handel's Orlando is back at San Francisco Opera, after an absence of 34 years. This is the opera with the asterisk in the list of operas that I've seen: I am pretty sure that I saw either Handel's Orlando or  Vivaldi's Orlando Furioso at SFO back in the 80s. However, I didn't save either tickets or programs or have any system for keeping track, so, I'm not sure which. I remember thinking "I'm not a big Handel fan and I don't care that much for Vivaldi's instrumental music, so maybe I should try the Vivaldi." Did I? Only ancient ticket sales records know the truth.

In any event, in the intervening decades, I've become quite the Handel fan and I've seen eleven or twelve of his operas and oratorios, so I was glad to see Orlando turn up on the schedule for this year.

And now...I am disappointed. It's possible that some of the problems in the production will clear up during the run, but I'm not really hopeful, because, well, they are big problems.

First off, I was not at all happy with the conducting of Christopher Moulds. The orchestra was too loud for an awful lot of the opera, at least from where I was sitting, uncharacteristically, in the Grand Tier, row A. Now, this could just be the opera house acoustics and it could also be a function of the set, which doesn't always give the singers much to bounce off. And the orchestra numbers around 40, which is not big for a 3200 seat house but is big for a Handel opera.

Volume aside, Moulds's conducting also lacked what I would call propulsiveness and thrust, a sense of coherent forward movement. This is completely separate from tempo; I have heard very slow performances that nevertheless always had forward momentum. I'm looking at you, Sir Mark Elder, and your amazingly wonderful Die Meistersinger, which clocked in at nearly six hours and somehow never felt draggy. What this takes is a feel for the shape and balance and harmonic movement of an opera, and somehow this was missing. I mean, I have some doubts about Moulds's tempo choices as well, but I don't have specific enough notes to get into that.

Sasha Cooke as Orlando

Photo: Cory Weaver / San Francisco Opera

The makeup and costume artists and director did a great job of turning 

a very feminine singer into a young man.

Second big problem, alas and alack, I don't feel that Sasha Cooke, a lovely singer whom I've liked in so many roles, was a good choice for the title role. Her acting was wonderful; by the end of the piece I was really convinced that she was a young man, perhaps a particularly delicate countertenor. But the vocal range is just all wrong for her: she is a high mezzo and this role needs a singer whose money notes are a lot lower than Cooke's money notes. I here note that Marilyn Horne was SFO's first Orlando, both here and in the Vivaldi, and, well.

Lastly, I think the production, which sets the opera in a rehabilitation hospital in England during World War II - a hospital for the shell-shocked - works reasonably well. It is a potentially very powerful updating, the second of this type that I have seen this year, because the Tcherniakov Les Troyens that I saw in Paris sets the Carthage acts in a rehabilitation center for soldiers who are, yes, shell-shocked from battle. (Yes, this means Christian Van Horn has spent a lot of time in the moral equivalent of a white coat this year, since he was that production's Narbal.)

But but but. The production is much too polite. There are an awful lot of powerful emotions on stage, from Dorinda's despair over Medoro's love for Angelica to, most crucially, Orlando's mad scenes. They were the least demented mad scenes imaginable; there was just not enough physical portrayal of the characters' states of mind, especially Orlando's despair and jealousy. And this is really necessary to put across the opera.

Heidi Stober (Angelica); Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen (Medoro) in Orlando

Photo: Cory Weaver / San Francisco Opera

I liked Heidi Stober (Angelica) fine; debuting soprano Christina Gansch (Dorinda) sang well, with some acid at the top of her range. I think that both Stober and Gansch were underdirected; neither of their situations really moved me.

Christian Van Horn has tremendously flexibility, especially for a bass, although the very top notes sounded a bit pressed. I think one of his arias might have been cut, based on a very odd harmonic progression at a crucial moment, but I need to check the press notes to see if this is right.

Young Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen, who took over the role of Medoro after David Daniels was arrested, sang gorgeously and acted well, although....someone should teach him 1) how to use a cane 2) how to limp convincingly.

Special kudos to the squad of comprimarios, who had a lot to do as doctors and nurses and were marvelous all around. Primarily on their account, I'm sorry not to have curtain call photos. And let me also note that I love the look of the production, from the Art Deco sets to the wonderful 40s clothing and hairdos.

A note that might be minor or might be significant: I would have personally hesitated to put a swastika and a photo of Hitler in the projections, and I would also have hesitated to show psychiatric torture during the production, which is very likely what electroshock therapy was in the 1940s. I was also not really thrilled with Orlando's repeated attempts to choke Dorinda. Find some other way to represent his tortured jealousy.