SF Opera raises curtain on a rare ‘Arabella’
San Francisco Opera, which last week unveiled a new production of “Tosca,” one of the most frequent works in its repertoire, is about to reach into the vault of much rarer treasures.
It has been years since Bay Area audiences have seen Richard Strauss’ “Arabella.” San Francisco Opera has staged it only two times before — once in 1980, with soprano Kiri Te Kanawa, and again in 1998, with Janice Watson.
Now the company is returning to Strauss’ 1933 score, with soprano Ellie Dehn in the title role. The production is conducted by Marc Albrecht, who calls the opera “gorgeous.” For Albrecht, a German who makes his U.S. debut with this production, “Arabella” has been a voyage of discovery. The chief conductor of Dutch National Opera Amsterdam and Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, he’s made the operas of Strauss and Wagner a specialty.
“But I came to ‘Arabella’ quite late, actually,” Albrecht said in a recent conversation. “I was always a bigger fan of Strauss’ early operas — ‘Elektra,’ ‘Die Frau ohne Schatten’ and ‘Salome.’ I knew ‘Rosenkavalier’ very well, and I always thought ‘Arabella’ was a second ‘Rosenkavalier.’ But when I really explored the score, I found it’s another story, with very different music.
“It has some waltzes — if it’s in Vienna at ball season, of course it does — but it’s a much more sinister, much darker score. It’s a social comedy, but it has this kind of abyss — which ‘Rosenkavalier’ doesn’t have.”
Strauss’ seventh and final collaboration with librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal, “Arabella” centers on the Waldners, an aristocratic Viennese family fast approaching bankruptcy; the family patriarch, Count Waldner, has a serious gambling habit. To regain his fortunes, he plans to marry off his eldest daughter, Arabella. His younger daughter, Zdenka, dresses as a boy so the family can devote its energies to finding a match for Arabella. Comic scenes of mistaken identity give way to a well of deep feeling as suitors Mandryka and Matteo vie for the daughters’ hands.
The conflicts are embedded in the score, notes Albrecht. “There are many layers, almost Stravinsky-like juxtapositions,” he says, “moments where half the orchestra is playing at 2/4 time and the other is playing in 3/4. There’s much more collision and a modern aspect in this Strauss score.”
Of course, the lovers work it out — and that’s in the music, too. “Strauss wrote so wonderfully for sopranos, and the big duets for Arabella and Zdenka are high points,” says Albrecht. “Arabella’s monologue at the end of Act 1, with the beautiful viola solo, is a favorite of mine. It has a melancholy like the Marschallin at the end of Act 1 in ‘Rosenkavalier.’ And of course, the Mandryka-Arabella duet is very touching, really the climax of the opera.”
Sounds like Albrecht has fallen in love with “Arabella.” “There’s a lot in it,” says the conductor, “which tells us this is not a failed ‘Rosenkavalier.’ It’s really a piece for itself — a very deep theater evening.”
DETAILS >> Tuesday-Nov. 3, War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco; $26-$398; 415-8646000; www.sfopera.com.
“TOSCA” CONTINUES >> Meanwhile, the new “Tosca” production, starring Italian soprano Carmen Giannattasio, continues its run at War Memorial. Seven performances of the production, which also stars tenor Brian Jagde as her lover Cavaradossi, remain, with the curtain falling the final time after the 7:30 p.m. Oct. 30 performance. www. sfopera.com.
AN ICON STEPS DOWN >> His leadership in early music is legendary;
his collaborations with artists such as Mark Morris revelatory. Now Nicholas McGegan, who has been music director of the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra since 1985, has announced that he’s stepping down at the end of the 2019-20 season, when he’ll become the organization’s music director laureate. McGegan has made enormous contributions to music in the Bay Area and around the world; with Philharmonia, he’s conducted operas, oratorios and diverse orchestral works, many of which have been recorded and released on the orchestra’s in-house label.