San Francisco Classical Voice

Gösta Winbergh's warm, "bel canto" performance in the title role is to be treasured. It reminded me of another unusual "dolce (more than helden) tenor" Lohengrin, in my favorite recording of the work: Domingo, but even clearer, cleaner, more musical and, of course, much more idiomatic. Winbergh, not a particularly animated actor, sings so well, so consistently, so elegantly that he presents a convincing, believable hero.

For a dramatic, if unusual, performance there was the Elsa — Adrianne Pieczonka — who looks perfect in the role: Mary-Costa blonde, Mary-Hartman guileless, a female Parsifal, exactly right. She would make a better Mimi than Violetta, a Nanetta born to the role and, more to the point, Eva. But Elsa? With a truly musical, gentle, accurate voice — smallish but excellently projected — Pieczonka sang and acted a new and unusual Elsa. There was little heaven-storming Grail angst here, more of Judith from Bluebeard's Castle, a simple, nosy, even childish woman, no earth-mother self-sacrifice — finally ending up in the isolation chamber for ex-wives and those abandoned by swan-riders. Human-scale, understandable, different, valid, good.

The rest of the cast: Eva Marton's ragged Ortrud, building steadily to a powerful performance, admirable but not really connecting with the audience; Kurt Rydl's sonorous, occasionally shouting King Henry, an important singer apparently near the end of a career even though he is still in his mid-50s; Tom Fox's Telramund in the singer's usual "good-but" manner of performing well, but not meeting the expectations he sets up. Young Martin Gantner, on the other hand, is one of the best Heralds, very much in Winbergh's style.

A truly significant point of this production is Nagano's work. Though no stranger to Wagner, Nagano has not been been linked with the composer, much less regarded as a specialist. This Lohengrin then is crucial in getting some indication what the LA Opera's upcoming Ring will be like under his baton. It bodes well.

Besides the Italianate, lyrical quality, Nagano's Wagner is also steady, straightforward, consistent, with rock-solid tempi, great balance, clarity, and a sense of "rightness." This is the kind of Wagner San Franciscans are used to getting from Donald Runnicles. However he's been building his Wagner repertory for a couple of decades, while Nagano is just starting. How far he'll go— nobody knows. The promise is great.

As to the Lohengrin production, Maximilian Schell's total control — designer, producer, director — is bothersome at best, "unmusical" at worst. Great actor that he is, Schell goes wrong here all over the place: busy, oversized, grotesque — a totem pole as the swan, one all-bald men's chorus, one hairy one (the men's chorus singing really well, notwithstanding), braids-as-Medusa-hair on the women , contemporary military helmets and rifles, an incongruous witches' sabbath background to the wedding, and on and on. Schell also exhibits a shocking inability to clear the chorus from covering up important action. That's worse than the director's calling attention to himself. It's obscuring the work.

Dirk Hofacker's costumes are too funny, with diaphanous skirts over the men's uniform, the King's golden bathrobe, and the like. Alan Burrett's lighting design is tremendous. Better it had been a production with lights only, forget the huge set and ridiculous costumes.

G.B. Shaw's advice was never more appropriate: attend the most glorious production of the opera by closing your eyes and creating your own images.

"Oh, darn!" a mild-mannered opera fan would say when realizing that he just drove 400 miles to find that Domingo sang only at the beginning of the run in The Queen of Spades. By Saturday, when I attended the matinee here, Domingo was singing Ave Maria in Yankee Stadium (with new — and unsubstantiated — rumors swirling around that he may soon move from his double duties in LA and DC to take over the Met).

Even so, soon after the performance began, I felt no pain. The Armenian tenor Gegam Grigorian sang the best Herman I ever heard, and where I come from, Pique Dame is part of the standard repertory. Even in the middle of a sensational cast, he was the perfect "Russian tenor," without any of the usual drawbacks of that species. He produced a grounded, secure chest voice, every note dead on, singing from inside the music. And, what Grigorian also has over a sound — along with the diction, of course — that is authentically Russian.

The entire cast gave uniformly excellent vocal performances, several personal-best efforts... even in the midst of another annoying, overblown physical production, even worse than Maximilan Schell's frontal assault on Lohengrin the night before. On the podium, Gergiev-protege Gianandrea Noseda struggled at first, with balance faltering and tempi in need of adjustment. However this fine orchestra, the LA Philharmonic's "opera wing," managed to right things.

The singers performing secondary roles would do very well if they were to have led the production. Suzanne Poretsky (Pauline/Daphnis) is a mezzo of greatpresence, on her way to top roles. Ditto for Irina Mataeva (Chloe), a talented young soprano. A rare, special quality in Poretsky's singing is how "clean" the vocal line, the diction and acting from this thrilling young talent.

The Lisa, Galina Gorchakova, has one of the most powerful voices around, but it's a matter of individual taste. Her vocal performance was impressive but not inviting, a big voice with a grainy, shrouded quality and her acting is still on the Novosibirsk High level. Sergei Leiferkus, another famous Russian singer I have the same misgiving about, was flawless this time, the best I've ever heard him, as Tomsky, a role-defining performance. Vladimir Chernov, as Prince Yeletsky, was also singing and acting as effortlessly as I have ever heard and seen him. Having Elena Obraztsova as the Countess — a role usually signifying a farewell round for a great singer — was a moving experience.

Other cast members and William Vendice's chorus (especially the men) were excellent, even in face of trying conditions. Director/designer Gottfried Pilz seems to suffer from Hollywood Envy,as he forced this small-scale opera into a huge, ostentatious, three-ring spectacle.

He took the good old idea of a steeply raked stage and turned it... sideways! When upstage is about 8 feet above downstage, there are some, even many, good reasons for that, enhancing the audience's ability to see clearly. Pilz created a set that covers the Pavilion's huge stage as an enormous wedge, rising sideways - with a door and chandelier set an angle. From the first few rows in the orchestra, you see legless torsos. There is a strip of empty space all the way downstage, with an overturned chair. The chair is moved beetween acts, but it remains overturned and attention-diverting.

The chorus made to sing and dance at an impossible angle. Pilz had a double chorus of 80 and a large children's chorus march around (while singing, of course), play with umbrellas, wear masks, make a general nuisance of themselves, and then he squeezed a chorus of 40 into the Countess' bedroom!

Not trusting the audience's ability to figure out the story from the supertitles, Pilz had the words "three cards" projected onto the wall... in Russian! Pilz has major assignments coming up in LA next year and in 2003, in New York, Dresden and Munich and audiences should prepare to listen with teeth on edge.

(Janos Gereben is arts editor of the Post Newspaper Group and technology editor for www.the451.com. Contact him at janos451@earthlink.net)

©2001 Janos Gereben, all rights reserved