Not going to San Francisco's Ring Cycle? Well look what you are missing: A Ring In Pictures

It would seem that SF Opera's Ring cycle is selling out fast. Considering it only happens every 10 years or so it may be your last chance to to see the Cycle in SF for a while. So, just in case you are still undecided, here, in HD, is what used to be known in my day as a "Photo Feature" of SF's Ring Cycle. I have even added an audio documentary introduction to the Ring, Ring Cycles and the people that go to them - to boot!. Media and Wagner heavy, your computer may enter its own Gotterdammerung - you have been warned!

Click Below To Enter Valhalla - BUT WARNING, MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS. (All Images: Cory Weaver/San Francisco Opera)

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SF Opera: Götterdämmerung - Review Summary. Brünnhilde redeems both the world and San Francisco

Keeping up my new, um,  "tradition" -  and in anticipation of the start of the entire San Francisco Ring Cycle next week -  a summary of the reviews, so far, of this weeks Götterdämmerung premier.

Nina Stemme’s Brünnhilde

To me, the "hero" of the Ring is Brunnhilde. It is after all she who first, - and repeatedly -  defies Wotan, it is she that leads to Siegfried's safe birth and ultimately his death. And it is finally she who overturns the old order. With that in mind, what-ever else the critics had to say about this new production of Gotterdammerung,  they are all in agreement that a new Brunnhilde seems to have been born in the form of Nina Stemme (Indeed, so great is their praise I have just put on the Domingo/Stemme/Pappano T&I to re-evaluate her Isolde. And as I have been inseparable from the Klieber for the past few weeks this is not the easy task it might seem).

Says the FT: "Nina Stemme’s Brünnhilde triumphantly strides the littered landscape of the San Francisco Opera’s just completed Ring des Nibelungen, as if she alone possesses the life blood that will infuse the Wagner tetralogy with the authority and grandeur that must irradiate this obsessive work" And SF Gate:"Stemme's Brünnhilde, a memorable linchpin in "Die Walküre" and "Siegfried," became nothing less than a triumph here. Singing with a combination of tonal heft and laser-like precision, Stemme brought the character to vibrant life, from the love-besotted rapture of the opening to the gleaming final moments of redemption". So impressed was Out West Arts they discribe this as "Stemme's Ring!" And on it goes:

"It was a magnificent portrayal. The entire race of the gods had burned to ashes by the opera’s end. Yet when Stemme reappeared alone onstage, the collective cheers from a standing audience affirmed her status as a living Wagnerian goddess." SF Classical Voice.

Ian Storey's Siegfried

It has of course been a difficult time for Storey, taking into account his illness and the small preparation time this gave him for tonight's performance. It is perhaps thus surprising, espcially at this early a stage, to find the OWT: commenting "Perhaps the biggest vocal surprise of the show was tenor Ian Storey as Siegfried. He’s proven to be a somewhat controversial Tristan, and when he backed out of the Siegfried performances he had originally committed to last month due to inadequate preparation time stemming from a prior illness, eyebrows were raised. He delivers in Götterdämmerung without strain or warble anywhere. His voice is lighter than one might expect, with more a head than chest quality, but also has an athletic ease. He was well paired with Stemme, and they had good stage chemistry, even in some of his more buffoonish moments on stage." SF-G while perhaps not as enthusiastic found positives" "Tenor Ian Storey, in his role debut as Siegfried, sang with hooded tone and lacked the ringing top notes for the character's most heroic passages. But there was a certain bluff, muscular appeal to his performance". SF-CV found Storey in finer form: "His voice has a ringing, penetrating quality, mollified by a slightly darkening, throaty quality. He sings a strong line, with conviction." 

Donald Runnicles and San Francisco Opera Orchestra.

Perhaps given Runnicles Wagnerian reputation - and SF Opera Orchestra's overall reputation -  the response is to be expected and that they gained the sort of praise given to Stemme should perhaps be unsurprising - even the FT broke a sweat for a moment:

"... Donald Runnicles, the opera’s former music director, who led his erstwhile orchestra in readings notable for lyrical expansion and incisive detail. A few moments faltered, but it was the Ring that introduced the conductor here 21 years ago and he remains an inspiring force in Wagner-mad San Francisco" FT

"In the pit, former Music Director Donald Runnicles led a performance of majestic power and sweep, eliciting thrillingly great playing from the tireless Opera Orchestra." SF-G

"The orchestra, under Donald Runnicle’s masterful conducting of this dramatic symphony, deserves full praise. The orchestral melody shapes, structures, characterizes, drives, and carries this epic. It was finely integrated with the stage, making the singers part of the orchestra, which in turn was the acting force, the narrator. While the strings have the most difficult and consuming music, the winds (especially horns and brass) skate on the thinnest of ice: One blooped note, and the drama plunges into cold water. (There were none.) Thanks to the musicians, instrumental as well as vocal, the experience was of a complete work of art." SF-CV

The Rest Of The Cast.

Götterdämmerung is of course about much else than just Brunnhilde and Siegfried:

But oh dear, while not the worse it said, it does seem the FT did not have a good night. Perhaps those investments are not doing so well?

Mark Delavan’s Wanderer finds his bass-baritone receding at climaxes. Another role debutant, Andrea Silvestrelli, summons an incisively wiry bass for Hagen’s plotting. David Cangelosi whines and cackles marvellously as Mime. Gordon Hawkins broods ominously as Alberich. FT

The rest of the press was far more positive:

"Stemme was not the only artist making a role debut. Tenor Ian Storey (Siegfried), bass Andrea Silvestrelli (Hagen), soprano Melissa Citro (Gutrune), mezzo-soprano Daveda Karanas (Second Norn and Waltraute), alto Ronnita Miller (First Norn), soprano Heidi Melton (Third Norn), and mezzo-soprano Renée Tatum (Flosshilde) all excelled in first outings of their respective roles. Together with bass-baritone Gerd Grochowski (Gunther), baritone Gordon Hawkins (Alberich), soprano Stacey Tappan (Woglinde), and mezzo-soprano Lauren McNeese (Wellgunde), they made for one of the strongest casts that General Manager David Gockley has brought us". SF-CV

"Silvestrelli, singing Hagen, reaffirmed his status as a vocal giant. The three mellifluous Rhinemaidens (Tappan, McNeese, and Tatum), who were perfectly matched in volume and vibrato, provided a distinct contrast with the more individual sounds of the three Norns (Melton, Karanas, and Miller). Melton’s voice seems to have grown in size; with darker tones on top, she gave promise of a thrilling Sieglinde in the third cycle Die Walküre. Miller was steadier than her Erda of last week, the voice rich beyond belief. Although Karanas seemed a mite underpowered for this duo, her beautifully sung Waltraute displayed her finest and most convincing acting to date". SF-CV

"There were many other notable performances including the large voiced Andrea Silvestrelli as Hagen and Melissa Citro as a vamped-up, man-hungry Gutrune." OWA

Production:

It's rare for critics to like staging of any opera - never mind the Ring, but SF Gate (SF-G) was suitably impressed saying, "In the final opera of Wagner's epic tetralogy, director Francesca Zambello brought her vision of gradual ecological ruin to a persuasive conclusion, while remaining true to the human dimensions of her story - and "Götterdämmerung" is the most keenly human chapter of the "Ring.". SF Classical Voice (SF - CV) was not initially as impressed over-all, but felt the musicality on show managed to over-ride the whole "seen it, done it" that they found: "The interpretation of “The Twilight of the Gods” as signifying the decline of capitalism and the industrial world is pretty much old hat, yet that aspect of the San Francisco Opera’s new production of Wagner’sGötterdämmerung didn’t and couldn’t distract from the consuming power of Sunday afternoon’s performance. " However, there was nevertheless, some begrudged praise: "Also, some imaginative touches in Francesca Zambello’s direction counted." The FT seemed to just hate everything (but that's the FT for you): "Possibly indebted to earlier Ring ruminations by Shaw and Chéreau, Zambello’s cleverness wearies; she seems to have found ingenious solutions to production problems rather than devising an organic concept. The tone sometimes misfires. Farce reigns when the intoxicated Siegfried tumbles head over heels in the presence of Gutrune, who has metamorphosed into a knowing blonde sexpot. A hastily appliquéd feminist “Immolation Scene” and a technically inert denouement compromise the final moments". Finally Out West Arts (OWA) thought that Zambello was simply trying to fit in "to much": At times, this Götterdämmerung comes off as an amalgamation of every directorial idea floated for a Ring cycle in the last 30 years. Zambello’s vision is a standard post-Chereau approach and is simultaneously presented as a number of things including an environmental ring and a feminist ring and others. Wagner's opera are certainly big enough for holding a whole world's worth of ideas. But in the home stretch Zambello's vision is muddled and indecisive

Finally, I just loved this from SFCV:
"Director Zambello applied some delightful and entertaining touches. When departing from Brünnhilde in Act 1, Siegfried was still wearing his security blanket: the green scarf he inherited from his mother, Sieglinde (he apparently loses it during his fall from grace). At the opening of Act 2, Gutrune and her brother Hagen are discovered on an emperor-size bed watching TV (in the audience’s direction), the screen denoted by a projection of TV snow."

The full reviews can be found below (titles playing on themes of the end of the world not assured)

NB: By the way, a comment to reviewers, if I haven't included your review it's most likely because I haven't read/noticed it. Don't sulk, (I don't get paid for this and it takes time) send me a mail with a link. Contact form at the top of the page.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/06/06/DDS21JQ89F.DTL
http://outwestarts.blogspot.com/2011/06/conduit-for-sale.html
http://www.sfcv.org/reviews/san-francisco-opera/sf-operas-gotterdammerung-a-complete-work-of-art
http://www.sfcv.org/reviews/san-francisco-opera/out-of-the-ashes-a-goddess-emerges
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/4ee9dbbe-91e6-11e0-b8c1-00144feab49a.html#axzz1Ok7znmXt

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Watch Now: SF Opera: Science and Wagner’s Ring. 1 hour run time

Presenters:

Dr. Clifford (Kip) Cranna is the Director of Musical Administration at the San Francisco Opera, where he has been a member of the administrative staff since 1979. In June 2008 he was awarded the San Francisco Opera Medal, the Company's highest honor. He received his undergraduate degree in choral conducting at the University of North Dakota, and his Ph.D. in musicology at Stanford University, where he specialized in Renaissance and Baroque music history and theory.

Jan Hartley made her San Francisco Opera debut with 2008's Das Rheingold; her designs will be seen throughout the Company's new Ring cycle. She has collaborated with Francesca Zambello on Shostakovich's Moskva, Cheryomushki at Bard College; David Henry Hwong's adaptation of Tibet Through the Red Box in Seattle; and Napoleon by Andrew Sabiston and Timothy Williams at the Shaftsbury Theatre in London. She also designed projections for Walt Disney's Finding Nemo. A member of Ping Chong & Co. since 1983, her work was featured in productions such as Cocktail, Kwaidan, After Sorrow, 98.6, Chinoiserie, Deshima, Skin, A State of Being, and the Ping Chong and Meredith Monk collaboration The Games. She has also worked on a wide array of productions both on and off Broadway and in London's West End. Hartley has received a Drama Desk Award for Bunny, Bunnie and an Obie Award for Sustained Excellence. Recent projects include The Miracle Worker at the Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey; Anna Deavere Smith's Let Me Down Easy; and Celia, the Musical by Carmen Rivera and Candido Tirado.

Carol Tang spent the last ten years at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. For the first five years, she supervised educational programs -- including programs for outreach, summer environmental education, teen youth development, teacher services, school district-wide science professional development and citizen science. More recently, she served as the Director of Visitor Interpretive Programs and then head of Public Programs. During this period, she had oversight for exhibitions, lifelong learning, and museum engagement and was responsible for all exhibit content and public programs for the museum and aquarium when it re-opened in Golden Gate Park in 2008.

Carol is a member of the American Association of Museums 2012 Annual Meeting National Program Committee, a review panelist for IMLS and NASA, and has been a session leader at several conferences including AAM, Association of Science and Technology Centers, and the California Science Teachers Association. She was a winner of a 2009 AAM Technology award for a museum multimedia tour.

Carol received a BA in paleontology from UC Berkeley, a Ph.D. in geology from University of Southern California, and a Chancellor’s postdoctoral fellowship at the UC Museum of Paleontology. She served as a geology professor at Arizona State University where she worked with inquiry-based science educators and local science centers. She was one of the first group of scientists funded by the

Michael Yeargan: Since his San Francisco Opera debut with the 1993 staging of I Puritani, Michael Yeargan has designed sets and costumes for the Company's productions of The Merry Widow, La boheme, Carmen, Madama Butterfly, Rigoletto, Luisa Miller, Das Rheingold, Simon Boccanegra, and the world premieres of A Streetcar Named Desire and Dead Man Walking. Yeargan's North American opera credits include designs for the Metropolitan Opera (Otello, Cosi fan tutte, Ariadne auf Naxos, Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Les Contes D' Hoffmann, and the world premiere of Harbison's The Great Gatsby); Los Angeles Opera (Nabucco, The Merry Widow, Stiffelio, Hansel and Gretel); Lyric Opera of Chicago (Antony and Cleopatra, Cavelleria Rusticana, Pagliacci, Nabucco, The Pirates of Penzance); the Dallas Opera (Madama Butterfly, Rigoletto, Hansel and Gretel); Houston Grand Opera (Floyd's Cold Sassy Tree and Susannah); and Glimmerglass Opera (Tosca, Madama Butterfly, Central Park), among others. Internationally, he has designed productions for Welsh National Opera; the Royal Opera, Covent Garden; Scottish Opera; Theatre Musical de Paris; Frankfurt Opera; and Opera Australia. A two-time Tony Award winner (South Pacific, The Light in the Piazza), Yeargan has also designed New York productions of Terrence McNally's Bad Habits, The Ritz, Awake and Sing, and Joe Turner's Come and Gone. He has worked extensively with regional theaters throughout America and is a professor of stage design at the Yale School of Drama.NASA Astrobiology Institute and held an NSF Geosciences grant to study fossils of the Dominican Republic.

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Francesca Zambello: "The Ring Remains Relevant"

In an interview published in the Mercury News, Zambello suggests it is easy to "demystify the mystery of the Ring" and that by doing so, it remains as relevant as ever.

Director finds 'Ring' themes -- love, abandonment, greed, abuse of power -- relevant today

In the popular imagination, Richard Wagner's "Der Ring des Nibelungen" ("The Ring of the Nibelung") has come to represent some sort of pinnacle of high art snobbiness and inscrutability. All that Norse myth. All that over-the-top music. All that length -- four operas, totaling about 17 hours, with a million characters (gods, semi-mortals, giants, dwarves), all related through a crazy thicket of marriages and liaisons.

Francesca Zambello, director of San Francisco Opera's new "Ring" cycle production (opening June 14 at War Memorial Opera House), demystifies the mystery.

Born in New York and raised in Europe, she was introduced to Wagner by her mother, and understands Wagner's epic as story. It's about relationships, love, abandonment, greed, abuse of power. Yes, it's filled with archetypes and reveals deep layers of meaning as the world collapses around the characters, who are clamoring for possession of a golden ring and the power it confers.

But it's approachable, the "Ring."

"Kill da Wa-bbit!" Zambello sings during an interview, following a "Ring" rehearsal in San Francisco. It's her imitation of Elmer Fudd in the old cartoon, the one that spoofs the "Ring" as spear-wielding Elmer goes after Bugs to the tune of Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries." Not every internationally acclaimed director is so down-to-earth, but that was Zambello throughout our conversation -- direct, clear, enjoying herself.

Q Francesca, let's hear how you got into the "Ring."

A I think my real loving of the "Ring" started here at San Francisco Opera in the mid-1980s, when the company did the "Ring" cycle under Terence McEwen, who was the general director. And I was a house assistant director at the time, and I wrote the supertitles for the production.

Q You wrote the supertitles?

A Yes. This was just when supertitles were beginning. And suddenly I understood everything that was going on in the "Ring" -- the stories and the characters. And from that time on, I realized what a character-driven piece it is. The "Ring" isn't really about spectacle. Ultimately, it's about the people.

If you look at all of the opera "Siegfried" (Part 3 of the cycle), there's rarely more than two people on stage at once. It's very personal. You've got to make the characters vibrant so people become engaged with the drama.

Q Yet a lot of people think of the "Ring" as a spectacle.

A I'm focused on the characters and their evolutions and journeys. That's what drives me, and I hope that's what people take away from it -- that they'll see bits of themselves in these characters.

However, I do think it's important to have a rich visual language. I think the audience expects that, and it's our job to give it to them. So you try to create a landscape where the audience immediately has a visceral feeling, and then they become immediately receptive to what the characters bring. We put Wotan, chief of the gods, in his office; Wagner says he's high on a rock, but to me that means this great big place of power. So you put him in this big office, high up in this skyscraper. And then everybody goes, "OK, I know what's going on."

Q Tell me about another character. How about Siegfried?

A He's the grandson of Wotan, and he's supposed to be the only Free Hero who's been born to help get Wotan what he wants -- the gold. But when Siegfried gets it, the curse on it destroys him as well. And when Siegfried meets his grandfather, Wotan, Siegfried doesn't know him and destroys his spirit and soul by breaking his spear. Wotan becomes like a homeless man; he goes from being a god to being like someone in the Tenderloin. And we live in a time like that, where that sort of thing happens.

Q What do you mean? What's an example?

A Everybody who's been hurt by a Ponzi scheme. I mean, the level of corruption in the world of finance certainly has parallels in the "Ring" cycle.

Q You make it all sound so simple.

A It shouldn't be obscured. It should be revealed. Audiences should be drawn into this story.

What keeps us engaged in the drama? This is 17 hours long, these four operas. This is an emotional time investment. So I think my job, simply put, is to be a storyteller. That's how I view directing.

And it is such an incredible story to be allowed to tell. It's not like you're trying to fill holes. There are many operas where you have to fill in the blanks. Not here.

This is one of the great epic stories of all time; people are fascinated by history, and there's a historical aspect to this. And there's also a mythic/pop-culture aspect to it, so people really can relate to it in the way they relate to something like "Lord of the Rings" or "Star Wars" or Harry Potter. The list is long.

If you go to our blog (www.sfopera.com; click on "Ring Blog"), just the other day I posted a list of movies I've given members of the cast -- things they should watch to help them understand their characters.

The "Ring" seeps into a lot of popular culture, through these archetypal characters. So for our cast members in the roles of Hunding and Hagen, I suggested watching "In Cold Blood" -- just to get that sense of human destruction. For our Wotan, I said to watch "Citizen Kane" and "Fountainhead," which are about sheer power and the way it gets abused.

Q Those are pretty famous movies. Don't you think they've already watched them?

A No. Opera singers -- they don't use Netflix as much as we do!

Q Let's hear more about the "Ring's" pop-culture tie-ins.

A There are kids in "Das Rheingold," 30 or 40 kids in the cast playing the Nibelungs, the slaves of Alberich, lord of the underworld. And explaining the story to them is almost easier than explaining it to adults....

And so they have no problem with hearing that at one moment Alberich might be turned into a frog, and in another moment he might be their master. It's not far-fetched to them. I say to them, "Wotan is like Darth Vader," and they say, "Oh!"

The kids understand and are gripped by the stories

More At: The Mercury News   

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SF Opera: Siegfried - Review Summery.

I love opera reviews, less for what they say about the production and more for what they say about the reviewers - and human perception in general. It would be easy to think that when we go to the opera we all see and hear roughly  the same things - allowing for  aging eyesight,  hearing, tiredness and alcohol consumption of course. But opera reviews (and indeed reviews of any medium) would suggest otherwise - but you know that already. It's for this reason that I very rarely take much notice of them - at least as far as deciding whether to see a particular performance. However,  if there is any "truth" out there and if that truth can be found amongst a number of different people, it will be when all of them find certain commonalities. With that in mind:


Over all, it would be fair to say the reviews have provided high praise overall (not that common with Ring Cycles and Siegfried especially). Common to all was praise for both Donald Runnicles and the  SF Opera Orchestra.

"The glory of the performance was the San Francisco Opera Orchestra, led by Donald Runnicles, who made his debut here 21 years ago with the “Ring.”
Wagner’s music is both big and intricately nuanced. Runnicles covered the extremes and everything between, leading near-perfect orchestral playing. For five hours, the strings were silk-smooth and together, the woodwinds sang freely and the brass impeccable". Janos Gereben - SF Examiner.(JG - SFE)

"...a powerhouse contribution from the pit from former music director Donald Runnicles, whose mastery of Wagner's music remains a thing of wonder and admiration".Joshua  Kosman - SF Gate (JK - SFG)

"Splendors of SFO’s Orchestra. .Runnicles may not be the most rapturous of conductors. Yet when he went for the gold in the final act, and unleashed the orchestra to convey the full glories of Wagner’s mature, post-Tristan und Isolde writing, the results were irresistible" SF Classical Voice - Jason Victor Serinus (SFCV - JVS)

"The orchestra played excellently under Runnicles’ sure and dramatic guidance, Wagner’s music portraying the story and unfolding in as eloquent and enveloping fashion as can be wanted. Altogether it was first class" SF Classical Voice - Robert P Commandy. (SFVC - RPC)

Of Jay Hunter Morris' Siegfried (WNO Tristan in 2012) there was a difference of opinion. Although none of it could be described as being  in anyway in the "negative', "size of voice" was noted. 

"Tenor Jay Hunter Morris, undertaking the title role for the first time, was adequate but never quite electrifying, his singing tender and thoughtful but one or two sizes too small for the task". said SF Gate, but went on to say, "What Morris did accomplish, though, was to inject a welcome note of humanity into a character who can too often seem thuggish and crude". However, SF Classical Voice said: "Morris sang a fine Siegfried, his voice focused and clear, softly burnished and, though not the strongest or most penetrating in the Heldentenor business, still consistently musical, expressive, and spirited".  This was repeated by the SF Examiner: "In the title role, Jay Hunter Morris has the best qualities of a heldentenor, with a forward sound, edge and natural high notes. He had a good day, in spite of what was lacking: a voice big enough to be both heroic and able to cut through the orchestra at all time".  It should be noted that with regards to comments about Morris shear vocal power, the SFCV reminded us that he is a very late replacement for Ian Storey and sang through the role in rehearsal for the first time only 1 week ago! As SFVC says, "Yet his youthful physical buoyancy, near-heroic posture, and convincing naivete amid brutality (how American!) were a delight. Perhaps by the time he essays the role a second time on June 17, in the first of SFO’s three complete traversals of the Ring, he will have found the means to forge his sword with the power of a hero."

There was similar  praise, concerns,and disagreement (do these people attend the same performances?) - about Mark Delavan's Wotan: SFCV - JVC (Yes, SFCV sent two reviewers!) "While Delavan continues to display a winning gravitas, his power came more from emotional depth than sheer decibels". On the other hand SFCV's other reviewer found the opposite: "Delavan’s bass-baritone seems richer, darker, and larger than ever, and he sang commandingly, delivering a strong, dominating performance. He is also physically bigger, with his commodious outer coat heightening the impression. SF Gate found: Mark Delavan, who after a commanding "Walküre" Wotan seemed vocally hazy and physically ill-at-ease as The Wanderer (Wotan's undercover identity). Even for a moribund god, this was a less than authoritative showing" And yet The Examiner said that while  Delavan’s Wotan seemed: "... vocally restrained, but his musicality and superb diction came through again. His duet with Gordon Hawkins’ Alberich provided a rare baritone summit".

Far different was the unanimous praise for David Cangelosi's Mime (central to Siegfried in my opinion and a good or bad Mime really can make or break a performance. Get this right in the first act and your "in" get it wrong and it takes a long time to recover.):

"David Cangelosi, as the malevolent Mime, to dominate the first half of the opera, which he did with a dark, fluid and vividly imagined performance" - SF Gate.

"...the sensational Mime of tenor David Cangelosi..." SFCV

"David Cangelosi’s bright, penetrating tenor projected the highly characterized singing of the Mime part well. Playing the troll, he compensates for his height by crouching and bending, and tumbled and hopped about acrobatically." SFVC

And what of  Francesca Zambello's production? You have seen Ring productions? You know, including yoursel, that people never agree what is a "good" staging/"concept" - right? Well, that would make this Ring no different to the rest:

SF Gate, helpfully fills us in with some background - should we not have noticed during the first two parts of the Ring staged: "The overarching theme in director Francesca Zambello's conception is American history seen through an ecological lens; this is a "Ring," to put it too simply, about the management and mismanagement of natural resources." ""Siegfried" arrives in a contemporary world of oil refineries, scrap metal and natural despoliation - a combination of the worst of New Jersey and East Texas. Projected images during the Act 1 prelude set the scene with gently roiling clouds that morph into toxic fumes". SFCV , tells us a little more - and lets us know what they thought about it: "On Michael Yeargan’s opening set, Siegfried and Mime’s home looks like the post-holocaust ruins of a trailer park, while Jan Hartley and S. Katy Tucker’s projections during the orchestral interludes are choked with the refuse of humankind’s destruction of the natural world. If Zambello’s vision is so stark as to make Wagner’s apocalyptic Twilight of the Gods (Götterdämmerung) seem like an afterthought, the overwhelming impact of Wagner’s music nevertheless makes us eager to return for more." The SF Examiner found the whole thing just a little "tiring" but at least not "Eurotrash" : "Zambello’s “decaying American landscape” and “world ravaged by greed and neglect” — on Michael Yeargan’s sets with piles of garbage, polluted water and smoke-belching chimneys — is OK, given that the production remains focused on the music. The staging is not outrageous, compared to some European excesses, but it is tiresome" . Well, there you go. And SFCV's other reviewer? "..the best aspects of Francesca Zambello’s direction that more than compensated for elements of the Modern-Times-in-a-Desolate-America production that stretched to Make a Statement (Zambello’s Achilles’ heel).Zambello’s best work focused on the crucial confrontations in Siegfried, searching out the dynamics of the relationships and interactions, building the final climax to the most powerful of these."

And now to those late appearing female roles in Siegfried.  We have seen variance in a opinion with many aspects of this production but this is not, generally, reflected with it's female performers. Indeed, the SFVC says - in bold and large font: "Thank Goddess for the Women". Of especial note is the gushing praise from all, for Stemme's Brünnhilde. Some examples below. Should you want to find out who-wrote-what, I have included the links to the original reviews at the bottom of this post.

Here at last was the combination of assured, muscular vocalism and focused theatrical vibrancy that Wagner's music dramas require. As the rebellious Valkyrie roused at last from her magical slumber, Stemme unleashed a stream of potent, silvery sound that pierced the orchestral texture without a hint of strain.

Stemme sounded marvelous, being in even better form than when she debuted as Brünnhilde in SFO’s Walkürelast June (while suffering from a sinus infection). Possessing the biggest voice onstage, she easily negotiated her character’s huge range. She also summoned forth multiple colors to make believable her character’s wide range of human emotions. With Flagstad, Nilsson, and Varnay no longer with us, we Wagnerites can rejoice that we have another great Brünnhilde to maintain the tradition. 

Brünnhilde, Nina Stemme, is on par with storied Wagnerian sopranos of the past. Her scheduled role debut Sunday as the “Götterdämmerung” Brünnhilde is an exciting prospect.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/05/30/DDBL1JNAUF.DTL

http://www.sfexaminer.com/entertainment/music/2011/05/san-francisco-operas-siegfried-here-ring-not-far-behind

http://www.sfcv.org/reviews/san-francisco-opera/siegfried-a-glorious-prelude-to-collapse

http://www.sfcv.org/reviews/san-francisco-opera/siegfrieds-split-personality

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SF Opera Ring Festival 2011: "What happens if you just fall right over her?" asked Francesca Zambello.

In S.F., Francesca Zambello completes 'Ring'


Siegfried dropped his glass and swaggered toward the couch. Gutrune eyed him knowingly as he moved in and perched above her.

Photo: Liz Hafalia

The director, watching from her rehearsal hall chair, offered a suggestion. "What happens if you just fall right over her?" asked Francesca Zambello.

Ian Storey, who's playing Siegfried in San Francisco Opera's new production of Richard Wagner's "Götterdämmerung," tried the tumble a few times. It didn't feel right to him. He got back on the couch and repositioned himself, looking down the body of Melissa Citro, cast as Gutrune, instead of into her face.

Zambello nodded her approval as Storey ran his hands up onto Citro's knees and thighs. "Legs do it for all of them," the director said. "I like it."

After a few more takes, Zambello asked if everyone was comfortable with what they'd just accomplished before continuing the scene. A pianist churned on through the score. Forty minutes later, the rehearsal hall, one of three in use that afternoon, was reconfigured for a duet from "Siegfried" with Brünnhilde (Nina Stemme) and a younger Siegfried (Jay Hunter Morris) clambering around on some rocks.

Zambello has been doing a lot of these hairpin turns, working 12 hours a day seven days a week to get all four operas of "Der Ring des Nibelungen" ready for the company's deluxe Wagner summer season at the War Memorial Opera House. Opening today with the local production premiere of "Siegfried," followed by the premiere of this "Götterdämmerung" on June 5, the season features three complete "Ring" cycles, each one compressed into a single week (June 14-July 3).

A broken ankle, which required a brace, wasn't about to slow the single-minded Zambello down. Brisk and straightforward, she brushed off any concerns about her enormous task. "We've got a battle plan," she said in a dinner-break interview, ignoring a boxed salad. "Once you've got the whole thing in your head, you don't get lost. You focus on what's in front of you."

Known for her ability to balance the sweeping view with telling psychological and emotional details, Zambello is finally about to reveal the full scope of an American-setting "Ring" that's been in the works for a decade. She and San Francisco Opera General Director David Gockley first discussed the idea when he was still running the Houston Grand Opera. When financial woes scuttled an American "Ring" in Texas, Zambello found a new home for the idea at the Washington National Opera, which mounted "Das Rheingold" in 2005 and "Die Wälkure" in 2007. But the D.C. company, too, was destined not to see the entire project through.

Now, despite its own financial constraints, it's San Francisco that will realize the full vision of a "Ring" that invokes everything from the California Gold Rush and a gleaming 1930s Manhattan skyline to bleak freeway overpasses and the winged Valkyries as Amelia Earhart-styled aviatrices parachuting in from above.

Local audiences got their first sense of Zambello's American "Ring" when "Das Rheingold" played here in 2008. "Die Wälkure" followed in 2010.

Her "Siegfried," the director said, "comes out of the American spirit of the outsider, whether it's Jack Kerouac or James Dean - the kind of free spirit who knows no boundaries." As for "Götterdämmerung," it will be set in a near future "when the actions of the characters have destroyed the natural order, and we've come to a time of such corruption that cannot be restored except by Brünnhilde's self-sacrifice. I see it as a time where all nature is dead." (more)

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All images Lea Suzuki unless indicated otherwise

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SF Opera Ring Festival 2011: An Over-View

I was looking at the best way to give some overview of San Francisco's Ring Cycle 2011 when I came accross this. It appears that Janos Gereben at the  San Francisco Examiner has done a far better job than I might attempt

"The Ring of the Nibelung," the beloved cycle of Richard Wagner operas, is coming back to San Francisco for the first time since 1999, bringing with it all its splendor and heartbreak.

For almost a century and a half, opera audiences have flocked to any part of the globe where Richard Wagner’s “The Ring of the Nibelung” was being produced.

Now, once again, it’s San Francisco’s turn, and some 40,000 visitors from around the Bay Area and world are expected at the War Memorial Opera House between May 29 and July 3. There will be three cycles of the 17-hour colossus (15 hours of music) divided into four operas (Dates and Booking Information here.)  Including individual productions in the past three years leading up to the complete cycles, the cost of the venture is approximately $24 million.

Ticket income will not cover the cost to the opera, which relies on individual and corporate donations, but the financial, public relations and visitor attraction benefits to The City exceed the expense.

“For San Francisco, having the full ‘Ring’ cycle here is like hosting a Super Bowl or World Cup soccer for the arts,” said Kary Schulman, the director of Grants for the Arts. “We gain not just additional hotel stays, restaurant meals and shopping, but, because these are culture-goers, our other arts and visitor attractions are likely to benefit as well.”

The man responsible for the decision to produce “Ring,” opera general director David Gockley, emphasizes the size of the project, but from another angle.

“It is the most monumental piece of music theater ever conceived by the mind of man,” Gockley said. “Every rational force in our society mitigates against it being done. Yet it is done because there is an urge within us to see the truth and the fate of ourselves as humans played out on a vast, multilayered canvas. For anyone in my position, it is the dream of a career in opera to essay this Everest of challenges.”

So large is that challenge that this will be only the sixth time in the company’s 88-year history that “Ring” is presented. Previous years were 1935, 1972, 1985, 1990 and 1999. The first “Ring” came to The City in 1900, when New York’s Metropolitan Opera performed it on tour in the Grand Opera House, long before the War Memorial opened in 1932.

Beyond size, expense, tradition and fame, at the core of the “‘Ring’ experience” is the experience of basic human emotions expressed in unforgettably powerful ways. What makes it all work is as basic as the anguish of a father (Wotan) over the loss of his daughter (Brünnhilde).

This deep human sorrow hits the audience with unsurpassed impact in a combination of gorgeous music and deeply affecting drama.

“My ‘Walküre’ turns out terribly beautiful,” Wagner wrote to Franz Liszt in 1852, and the century and a half that has passed since only confirmed and amplified his judgment.

Francesca Zambello, who’s responsible for the San Francisco production, said Wagner’s vision of the world “demands a setting in which gods, goddesses, creatures, heroes and mere humans are all equally at home. Many set out on journeys that will take them through terrifying landscapes demanding courage, heart, understanding and sacrifice. As they are transformed, so are we who watch, and [we] sense their stories are also ours.”

Those journeys might sound familiar even to opera newbies: From ancient Nordic mythology to Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” to Peter Jackson’s film trilogy, there are recurring stories of the all-powerful ring and what befalls on mortals, and even gods coveting them.

“All of the great themes of the ‘Ring’ — the destruction of nature, the quest for power, corruption, the plight of the powerless — resound through the four operas,” Zambello said.

Unlike traditional staging of the Wagner operas, here “they are not bound to the 19th century’s industrial age, nor to Europe or some leafy Nordic realm of long ago,” Zambello said.

To make this happen, huge forces are coming together. World-famous Wagner specialist Donald Runnicles conducts an orchestra of more than 100. Principal roles are filled by acclaimed singers, and the rest of the cast includes some participants in the Merola Opera Program; veterans of Merola now take on major roles, and there are scores of stagehands, costumers, makeup artists, ushers and others involved.

For the months leading up to the big event in June, local arts organizations collaborate in presenting a wide range of programs centering on the “Ring.”

Zambello said in his (sic) production, American history, mythology, iconography, landscape and “dreams all filtered into our palette as we constructed our stage world.”

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San Francisco Opera: Larissa Diadkova withdraws, Elizabeth Bishop steps in as Fricka

How did Wotan get to be leader of the gods? Not only can't he control his children, he can't even stop his wife from roaming:

American mezzo-soprano Elizabeth Bishop will replace Larissa Diadkova as “Fricka” in San Francisco Opera’s 2011 production of Wagner’s DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN (The Ring of the Nibelung). Fricka appears in two of the Ring cycle’s four operas — Das Rheingold and Die Walküre. Larissa Diadkova has withdrawn from these performances due to personal reasons. A former Adler Fellow and Merola Opera Program alumna, Elizabeth Bishop appeared as Fricka in San Francisco Opera’s 1999 Das Rheingold as well as in Washington National Opera’s performances of Francesca Zambello’s Ring production in 2006 (Das Rheingold) and 2007 (Die Walküre).


Elizabeth Bishop made her San Francisco Opera debut in 1994 as Inez in Il Trovatore and has sung nearly twenty roles with the Company, including Tisbe (La Cenerentola), the Second Lady (Die Zauberflöte), Flora (La Traviata), and Suzuki (Madama Butterfly) as well as creating the roles of Emilie (Susa’sThe Dangerous Liaisons) and Mama (Wallace’s Harvey Milk). Bishop’s engagements this season include the title role of Iphigénie en Tauride at the Metropolitan Opera, the Principessa (Adriana Lecouvreur) with Washington Concert Opera, and Mother Marie (Dialogues des Carmélites) with Pittsburgh Opera. Other career highlights include Fenena, Venus (Tannhäuser), Mère Marie, and the Second Norn (Götterdämmerung) at the Met; Fricka, Eboli (Don Carlo), Meg Page (Falstaff), Gertrude (Hamlet), and the Marquise de Merteuil (The Dangerous Liaisons) with Washington National Opera; Marthe Rull (Kleist’s Der zerbrochene Krug), Third Maid (Zemlinsky’s Der Zwerg), and Grandmother Buryja (Jenůfa) with Los Angeles Opera; Amneris (Aida) with Atlanta Opera; Offred in the North American premiere of Ruder’s The Handmaid’s Tale with Minnesota Opera; and principal roles with Genoa’s Teatro Carlo Felice, Pacific Opera Victoria, and Deutsche Oper Berlin.

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