The Man Who Wasn't There

 

Hand-colored photo postcard of the War Memorial Opera House and Veterans Building

Collection of Lisa Hirsch

San Francisco Opera's 2023-24 season, their 101st, has now been announced, and the company also released the names of everyone who will participate in the June, 2023, gala centennial concert. It's quite a line-up!

Conductors: Music Director Eun Sun Kim, former Music Director Sir Donald Runnicles, former Principal Guest Conductor Patrick Summers

Soloists include:

Sopranos: Karita Mattila, Ailyn Pérez, Patricia Racette, Nina Stemme, Heidi Stober, Adela Zaharia

Mezzo-sopranos: Susan Graham, Daniela Mack

Tenors: Lawrence Brownlee, Michael Fabiano, Brandon Jovanovich, Russell Thomas

Baritones: Lucas Meachem, Brian Mulligan

Bass-Baritone: Christian Van Horn

The wording "soloists include" means that there might be additions, which would be lovely. Not much in the way of basses there! And a raft of singers will be in town for the summer season who aren't listed there. Some singers who've been important to the company in the past aren't listed. I remember some unexpected appearances at the 1996 Gala concert that re-opened the opera house after renovations and also one from the Mansouri Gala a few years later (Joan Sutherland in a non-singing role!). 

But between the centennial season, the gala concert, and next season, I'm struck by a significant absence: former Music Director Nicola Luisotti. I was certain that he'd be conducting something this season, and was truly surprised that he's not on next season or in the Gala. A check of his schedule did reveal that in July of this year, he'll be conducting a triple-cast production of Turandot, directed by (gulp) Robert Wilson, whose productions are demanding. So very likely June will be devoted to rehearsals for that, and Luisotti isn't available. I'm sure he'll be back at some point, given his position in the recent history of the company; maybe it'll be for that Bohème with Pene Pati that Matthew Shilvock mentioned at the opening night concert last year.

Runnicles and Luisotti

I did a summing up the other month of Nicola Luisotti's career at San Francisco Opera, but I omitted something I'd consider important: a summary of the composers he performed at SF. Just for the heck of it, I'm including Donald Runnicles for contrast:

Runnicles: 101 productions of operas by Wagner, Rossini, Mussorgsky, R. Strauss, Verdi Beethoven, Mozart, Puccini, Gluck, Susa, Bizet, Wallace, Britten, Debussy, Janacek, Humperdinck, Berlioz, Messiaen, Busoni, Shostakovich, Thompson, Tchaikovski, Adams, J. Strauss, Stravinsky, and Korngold.

Luisotti: 36 productions of operas by Verdi, Puccini, R. Strauss (Salome), Bizet, Wagner (Lohengrin), Boito, Bellini, Tutino (Two Women), Giordano (Andrea Chenier).

Runnicles was here for many more years, including part of the Mansouri era, which featured a lot of Russian opera, and the Rosenberg era, which was the most adventurous ever. Luisotti was here for most of Gockley and the early Shilvock era only, and as we know, David Gockley really wanted to restore endangered Italian opera to its full glory, so a music director whose talents lay 95% in that area was perhaps just right for him.

Still, you can see whose talents are the broader.

Going, Going, Gone

Nicola Luisotti

San Francisco Opera web site, July 31, 2018:

San Francisco Opera web site, August 1, 2018:

That's right: Nicola Luisotti's term as Music Director of San Francisco Opera ended on July 31. It's just over two years since he announced his departure, and there is no replacement in sight. As Matthew Shilvock has said on more than one occasion, he's being very careful to get the right person.

As he's not saying, this is also probably one way for the company to save a few bucks, or hundreds of thousands of bucks, at a time of belt-tightening. (Note the eight-production season coming up.) But I also appreciate his care, because Luisotti turned out to be a something of a disappointment as a conductor.

His first appearance in SF, 2005's La Forza del Destino, led everybody to have high hopes; it was a spectacular debut, at least if you were at the first performance, which I believe I was. Since then...he could be inspired, or he could be off form, all in the same run. His talents proved to be largely in Italian opera, but because of his inconsistency, you couldn't count on him from performance to performance or opera to opera. His Otello, seen at the last performance in the run, was mediocre and the principal singers barely engaged with each other, which must have been at least partly his fault.

His Cost fan tutte, of which I also saw the last in the run, was the worst-conducted Mozart at an international company that I've seen. His Lohengrin was competent, but cautious. I remember the Salome as oddly paced, but others liked it and at the time (2009) I wasn't a fan, so maybe you shouldn't trust me.

His Italian opera certainly could be very good, and he was an excellent advocate for La Ciociara, a mediocre work that got a good performance from him. (Maybe he should have conducted more new music at SFO.) He made a couple of excellent hires in principal oboe Mingjia Liu and principal clarinet José González Granero, both of whom joined the orchestra in 2010 and both of whom are great players.

He put his foot in his mouth pretty badly following La Ciociara, when both he and David Gockley spoke ill of 20th and 21st century music, while running the company as though Italian opera were an endangered species ("returning the company to its Italian roots"). That...was not a good look for the ranking leadership of a major opera company. He waved it away in an interview with Joshua Kosman last fall, around when he conducted his last performance as music director, but I wasn't completely convinced. I mean, he could have made the case for staging Lulu or reviving St. Francois, but did he? I suppose we'll never know; it's not as if SFO is releasing the minutes of any talks he had with Gockley.

In the meantime, absent a music director, what happens if there's an opening in the orchestra, through retirement or the decision by a player to join a different performing organization, say, the one across the street? (Who among us has not had nightmares of Kay Stern deciding that Mark Volkert's assistant concertmaster spot looks like a good position to play for the next 15 years?) Last year, as the months went by with no new music director, I actually asked SFO how this would be handled, but I didn't get an answer. 

I will now speculate about how it would be handled: with the contract hire of a temporary player to fill whatever seat opened up, whether a principal or section position, and when a music director is appointed, that person gets to hold auditions for a permanent hire for the job. This is sort of what happened at SFS during their long search for a new principal oboe to replace the late William Bennett, and then for a new associate principal oboe to replace Jonathan Fisher: Christopher Gaudi played each of those positions during the search, and eventually MTT hired a pair of oboists. 

SFO Music Director Opening

Nota bene: I drafted this a couple of months ago; long story why I didn't publish it then.

I read Joshua Kosman's final interview with Nicola Luisotti about a week after it was published. Most of it is unexceptional, although Luisotti's "Nobody understood what I was trying to say!" about his remarks in 2015 on the Second Viennese School struck me as...a little late, on his part.

What really caught my eye was this:

Matthew Shilvock, the San Francisco Opera’s current general director, says the search for his successor will be thorough and painstaking, perhaps taking as long as two or three years.

Oh? Nobody says that kind of thing in public except to signal the likelihood that they will stretch the process out for two to three years. There's plenty of talent out there looking for jobs - see my running list of open positions and conductors without permanent contracts, and SFO probably has a much more extensive list of available conductors.

Luisotti's departure was announced in May, 2016, eighteen months ago, and presumably there had been discussions about his decision and the timing of that announcement before that. He could have gone to Shilvock and the board six months or more before May, 2016. A search committee could, and should, have been formed right away. At the very least, Shilvock must be asking around: consulting other general directors and conductors about potential candidates. He must also have a list of conductors available to take over in an emergency, say, if someone under contract for a scheduled opera is ill or injured or has a family emergency.  Imagine a conductor who is in a serious accident and won't be able to conduct for a year or more. Recall the real-life drama of James Levine's medical problems and their impact on two major musical organizations. Someone in Shilvock's position has to plan for these things in advance.

But maybe the reason for the thorough, possibly multi-year search is financial: Luisotti made more than $600,000 in the last year for which I can dig up a 990. Or maybe the reason is that SFO has someone in mind and that person isn't available yet or discussions are under way or whatever.

Let's think for a moment about the qualifications needed to be the music director of an opera company in the US.

• Excellent to great conductor, of consistent skill and a convincing interpreter of a wide variety of repertory, that is, not a specialist who can do Wagner and Strauss, but not Verdi, or the opposite, who can do Verdi and Puccini (and their bel canto predecessors), but falls down elsewhere in the standard rep and important perimeter works 
• Broad knowledge of the repertory
• Experience beyond the podium: can work with the music librarian, chorus master, chorus; knows voices; can do orchestra-building
• Worked as a repetiteur / assistant conductor for some time
• Comfortable with the possibly-maddening fund-raising and socializing and glad-handing required of any US music director
• Familiar with, or has performed, the administrative tasks required of a music director
• Gets along with the general director of the company
• No history of abusive behavior on or off the podium

Best of all might be someone who has experience as a music director of an opera company (although the absence of this didn't keep the Met from hiring Yannick Nezhet-Seguin.) Interestingly, there are a few of this rare breed floating around the music world just now:

• Lothar Koenigs, former music director of the Welsh National Opera, who stepped in for Levine to conduct what sounded on the HD broadcast like an excellent run of Lulu in 2015
• Henrik Nànàsi, former music director of the Komische Oper in Berlin, who just happens to have conducted the fabulous Elektra in SF this season
• Philippe Augin, about whose upcoming departure from Washington National Opera you might be scratching your head
• Antonio Pappano, whose ROH contract will be up in a couple of years, although interviews make it sound as though he is not looking for another opera house gig
• Simone Young, former chief conductor of Opera Australia and former chief executive of the Hamburg State Opera

And there are plenty of other fine conductors who are currently guesting or who might be in a position to add an opera company to their responsibilities. I suspect that the great Susanna Målkki is fully booked, between the Helsinki Symphony, guest work at the LA Phil, and other guest conducting (but please, book her for something!), but how about David Robertson? (Actually, one might wonder just what went wrong with Robertson at SLSO; his departure surprised me.) What about Ludovic Morlot, who will be leaving the Seattle Symphony in another season or two? What about....Krzysztof Urbanski? (Written before I read about an age-discrimination lawsuit at the Indianapolis Symphony that involved Urbanski. Ooops. That could be disqualifying.)

Regardless of which conductor is eventually tapped, I hope that some of the immensely talented conductors out there will visit San Francisco Opera as guest conductors.

(Note: I drafted this blog post before the MTT bombshell hit. Some conductors who might be suitable for SFO might also be suitable for SFS. And MTT is a talented opera conductor who might now be able to guest conduct at SFO.)

San Francisco Opera and Nicola Luisotti on KQED-TV

Upcoming TV broadcasts of SFO productions:

Attila – Giuseppe Verdi

Thursday, August 3 at 9 pm

KQED 9

In popular culture, Attila the Hun was a ruthless barbarian, but to Verdi, he was a far more complex and compelling figure: a brave, ambitious warrior tormented by fierce internal doubts. This San Francisco Opera/Teatro alla Scala co-production features a distinguished cast, including legendary Italian bass Ferruccio Furlanetto in the title role and Hawaiian baritone Quinn Kelsey as the Roman general Ezio. The cast also features Lucrecia Garcia (Odabella), Diego Torre (Foresto), Samuel Ramey (Leone) and Nathaniel Peake(Uldino). Nicola Luisotti conducts the San Francisco Opera Orchestra and Chorus. The performance was recorded in June 2012.

Mefistofele – Arrigo Boito

Thursday, August 24 at 9 pm

KQED 9

This monumental work of “choral grandeur and melodic richness” (The New York Times), a reimagining of Goethe’s Faust, is one of the most impressive productions ever seen at the War Memorial Opera House. The title role of Mefistofele is sung by Russian bass Ildar Abdrazakov in his staged role debut. The cast also features Ramón Vargas (Faust),Patricia Racette (Margherita/Elena), Chuanyue Wang (Wagner/Nereo), Erin Johnson(Marta), Renee Rapier (Pantalis), Luke Lazzaro (Adam) and Brook Broughton (Eve).Maestro Nicola Luisotti conducts the San Francisco Opera Orchestra and Chorus in the bold San Francisco Opera production by director Robert Carsen. The performance was recorded in September 2013.

So Much for My Favorite Candidate.

James Conlon's contract as Music Director of LA Opera has been renewed. The contract was going to expire next year, but will now run through the end of the 2020-21 season.

LA's gain, San Francisco's loss. Now I can start dreaming about more realistic future SFO music directors, such as Esa-Pekka Salonen, Semyon Bychkov, Alan Gilbert (well, he is available...), etc.

Candidates

The San Francisco Opera 2015-16 season is over, with 2016-17 opening in September. It's time for the summer festival season, whether at the abandoned Oakland Wood St. Station, where West Edge Opera will hold forth, or Bayreuth, where Andris Nelsons abruptly stepped down from conducting the new production of Parsifal, which stars Klaus Florian Vogt.

But the talk never stops. A few weeks ago, music director Nicola Luisotti and SFO announced that Luisotti had decided not to renew his contract when it runs out in two years, that is, at the end of the 2017-18 season. This effectively means that his last appearance on the podium as music director will be during the fall of 2017, because the summer season in 2018 is given over wholly to the Ring, with former MD Donald Runnicles conducting.

So here's a place for you to list your favorite candidates for the job, their strengths and weaknesses, and why you'd like to see them here.

I, of course, have a few of my own favorites and will comment on other names that have come up. In no particular order:

• James Conlon, since the Met didn't pick him up to succeed James Levine. He is a terrific all-around conductor who has done some superb work in LA and at SF Symphony; he has lots of opera experience; he is passionate about a particular repertory (Entartete Musik, which he promoted with his Recovered Voices project). Currently: Music Director of the LA Opera and of the RAI National Symphony Orchestra, Turin, Italy.
• Semyon Bychkov. Well, who wouldn't want him? A great conductor, and he does not have a permanent post. Of course, that means he doesn't want one.
• Pablo Heras-Casado. PH-C should be the front runner for a lot of jobs right now; why the NY Phil didn't grab him, I do not know. He has the widest working repertory of any living conductor, from early music to music of our time; he is an interesting and exciting conductor; he would look good in the publicity photos. He appears to be extremely charming. (Gratuitous and unnecessary remark: he looked awfully slick at his last SFO appearance. The unruly curls were better.) Currently: Principal Conductor of the Orchestra of St. Luke's, NYC and Principal Guest Conductor, Teatro Real, Madrid.
• Donald Runnicles. Love him, and he's as photogenic as Heras-Casado, but: Been there, done that. Why would he leave his current great job at the Deutsche Opera Berlin to come back here? The only thing that would surprise more than the Return of Runnicles would be the appointment of James Levine.
• Susanna Malkki. Her visits to San Francisco Symphony have been mighty impressive and have included lots of interesting repertory. She is formidable in 20th and 21st c. music, as the former MD of the mighty Ensemble Intercontemporaine. She was recently appointed Principal Guest Conductor of the LA Philharmonic, so we know she'll be spending some time in sunny California. She is chief conductor of the Helsinki Philharmonic.
• Alan Gilbert. The outgoing music director of the NY Philharmonic is a dab hand at late 19th repertory and forward, and the upcoming season is his last in NY. He has conducted at the Met and done semi-staged opera at the NYPO. We could conceivable get a production of Nielsen's Maskerade if he were SFO MD.
• Cornelius Meister, who lead a fabulous Abduction from the Seraglio in his only SF Opera appearance some years ago. Unfortunately, he was just named music director of the Stuttgart Opera.

Okay, I'll name Heras-Casado, Malkki, and Gilbert as my actual favorites for the job.

SFO Don Carlo: Media Roundup and Further Commentary

Michael Fabiano (Don Carlo) and Mariusz Kwiecien (Rodrigo)

San Francisco Opera, Don Carlo

©Cory Weaver/San Francisco Opera

My Don Carlo review, filed late yesterday, won't be up until this evening or tomorrow, owing to technical issues at SFCV. is now posted. Briefly, it's a great musical achievement, not so much on the theatrical side.

Here are links to those reviews that I know about; in the absence of mine, just read Joshua Kosman's. He's more concise and a lot snappier than I am, but we are in accord, all the way to telling the company to dump the Sagi production, already.

Or, in my opinion, get a better director; I dislike the sets but they can be made to work. I spell out more of the foolishness of the production and direction than Joshua; that all the characters do is stalk around the stage before they stand and sing is the least of the problems.

The SFO press photos even capture a scene that shouldn't have happened, another laugh-inducer during a deadly serious scene. This is the garden scene, where the only blade that should be drawn is Rodrigo's dagger, but this production somehow has Eboli drawing Carlo's sword and threatening him with it.

Michael Fabiano (Don Carlo) and Nadia Krasteva (Eboli)

San Francisco Opera, Don Carlo

©Cory Weaver/San Francisco Opera

I noted in my review that Fabiano and Martinez both needed more help than they got from Sagi, to which I must add: boy howdy. Fabiano spends an awful lot of time with his chin in the air singing to the chandelier instead of to her. Their facial expressions hardly changed in Act I; there's a bit in there where he chases her around the table trying to kiss her, which, honestly, I just don't think is happening in the 16th c. between a Spanish prince and a French princess. Not to mention: why is there a table in the middle of a forest? For a picnic, maybe? And why are they wandering around in the middle of winter without cloaks?

I'd also like to know whether there's historical precedent for the Inquisition hanging puppets as part of an auto-da-fe. I mean, maybe there's a reason for having a few heretics and a couple of puppets marching to the scaffold.

And I gotta say, I fell over at Joshua Kosman's observation that the auto-da-fe looks more like a farmer's market.

You get it: there's a lot in the direction that doesn't make any sense at all. There's no attention to detail, and that's why there's so much unmotivated wandering around on stage. This works for Pape in the King's Act IV scene; it's late, he's restless and unhappy and haunted. For everyone else, not really.

• Joshua Kosman, SF Chronicle
• Georgia Rowe, SJ Mercury News
• Janos Gereben, Examiner
• Lisa Hirsch, SFCV
• Greg Freed, Parterre Box. Silvestrelli is "a Grand Inquisitor so steadfastly malevolent you wanted to send him on a blind date with Suor Angelica’s aunt."
• Opera Tattler
• SF Mike, Civic Center
• James Ambroff-Tahan, SFExaminer.com
• Ilana Walder-Biesanz, Bachtrack

Luisotti to Leave San Francisco

Nicola Luisotti

copyright Terrence McCarthy/San Francisco Opera

used courtesy of San Francisco Opera

Well, well: here´s a surprise in my mailbox: Music Director Nicola Luisotti will leave San Francisco Opera in two years, at the end of the 2017-18 season. When David Gockley´s retirement was announced, the press conference also announced a two-year extension of Luisotti´s contract, presumably to provide continuity for the incoming General Director, now known to be Matthew Shilvock.

So, one of his first big jobs will be to find a new Music Director for the company.  As Joshua Kosman´s Chron article says, Luisotti was appointed in part to strengthen the company´s commitment to Italian opera. The end result of this is next season, with seven Italian operas out of nine productions. I´d say it´s time to strengthen the company in other areas.  I have not been impressed by Luisotti´s ventures into Mozart, Wagner, or R. Strauss.

I also note, with interest, that as of now Luisotti has no other full-time appointment. I suggest thinking about the possible implications of this. And there´s this in the press release:

I want the Company’s General Director Designate Matthew Shilvock to be able to move freely into the future with his ideas, his artistic interests and to take San Francisco Opera into a new direction.

Best of all, I can now tout my favorite candidate for the Met job for this one: James Conlon, a terrific conductor with broad interests and great skill across an extremely wide repertory.