Santa Fe Opera Notes

Back from Santa Fe; we caught three shows in three days: Marriage of Figaro; Falstaff; and (Handel's) Radamisto. We missed Billy Budd which, if you believe the lobby chatter, may be the hit of the season: surprising to me because I have sometimes suspected that I am the only person on the planet who actually likes Billy Budd. Evidently I need to get out more.

It's no disrespect to Santa Fe to say that Figaro is an opera that's hard to screw up: there is so much glorious invention here, and so much affability, and so much cheerful comedy, that something will survive even the limpest efforts. Indeed when you stop and think about it, the plot is pretty shambolic; tighter editing could have wound it all up in the third act. But there is so much to enjoy here that you forget all about that looseness as you kick back. In any event Santa Fe wasn't limp at all; it was buoyant and energetic altogether a delightful way to spend an evening. But who would have thought that you could have a Figaro carried by Count Almaviva? He's the villain of course, but a somewhat austere and off-putting villain, not one possessed of the malign magnetism of a Scarpio or an Iago. Mariusz Kwiecien (who? Oh, that guy.) brings it off: he's aggressive and dynamic and at home with himself--so much so that you forget that his character is mostly a rat.

I guess that Falstaff has long been a kind of favorite of mine, perhaps because it was the first opera I ever saw, back when I was 17, long before I had the least notion what it or any other opera was about. There's just an amazing amount of musical material here, almost as if Verdi, closing in on 80, felt he had to dump everything left in the trunk. In this light, people speak of Falstaff as a kind of valediction: a summing up, replete with mellow wisdom. But there is a problem here: strip off all the filigree, and you have to concede that Falstaff is one long, unkind--read "nasty"-- practical joke. It seems to me this is an issue with any production of Falstaff but for some reason, it seemed to come across more clearly in Santa Fe's setting than I've ever seen it before. It might be Falstaff himself: he is a vain, greedy, lecherous, old fool, of course, but in this production he's also a bit ridiculous: a more constrained putdown would seem a lot more appropriate than an extended and mean-spirited prank. And it might be the production: I remember seeing a Falstaff at the NYC Opera a few years back (I can't remember any names) which somehow sussed bits of darkness and melancholy behind the plot--altogether richer and more convincing.

I'm a big Handel fan, and I had never seen Radamisto before. On the whole, you'd have to say it was time well spent: great performance by David Daniels (the marquee name on this summer's Santa Fe card) with a good supporting cast. But Luca Pisaroni as the villain may have stolen the show. Remarkably: Pisaroni had played Figaro just two nights before: he was a good Figaro and he had a good comic sense, but he has perhaps a bit too much natural dignity for a role that almost requires Phil Silvers. In a posture of villainy, Handel gave him every opportunity to strut his stuff, and he rose to the occasion.

Opera insiders, by the way, seem to be treating this Radamisto as a showcase for the director, David Alden, "known" as Wiki says "for his post-modernist settings" (link). Well, whatever. Handel does present a challenge to the director, and the tendency today seems to be to declare tht all bets are off: nothing is too lurid, too excessive, too campy too--oh, go ahead and say it--to operatic for a Handel production. I guess you'd have to say that it didn't get in the way.

Not-so-Magic Flute

For no particularly obvious reason, we have seen four Magic Flutes in the last couple of years, the latest yesterday at the SFO Opera. My guess is that this is an opera just impossible to screw up completely: there is too much glorious (and accessible) music; at least some of it is bound to come through. In many ways, it is an ideal “first opera” for newbies—easily reworked for kids, and I’ve seen one fetching version with puppets. The only qualification would be that it isn’t quite an “opera” at all—more of a barrel-house frolic with an overlay of transcendence.

We shared our outing yesterday with a gang of relative newbies—three guys with good taste & good ears but not a lot of first-hand opera experience. In a word, I’d describe the experience as “unfortunate.” Not bad, precisely; as I just suggested, I’m not sure Magic Flute can be altogether bad. Anyway, the singing was passable, the clowns got a few laughs, and the staging (more infra) is good fun.

But it lacked viscera: the kind of power and energy that can kick it all into outer space. There are a lot of suspects here, but I’d say the main culprit here was size: the SFO stage proved just too big for the job—it allowed singers to spread out and wander way (from each other, and themselves). The result was no challenge, no engagement, no drama.

Size alone isn’t a necessary disability; the Julie Taymor Met production, on an even bigger stage, somehow seems to rise to the occasion (maybe just because you spend so much time worrying that the set will fall down). Last year’s Santa Fe production (thanks in no small part to Natalie Dessay), kept up the pace even though spread out in front of an entire mountain range. But in SFO, the whole production veered somewhere close to marmorial—perhaps the kind of thing you have to put up with in La Clemenza di Tito, but not what you want from.

I’m left then, with an odd irony. Of all the productions I’ve seen in the last couple of years, maybe the best was that glorified pocket opera I saw earlier this month in Budapest, with the chorus singing from faux audience boxes and grownups doing voice-overs for the three blessed children. Technically it was the least polished, and in terms of raw singing talent probably the weakest. On a tight budget, they even skipped the monster: he lived and died offstage, and thus did not have to draw equity wages. But as the least cluttered and least ambitious of the four, it was the one that most allowed Mozart to show through.

Note re staging: San Francisco is recycling a 15-year-old production, first conceived by the late Peter Hall, with designs by the sometimes cartoonist, Gerald Scarfe. I’m a big Scarfe fan, and he did produce a few lovely touches—e.g., a set of stage animals that are as sweetly funny as anything this side of the original Sesame Street. But I wonder if the staging itself (along with the size of the stage) might have been part of the problem. I’m not enough of a theatre person to pass judgment, but it seemed to me there were a lot of times might have been simply pushing people into the wrong place, as if conspiring to make it harder for them to do their job.

Live épaul d’agneau Blogging

It’s a lovely day here in Palookaville and we disport ourselves in unseasonably balmy breezes while we await the 112-degree temperatures that will surely arrive next month. Also en route to Chez Buce: weekend guests, so I undertake to whip up a batch of Paula Wolfert’s épaul d’agneau à la Catalane—Lamb with Garlic and White Beans (en pistache). As an achievement of Western culture, I’d say this dish ranks right up there with Le Nozze di Figaro and E-MC². This recipe is not nearly as difficult as physics or opera, but it does take time and attention: when Paula Wolfert says to do something, you do exactly what she says, and your whole life will be better. Also, I admit I am never nearly as fast as the cooks who create the recipes—when Wolfert says “one hour,” I get ready for “two” (and I must say, I don’t understand why Rachel Ray’s pants are not permanently on fire).

I’ve learned that I can’t work without something in my ear, so last night I downloaded an audio of Michael Oren’s Power, Faith and Fantasy (link), with high hopes of learning a little something about the Middle East. This morning I found I couldn’t find my favorite earphones, so I lugged the laptop out to the kitchen and, positioning it suitably far enough away from the counter, I fired up the BBC. So, what shall it be? News? No, I’d learned enough about Gordon Brown’s new cabinet last night, and I figured I’d learn more than I wanted to know about the nail-bombing without even trying. So I flipped over to the on-demand streaming and picked up a lovely James Naughtie series on the history of music (link). After I got sick of Naughtie, I tried to link over to a performance of Tom Stoppard’s Albert’s Bridge. Couldn’t find it (am I too early?) so I had to settle for a dramatization of Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe (link).

Meanwhle Mrs. Buce was puttering in the garden. She’s not particularly self-confident about pruning, so she recruited our neighbor Brian, who has spent a lot of his life managing farm property, to give her a hand (note to self, bake some bread for Val and Brian). Brian now and I can see she has her Ipod on: from the look on her face, I’ll bet she is basking in Juan Diego Flórez’ Barber of Seville (link).

And so it goes. There is nothing particularly novel here, so I will settle for two perhaps already well known to all of my readers.

• You can live anywhere. In a long and not terribly corrupt life, I’ve spent time in New York, London, Los Angeles, Paris, Rome and Washington, with predictable sidetrips elsewhere. I won’t say Palookaville is “better” (maybe Rome?). I will say it really doesn’t matter. With the whole galaxy an earbud away,it hardly matters. And price of real estate is lower.

• What a bunch of spoiled brats we are. That we is inclusive—not just us, though it certainly includes us.

Beans are bubbling, gotta run.

Fn.: The lamb cassoulet is in Wolfert’s The Cooking of South-West France 292-4 (1983) (link).

Don Giovanni: The Graphic Novel

My favorite Shakespeare teacher back in college told me that Romeo & Juliet isn’t a tragedy; it is just a comedy that ends badly. Something the same can be said for Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Indeed one of DG’s almost illimitable points of appeal is the odd and unsettling mix the truly nasty and the falling-down funny. Not all productions of DG recognize this, or at any rate, not all dare to face it.

We queued up with a legion of wrinklies and crumblies this afternoon for a dress-rehearsal production of DG in San Francisco. It’s worth the trip, although perhaps not, as Michelen would say, worth a detour. One signal advantage of this David McVicar production is that it isn’t afraid to let the comic scenes be comic. Indeed, the staging itself seems to have been lifted from a graphic novel, with (at times) little boxes like panels in a cartoon. Never mind that the drama ends with the hero being dispatched to hell: you are mad to understand that an unsettling lot of this is just good fun.

This was refreshing, and it worked, and it was enough to carry the main event. Which was a good thing, because a lot of the other pieces didn’t connect. As Mrs. Buce was quick to point out, the production as a whole lacked the ambivalence that you need to make it truly unnerving. By all accounts the Don is a great seducer but you don’t get that many babes unless you are either (a) a world-class basketball player; or (b) a bad boy with a large dollop of sexual magnetism. The Don here obviously wasn’t competing in class (a) and he really didn’t seem to have it for class (b); he was, as Mrs. B said (rather dismissively, I thought) “trailer trash.”

This is important not just for the Don himself but for those round him: you want to believe it when Donna Elvira discovers that she may be just a teensy bit in love with him. And when Donna Anna sets out to take her vengeance against him, you want to feel that she feels that she might be just a little bit complicit in all his crime.

This didn’t come off in this performance, and it’s too bad: the performance has a lot going for it. But in the end, it’s such a great opera that almost nothing can spoil it, and this one, if not perfect, was as long way from spoiled.

Afterthought—pleasant surprise: Luca Pisaroni as Massetto, the Ringo Starr of the majors in the show, made a lot out of not a great deal. It was his SFO debut and here’s wishing him many happy returns.