Turandot by Puccini at San Francisco Opera last night promised to make a spectacular and crowd pleasing opening for the season but also a blockbuster Opera at the Baseball Park on September 25th.
Not just because of the charismatic and electrifying leads Berti and Theorin, but with young soprano Leah Crocetto rounding out the high melodrama. The opera house and ballpark audiences get not only the out-of-body experience of hearing Nessun Dorma live, but also Leah shall get the mass exposure her self-sacrifycing and dignified portrayal deserves. However, she is really a tear jerker and a fine comedian when performing her own choices in more intimate recital, as I recall from her Schwabacher Debut.
I attended with the engaging and entertaining local personality Frances Gorman, a long time friend of veteran supernumerary Kimberly Thompson, woman of a thousand faces. Frances seemed thrilled.
For more on Crocetto and also Montenegro: Turandot opens season at SF
Congratulations to director Garnett Bruce for his casting and direction of Turandot with it's tenderness, joy, pride, pity, strength, bitterness, menace, vengefulness, mass fear, confusion, triumph, loyalty, and above all, Puccinian love as expressed by selflessness to the point of self-sacrifice.
On that note Crocetto plays the young girl Liu, the loyal slave and supporter of the prince Calaf who risks his own neck to marry The Dot. Leah Crocetto manages to make the preposterous love story about a bitter and vengeful ice-princess who kills off her arrogant suitors have heart and strength rather than just high melodrama and over-the-top cartoonesque appeal. Better yet her strong voice holds up well amid the male singers and the huge chorus--that's eighty choristers and fifty non-singing supernumeraries, the chorus led by the indominable Ian Robertson. There were twenty children on stage and forty children off stage.
Meanwhile, see you at St. Francis Ian! I actually ran into the man there during the Masters' Laser competition and he was threatening to sing from the yacht club balcony. I had gotten seasick on the committee boat and the press folk in the press room I gravitated to said, why don't you go have a beer in the dining room. Mexican buffet too.
Back to the dying slave girl, one could hear the remorse if not pity in Berti’s tone when his Unknown Prince cries at her death, “O my little Liu”. The drama peaks with Raymond Aceto as his father Timur, who abandons all regal composure and creeps to Liu’s body to hold her as he himself seems to have a fatal wound in his heart. Berti as Calaf follwed by Aceto as his father Timur underscored the poignancy. The scene actually felt Verdian or Rigolettoan because of the father/daughter type tragedy. The drama came from first such a bold and brave soul (Calaf) and then such a tall and regal, wise and aged figure (his father Timur) each brought to his knees over the girl’s public sacrifice.
Just as one of the answers to the princess riddles was blood, David Hockney’s hot blooded Chinese red sets look comic-book melodramatic. The set's bold color and scale arouses a touch of macabre like the Rigoletto set from five or so years ago, especially with Turandot's three male severed heads hanging from their long black hair. Plus, the muscular, bare chested executioners with their huge swords were something out of Salome. Speaking of which, the entire cast wore costumes created by San Francisco’s Opera Shop. The costumes made the production look like a carnival, with Ian Falconer’s designs looking as colorful and oversized as circus costumes--a little touch o' Nutcracker. Admittedly the production needs bold colors to stand up against the big bold red sets which demand attention.
Falconer however also uses a refreshing and feminine seafoam or minty green for a touchable and graceful softness and elegance, a juxtaposition against the garish and overblown red and pagentry Turandot wielded so fiercely. He uses the soothing shade for Turandot as she finally softens and submits passionately to her prince and Falconer also uses it for the lithe dancers and gymnasts of Act II. For Act II’s festivities heralding the entrance at last of the title character Turandot, I felt Cirque du Soleilesque, as if Robert Lepage were directing.
Speaking of Cirque. The three clowns Ping, Pang and Pong are played by Hyung Yun, Greg Fedderly, and the young charmer Daniel Montenegro. Daniel is definitely a charismatic young man, somebody to watch and see how he distinguishes himself from romantic comedian Juan Diego Florez.
I loved the lighting by designer Christopher Maravich, used to spring to life characters hidden within the set at various levels, like spirits appearing suddenly and omnipresently. The tricks added to the surreal quality or the feeling of exotic magic in the production.
This production will probably give the ballpark audience goose bumps as it continues to do inside the opera house. Whether you just like an exponential size picnic or you are a die-hard opera fan, Nessun Dorma will make your experience complete. David Gockley did a fine job of selecting the production for simulcast. Interesting lesson for those in a sports arena, not to pillage and plunder the women. Let's keep our heads though as one doesn't often find a princess in a sports bar. It's a compelling lesson in what it really takes to win, hint: It ain't arrogance, cowboy.
Note the Met simulcast Turandot worldwide last year with Marcello Giordani delivering a fine Nessun Dorma after technical difficulties in the broadcast.
Running time two hours, fifty minutes with two intermissions of 25 minutes.
Tickets range from $21 to $389 with standing room for $10 cash. Opera in the Ballpark simulcast is free but guests should register at the SF Opera website.
Performances to November 25, 2011 at the War Memorial Opera House at 301 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco.
For more information including Opera in the Ballpark, www.SFOpera.com.
