Crowd stakes out seats in the sun for a song
When it comes to Opera in the Park, as with most things in life, it helps to have an angle.
Palo Alto resident Peggy Stauffer, 78, showed up in Golden Gate Park’s Sharon Meadow at 9 Sunday morning — a good 4½ hours before the start time for the San Francisco Opera’s annual free outdoor musical celebration.
“My husband thinks I’m crazy,” she confided.
Crazy like a fox, as it turns out. Stauffer didn’t just stake out turf right in front of the stage — thus beating out most of the crowd, estimated by the organizers at around 12,000, for prime sightlines: She also got to hear the morning rehearsal for the event, which is cosponsored by The Chronicle.
That meant double helpings of a full lineup of operatic arias, conducted by Music Director Nicola Luisotti at the helm of the Opera Orchestra and beautifully sung by the stars of the company’s fall season along with several of the up-and-coming young Adler Fellows. And it meant plenty of time to savor the sunshine and gentle breezes that filled the meadow for one of the reliably delightful landmarks of the fall cultural calendar.
Sunday’s Opera in the Park, the 40th installment of the event, was dedicated to the memory of former General Director Lotfi Mansouri, who died Aug. 30. Current General Director David Gockley, who acted as master of ceremonies, praised Mansouri as “one of the world’s leading stage directors and
Lotfi Mansouri “was an exuberant, tireless and passionate advocate for what he liked to call the greatest art form ever invented.” David Gockley, general director, in tribute to the former general director
innovators, who truly left his stamp on the world of opera.”
Added Gockley, “He was an exuberant, tireless and passionate advocate for what he liked to call the greatest art form ever invented. Lotfi, you got it right.”
Another attendee with a secret for success was Mark Hydeman, 53, of San Francisco, a longtime visitor along with his wife, Patricia Perkins. His technique is so close to proprietary information that he was initially reluctant to see it in print, but he proved persuadable.
The smart move, he said, is to find a seat right behind the sound booth — the acoustic mix is better where the technicians are than anywhere else in the park.
Optimal acoustics or not, the musical quality of Sunday’s program was higher and more consistent than that of any in recent memory. From top to bottom, the artists lavished their most lustrous vocal efforts on music both light and somber, interrupted only by the occasional overhead thrum of a helicopter.
Tenor Ramón Vargas unleashed a wealth of clarion sound in arias by Verdi and Boito, and bass Ildar Abdrazakov — his colleague in the company’s opening production of Boito’s “Mefistofele” — matched him in excerpts by Rossini and Verdi. Bass-baritone Wayne Tigges, about to appear in Tobias Picker’s “Dolores Claiborne,” offered a dark-hued aria from Rachmaninoff’s “Aleko,” and soprano Heidi Stober was a repeat performer with music by Mozart and Gounod.
Two splendidly sung numbers from the world of operetta lightened the tone — the “Laughing Song” from “Die Fledermaus,” delivered with pinpoint brightness by soprano Susannah Biller, and soprano Elizabeth Futral’s poignant account of “Vilja” from “The Merry Widow.”
The Adler Fellows included soprano Marina Harris (excellent in an aria from Puccini’s rarely heard “Le Villi”), mezzosopranos Laura Krumm and Renée Rapier, tenor Chuanyue Wang, baritone Joo Wan Kang and bass-baritone Philippe Sly. The encores were the nowtraditional lineup: Vargas with a crowd-slaying “O Sole Mio,” a six-diva tag-team version of “Musetta’s Waltz” from “La Bohème” (with Luisotti adding a vocal interjection) and the Brindisi from “La Traviata.”