A Tale of Two Opera Houses

War Memorial Opera House

View from the Stage

Photo courtesy of the War Memorial

If you read this blog, you know that my home opera house is San Francisco's War Memorial Opera House. The WMOH opened in 1932 – yes, there's a significant birthday coming up; watch for a nice funding raising campaign* – and seats roughly 3200 people in sections called Orchestra, Box, Grand tier, Dress Circle, Balcony Circle and Balcony.

In the photo above, you can see that the orchestra is fairly deep and there's a significant overhang of the box level over the back of the orchestra. In the level above the boxes, the Grand Tier is in front, then, across an aisle, the Dress Circle rises above it.

Above that, there's the Balcony Circle, and behind it, the Balcony. 

For marketing and sales purposes, each of the levels is subdivided in various ways, to provide different price points depending on the desirability of the seats.

Metropolitan Opera House

View from the Stage

Allegedly Opening Night, 1966

The photo above is New York's Metropolitan Opera House, which opened in 1966. The Met seats 3800 people across six similarly named levels, but each named level gets its own separate physical tier. The Orchestra is extremely deep, with the back of Orchestra level a lot farther from the stage than the back of the WMOH orchestra level is from the stage. 

At the Met, the Parterre level houses the main box level, though, interestingly, every level up to the Balcony has boxes along the sides of the house. So, the Met levels are Parterre, Grand Tier above that, Dress Circle above that, Balcony above that, and waaaaay up there, the Family Circle. I do not have height measurements for the interior of the two houses, but the Met's Family Circle, and probably the Balcony would be above the roof of the WMOH.

Basically, any time you're in one of the tiers, even the $$$$ boxes, you're farther from the stage at the Met than at the WMOH.

I recently took in the Met's productions of Tristan und Isolde and Innocence, sitting in the Family Circle for my first Tristan and the Dress Circle for my second, in the Dress Circle for Innocence. I bought my own tickets, because, without a paid review, it was not clear when I asked for them that I would be able to get press tickets. 

Hoo boy, the sheer size of the house created quite the distance, physical and emotional, from what was happening on stage.

For Innocence, the Met used Simon Stone's production, which was created for the 2021 Aix-en-Provence world premiere, and which has been used by the commissioning opera companies. The Met was a "sponsor" of the production, and I admit, I don't know exactly what that means.

It's the production we saw in San Francisco, the one with the giant rotating set; I attended the dress rehearsal and opening night (I can't recall what I did with my subscription ticket), then watched a performance from backstage and wrote about it for SFCV. 

Everyone sang well, but I was shocked at how little impact the singing actually had. I've seen the Danish bass Stephen Milling several times and he's always been magnificent, pulling off such feats as stealing the show while singing Hagen in Götterdämmerung. But here? It could have been any good bass on stage; there was nothing like the dramatic or vocal impact Milling brings to everything he does. I was far more moved by Kristinn Sigmundsson in SF.

So, this was the last time I'll be up in the tiers at the Met; in the future, no matter the cost (if I can't get press tickets), I'll be in the orchestra somewhere, where I'll be able to actually connect with the music and singers.

More about Tristan, eventually.

 

Friday Photo

Tristan und Isolde

Curtain Call Photo

Metropolitan Opera, NYC

April, 2026

 

Kavalier & Clay at the Met

 

Cover, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

I read Michael Chabon's novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay back around 2000 or 2001; my paperback copy of the book looks exactly like the graphic above, so I bought the book after it won the Pulitzer Prize for literature. I loved the book's immense sweep and its colorful characters.

I raised an eyebrow when Mason Bates and Gene Scheer's Metropolitan Opera commission was announced, because, really, it didn't seem like a great candidate for an operatic adaptation, given the scope and complexity of the novel. I was surprised that the opera wasn't listed for an HD broadcast this season, and I decided against a quick NY trip, given various writing responsibilities I have. 

Now the reviews are coming in and it seems reasonable to start a media round-up.

• Joshua Barone, NY Times
• Justin Davidson, Vulture/New York, who incorporates a critique of Peter Gelb
• Heidi Waleson, WSJ (paywall)
• Sylvia Korman, Parterre Box
• Alex Ross, The Rest is Noise (a glancing blow only)
• Alex Ross, The New Yorker (a body blow)
• George Grella, NY Classical Review
• David Gordon, TheaterMania
• Financial Times (so paywalled I have no idea who wrote it)

The Metropolitan Opera in Saudi Arabia

Lincoln Center Fountain

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

The Metropolitan Opera has decided to accept $100 million from Saudi Arabia (gift link) and will perform there for three weeks annually over a five-year period.  From the NY Times story I linked to:

Saudi Arabia’s record of human rights abuses, its restrictions on free speech and its role in the 2018 killing of the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident, have led some in the West to call for shunning the kingdom. But in recent years both the Biden and the Trump administrations have sought closer relations with Saudi Arabia. And the country’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has relaxed some rules in the kingdom, tried to diversify its domestic economy beyond oil and worked to reshape its global image through large investments in business, sports, tourism and culture.

Under Mr. Gelb, the Met has been a vocal champion of political freedom and human rights in supporting Ukraine after Russia’s invasion, cutting ties with the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow and with artists who had supported President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, including the star soprano Anna Netrebko.

Mr. Gelb said his support for cultural exchange with Saudi Arabia was different. He called the killing of Mr. Khashoggi, which American intelligence officials said had been approved by Prince Mohammed, “a horrendous event.” But he said he had been encouraged by the new social freedoms given to Saudi women, saying that the country was “trying to improve itself in the eyes of its own population and in the eyes of the world.”

Yeah, no. This is part of a general artwashing campaign on the part of Saudi Arabia. I know about this in part because recently I started getting press releases about various Saudi artistic endeavors.

The story I linked to doesn't even mention that the 9/11 attackers were largely Saudi and the plot was masterminded by a Saudi. It doesn't mention that the Saudis have bribed the Trump family through a gigantic amount of money that Jared Kushner is managing.

Related: read this Guardian story about comedians performing in Saudi Arabia.

It really sucks that the Met has fallen on bad financial times. Maybe Gelb should figure out how to get fund-raising back on track instead of accepting money from Saudi Arabia.

 

Babies. Babies! BABIES!

Die Frau ohne Schatten

San Francisco Opera

June, 2023

Johan Reuter (Barak) and Nina Stemme (Dyer's Wife)

Photo: Cory Weaver, Courtesy of San Francisco Opera

The Metropolitan Opera has revived the late Herbert Wernicke's production of Strauss and Hofmannsthal's monumental Die Frau ohne Schatten, giving me an opportunity to get up on a soapbox that's been waiting for me for roughly 18 months, since San Francisco Opera's magnificent staging of the same opera.

Back then, I had a couple of friends telling me, oh no, it's not about babies! They're just a metaphor! Look beyond the words of the libretto!

I'm here to tell you, they were wrong. There was a moment when I pointed out to one of them that the Spirit Messenger makes it quite clear with his first words, which happen to be the second speech in the opera, that Keikobad, the Empress's father, is monitoring her fertility, and he told me he'd never noticed that:

Not our master, not Keikobad but his messenger! Eleven of them have sought you out, a new one with each waning moon. The twelfth moon is down: the twelfth messenger stands before you.

That is, there's been a monthly visit from one of Keikobad's messengers. They're checking to see whether the Empress is pregnant.

I went through the libretto last year and compiled a list of references to babies and fertility in the libretto. Here it is, including the reference above:

1. Keikobad is monitoring the Empress’s fertility, as the Spirit Messenger says in Act 1.

2. Keikobad threatens to turn the Emperor to stone unless she obtains a shadow, though it’s hard to see what he has to do with the Empress’s lack of a shadow. Is it because they really like all of the sex they’re having?

3. The nurse says in Act 1 “He has not loosened the knot of your heart, no unborn babe stirs in your womb.”

4. Barak to the Dyer’s Wife: “If you give me children to cluster round the dishes each evening, I’ll see that none of them gets up hungry. I’ll applaud their appetites, and give thanks in my heart that it falls to me to fill their stomachs." (Touches her gently.) "When will you give me the children to feed?”

5. Dyer’s Wife to Barak: “Two-and-a-half years I’ve been your wife– and you have garnered no fruit from me and have not made a mother of me.”

6. Barak: “I don’t reproach you, my heart is content, and I will be patient and wait for the precious children which will come.”

7. The Nurse of the Dyer’s Wife: “Alas! And she is to bear his children, and waste her life here in obscurity!”

8. The Nurse and the Dyer’s Wife: “Have you wept tears of blood because you have borne no children yet to that block? Quickly, quickly, Do you yearn for them in your heart, night and day? Do you long for a troop of little dyers to trample through you into the world? Is your body to turn into a high road, your slim grace to be compacted under their feet? Are your breasts to droop and their glory to wither so soon?” WIFE “My soul has grown weary of motherhood before even tasting it. I live here in this house, and that man shall not come near me!”

9. Nurse: “Putting away motherhood for ever and aye from your body! And dismissing with that gesture of contempt the importunate babes that will not be born!”

10. CHILDREN’S VOICES through the fish: “Mother, mother, let us come home! The door is bolted, we can’t get in, it’s dark and we’re frightened! Mother, oh, alas!”

11. “.....Or call our dear father and tell him to open the door! Or call our dear father and tell him to open the door!”

12. Dyer’s wife, Act 2: ”I put away from my body the children as yet unborn, and my womb will not bear fruit to you or to any other man, for I have given myself to the winds and the night air, and am at home here and elsewhere, and as a sign of that I have sold my shadow: and the buyers are willing, and the price is glorious and its like will not be found!”

13. The Brothers: “She has sold it and prevented the unborn children coming from her body!”

14. Dyer’s wife, Act 3: “Placed in your care, so as to attend to you, serve, love and bow to you: see you! breathe you, live you! And give you children, best of men!”

15. Voices of Unborn Children, Act 3: (above, from the dome) "Listen, we will say: 'Father!' Listen, we will cry: 'Mother!' Come up here! No, come down here! All the steps lead to us!”

16. EMPEROR: “Those are unborn children, rushing down into life on the red wings of morning and coming to us, who were nearly lost; These strong ones hasten down to us, like starlight. You overcame yourself. Now heavenly messengers release the father and the children— the children yet unborn! They have discovered us, and come hastening down! (steps down from the bottom step”

17. Voices of Unborn Children, to the Wife: “Mother, your shadow! Look, how beautiful! Look at your husband crossing over to you!”

18. EMPRESS AND BARAK’S WIFE "Both casting shadows as we were chosen to do, both of us steeled in the flames of trial. Close to the threshold of death, to being murdered in order to murder, but now blessed with children, and we shall be mothers!" EMPEROR AND BARAK "Both casting shadows as they were chosen to do, both of them steeled in the flames of trial, but now blessed with children and chosen to be mothers!" (A curtain falls, concealing the four figures and the landscape from sight) VOICES OF THE UNBORN CHILDREN "Father, nothing more threatens you, look, Mother, that terror is already dispelled, that led you both astray. Was there ever a feast at which we were not secretly always the guests, and also the hosts! Brothers! Friends!"

The above doesn’t include Barak almost killing the Wife when he thinks that she has sold her shadow or the way that Keikobad blackmails the Empress into seeking a shadow by threatening to turn the Emperor to stone. 

It's really beyond me how you can read the above (not to mention seeing the opera) and not conclude that yes, this opera is, front and center, about having children, and how having children is necessary for women to be fully human.

These points didn't evade Joshua Kosman, who got up on his soapbox about Frau in July, 2022, a year prior to the SFO production, and they're not evading Zachary Woolfe, who reviewed the opera in the NY Times this week ("You might think a four-hour allegorical ode to pregnancy isn’t your thing. But I’m here to tell you: Just go."). I'm going to slightly argue with Woolfe's description of Barak as kindly. The text suggests that his Wife is basically a slave, that she's someone he paid for.

Nobody is denying that one of the central points of this opera is the Empress's transformation as she realizes that she cannot take the shadow from the Dyer's Wife, one of the great moments in all opera, but neither are they denying the opera's focus on fertility and babies. And Joshua Kosman was clear about how this opera lands at a moment when the right wing in the United States has not only gotten Roe v. Wade struck down, it is openly discussing restricting access to contraception, doing away with no-fault divorce, and so on. If somehow this isn't pretty clear to you after reading the above excerpts, well, read them a few more times.

 

Trinity Church Fires Julian Wachner

Monument in the Trinity Church graveyard

Well, that didn't take long. On February 28, Trinity Church learned of a sexual assault allegation against its choir director Julian Wachner, who runs their very well-funded music programs. (Trinity owns real estate in NYC and has an investment portfolio worth $6 billion, which is not a typo. This is the kind of thing that happens when you have held on to real property since the 18th c.) He was put on leave within the last couple of days, as Javier C. Hernández reported yesterday. Today, Trinity fired him, issuing a statement indicating that it "concluded based on recent information that Julian has otherwise conducted himself in a manner that is inconsistent with our expectations of anyone who occupies a leadership position."

I saw some comments on Facebook indicating that Wachner has a reputation for bullying people he works with in various capacities, which would be sufficient reason, in my opinion, to fire someone. Trinity's statement says that the investigation into him is ongoing.

Compare and contrast Trinity's actions with those of, say, the Metropolitan Opera, which heard those rumors about James Levine for decades before finally being forced to conduct an investigation that found credible evidence of his misbehavior.

 

Lies, Damned Lies, and Publicity

The Met PR machine rolls on: I have in hand a press release for the upcoming Ring HD broadcasts calling it a "cutting-edge production" and a "landmark production."

Noooooo. It's a conservative, traditional, production with some projections and an expensive, noisy, unit set.

 And Robert Lepage is called a "visionary." Noooo. Or if he is, he's not showing his vision very well.

Oops.

San Francisco Opera sold something like 98% of its tickets for the 2011 Ring cycles on subscriptions. The Met, apparently not:

I took a look around, and a shocking number of seats - not cheap seats - are still available.

Season Announcement Season: The Met

As I just noted elsewhere, the Met schedule for 2012-13 is mighty light on...well...a lot of things.

• Seven new productions, sixteen revivals.
• There are five operas written after 1900, but with one exception, they're as musically mainstream/conservative/popular as can be: La Rondine, Turandot, Francesca da Rimini, Dialogues of the Carmelites, The Tempest. Alex Ross put it differently: only two operas written since 1950.
• There are four operas written before 1800, and Mozart wrote three of them: Giulio Cesare, Don Giovanni, Nozze, Clemenza di Tito.
• We get more Ring cycles - without Bryn Terfel! - and Parsifal.
• There's a lot of Verdi but it's all popular middle/late Verdi: La Traviata, Rigoletto, Il Trovatore, Don Carlo, Un  Ballo in Maschera, Aida, Otello. Um, the guy actually knew what he was doing before Rigoletto.
• No Britten. No Adams, no Glass.

Putting it another way, while there's some nice casting, there are only 4.5 (or 5.5) operas I've never seen. The half is Le Comte Ory, which I saw on HD broadcast. The 4 or 5 is because I'm not sure what I saw at Covent Garden in 1982. It might have been Clemenza. I've never seen Maria Stuarda, The Tempest, Francesca or Troyens.

If I lived in NYC, I'd be most excited by The Tempest and Les Troyens, which my regular readers could have guessed. I think had both of them in the first season of Fantasy Opera! Well, okay, I'd be excited by Jonas Kaufmann and Peter Mattei in Parsifal. And by Francesca, a score I like a whole lot. But the cast of Troyens....well, hmm. And although I am not a fan of Dialogues, I'd go for the cast.

Overall, not a season to get super excited about, and it seems a step backwards from the last couple of year's repertory.

Nooooooooo.

From the Metropolitan Opera season announcement, regarding Thomas Ades's The Tempest:

Robert Lepage’s innovative production recreates the interior of the La Scala opera house as the magical island venue for the otherworldly arts of Prospero, the exiled Duke of Milan.

After the wretched mess of the new Ring, HOW DID THIS HAPPEN? And, ah, what makes the interior of La Scala an appropriate analog to Prospero's island?


I'm still dissecting (and cringing periodically at) the press releases. You can read along at home:

• Here's the season brochure
• Here's the web site for the season

Can't find the web site of the HD broadcasts, but I have the press release, and it's a tasty season! They're broadcasting Elisir, Otello, The Tempest, Clemenza di Tito, Ballo, Aida, Les Troyens (!), Maria Stuarda, Rigoletto, Parsifal, Francesca da Rimini, and Giulio Cesare. 

Charles Anthony

La Cieca reports that veteran tenor Charles Anthony has died at 82.

He sang in 2,928 Metropolitan Opera performances of 109 roles, starting with the Simpleton in Boris Godunov on March 6, 1954 and continuing at the house to a final Emperor Altoum in Turandot on January 28, 2010. He sang 159 performances as the Innkeeper in Rosenkavalier, more than 200 performances of Turandot in three different roles, and sang five different roles in Boris.

At his audition, he was advised not to sing under his birth name, Charles Anthony Calogero Antonio Caruso, so dropped his surname.

Here's the AP obituary for you, and here's the NYTimes obit.

Oh, Dear

Way too much of Deborah Voigt's Bruennhilde is just plain embarrassing: pitchy, terrible or nonexistent enunciation (she is just not bothering with a shocking number of words), rushing, lunging at notes, poor connection with her lower register, etc., etc. She should be singing in the Sieglinde / Gutrune league, not Bruennhilde.

Also, I see why people wish Luisi had more weight in his conducting. The coda needs more majesty and more time to unfold than he is giving it. Why the big rush, Fabio?? You've got one of the greatest orchestras in the world in front of you. Slow down and let them enjoy themselves a bit more.

Luxury Casting

Today's Rheinmaidens sound splendid (I missed the announcement between acts and don't know who they are), and having Elizabeth Bishop and Heidi Melton as two of the Norns - wow. Bishop was our fabulous Fricka and Melton one of our Sieglindes in SF last year.

And...a cast change announcement from the Met advises me that Kyle Ketelsen and Bryn Terfel will each play Leporello in the upcoming run of Don Giovanni, with Ketelsen singing the first four before Terfel takes over the role.

Metropolitan Opera Cast Change

Voigt out, Dalayman in, for tonight's Goetterdaemmerung. Who, pray tell, will take the stage for Saturday's HD broadcast?

He Likes a Challenge

Complete text of a Metropolitan Opera Cast Change Advisory:

Roberto Alagna will sing the title role in Gounod’s Faust this evening, replacing Joseph Calleja, who is ill.

Alagna sang Faust last month on December 23 and 28 and will sing the role of Cavaradossi tomorrow evening in the season premiere of Puccini’s Tosca. Alagna has frequently stepped in on short notice at the Met, most notably in the fall of 2007 when he sang two performances of Roméo in Roméo et Juliette substituting for a colleague, then two scheduled performances of Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly before taking over as Radamès in Aida for one performance on very short notice.

It is extremely rare for an opera singer to perform leading roles on two consecutive evenings, but Alagna volunteered because he enjoys the challenge. “To sing Faust and Tosca on consecutive nights makes my adrenaline flow,” he said. “This is what makes being an opera singer so exciting for me.”

Faust is conducted by Alain Altinoglu and also stars Marina Poplavskaya, Kate Lindsey, George Petean, and Ferruccio Furlanetto in other principal roles.

Rolling on the Floor

Peter Gelb has an article in the Huffington Post defending the Lepage Ring. I started laughing right here, half-way through the third paragraph:

Of course, because our Ring is revolutionary, not everyone supports it. 

I was still laughing when I got to this, in the next paragraph:

I strongly believe in Lepage's literal but imaginative approach.

Of course, he offers nothing to demonstrate the revolutionary nature of the Lepage Ring...because it's not. "Literal but imaginative" doesn't equal revolutionary, and he must know that. The character interpretations are middle of the road; most reviewers have mentioned that the singers don't seem to have much directorial guidance, in fact. The damn Machine is a big old distraction, adding little value for a lot of time and money. Rheinmaidens who swim are nothing new; see photos of Met and Bayreuth productions going back to, um, 1876 for swimming Rheinmaidens. 

Hopefully, with the completion of the cycles, this Ring will stand out as one of the Met's greatest feats. 

No, Peter. It's going to stand out as one of the Met's biggest wastes of money. 

The Press Release

Alex Ross comments on Twitter about the strangeness and sadness of the Levine press release today. "How can he remain music director of the Met if he cannot conduct until Fall, 2013, at the earliest?"

Well, that is the $64,000 question, isn't it? Does administrative work, planning, and working with young artists make a music director?

But it's easy to understand why the Met would send out this particular press release, complete with Levine's personal statement (which tells us a few previously-unreleased details about just how bad his condition has been, like the three surgeries last spring and the three month stay in rehab this fall).

Levine would clearly like to return to the Met. We don't know the details of his contract and how those details deal with a situation like this. There may be required payments to Levine when he's on the disabled list; there may be particular conditions that have to be met before he can be said to be unable to meet the contract requirements (for example, an allowable period of disability might be set).

We can take as literally true the Met's need to sign conductors for next year without a huge scramble like the one the BSO undoubtedly had to make earlier this year when Levine resigned his job there. As it is, most conductors they'd want to step in for Levine already have work someplace else. 

The Met may or may not want Levine to return at this point, given his health over the last couple of years. The press release therefore has to support Levine while leaving open the possibility that he won't return. The Met does not want to let him go in a way that makes it look callous or unfeeling or unsupportive of Levine.

There are other factors at work. If Levine ultimately leaves, the Met needs breathing room to find a new music director. We don't know whether Luisi can just step in, because there's that contract he has in Zurich. Getting a new MD on board is not so easy, as um the Boston Symphony knows. And the Philadelphia Orchestra. Everybody with the requisite skills has a job already. (Unless the Met willing to go out on a limb by hiring someone young and inexperienced.)

So there's a lot of careful balancing of the words here, to allow for both Levine's return or resignation/replacement and for everyone to come out of it looking suitably professional. Strange and sad it is, but also doing its best to walk a very, very fine line.

James Levine

The conductor lives, but we won't see him on the podium for a while. A press release from the Met says that James Levine has withdrawn from all performances at the Met through the 2012-13 season.

I have been telling people that if Levine couldn't manage Götterdämmerung in January, he wouldn't be conducting full Ring cycles in April. Fabio Luisi is on the podium for those.

The full press release and a personal statement from Levine follow the cut. Levine is optimistic about a full recovery and hopes to resume his conducting responsibilities. However, if he is unable to continue or must retire, this smooths the way for such a withdrawal.

Lehman Out, JHM In: Met Goetterdaemmerung

I am not surprised. From the Met press office:

Jay Hunter Morris will sing the role of Siegfried in Siegfried on April 21 matinee and April 30, 2012, and in Götterdämmerung on May 3, 2012. He replaces Gary Lehman who has withdrawn due to illness.

Met Goetterdaemmerung Cast Change

I bet you figured this one out when you saw the post title:

Principal Conductor Fabio Luisi will conduct the Met’s new production of Wagner’s Götterdämmerung which premieres January 27, 2012, and continues on January 31, February 3, 7, and 11 matinee. Luisi will also conduct the MET Orchestra concert at Carnegie Hall on January 15, featuring Renée Fleming as soloist. He replaces the Met’s Music Director, James Levine, who is continuing his rehabilitation after a fall last September that necessitated emergency back surgery. Luisi stepped in for Levine to conduct the new production of Wagner’s Siegfried on October 27, and will lead the Live in HD performance on Saturday, November 5.

I wonder if InTrade is taking bets on 1) Levine's ability to conduct the full Ring cycles 2) the chances of Levine resigning.