Time for full disclosure. As much as I admire the Oakland East Bay Symphony, I asked to review its season opener, "A Grand Opening: Beethoven and Bernstein," for one specific reason: to have the opportunity to reassess the artistry of soprano Hope Briggs. In a striking departure from his usual opening-night format, which always includes music by a living composer, Music Director and Conductor Michael Morgan announced on August 3 that he had replaced composer Peteris Vasks’ Sala: Symphonic Elegy for Orchestra with Briggs singing arias by Wagner, Puccini, Verdi, and Cilea.
As he further explained in his "Maestro’s Message" printed in the opening night program, “I changed the originally announced program to welcome back our own Hope Briggs, who was soprano soloist in our 2006 performance of Dvořák’s Stabat Mater.” He later referred to Briggs as a “great diva.”
Hope Briggs
In case you are unfamiliar with the deeply human motivation for Morgan’s major switch, Briggs is the African-American soprano who found herself booted at the last minute from San Francisco Opera’s last season production of Don Giovanni. As explained in a media advisory written exactly two days before the production opened on June 2, “After the final dress rehearsal for Don Giovanni, San Francisco Opera General Director David Gockley, in consultation with Music Director Donald Runnicles and members of the artistic staff, made the decision that soprano Hope Briggs was not ultimately suited for the role of Donna Anna in this production.”
The Sound, the Fury
As might be expected, replacing an African-American — whose resume includes debuts at S.F. Opera, Frankfurt Opera, and Staatstheater Stuttgart — with Elza van den Heever — an Adler Fellow (and a Caucasian) from Johannesburg, South Africa, who had only sung Donna Anna in Napa’s Lincoln Theater — caused a major ruckus. Accusations of racism abounded (although some may by now be tempered by the premiere of the Gockley-commissioned Appomattox, which featured a large number of African-Americans in an opera that wholeheartedly condemns racism).
I have reviewed Briggs once before, in Festival Opera’s July 2005 performance of Un Ballo in Maschera (also conducted by Morgan). In Opera News online, I wrote, “In her lower and midrange, soprano Hope Briggs’ Amelia delivered all the drama, color, and beauty the role demands. As she rose above the stave, however, color and vibrato ceded to an unattractive, hard-edged sound. She also labored to negotiate the final passages of ‘Ma dall’arido stelo’ and ‘Morrò, ma prima in grazia.’ ”
The good news is that Berkeley resident Briggs’ high range was in fine shape for OEBS. The voice rang out impressively in the Paramount Theatre, riding over the orchestra in climaxes, swelling on highs. However, in her opening aria, Wagner’s “Dich, teure Halle'' (Dear hall) from Tannhäuser (albeit spelled Tannhaüser in the program), her intonation was unsure in the middle section. Equally troubling were some questionable timing, a climactic high B that began under pitch before jogging into place, and what can only be called clunky, unimaginative phrasing. Not only did scattered intonation problems resurface in Puccini’s “Tu, che di gel sei cinta" (You, who are enclosed in ice) from Turandot, but Briggs’ straight-ahead, sing-it-for-all-it's-worth approach, combined with a Fleming-like tendency to smile between phrases, robbed Liu’s final aria of its essential tragedy.
Briggs chose powerhouse over bel canto for Verdi’s “Tacea la notte placida … di tale amor" (It was a peaceful quiet night … with such love) from Il Trovatore, missing the essential poetic inevitability created by building tension on the rising line, “dolci s’udiro e flebili" (Sweet and sad were heard), and then releasing it as the line descends on flebili’s two final syllables. (Listen to Callas and Price, among others.)
In a repeat of her Festival Opera problems, the aria’s unaccompanied conclusion, “Ah si! La terra un ciel sembró” (Ah yes! Earth seemed Heaven itself), began with a high stab that landed somewhere, then stumbled about. Briggs redeemed herself in the cabaletta, forcing Morgan to speed up, and tossed off some impressive trills. Alas, there was nothing in her performance of Cilea’s “Io son l’umille ancella" (I am the humble servant) from Adriana Lecouvreur — certainly not the unimaginative phrasing and final A-flat cut short — that leads me to temper an assessment, admittedly based on only two hearings, that the beautifully voiced, prodigiously endowed Briggs still has some more work to do on pitch, phrasing, and presentation.
Projection Problems
Also on the program, Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony was particularly handicapped by the strings' inability to project over the brass. This caused problems when strings carried the melody line and the brass repeated the same notes or short figures over and over. From row F of the lower balcony (where the sound is significantly better than on the floor), string articulation occasionally sounded muddy on fast figures in the opening movement, for which Morgan adopted a rapid, no-nonsense tempo.
Happily, the strings produced beautiful, limpid sounds at the start of Andante. The Scherzo seemed somewhat ponderous, and the transition to the final Allegro lacked magical tension. Although the strings never produced all the volume Morgan clearly wished from them, the finale was sufficiently thrilling as to elicit cheers.
Bernstein’s ballet Fancy Free, written for Jerome Robbins, began with a recording of the fabulous Billie Holiday singing Big Stuff as no one else could or can. Brass and percussion were both idiomatically emphatic, and far more in the showbiz groove than was the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra in its Bernstein of the week before. Pianist Ellen Wassermann, granted several solos, deserves major kudos for helping put the performance over the top by approaching Bernstein’s theatrical jazz/blues pastiche as to the manner born. As they say, what’s not to like?
Jason Victor Serinus regularly reviews music and audio for Stereophile, SFCV, Classical Voice North America, AudioStream, American Record Guide, and other publications. The whistling voice of Woodstock in She’s a Good Skate, Charlie Brown, the longtime Oakland resident now resides in Port Townsend, Washington.