The consortium is working together to commission new American operatic works that are flexible in scope and scale, with the potential to be performed in smaller venues and off the main stage while striving for rich storytelling and artistic integrity. The first new work, composed by Augusta Read Thomas with a libretto by Jason Kim, will receive its premiere in 2019 at Santa Fe Opera. The second commission, by composer Laura Kaminsky and librettist Kimberly Reed, is slated to premiere at San Francisco Opera in 2020. Complete information including cast, creative team and performance schedule will be announced at a later date. Additional commissions will be chosen through an open invitational and in partnership with a panel of esteemed jurists.
The 2019-20 and 2020-21 seasons were curtailed by the pandemic, obviously. Ruth Nott, who headed SF Opera's Department of Education in 2017, left the company at the end of 2019. She's now managing director of Opera Parallèle.
SF Opera never performed the Kaminsky. I'm sorry about that, because I liked the music for Kaminsky's As One, with librettist Kimberly Reed and Mark Campbell, despite the issues in the libretto.
OFAV has as part of its remit creating operas for all audiences (of all ages) and diverse subjects, with each opera on a small scale, making them financially accessible. They are also supposed to be short.
These constraints are certainly a challenge to the librettists and composers. They have to write operas that eschew the musical impact that you can have with a big orchestra–think about the scale difference and emotional impacts of two great operas, Dido and Aeneas and Les Troyens–and the dramatic impact of, well, traditional tragic operas that include such subjects as murder, rape, kidnapping, etc. They're still supposed to be serious operas on significant subjects.
I think that Hanlon and Fleischmann did an excellent job, particularly within those constraints. As I noted in my review, I felt as though the opera could have an alternative, bigger orchestration that would give it even more impact. I'd be very interested in hearing the first opera they wrote together, After the Storm.
Review round-up (to be updated later this week):
- Lisa Hirsch, SFCV and SF Chronicle
- Joshua Kosman, On a Pacific Aisle. See below for some commentary.
- Charlise Tiee, Opera Tattler
- Michael Antonio, Parterre Box
Why won’t Dad take him in? you may ask. It’s a good question, which the libretto doesn’t really answer. Nor does it persuasively address several other questions: Why are the residents of the village so nasty, including the schoolchildren? Why is the Pigeon Keeper who lives in the village such a pariah — aside from the fact that he doesn’t speak the language, hangs out with birds, and makes weird goo-goo eyes at everyone? (OK, that one’s actually pretty easy.) And most bewilderingly, why does the fisherman suddenly change his mind? For such a climactic plot point, this turnabout needed more justification.
The child is one of the hated refugee-outsiders is why. That's why everyone is nasty to the child; it's why everyone, including Orsia, is nasty to the Pigeon Keeper. I believe that when the child spontaneously sings the lullaby that the mother used to sing, the father's heart is unlocked. This is the closest thing to magical realism in the plot: the mystery of the child's origins and how he knows the song. Maybe it's a common folk song, but how does he pull it out at the moment when he sings it?
UPDATED: March 12, 2025
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