Young vocalists with depth of talent
According to the famous old operatic maxim that I just made up, you can’t really tell what young singers are capable of until you hear them perform from within the belly of a British mano’war. It’s something to do with the resonance, and the wood and the curved pitch of the floorboards.
That principle was put to the test on Saturday, Aug. 17, in the War Memorial Opera House, as the two dozen singers of the Merola Opera Program made their final appearances of the summer. The Merola Grand Finale — an annual cavalcade of arias, duets and ensembles designed to showcase the participants in San Francisco Opera’s intensive summer training program one last time — took place on the elaborately detailed set of Britten’s “Billy Budd,” which will be the second work of the Opera’s coming fall season.
Fortunately, stage director Greg Eldridge fitted out the threehour program with a few apt lines of Shakespeare fore and aft. The relevant introduction and close from “Henry V” and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” respectively, on the subject of theatrical illusion reminded the audience to suspend its disbelief while shutting off cell phones.
And those spoken snippets, in turn, dovetailed with the recurrent Shakespeareanism of the program itself, which included double doses of “Romeo and Juliet” (as treated by Gounod and Bellini) and of “The Merry Wives of Windsor” (Verdi and Nicolai), as well as a single shot of Ambroise Thomas’ “Hamlet.”
“Hamlet” is a tough sell musically, but on this occasion it had a formidable advocate in the person of mezzosoprano Alice Chung, whose ringing, magisterial performance as Gertrude — abetted by baritone Timothy Murray in the title role — lent Thomas’ limp score a soaring grandeur it might otherwise have lacked.
Chung was just one of the stars in a program — conducted by George Manahan with bland efficiency but not much rhythmic vitality — that often found the women commanding the spotlight. Soprano Anna Dugan even doubledipped, with superb and shapely excerpts from Strauss’ “Der Rosenkavalier” (the opening scene, opposite mezzosoprano Cara Collins as Octavian) and from Barber’s “Vanessa” with tenor Victor Starsky.
From Mozart’s “Così fan tutte,” the duet “Fra gli amplessi” was an ideal vehicle for the gleaming tones and impeccable dynamic control of soprano Esther Tonea, joining forces admirably with tenor Michael Day. And soprano Elisa Sunshine brought a blend of vocal sparkle and theatrical charisma to the Act 1 duet from Donizetti’s “Daughter of the Regiment” together with bassbaritone Andrew Dwan.
Among the men, obvious standouts included baritone Laureano Quant, whose aria from Bellini’s “I Puritani” was robust and full of vocal swagger, and tenor Brandon Scott Russell, who brought eloquent suavity to the Prince’s aria from Dvorák’s “Rusalka.”
Eldridge, himself a Merola participant, stitched together scene after scene with barely visible theatrical thread, crafting elegant handoffs between the participants in different dramatic situations (the segue from the allfemale chorus of Poulenc’s “Dialogues of the Carmelites” to “Così” was particularly delectable). This is a perennial challenge for directors in the stringofarias format — how do you create even a semblance of narrative unity out of a largely random array of scenes? — and Eldridge managed it so deftly that the presence of cannons and sailors’ hammocks scarcely registered.