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Francesca Zambello directs Gershwins' Porgy & Bess and Wagner's Die Walkure at SFO
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Wotan twists Cinderella
When does David Gockley call upon Francesca Zambello to direct? When an opera has a history of being not only spectacular but racially controversial? Or when it’s quintessential?
Porgy & Bess, coming this June, remains an American classic with an all Black cast, sultry as a summer picnic on the Mississippi; intense as a hot summer night. While Wagner’s demanding Die Walkure, coming next June, remains quintessentially German. Big, bold with lots of brass. Bess will be played by Laquita Mitchell, whom Francesca has directed twice in Porgy & Bess, in Chicago and Washington State. Laquita though came through SFO's Merola program for the young and gifted. Note Francesca has directed Placido Domingo twice in Die Walkure.
SFO's William Berger writes about Die Walkure, The Valkyries are clearly understood as riding flying horses; that's how they get to Valhalla. Even Wagner, who demanded the impossible out of stagings, understood that 'flight' would have to be conveyed by the orchestra . . . fortunately, he was able to use the orchestra effectively enough to convince people they were seeing flying horses. (Wagner without Fear, page 250)
Donald Runnicles with his charming accent as this video shows will conduct Die Walkure.
According to SFO, he has an ongoing relationship with the Bayreuth Festival, started by Wagner in an opera house he built just for the Ring Cycle.
Meanwhile the Grammy and Tony Award winning conductor of Porgy & Bess from the Houston Grand Opera will come to SFO in June, John DeMain.
Enter Francesca, who will work with each conductor. She's an American born in 1956 (a few yeas before I) and educated in Europe. She's multi multi lingual. The Foreign Service would pay dearly for her as a diplomat since she speaks a hard one, Russian, as well as German.
Francesca directed Mark Delavan last season at SFO as Wotan in Das Rheingold, the first part of the four in the Ring Cycle. Here's some video of some Rhein maidens and Mark under Francesca's direction. Mark as Wotan has sold out his sister in law to the giant laborers to pay for the contruction of Valhalla. You get what you pay for.
Recently two singers have said to me Francesca Zambello is their favorite director so I asked one of them, Siggy Siegel, why. Mark Delavan is the other. Meanwhile this SFO alum did meet a fellow Wotan Wednesday night at Lyric Chicago. He and Greer Grimsley were sharing a dressing room and finally crossed paths. Mark and his wife attended the performance of Wagner’s Tristan & Isolde. So Mark emails from Chicago:
We crossed paths, and said hello. He sang phenomenally well as Kurwenal. I told him,
'I felt strangely threatened', it was the highest compliment I can pay.
About high regard among the apocalyptic, Siggy emails:
First about Francesca. I have known Francesca for over 30 years. I met her while singing in the chorus of New Jersey State Opera in Newark, New Jersey when she was an ASM [assistant stage manager] there.
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She is original, gutsy and a no non-sense person who really cares about the people she works with. This comes across to everyone she works with so people try extra hard to please her and to do their best work with her. She also has a wicked sense of humor.
Meanwhile Siggy, a long time chorister with SFO, notes Berkeley Opera opens it's season with 'Tales of Hoffman'. He says, I will be welcoming everyone to the theatre in a speech since I am on the Board of Berkeley Opera.
But back to SFO and it’s presentation of groundbreaking operas.
SFO says: George Gershwin originally conceived Porgy and Bess as an “American folk opera” and hoped it would have its world premiere at the Metropolitan Opera, a suggestion that was refused because the of the controversial nature of the subject matter. Porgy and Bess was consequently reworked as a musical theater piece and opened on Broadway in 1935 with a cast of all African-American artists–an extremely bold move given the segregationist views of the era.
The work enjoyed more than 40 years in the musical theater repertoire, with several significant revivals and a film version starring Sydney Poitier and Dorothy Dandridge in the title roles. Houston Grand Opera (HGO), under the leadership of David Gockley, presented Gershwin’s original opera for the very first time on the operatic stage in 1976. The production established Porgy and Bess as one of the greatest American operas and earned HGO a Tony Award, a Grammy Award and the Grand Prix du Disque.
San Francisco Opera quickly followed suit and presented the HGO production in 1977, with subsequent performances in 1987 and 1995.
Sung in English with English supertitles—won’t it be tempting to sing along?
SFO continues: A turbulent story of love found and lost, Porgy and Bess is a quintessentially American masterpiece highlighted by almost a dozen of Gershwin’s most recognizable melodies, including “Summertime,” “I Got Plenty o’ Nuttin’,” and “Bess You is my Woman Now.” Zambello’s critically acclaimed production brings to life the hardships, hopes, and resiliency of a troubled community through the story of Porgy, a crippled beggar, and Bess, the beautiful and headstrong woman he loves. General Director David Gockley, whose long association with Porgy and Bess has made it a mainstay of the operatic repertoire, brings Gershwin’s beloved opera to San Francisco for the first time in over a decade.
Yet sometimes an audience needs to separate the composer from fanatical or maniacal followers. Wagner is better appreciated as a genius of cohesion. Characters and confrontations have musical identities; Wagner wrote the scenario and the libretto himself. He was known to conduct orchestras playing his own composition. The Ring Cycle is an apocalyptic story about the pursuit of gold and power rather than of happiness, and Mother Earth herself voices the warning expressly to Wotan.
In contrast, here's a clip of The Ride of the Valkyries from 1948. It's Arturo Toscanini, the anti-fascist Italian conductor who refused Hitler in his desire for Toscanini to lead the Bayreuth Festival. So if you can believe Wikipedia about Wagner:
Adolf Hitler presented himself as an admirer of Wagner's music, and is said to have claimed that "there is only one legitimate predecessor to National Socialism: Wagner". Wagner's music was frequently played during Nazi rallies (as was the music of Beethoven, also 'appropriated' by the Nazis).[8] Wagner's posthumous daughter-in-law, Winifred Wagner , was an admirer of Adolf Hitler[9] and ran the Bayreuth Festival of Wagner's music from the death of her husband, Siegfried, in 1930 until the end of World War II, when she was ousted. During the Nazi regime, the Nazi hierarchy was frequently required to attend performances of Wagner operas (although they did not necessarily respond enthusiastically)[10]. Thus Germans of the Nazi era, even if they knew nothing about music, and knew nothing of Wagner’s writings, were presented with a clear image of the anti-Jewish Wagner as a great German.
Because of these factors, performances of Wagner's works in the modern state of Israel did not occur during the twentieth century, by consensus. In recent years many Israelis have argued that it is possible to appreciate his musical talents, without implying acceptance of his political or social beliefs. A public performance in Tel Aviv in 2001 of Wagner’s prelude to Tristan und Isolde, conducted as an unprogrammed encore by Daniel Barenboim, left its audience partly delighted, partly enraged.
Photos of Die Walkure and Francesca Zambello courtesy of SFO
Wotan shares his dressing room
Greer Grimsley Impressions, Passions, Stand by Me, Dreams
Tosca and how opera's embattled stay in fighting shape
Fred Matthews sang Porgy & Bess 756 times
Fred Matthews produces Cavalcade of Stars III February 2009
Opera announces 2009/2010 season
Contact the writer at SFOperaExaminer@Yahoo.com
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