Opera workshop at SFCM displays wealth of talent and comic recession era staging

Emma McNairy/San Francisco Conservatory of Music/Opera workshops/Photo: Rui Cavender

Emma McNairy sang romantic comic opera Giustino and Die Fledermaus to Ariadne Auf Naxos

With talent like this who needs expensive sets and costumes and dramatic lighting. The Conservatory of Music displayed a wealth of talent last night at it’s opera workshop. The next one is Sunday May third at 2:00. Last night instead of sitting home watching bad television you could have been laughing along with the advanced singers in their eclectic scenes. Moreover the workshops were free and two hours worth of everything from Le Nozze di Figaro to things I haven’t heard of, many in English. I was so excited about these fresh and funny and extremely talented young opera singers I emailed Greer Grimsley last night, wondering where he will choose to send his daughter Emma, if not to Julliard.

Again as on Tuesday night, part of the fun is seeing each of the performers return to the stage reinvented in a different opera. It made me wonder how each will be cast professionally. Some seemed at home right as they were, for example a Daniel Epstein as Figaro. He made me think of Nathan Gunn. Although he returned after Figaro to sing a great comic duet in Die Fledermaus with scene stealer Frankie Liu, the would be lover of Rosalinda. Daniel as Frank is there to arrest Rosalinda’s husband and take him to serve a jail sentence, but the real husband is out partying with Count Orlofsky. So Frankie as Alfred was wearing Rosalinda’s husband’s dressing gown to convince her . . . and consequently Alfred gets taken away instead. Rosalinda was sung by a robust Jennifer Rogers. She was serenaded with Alfred’s

Night and day, let’s sing our cares away.

Instead she sang away Alfred, clever girl. The quartet received bravos.

Frankie however would return to the stage dressed soberly in black for Dialogues of the Carmelites by Poulenc. It’s the true story from the French Revolution where the revolutionaries outlawed all religious orders. Nuns establishing an order were sent to the guillotine. Sister Constance sung by Leslie Katter showed wide eyed apprehension, as Leslie had in the previous scene from Hansel and Gretel where she sang Gretel, in English. It just took on a dark twist contrasting with the child’s nightmare in the forest.

Note the Vogue theater on Sacramento in Laurel Heights, San Francisco will show Hansel & Gretel Sunday morning at eleven a.m.

Monique Bomba as Sister Blanche sang with gorgeous resonance, a full bodied clear voice that could fill a larger theater. Monique emails me this afternoon: It was so much fun to be able to share those moments with you all, it made it that much more of a wonderful experience for me, and hope that you felt the same.

I commented to Stephen on my way to find a taxi later in front of the opera house that Bomba should play Bess in Porgy & Bess; He thought her voice a little too low for that.

Monique Bomba/San Francisco Conservatory of Music Monique first appeared that night singing another French scene but that one sung in French not translated into English as in The Carmelites. She had begun the evening saying she would rather join a nunnery where she could be safe rather than get married. She in a vibrant purple gown sang Beatrice, the title role in Beatrice et Benedict by Berlioz and based on Shakespeare, who gets teased by her pretty Victorian cousins about her romantic love.

Lena Leson sang Hero and Kate Davis sang Ursule in French and barefeet, while toying with white roses that matched their innocent and virginal white dress.

The evening just had so many wonderful moments from comedic and slapstick to tragic. In Giustino by Handel, we were treated to recession era staging of the baroque masterpiece. The stage director was Heather Matthews and instead of real dramatic lighting and special effects, the students held up cue cards that read . . . “dramatic lighting” and “special effects”. Although when Molly Mahoney as the would be rescuer Giustino, the title role, goes tumbling into the sea and must combat the sea monster, students blow bubbles from under the surface.

The sea is a blue sheet held up on either end by students. It really worked and helped set off the comic oblivion of the lovers to their earnest rescuer. The persistent and soaked rescuer gets knocked back into the water by Arianna and Anastasio, sung with happy love struck delirium by Angela Jarosz and the tall strawberry blond haired Emma McNairy singing Anastasio. Emma returned to the stage with her long hair down and romantic in Ariadne Auf Naxos. She sang Strauss in German, where her character uses feminine wiles to win an argument over whether one can have comedy and opera in the same evening’s entertainment.

Does anybody else see a resemblance between Emma and Elina Garanca who will play Cinderella at the Met this month?

Garanca/Bel Canto

Emma McNairy made me think of Cinderella to be broadcast live by the Met on May 9, with La Cenerentola wearing long red soft and kinky Victorian hair. Meanwhile, Emma emails me today: I am taking this next school year off to go traveling to India and SE Asia and the Middle East before I finish up my undergrad degree. But then I will be back in the city performing and studying, in 2010.

Part of the fun of the evening though were all the girls singing male roles that are traditionally male, not just pants roles as Cherubino. Although Evgenia Chaverdova sang Cherubino so impishly as Cherubino. So eager to please his beloved Countess, Cherubino tries to wear a dress to the best of his ability, sauntering, butt scratching, flirting with a tilt of the hips and derriere and inviting another spank from the charmed Countess.

Similarly Kate Davis sang the handsome messenger role in Der Rosenkavalier, the knight who delivers a message of love to Sophie only to become the object of her affection instead. Kate had her long kinky Victorian hair down when she returned to the stage in Hansel and Gretel as the sandman singing “Shhhh” to the children she loves. Carolyn Withers in turn sang the male role in Hansel: “I’m the boy, I’m never lost”.

Pelleas et Melisande by Debussy was a romantic duet sung in French by Emily Pelc and Chris Ramos. Chris had been a well played (not over played) drunk in Die Fledermaus but returned with a smooth, seductive and suave tone as he accompanies Pelleas at the water’s edge. She’s distant and mysterious but comes to reveal that Melisande’s own brother had given her the ring she would drop and lose in the water. His brother tried to kiss her and she didn’t want him to. How many women has this happened to? It’s bound to be a close family one way or the other isn’t it. She probably just should not have accepted the bling even if Melisande comforts her after the loss saying she shouldn’t be upset it’s just a ring, putting things in perspective. Melisande should have offered to get her one himself at that point. As for myself, I still wear my wedding ring even though I’ve been divorced for ten years and I’ll wear it until my beloved puts his own on my finger, testosterone driven brother or no.

I don’t want to end up another forgotten and isolated spinster like Vanessa. Megan Cullen sang so poignantly and hauntingly in English in Barber’s tale of a lonely country estate where Vanessa’s lover had promised to return twenty years ago and never did. Yet this night she sets out a lavish romantic dinner as she thinks she sees him coming through the snow and emerging from the forest surrounding her. Erika tries to humor her but Erika’s grief shows through her sullen face and the tragic tone of her song. There is a moment of comic relief when Vanessa demands Erika read to her. Erika acquieses and it turns out to be Oedipus.

Speaking of seduction, the next scene is The Turn of the Screw by Britten, in English. Two ghosts argue over how they came to be ghosts and Miss Jessel, sung by Monique Bomba, accuses Quint of seduction. Monique had gone from an innocent Victorian being teased about romantic love to playing as doomed nun to this ghost, a victim of a cruel seducer. Jeremy also displayed a dutiful cruelty in Carmelites, where as First Commissioner with the French revolutionaries, he strips with contempt each veil from the doomed nuns' heads.

So I was envisioning Jeremy Kreamer who sang Peter Quint to elevate his malevolence into Toscadom some day, to play Scarpia or at least Spoletto. In the style of Anthony Laciura, the New Orleanian who gave Spoletto a comic twist when he sang at SFO a few years ago.

Jeremy displayed a talent for the same sense of ineffectuality later in Mozart’s The Impressario. He gets bookended by dueling divas and ends up pleading pianissimo. Madame Heartmelt sung by fist clenching Angela Jarosz in a midnight blue strapless gown; Mademoiselle Silverpeal by Ashley Seaton in a green silk gown. The madame’s plant plucking display of anger would make Natalie Dessay proud.

Photo of Emma McNairy: Rui Cavender

For more info: http://www.sfcm.edu/index.aspx, www.SFOpera.com, www.metopera.org/HD Live, www.voguesf.com

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