ArtsSF

Faust is back again in a modern-day operatic setting with a female Mephisto, thanks to composer Jake Heggie. Is San Franciscan Jake Heggie the next Leos Janacek? In initiating ultra-dramatic opera when nearing the age of 60, Heggie’s path suddenly parallels that of that amazing late-starting Czech operatic master whose belated bursting forth had ushered in the 20thcentury. Heggie, 58, had already created several operas marked by fluid story-telling and lyricism but little fire. Now, for the first time, he…

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WALNUT CREEK, CA—Zounds, is acting now encroaching on the world of opera? It flourished this summer in both the top-of-the-line S.F. Opera’s “Orlando” and now the struggling Festival Opera here with its history of multiple Lazarus-like revival modes. The casts of actor-singers provide a new vitality to the medium, often compensating (and then some) for less-than-Met voices. The latest such miracle was brought off by a stage director better known as a Bay Area dance director, Mark Foehringer. The vehicle…

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A lesser-known baroque opera took over the S.F. Opera Sunday, offering first-rate stage direction and conducting while falling short of vocal expectations. Handel’s “Orlando” (1733) is a fictional love story inspired by Charlemagne’s eighth-century military leader Roland, one that took 238 years to reach US shores. It had ridden high during London’s craze for Italian opera, though its modest dimensions don’t fit expansively into the huge Opera House. This intimate chamber opera boasts a string orchestra and cast of five,…

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The miracle of West Bay Opera is not just that they pulled off yet another highly professional show in Verdi’s “Falstaff;” it’s what they do bringing that tiny community theater never built for opera so vibrantly to life. Consider that you have no overhead space for flying scenery, no prompter’s box, very limited stage depth, a pit that can’t even seat half a Verdi orchestra, and space even tighter than Falstaff’s drinking buddies usually are. The conditions would be enough…

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REDWOOD CITY, CA—Opera composers are caught in a to-be-or-not-to-be quandary when adapting great novels for the stage. Should the text, consonants and all, be squeezed into librettos of talky vocal lines? Or else just retain the gist and plot (like Giuseppe Verdi) while adding rhymes and all those delectable, soaring vowels that singers love so dearly? Composer Kirke Mechem, 93, audaciously chose the first option in taking on Jane Austen’s classic timeless novel “Pride and Prejudice,” producing his latest opera…

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The future of opera in America points more than ever to small, mobile, no-star troupes like Opera Parallèle. Consider the financial pinch of the vaunted major companies like the Metropolitan Opera (pressed despite orchestra seats running close to $500 a night), and now the San Francisco Opera, which just recently laid off 10 staffers. Here in the Bay Area, the fire is lit by lesser-known, versatile troupes in compact theaters, like the local Opera Parallèle in a rough-and-tumble 240-seat theater…

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PALO ALTO, CA—The miracle here these days is West Bay Opera producing repertory on a par with professional ones in Italian towns. And only a generation ago WBO was still a sleepy troupe presenting mostly honest amateur productions. Yet more surprises: In the current Verdi staging, the singer who saved the night wasn’t even in the cast. And the New-World conductor in the pit performing like a true Italian maestro, with poetic baton and a passion for cuing singers, also…

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Intimate opera flashed and flickered with insight and drama in the world premiere of Allen Shearer’s “Howards End, America,” given by Earplay in San Francisco on Feb. 22. Based on the E.M. Forster novel, it is now updated to mid-20th-century Boston, focusing on racial conflicts and class distinctions. Its unlikely principals are two white sisters, a hard-striving black man as society’s victim, and the millionaire’s family mansion (Has any edifice apart from Valhalla had a starring role in opera before?)….

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SAN JOSE—A very good American opera becomes a great experience through a highly theatrical production currently at Opera San Jose. This is Jake Heggie’s “Moby Dick” (2010) in a super-charged dramatic concept, thanks to both Kristine McIntyre stage director and Gene Scheer, who wrote the visionary libretto. McIntyre, a master of the art, should be giving boundless master classes to conservatories full of budding directors, even those in major prestige opera houses hard pressed to provide her sort of animation….

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The prolific composer Jake Heggie, 57, has amiable music coursing through his veins, resulting in some 300 songs written to date. You may recall Schubert in Vienna, and Brahms in Pörtschach, with so many melodies in the air, all they had to do was write them down. Or so was the claim. And Heggie gets his lyrical inspiration right here in San Francisco. But that make-no-waves facet of his does not transfer readily to composing operas with action, drama, and…

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