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OPERA NEWS
Rosenberg Psyched Up for Her 1st SF Opera Season
December 5, 2001
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By Janos Gereben
Of the countless aspects of opera, Pamela Rosenberg's focus now is on "psychology." At her press conference Wednesday, the San Francisco Opera general director used the word a dozen times before I stopped counting. While she was talking about "getting under the skin" of characters and "inner journeys," Rosenberg also appeared "psyched up" for her first season here, excited about the "challenge and promise" of the 12 productions in 88 performances between September 7, 2002, and July 6, 2003.
She pronounced the 2002-03 season "a healthy mix of innovative productions and standard works." Resisting pressures to scale down programs or even cancel some productions because of the economic crisis and the "worrisome climate" following September 11, Rosenberg said the company will withstand shifting from the adventurous to the comfortable. "We will provide substance," she said. "People in times like these need more art, not less."
Rosenberg and music director Donald Runnicles focused attention on the upcoming American premiere of Olivier Messiaen's Saint François d'Assise. Discussing this work of enormous size in terms of the highest esteem, they described it as a profound "psychological work, an inner journey." Messiaen's work is part of Rosenberg's previously-announced five-year "Animating Opera" themes, as next season's entry in the "Seminal Works of Modern Times" series. The others:
Leos Janácek's Kát'a Kabanová (part of both the Janácek series and of "Women Outside of Society");
Hector Berlioz's La Damnation de Faust (another double-qualifier, under the Berlioz series and "The Faust Project");
Engelbert Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel (in the "Metamorphosis: From Fairy Tales to Nightmares" series), and with the surprising assignment of Baroque specialist Nicholas McGegan as conductor;
Handel's Alcina (another "Woman Outside");
Rosenberg described preparations as having been going on for some time, even for productions not due for almost two years from now. This has involved the help of dramaturgical and production teams, in an approach more typical of European opera houses (where the new general director comes from) than those in the US. Several of the coming operas have been already set in preliminary stagings in the War Memorial.
Having emphasized her total involvement in productions, Rosenberg was asked if ("hypothetically") she were not satisfied with the current production of The Merry Widow, directed by her predecessor, Lotfi Mansouri, could she, would she have interfered before it was videotaped for a national screening on PBS. She gave a two-pronged reply: first, once a production is ready to go, the general director shouldn't (and, based on a recent court case in Dresden) couldn't make changes. "If I am involved in a production," she said, "it's during preparations, putting the team together, the rehearsal process — and there, only in the form of non-invasive surgery if absolutely necessary. I engage in discussion, but will not use censorship. When the work is prepared, it becomes the intellectual property of those who produced it."
Her second reply, more specific to Merry Widow, was that "if this happened under my direction, so to speak, I would have tried to influence the production, but this was not my season, it was not my place to interfere."
Details of the season:
TURANDOT
September 7-October 2, November 27-Dec. 8 (12 performances)
ARIADNE AUF NAXOS — Production new to SF Opera
SAINT FRANÇOIS D'ASSISE — New production
OTELLO — Production new to SF Opera
DIE ENTFÜHRUNG AUS DEM SERAIL
KÁT'A KABANOVÁ — New production
ALCINA — Work and production new to SF Opera
MADAMA BUTTERFLY
LA CENERENTOLA
LA DAMNATION DE FAUST — SF Opera premiere
IL TROVATORE — Production new to SF Opera
(Janos Gereben is arts editor of the Post Newspaper Group and technology editor for www.the451.com. Contact him at janos451@earthlink.net).) |