Last April, a San Francisco Opera Center production, staged by one Roy Rallo, managed to fold, spindle, roll and otherwise mutilate Mozart’s La Finta Giardiniera. Mozart was Euro-trashed. I seem to recall thatlast season, Pamela Rosenberg was asked if she would interfere if she saw a director doing something in production that was clearly not going to work, or might be offensive or could otherwise create significant problems. Her position was that, no, it was the right of the director, as artist, to pursue his vision, in effect, that something like poetic license or copyright was in play. Never mind the “rights” of the composer, the dignity of the young performers, the feelings of the paying audience — the director’s wishes override all. I cannot imagine any of her four predecessors taking such a hands-off position, least of all Kurt Herbert Adler, whose standards and personal identification with the artistic product were crucial to the company’s achieving the levels it did. His autocratic rule did have an important beneficial side.

It could be argued that the La Finta Giardiniera was, after all, a professional school production in a small house, that the opera was an early effort of the composer and the whole affair a kind of studio experiment. But that line of reasoning didn’t wash after the Alcina production. Inevitable questions arise. Does Rosenberg’s view of opera place the music and the singing first? It would seem not. It is not even clear that she loves the music of Mozart and Handel, not if she is as ready to relegate and exploit their operas as the season has shown, using them as vehicles for theatrical interpretations.

The fear of just such a development, in the awareness that the great preponderance of productions at the Stuttgart Opera while she was co-intendant there were updated, modern or anachronistic productions of repertory operas, raised concerns for the San Francisco Opera. In particular, there was the concern about the priorities of a general director who was not trained and professionally experienced as a musician. Much of what we have seen this season, confirms these apprehensions.

The Hansel and Gretel production that opened the Sunday before last is a somewhat different but not unrelated case. There were many reactions to the opera noir aspects ranging from offended to outraged. (Olivia Stapp’s review for SFCV, “R-rated Humperdinck,” is available if you click on “Last Week” or here). But at least, with the Hansel and Gretel unlike Alcina, you could hear and enjoy the singing and the music, even if the staging violated the character of that score, its romantic neo-Die Meistersinger style, and the innocent childhood fantasy that inspired Humperdinck and has charmed audiences for more than a century.

Those who worry about the production’s effect on young children may for a moment consider what even the youngest children today are exposed to in television, the movies and other popular entertainment. In those terms, Richard Jones (producer) and Linda Dobell (director) are barely keeping up with our unfortunate times. What they did was hardly great but it wasn’t a felony.

Unnoticed in all the brouhaha about this Hansel and Gretel is a major fault: the English “translation” to which this was sung is atrocious. The English is bad, the prosody’s worse. As one colleague muttered, “We needed a second set of Supertitles.” The text was like a dummy libretto that had been fitted out with whatever words suited the rhythm, words for which more effective lyrics would eventually be substituted. (Actually, it was quite a way into the performance before I realized that the principals were singing in English, their diction was so “operatic.”) Pointedly, no translator or “lyricist” was named.

The production had been previously mounted at the Welsh National and Chicago Lyric Operas and undoubtedly seen by Rosenberg and probably her music director Donald Runnicles. And no one thought of commissioning a new set of lyrics? San Francisco’s Donald Pippin could have done a capital job for probably no more than $10,000 or less than a tenth of one percent of San Francisco’s cost of mounting the show. Or, was the San Francisco Opera required to use the lyrics of the original production because of this new regime’s principle of Director’s Privilege?

(Shortly after publication of this issue, a reader reported that when she saw this production of Hansel and Gretel in Chicago last winter, it was done in German. That means that the decision to do it in English and in this terrible translation was made here.")

The above comes down to questions of artistic judgment, ranging from questionable to downright poor. There can be no worse trouble for this company than that.

Another new production, Kát’a Kabanova (pronounced Katya KABanova) conceived and directed by a Stuttgart producer, Johannes Schaaf, was saved from itself by the magnificent performance of Karita Mattila in the title role, a fine cast and the conducting of Runnicles. Erich Wonder’s sets placed Kát’a and the oppressive Kabanov family in a mansion, with great, stark rooms. The usual treatment for this opera is to place it in a far less grandiose setting, with smaller rooms in the context of a Russian village, which heighten the sense of the psychological pressure on Kát’a.

The crusher was the final act where German Konzept Opera struck again. A huge cut-out bird resembling the peace dove on Christmas cards, but black, hung suspended across the stage. That was supposed to symbolize her imagining herself as a bird “who lifts herself lightly from the earth just as she falls into the depths of the Volga,” according to comments attributed to Schaaf, the designers, Runnicles and Rosenberg’s dramaturge, Wolfgang Willaschek. Bye, bye, blackbird.

Typical of the German production approach, the designer, groping for a thematic idea, comes across a poetic metaphor in the sung text involving a bird and flying, and “Eureka! A motif, a symbol!” Actually, instead of Katya dropping out of sight as if into the “depths of the Volga,” she falls into a puddle on stage. Watching her suicide is a crowd of townsfolk clad in the new trademark costume of the San Francisco Opera’s German modern look, trenchcoats. What follows then is consistent in absurdity. (See Olivia Stapp’s review for SFCV, “Karita Mattila, at an Opera’s Center.”)

Rosenberg certainly brings a different approach to the post, one that is distinctive in this country for sure. Her thematic programming called “Animating Opera” would connect the operas she selects so that each falls under one or more of seven categories, to be explored from now through 2005. This season’s Turandot, Kát’a Kabanova, Alcina and in January, Madama Butterfly are part of the set, “Women Outside of Society: Laws Unto Themselves.” Joining Cio-Cio-san to the above ladies in addition to Lady Macbeth, Salome and Rodelinda would seem a bit of a stretch. Hansel and Gretel is included in “Metamorphosis: From Fairy Tales To Nightmares.”

This season’s Otello, Ariadne auf Naxos and Die Entführung aus dem Serail are not part of this scheme although Ariadne would seem as much “outside of society” as Cio-cio san. Die Entführung furthermore, would be as appropriately placed in “Metamorphosis” as is La Cenerentola, included in that category and scheduled for performance in June. No question but the “Animating Opera” idea itself is a provocative one, but only if it is executed in productions that realize the idea without being forced.

Perhaps the interpretive concept will lead many to consider each opera in a new, comparative light. Possibly the new dramaturge Willaschek’s program essays, translated in each printed program will help. First and last however, each opera still must be perceived, appreciated and evaluated by the criteria posited by the music and ideas of its composer, not by a new set of criteria imposed by a producer.

Four operas of this season may have been planned in advance of Rosenberg’s arrival, which would explain three of them not being included in the “Animating Opera” scheme. One, Ariadne auf Naxos, was outstanding in all respects, in fact, surpassed all seven of the other productions. Turandot succeeded on the strengths of Patricia Racette (Liu), as good a Ping/Pang/Pong trio as could be wanted — Herman Ituralde, Jonathan Boyd, Felipe Rojas — Hockney’s sets and Donald Runnicles’ conducting. But the two leads did not match our previous experience with the opera. Jane Eaglen, for all the power and, in the upper middle of her voice, glory, was more of a physical distraction than ever, and Jon Villars was not consistently impressive.

Otello never did manage to have a successful tenor in the title role, all the backing and filling notwithstanding. It’s strange to commit to producing that opera without a great tenor and a very good alternate under contract, but perhaps this was a legacy from the previous regime. And it was a needless expenditure to import from the Washington Opera a production that was not appreciably an improvement or significantly different from the one the San Francisco Opera owns. For this Die Entführung aus dem Serail, there is no imaginable excuse. The poor casting resulted in performances at the level of a middle rank, small city German opera house.

As has been widely discussed here and in the press, the season met with great financial setbacks for the company, attributable to the economic downturn. Partly but not wholly because of that, there was a big decline in ticket sales as well. Disappointment spread by word of mouth may have had something to do with the empty seats. If discontent also affects contributions from the larger donors, that can conceivably affect improvement. As they say, you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.

The bottom line is that after Pamela Rosenberg’s second season, the first one that fairly reflects her management and style, the camps are unevenly divided. Now, with the traditional fall season having opened and become a matter of record, critical voices are drowning out the patient “wait and see” crowd and those who welcome a different approach even at the cost of disappointments. With Madama Butterfly in January, and three more productions in June, the picture is yet to be completed, and the regime remains a work in progress.

(Robert P. Commanday, the senior editor of San Francisco Classical Voice, was the music critic of The San Francisco Chronicle, 1965-93, and before that a conductor and lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley.)

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