***Įven at age 28-he was to die almost six years later-Ĭould write genuinely moving bel canto music for the female voice. In the end, I found myself preferring the opera to the novel. I was left with no profound or metaphysical reflections-but neither am I by Melville's wordy tome. Conductor Patrick Summers was an essential and sympathetic member of the creative team. And the powerful if conventional score conveys the individual human natures and relationships of 10 characters (and serves a mighty male chorus of sailors), as well as the epic dimensions of the surrounding ocean and Captain Ahab's manic obsession with killing the never-seen white whale.Ĭhorus was given several fine numbers of its own, which it handled with a stunning sense of dynamics and intonation. The libretto focuses on the personal story at the novel's center, eschewing Melville's pompous philosophizing. Worked together to turn every element of this 6,000-word distillation ofĢ00,000-word novel into a unified and powerful whole. Heggie and Scheer but director-dramaturge Leonard Foglia, set designer Libretto, was this season's most successful dramatic production. Wagner's ever-flowing late-romantic music conquered all, including the absurdities of his own legend-plus-fairy-tale plot. Production, updating everything to 1950s Eastern Europe, made no sense. The excellent, enlarged San Francisco Opera Chorus outdid itself, in music as complex and varying as the orchestra's. Jovanovich's level of power or precision, but she sang well enough to keep her scenes with him in musical and emotional balance. Vocally, Brandon Jovanovich (undertaking the title role for his first time) was the star of the show, a high heroic tenor clearly destined for greatness.Īs Elsa, Lohengrin's tormented lover, never attained Mr. Artistic DirectorĬonducting the first Wagner opera of his career, gave the rich, familiar score a subtle and moving reading, demonstrating that his reach goes far beyond the Italian masters. San Francisco Opera's best opera production of the fall season was "Lohengrin," mainly because it was the best opera on offer.
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