Simon Boccanegra at San Francisco Opera

Amartuvshin Enkhbat as Simon Boccanegra, Christian Van Horn as Jacopo Fiesco, and Eleonora Buratto as Amelia Grimaldi in Verdi's "Simon Boccanegra."

Photo: Cory Weaver/San Francisco Opera

I've filed my Simon Boccanegra review with Opera – it'll be in the November issue – so now I can read what everyone else has to say and create a review roundup. My review praised the performers and damned original director Claus Guth, whose production muddied the waters of an already murky plot while draining the emotional life from a deeply emotional opera. 

I wish I'd had more space to detail the failures. The photo above says it all: three impassive singers not able to interact.

• Steven Winn, SFCV / SF Chronicle. "Brilliant realization"
• Joshua Kosman, On a Pacific Aisle. "A risible stage production"
• Harvey Steiman, Seen & Heard. "Unfortunately, a misguided production drained some of the juice from the music and almost all of the opera’s tale of messy politics and a too-late healing of nasty family secrets."
• Lisa Hirsch, Opera. "An opaque and sometimes laughable Claus Guth modern-dress production." I  also wish I could have squeezed in how great Van Horn looked in that coat. 
• Gary Kamiya, Kamiya Unlimited. A hilarious and accurate description of the plot complications in Simon, plus "Claus Guth’s aggressive directorial choices (Guth’s production was first staged in Hamburg in 2006 and revived here by Katherine M. Carter) only made matters worse."
• Michael Strickland, SF Civic Center. "However, the 20-year-old staging by German director Claus Guth for the Hamburg Opera was Euro Konzept at its most deliberately alienating and ridiculous."
• Charlise Tiee, Opera Tattler. "The direction was an obstruction to the narrative rather than elucidating the text" and also "To be honest, I enjoyed the production very much as it is absurd and unintentionally funny."