Arnold Schoenberg, Erwartung
Mary Elizabeth Williams in the process of knocking everyone's socks off.
Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting SFS.
Photo: Kristen Loken, courtesy of San Francisco Symphony
- Lisa Hirsch, SFCV
- Michael Strickland, SF Civic Center (Mercifully, I was in Row T and heard no clomping in the Ravel.)
- The Opera Tattler
4 comments:
We were closer up in the orchestra. The clomping distracted me for the first couple of minutes but then receded into the background.
I was stunned to see Mary Elizabeth Williams singing some of her lines upstage(!) with no loss of clarity or balance. I don't think I've ever seen/heard that at Davies before.
She was superb all around. Not sure whether it was the orchestra's placement - which evidently changed a bit from Friday to Saturday - or some Salonen conducting magic that helped when she was singing upstage.
Yes she was. I was there on Saturday and the orchestra came out to its usual placement for Erwartung.
I did not love her in Santa Fe last year as the Foreign Princess in Rusalks ("Soprano Mary Elizabeth Williams wore that red dress well and acted up a storm, but vocally she was a disappointment, with a soft-grained middle range and tiny high notes disconnected from the rest of her voice."). No idea whether I caught her on a bad night, Erwartung works better for her, or she has gotten her vocal registers better connected. Regardless, these performances - apparently her first in the role! - were great.
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