Opera’s twist on opening gala
Orchestra takes stage as 2 singers perform for in-house patrons, simulcast audience
“How strange” were the first words sung during the San Francisco Opera’s “Homecoming” concert Friday, and that snippet from Verdi’s “La Traviata” has seldom felt so marvelously apt.
Was it a season-opening gala? Well, yes and no. For the company’s patrons, long accustomed to looking forward to the Friday after Labor Day for opening festivities, there was a familiar buzz about the proceedings.
But with a full operatic production already on the books — a vibrant “Tosca” in which soprano Ailyn Pérez shone in the title role and wound up engaged to be married — this was a different kind of event, thrillingly unusual and mildly hard to classify.
Eun Sun Kim, the company’s promising new music director, presided over a concert performance in the War Memorial Opera House with two vocal stars, soprano Rachel Willis-Sørensen and mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton. The San Francisco Opera Orchestra, arrayed onstage instead of in the pit, sounded luxuriantly fine.
At Oracle Park, meanwhile, a free simulcast threw the event up on the Jumbotron for the delectation of a crowd of 7,000. And through it all ran the consciousness of COVID, which gave the entire celebration a slightly defiant edge — as if the two events were a testament to the city’s determination to carry cultural life forward in the face of the pandemic.
“This is a great way to welcome the community back,” said Erwin Tam of San Francisco, who said he’s been coming to the Opera for 10 years.
Tam was at the Opera House with Eddie Cheng, who pointed out that in addition to being vaccinated he had come double-masked. “It’s a way to get back to some semblance of normalcy,” Cheng added. “Everyone is being safe, being cautious, and being prepared for it.”
At the ballpark, Bob Anderson stood smiling in centerfield as the sun moved low in the sky, awaiting the music.
“I’m exuberant,” Anderson said as he awaited the opening notes. “There’s a little fire in my chest.”
Anderson said he came up from Palo Alto for the evening after attending a performance of “Tosca” last week at the Opera House. “You can feel the relief of everyone being together again,” he said of Friday’s outdoor event.
The outfield slowly filled with a chattering crowd as others streamed into the stands. A staffer posted at the entrance said only 2,500 people would be let onto the field before people were rerouted to the stadium seats.
Blankets and the people on them were mostly distanced, as the on-field crowd sipped wine from carafes in anticipation — a far cry from previous years when walkways had to be carved between the overlapping blankets.
Just on the outfield grass between first and second base, Laurie Coe and Rick Velez were wrangling a windwhipped blanket and a couple of drinks. A dual opera and baseball fan, she said she’d been to just about every Opera in the Ballpark performance since they began.
“The music really brings us together,” Coe said.
Kim was appointed the company’s music director shortly after conducting one of the notable operatic triumphs of the pre-COVID era, the 2019 production of Dvorák’s “Rusalka.” That production also starred WillisSørensen and Barton, which gave the new event a “getting the band back together” vibe.
Willis-Sørensen reprised the opera’s “Song of the Moon,” in a luminous account phrased with an air of hushed, magical stillness. She brought
similar qualities to a beautiful rendition of “Depuis le jour,” the soprano showcase from Charpentier’s “Louise.”
Barton brought palpable dramatic intensity to excerpts from Donizetti’s “La Favorite” and Verdi’s “Don Carlo.” Then, after intermission, she reduced the audience to a communal awed puddle with a lustrous rendition — sumptuous, sustained and full of emotion — of “Mon coeur s’ouvre à ton voix” from Saint-Saëns’ “Samson et Dalila.”
Yet the two artists were at their most arresting when performing in tandem — in extended duets from Donizetti’s “Anna Bolena” and Verdi’s “Aida,” and finally in “Mira, o Norma,” from Bellini’s “Norma,” their melodies intertwining with one another in elegant ringlets.
The orchestra’s presence onstage was made possible by the construction of a new orchestral shell, a company project during the pandemic closure. Hearing the instrumental textures with new clarity during the “Moonlight Music” from Strauss’ “Capriccio” was a marvel. (Kim’s position with her back to the singers, however, also made coordination more difficult than usual.)
There was one feel-good encore, a Rodgers and Hammerstein twofer of “You’ll Never Walk Alone” and “Climb Ev’ry Mountain,” before the artists were presented with huge bouquets. Willis-Sørensen wound up and tossed hers into the audience like a newlywed softball pitcher; Barton kept a firm hand on hers as she marched offstage.