Opera offers array of free performances, young and gifted to the professional; tonight and 5/01

Dmitri Hvorostovsky/Il Trovatore/San Francisco Opera/Simulcast

Dmitri simulcast by SFO in September

Stephen Smoliar the concert writer invited me to attend one of the free opera events offered in San Francisco. This week it's the opera workshops at the Conservatory of Music, one last night. Absolutely free. Young, vibrant and professional undergraduates singing everything from Don Giovanni to La Bohème.

San Francisco Opera Free Events

SFO Opera in the Baseball Park, the simulcast of Tosca. Friday June 5 at 8:00 pm. Pre-register.

Outdoor Schwabacher Concert, Yerba Buena Gardens on Sunday, July 12 from 2:00 until four.

SFO's Opera in the Park, Sunday, September 13 at 1:30, Golden Gate Park.

SFO's simulcast of Verdi's Il Trovatore, Saturday, September 19, 2009 at 8:00 p.m.

SFO radio broadcasts once a month on KDFC. Next one Sunday May 3 at 8:00 PM, La Bohème.

The SFO opera guild offers free pre-performance lectures at the Main Library in San Francisco. Tosca is May 27 at noon; Porgy & Bess is June 3 at noon. For information call (415) 565-3204 or email sfoguild@sfopera.com

Just for comparison and so you know you are getting your money's worth, tickets to SFO's fund raiser for students and honoring Frederica von Stade on May 13 run $475 to five thousand dollars.

Marco Berti will sing Manrico in Il Trovatore, to be simulcast by SFO in September.

Sondra Radvanovsky/Il Trovatore/San Francisco Opera . . . and Sondra Radvanovsky will sing Leonora.

Berkeley Opera Free Event

Ballad of Baby Doe highlights at Berkeley Library on Thursday, June 25 from 12:15 to one o'clock.

Meanwhile. Opera students at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music will hold workshops on Thursday, April 30 and Friday, May first. Each at 7:30 p.m. at Fifty Oak Street, near Civic Center, a couple of blocks from the Symphony Hall. Between Van Ness Avenue and Franklin.

Thursday April 30

Friday, May first

Many selections Tuesday night were in English, perhaps in the tradition of Berkeley Opera. Berkeley's goal involves making opera approachable if not quirky, counterculture and innovative. Yet at the workshops the staging and costumes remain minimal and all attention goes to the singing and personalities. You also get subtitles projected on a little movie screen.

I had no idea these undergraduates would show so much character and such mature talent. Plus they tend to be attractive and slender if not model thin. Julie Adams looked particularly stunning in her blue gown and long blond hair, even up in curlers. Even the more traditional opera sized students displayed sizeable personality and talent. The selections tended to be young and high spirited in French, German and Italian as well as in English. It was an edifying experience for students and audience alike. Each singer would appear in one scene only to reinvent themselves in a second, that was fun.

The range also went from romantic comedy to the poignant as the finale was La Boheme. It's the goodbye song where Mimi and Rudolfo decide to see each other through the cold Parisian winter and break up in spring, although Mimi is dying and Rudolfo is too poor to help her. All this tenderness while Musetta in her red dress, sung by Stephanie Kupfer, exchanges barbs with her lover Marcello, sung by Tim Artusio: Snake . . . toad . . . this number was so nice it gave me chills as Mimi and Rudolfo exited together. Speaking of Puccini then Yang Hai, singing Mimi, is destined to play Butterfly. James Stahlman sang Rodolfo with gentlemanly dignity and tenderness. IMHO. In my humble opinion, as my buddy Jeff Jenkins says.

Typical of the workshop, each singer would return in a different opera and show their range. For example, Yang Hai made her first appearance as Donna Anna in Don Giovanni opposite Don Ottavio sung by Dominic Domingo, who must acquiesce to Donna Anna's demand for vengeance after her father’s murder. He just keeps repeating to Donna Anna, those words some women secretly yearn to hear . . .

You shall have both husband and father in me . . .

Stephen asked me at this point if I had seen Hoffman’s Tale of Don Juan, where he remarks on Ottavio’s vanity, that he had time to dress in the middle of the night, being more concerned with his appearance. Stephen emails this evening:

I decided to look up the Hoffmann tale. Here is what he actually said about Ottavio:

Donna Anna reappears with Don Ottavio, a dressed-up, foppish, dandified little man of one-and-twenty years at most. He apparently is living in the house as Anna's fiancé, since he can be called out so promptly. He must have heard the fracas from the beginning and could have helped the father save himself, but no doubt he had to dress carefully first and he is probably careful about stepping out at night.

When the evening ended about ten p.m., Stephen walked me to BART. As we approached the homeless sleeping on the sidewalk outside the main library, he and I had been discussing how Julliard gets the names but San Francisco Conservatory is very competitive. What I loved besides the youth and energy and high spirits was the range of the offerings, to please the most advanced opera and music lover like Stephen but also just an SFO regular such as myself.

Random notes as Stephen and I chatted in the near empty house, save for some family members in the back of the room:

Hailey Johnson the mezzo in Cosi Fan Tutte sang a lovely duet. She has classic Victorian features, tall and slender with black hair and fair skin. She wore two long pony tails for this romantic comedy.

Stephen remarked after a few scenes the running gag of laundry . . .

In Fidelio by Beethoven, Marzelline sung by Elizabeth Herztberg is trying to get some work done at the laundry table while Ted Zoldan as Jaquino pesters her . . .

Hailey Johnson the dark haired mezzo returned for Orlando by Handel. The scene has newlyweds Medoro, sung by Hailey; and Angelica, sung by Lauren Rieztel, consoling Medoro’s ex girlfriend Dorinda, sung persistently by Katie Cole. The trio produced some lovely harmony worthy of Handel.

Next I saw Dialogues of the Carmelites by Poulenc, whom I have never even heard of. It’s a true story from the French Revolution. A demented Blanche enters a Carmelite mission for refuge. Naomi Silva as Sister Constance then returning as Miss Pinkerton in The Old Maid. We see the premonition scene where there’s a dream of death, and at the end the nuns all go to the guillotine. Stephen says the piece is wordy, more a literary work and popular in the 1960s. Sung in English. I commented perhaps I had never seen it since SFO these days has big American productions. He answered with Lusotti’s inauguration, it means a return toclassic Italian operas. Stephen emails: the remark about Luisotti was made by Gockley at the San Francisco Opera Association meeting on April 16.

I mentioned Mark Delavan coming to sing Wagner and how he had shared a dressing room with Greer Grimsley, who is singing the entire Ring Cycle in Seattle this summer. Stephen says look up the Met’s high definition Salome at the Met, and I may add especially since the Met is offering free trials of the website this weekend, May first through the third. Says Stephen,

It’s a take no prisoners performance.

In the HD broadcast the spirit was set in a brief exchange between Deborah Voigt, who was hosting the broadcast, and Karita Mattila, who was singing Salome. Voigt asked Mattila for a few words on her way to the stage. Mattila replied with what she said were her words before every performance: "Let's go out and kick some ass!" She certainly did!

Stephen noted further the Conservatory put on a full opera in March at Fort Mason. The students set Orpheus in the Haight and the former poster designer for the Grateful Dead designed their poster. Stephen wrote these up at Examiner.com, both a preview (http://www.examiner.com/x-5030-SF-Concerts-Examiner~y2009m3d20-Spoofing-the-spoofer) and a review (http://www.examiner.com/x-5030-SF-Concerts-Examiner~y2009m4d3-Let-Offenbachs-sun-shine-in).

Next up, Menotti, also in English, with The Old Maid and the Thief. Miss Todd was played by Roxanna Walitzki. The reedy blond spinster bun head look complete with heavy black rimmed glasses was particularly cute with her really knitting. This piece sounded like an old fashioned melodrama, the soundtrack to a silent film. Tim Artusio made a cute drunk and would return for a smack down in La Bohème.

Another English opera, Offenbach’s Périchole. The whole cast came out like something from Tales of Hoffman, young people gathered informally to party. This time the young and impoverished lovers are street performers, performing for the crowd in Peru, to raise money for their marriage license. It’s Papageno/Papagena-esque. Julia Metzler in the title role paired against Piquillo sung by Dominic Domingo.

Merry Wives of Windsor followed based on Shakespeare, a lovely quartet develops, by Nicolai. Rolfe Duaz who sang Sulpice in La Fille du Regiment returned as Caius for the quartet, again being ever so French. Stephanie Kupfer as Ann; James Stahlman as Fenton; Ted Zoldan as Slender.

Just before the finale of La Bohème, you get Ariadne Auf Naxos by Strauss. Three nymphs watch a deserted girl with disinterest, in German. We see Roxanna Walitzki return as nymph Dryade after singing the spinster in The Old Maid. She’s joined on her perch by Elise Cordle as Nyade and Julie Adams as Echo.

As for this watchful nymph on a rock, I am anything but disinterested as the performers echo such talents on Thursday and Friday evenings this week.

If you see them now you can say you knew them when. Even Dmitri was twenty years old once.

For more information: http://www.sfcm.edu/index.aspx, www.SFOpera.com

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