S.F. Opera’s ‘transitional’ new season
In a season like no other in the company’s 99year history, San Francisco Opera plans to return to live performance at the War Memorial Opera House with an abbreviated 202122 bill of five fully staged productions and two special concerts.
Called a “transitional year” in its announcement Tuesday, June 22, the season is expected to open with Puccini’s “Tosca” on Aug. 21, and features Beethoven’s “Fidelio,” a double helping of Mozart and a revival of Bright Sheng and David Henry Hwang’s “Dream of the Red Chamber.” Three of the five operas are new productions.
As the city and its arts organizations emerge from the COVID19 lockdown, significant options are available for remote audiences. On Sept. 10, “Live and In Concert: The Homecoming,” which replaces the traditional Opera in the Park season opener, will be simulcast from the Opera House free to Oracle Park. Selected performances of “Fidelio” in October and Mozart’s “Così fan tutte” in November will also be offered as $25 ticketed live streams available to audiences around the world.
Shorter online musical programs, some of which have been available during the shutdown, will continue and expand.
Tickets go on sale Tuesday.
“I am so ready to go,” the company’s new music director, Eun Sun Kim, told The Chronicle. Her first season will include conducting duties for “Tosca,” “Fidelio,” “Homecoming” and an allVerdi concert that winds up the season in June 2022.
Even as the cast, orchestra and chorus operate at full strength, the effects of the pandemic will be felt in various ways. To streamline and simplify production issues and other matters (not turning over dressing rooms too often, for example), the fall operas are scheduled to run consecutively rather than in rotating repertory, with breaks of three weeks or more between them.
The 2022 portion of the season is more compact, but General Director Matthew Shilvock said he’s still “ecstatic” about what’s to come.
“To be building back to the moment of raising the curtain again and hearing those first notes is so lifeaffirming,” he said. “It’s been a long year, but some of the things we’ve been able to do have really moved us forward.”
Noting that the protocols “will be reevaluated as we go forward,” Shilvock said any health and safety measures implemented during the season reflect concerns expressed by ticket buyers in a survey. To that end, at least through the run of “Tosca” (Aug. 21Sept. 5), patrons must show, along with a photo ID, either proof of full vaccination, a negative coronavirus test within 72 hours or an antigen test within one day of the performance. Maskwearing will be required, and seating will include empty “buffer seats” between parties.
There will be limited food and beverage service at the Opera House. Tickets, for the time being, will be sold online or by phone but not in person, with exchange fees eliminated throughout the season.
Originally scheduled to open the 202021 season, “Fidelio” (Oct. 1430) is a tentpole of the new schedule. Beethoven’s politically charged tale of the struggle for liberty and justice, last produced by the company in the 200506 season, is the composer’s only opera.
Director Matthew Ozawa’s updated contemporary production unfolds on a doubletiered set that was adapted for the company’s “drivein” staging of “The Barber of Seville” at Marin Center in the spring. The Beethoven work is “every conductor’s dream,” said Kim. Former Adler Fellow Elza van den Heever and Russell Thomas (“Roberto Devereux”) headline the cast.
“Così fan tutte” (Nov. 21Dec. 3) continues the Opera’s trilogy of works by Mozart and librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte that debuted with “The Marriage of Figaro” in 2019. “Don Giovanni” ( June 4July 2, 2022) completes the project, directed throughout by Michael Cavanagh.
All three operas take place in the same American house over a 300year period. Of the 1930s “Così” setting between two world wars, Shilvock remarked, “It’s a pivotal point, both joyful and thoughtful, as society gets squeezed to the edge.” Casting includes Nicole Cabell, Irene Roberts, Ben Bliss, John Brancy and Nicole Heaston (“Figaro”).
“Don Giovanni” plays out in a dystopian future. Etienne Dupuis sings the title role in this classic portrayal of seduction and doom. Adela Zaharia, Carmen Giannattasio (“Tosca”) and Christina Gansch are the women in the Don’s sights, with Luca Pisaroni as his wily servant Leporello.
World premiered here in 2016, “The Dream of the Red Chamber” (June 14July 3, 2022) is expected to return in director Stan Lai’s opulent production of this classic Chinese novel adaptation. Yijie Shi and Karen Chialing Ho reprise their leading roles.
“Homecoming,” the first of the season’s two onenightonly concerts, showcase Rachel WillisSørensen and Jamie Barton, both standouts in the Kimconducted 2019 “Rusalka.”
Of the June 2022 Verdi concert, Kim promised a program that includes “things that are not the classics everyone knows.”
The seasonopening “Tosca” returns a company perennial to the stage in a revival of the 2018 staging. Ailyn Pérez, Michael Fabiano and Alfred Walker head the cast.
“The Atrium Sessions,” a new digital program devoted to shorter vocal works by various composers, debuts in September.
As for the highly anticipated mainstage productions that were scuttled by the pandemic, Shilvock said the company is “looking for where we can find homes” for such works as “The (R) evolution of Steve Jobs,” “The Handmaid’s Tale” and “The Dwarf.”
The company lost about $20 million in anticipated revenue on a $72 million budget while the Opera House was dark, Shilvock said, though it allowed the venue to receive longawaited upgrades such as additional accessibility enhancements.
“The government programs have been a lifeline. The donor response has been amazing and lifesaving,” he said. “The biggest question mark is how the audiences will come back.”