Finnish soprano Camilla Nylund is The Empress in the San Francisco Opera’s rare staging of Richard Strauss 1919 opera “Die Frau ohne Schatten” (The Woman Without a Shadow), through June 29 at the War Memorial Opera House. (Contributed photo/ SF Opera/ Cory Weaver)
San Francisco Opera’s summer 2023 season started off earlier this month with a whimper and a bang with the respective staging of Puccini’s “Madame Butterfly” and Strauss’ “Die Frau ohne Schatten” (The Woman Without a Shadow).
It is the German composer’s rarely performed 1919 fairy-tale opera that impressed and should not be missed. (The company staged its American premiere in 1959, last mounted it 34 years ago, and should produce it more often but it is clearly a costly proposition.)
The production’s standing-ovation success rests with all its various moving parts — the clarion-like voices, the massive sound of the music, the abstract sets, the dramatic lighting changes, the costumes — and this staging, designed by celebrated, British-born artist David Hockney and directed by Roy Rallo, radiates with energy and well-thought-out action.
It helped mightily to have former company music director Sir Donald Runnicles, one of the world’s most adept interpreters of the Germanic opera literature, in the pit and leading more than 100 musicians. The force was with him on opening night, as he gave a studied reading of Strauss’ agitated, harmonically unstable but always-innovative score, filled with warmth and, at times, ineffable beauty, as it tracked two pairs of lovers to emotional and spiritual salvation.
The story, based on the libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, is about an empress who will return to the spirit world — and her husband will turn to stone — if she doesn’t acquire a human shadow. She spends nearly the entire, sprawling, 3 1/4-hour opera, considered Strauss’ masterpiece, pondering whether to steal a shadow, a key symbol of humanity, from a mortal woman and, thus, take that woman’s ability to have children.
Will the empress develop from a creature into a human by realizing other people matter? That’s the gist and it is intriguing to watch her change, to reveal her compassion.
From beginning to end, Finnish soprano Camilla Nylund portrayed the Empress with a steely power, her voice marked by shimmering highs and dramatic radiance when called for, well-suited for Strauss’ musical imaginings. Her talent rose to a high point at the end of Act 3, with her singing “Nun will ich jubeln” (Now I will cheer), as she is rewarded with a shadow of her own rather than accepting one at the cost of happiness between the hard-working tradesman Barak, the dyer, and the Dyer’s Wife (the only name for her character).
Swedish soprano Nina Stemme sang the role of the Dyer’s Wife with equal dramatic flair but also infused her vocals with measures of emotional ache, angst, hopelessness, and joy. As a now-penitent wife and separated into two cells in the bowels of the earth, her duet with Barak, sung by Danish bass-baritone Johan Reuter, at the beginning of Act 3, “Mir anvertraut” (opened your heart) was an example of why she received the San Francisco Opera Medal at the opera’s end on opening night.
American soprano Linda Watson sang role of the Nurse; and British tenor David Butt Phillip portrayed the Emperor, both delivering deeply affecting vocals with upper-range clarity and heft.
As for Hockney’s sets, they were a welcome marvel of some of his amoeba-like shapes, highly chromatic, with backdrops studded with stars, and long pieces of dyed cloth during the dyer’s scenes in Act 2 and part of Act 3, and a sloping, geometrically rounded walkway in Act 1. The lighting cast different hues on Hockney’s art to captivating, psychedelic effect.
Performances continue through June 28.
The familiar story of a Japanese girl forsaken by the American father of their child, “Madame Butterfly” should be a no-brainer for San Francisco Opera, a leading U.S. opera company.
But this Puccini classic, generally a good first opera for newcomers to the art form, was such a letdown when compared to the company’s many previous and invariably excellent productions with emotional wallops throughout its two-hour running time.
Staged by Japanese director Amon Miyamoto, with costumes by Late Fashion designer Kenzo Takada, it falls annoyingly flat for two reasons:
Miyamoto enlisted the help of associate director Miroku Shimada, who presented the story from the point of view of Cio-Cio-San’s child with American Navy Lt. B.F. Pinkerton, Trouble, portrayed in a nonsinging role by John Charles Quimpo, who populates every scene, hanging around the edges or standing close the principal singers. His presence is distracting, and, overheard, it prompted some in the audience to consider booing.
The other reason is company music director Eun Sun Kim leads the orchestra in this new co-production with a surprisingly anemic interpretation of the 1902 score, as if the music has run out of breath — and certainly dynamism — especially notable when Butterfly, after giving up her child, commits suicide. And there was no hair-raising end, “no there there,” as Gertrude Stein would say.
Even the vocals by tenor Michael Fabiano, as Pinkerton, and soprano Karah Son, as Butterfly, and baritone Lucas Meachem, as the U.S. consul, Sharpless, lacked luster. But some of the singers in lesser roles, including tenor Julius Ahn as Goro, a marriage broker, and Jongwon Han, as Bonze, sang with pointed passion.
Based on a play by David Belasco and set on the hillside overlooking Nagasaki harbor around 1900, “Madame Butterfly” is regarded as hauntingly lyrical, with Japanese motifs in the music, but this production is hauntingly unmemorable.
The love duet, the “One Fine Day” aria, the “Humming Chorus,” the “Flower duet,” and Butterfly’s farewell to her child, “Tu? tu? tu? tu? Piccolo Iddio!” Left no impression at all.
Performances continue through July 1.
A pioneering new opera, “El Ultimo Sueno de Frida y Diego” (The Last Dream of Frida and Diego), a work composed by Gabriela Lena Frank, closes out the summer season.
Based on a story by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Nilo Cruz, the opera unfolds three years after the death of famed artist Frida Kahlo, wife of equally famed Mexican artist and muralist Diego Rivera.
Rivera makes a final wish: to see his dead wife once more. Who’s listening? The underworld is.
Lorena Maza directs the production. Jorge Ballina designed the set, Eloise Kazan the costumes, and Victor Zapatero the lighting. Roberto Kalb, recently appointed music director of Detroit Opera, makes his company debut in the co-commissioned work, the first Spanish-language opera in the San Francisco Opera’s 100-year history.
Performances began Tuesday (not in time for a review) and continue to June 30.
The company’s 100th anniversary season ends in a concert with the artists at 6 p.m. June 16. Tickets are available.
IF YOU GO
What: San Francisco Opera
Where: War Memorial Opera House
301 Van Ness Ave.
Tickets: $10 (standing-room only) to $464 and available at the San Francisco Opera box office by calling (415) 864-3330, or online at sfopera.com.
The livestream option: www.sfopera.com/digital/Livestream/