War Memorial Opera House
Photo: Lisa Hirsch
It's early December; time to speculate!
Here's what I have heard:
- Macbeth, Verdi, September 2020, cond. Sir Mark Elder. Found in Opera Magazine. However, I have also heard rumors that this has been swapped out for Rigoletto.
- Cosi fan tutte, second in the Mozart/da Ponte series; John Chest as Guglielmo (Opera Magazine).
- Poul Ruders, The Handmaid's Tale; Sasha Cook as Offred (Santa Fe Opera program; Opera Magazine). Contralto Sara Couden has a role in this too.
- Fidelio, Beethoven; opening weekend; MDD Eun Sun Kim conducts. Simon O'Neill is Florestan; this is in his bio at Santa Fe Opera and at his management company. Kevin Langan is Rocco. Thanks to the sharp-eyed Mateo Santos Perry for spotting this!
- Nicola Luisotti to conduct sometime during the fall of 2020 (source is Steven Winn's profile of Luisotti in the Elektra program guide). I expect that this is La Boheme, which Paul McKaskie mentions in comments.
- Donald Runnicles conducts something in the 2020-22 time frame; maybe it is here. Have heard a rumor of something "big and German", but you would expect something Big from Donald, if not big and German. Could this be Parsifal? Frau?
- The young tenor Clay Hilley makes his SFO debut in a new role, spring 2021, but we don't know in what.
- Maybe Adriana Lecouvreur? Maybe not!
- Rossini, Barber of Seville in June, 2021
I was going to have a blank bullet labeled "something for the new music director;" today's press release includes the news that Eun Sun Kim will conduct a new production of Fidelio. I should have guessed; Beethoven 250, blah blah. She was fulsome about the opera in today's press conference. I have a lower opinion of it, after three very different productions with different casts; the libretto is terrible; the tone varies from comic to deadly serious; he did not write well for the voice, but okay.
The Kaminsky Opera for All commission is supposed to be up next season, but it's not clear to me whether this is a main stage production or not.
So, listed above are four pretty definite items and two additional bullets for former music directors, with Runnicles a maybe, leaving two items open, or one if Adriana is on the schedule; the company cannot go below eight operas, I believe. Maybe one of these is the Saariaho commission? Except for the small number of singers mentioned about, I have no idea about casting.
Finally, there are eight items above, but Adriana seems unlikely to me (though who knows!) and no one has any idea whether Runnicles will be here or what he might be conducting.
Finally, there are eight items above, but Adriana seems unlikely to me (though who knows!) and no one has any idea whether Runnicles will be here or what he might be conducting.
9 comments:
Fidelio is a great opera but it's not foolproof, it does need some care in the direction. It sounds like you have experienced mediocre-or-worse direction. I've seen two atrocious productions of Macbeth, but that doesn't make Macbeth a bad opera or a bad libretto.
Fidelio's libretto is rather spectacular in presenting a strong female lead in a drama who doesn't die at the end, but triumphs instead. It seems like a pretty appropriate choice for the new music director!
For those of us with no knowledge of Korean pronunciation, how do you pronounce her name? So many vowel choices for her first name especially.
I very much disagree about Fidelio. The productions I've seen:
* Jurgen Flimm's at the Met (Nadler/Sunnegardh, Heppner)
* Michael Hampe's in SF (Runnicles/Brewer, Moser)
* Someone at SFS (MTT/Stemme, Jovanovich)
The SFO production was certainly nothing to write home about.
Re the libretto, I think the tone problems, contrasting the high and mighty couple (Fidelio and Florestan) with the sort of comic, lower-class couple (Marzelline and Jaquino) doesn't work well; Marzelline's crush on Fidelio is never resolved, leaving her presumably miserable. A better libretto would have tied up this loose end in some way, or at least given her a moment on stage at the end.
The pacing is also poor, and that's inherent in the libretto; when things wrap up, it's too fast and suddenly the opera is over, where the first act seems awfully slow in setting up the story. I'm glad for the heroine but her heroism and survival don't make up for weak drama.
Eun Sun Kim is pronounced Un Sun Kim, which surprised me. Sun as in English, Eun rhyming with Sun.
Thanks so much for the pronunciation guide!
Marzelline does have her moment on stage at the end - the duet with her father "Du prüfest, du verlässt uns nicht." It's only 8 bars but if led up to correctly it is really powerful. It's indeed not the most classically structured libretto, but I like that. It would be a boring world if we all liked the same things.
Only eight bars! Basically, it gets buried most of the time.
Re pronunciation, see the comment on the post about Kim's appointment: a knowledgable person says that the usual transliteration of her name would be Eun Seon Kim, with Seon pronounced something like Sawn.
I hope Goerke returns for Fidelio. It'll be hard-going for me otherwise. I've seen it only once, at Seattle Opera in 2012 (Christine Libor, Greer Grimsley, Clifton Forbis in the leads), but have tried to listen to it umpteen times. I just don't find it interesting, and in terms of drama, it's boring. I love most of Beethoven's music but just haven't found a way in to this opera.
(I liked Libor and Grimsley and would like to hear them in other works. Have been lucky with Grimsley appearing here.)
I hope Rigoletto doesn't replace Macbeth. We've had so much Rigoletto here since I started going to the opera.
Simon O'Neill's bio on Santa Fe Opera website lists him as our next Florestan here in San Francisco. Aren't we also getting that Adriana Lecouvreur production from the Met last year?
Oh, excellent sleuthing!
The McVicar Adriana is a co-production with SF, ROH, and a couple of other companies. I have had it on the Operatic Futures page for.....years.
My sources say it is Rigoletto but no Adriana next season. La Boheme in the Fall and Barber of Seville in the Summer. Also a truncated season with only two in the Summer apparently because of some construction? refurbishment? at the Opera House.
That'll be summer of 2021, when the seats in the orchestra will be replaced, so that makes sense.
I have not seen Barber since 1996, so...I'm willing to try again, especially if I like the cast.
Boheme SIGH didn't we have that ten minutes ago?
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