Spirits of the Operatic Future

In our recent year-end piece about highlights of the San Francisco Opera's 2014 fall season, we mentioned the announcement by General Director David Gockley of his intended retirement in July 2016. We didn't have to wait long to hear about the amazing impresario's plans for his farewell season with the company he will have overseen for more than a decade. Last week, subscription tickets went on sale for an intriguing schedule of opera and musical theater that sets the seal on Gockley's mission and validates his careful taste in choosing productions that will please the critics and keep the donors and traditionalist subscribers happy.

Opening night 2015 is probably the only jarring note in the roster, but not because it is an unwelcome production of an important and infrequently performed opera. Rather, because it will seem an awfully sober-sided choice for an evening known more for extravagant audience excess than musical appreciation. Giuseppe Verdi's gorgeously melodic, bitterly tragic and typically complicated "Luisa Miller" is a treatment of a play by Friedrich Schiller that expresses the composer's cynical distaste for class politics and family intrigues. The cast is mouth-watering for a score that requires a real Verdi spinto (between lyric and dramatic) soprano and tenor to make a satisfying impact. Leah Crocetto and returning star-standout (for his La Boheme last season) Michael Fabiano should prove quite the dream team, with Verdi veteran baritone Thomas Hampson making a welcome appearance as the stubborn father of a bourgeois girl in love with an aristocrat.

There is more Italian tragedy on the horizon, with Gaetano Donizetti's bel canto masterpiece "Lucia di Lammermoor" joining conductor Nicola Luisotti with gloriously gifted soprano Diana Damrau in the title role. Tenor Piotr Beczala is Lucia's secret lover Edgardo. It will be the premiere of a new SFO production directed by Michael Cavanagh and designed by Erhard Rom, the pair responsible for the Company's memorable Carlisle Floyd Susannah last year.

Mozart-lovers and fans of contemporary art will be pleased to hear the SFO is bringing back "The Magic Flute" with Jun Kaneko's wonderfully kinetic and whimsical multimedia designs in the smash-hit production of 2012 directed by Harry Silverstein. David Gockley's English-singing translation, with additional English translation by Ruth and Thomas Martin, still needs supertitles, but if there was ever a Mozart tale that should be performed in the language of the listeners, this endlessly fascinating opera is it. After highly praised performances in last season's "La Boheme" and Handel's "Partenope," former San Francisco Opera Center Adler Fellows soprano Nadine Sierra and bass baritone Philippe Sly are Pamina and Papageno. Tenor Paul Appleby makes his SFO debut as Tamino, along with American conductor Lawrence Foster. Coloratura soprano Albina Shagimuratova returns to repeat her dazzling portrayal of The Queen of the Night.

David Gockley is also making good on his life-long loyalty to American composers and commissioned works with a double bill called "The Fall of the House of Usher" (Dec. 8-13). For the first time in the U.S., the pairing, comprised of Gordon Getty's Usher House and Claude Debussy's "La Chute de la Maison Usher" (both inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's short story), will feature baritone Brian Mulligan in the role of Roderick Usher in both interpretations. Director David Pountney's production, designed by Vicki Mortimer with video projections filmed by David Haneke, also marks the American professional premiere of Robert Orledge's reconstruction of Debussy's unfinished score.

David McVicar's production of Richard Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nuernberg will open in November, and I am looking forward to a new visit (last time was 2001) with the monumental comedy (his only one) by a composer hardly known for his drollery. We love the music and the warm-hearted humanity of the score, even if we could easily live without the queasy nationalism of the third act. It is always a pleasure to wallow in the sheer beauty of Wagner's melodic outpouring honoring the philosophy of a long-gone era, and the remarkable cast includes some local favorites: Brandon Jovanovich, mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke, and bass-baritone Greer Grimsley returning to SFO in his role debut as Hans Sachs.

Perhaps the biggest news of Gockley's final run in San Francisco is the SFO premiere of Stephen Sondheim's "Sweeney Todd." There will be blood on the venerable boards of the War Memorial Opera House in September, and maybe a few stunned patrons in the orchestra seats and boxes, but this promises to be a slam-bang shocker that will keep us talking about David Gockley for years to come. "The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" is performed with Sondheim's original score for the lyric stage (orchestration by Jonathan Tunick), with some wonderful stars of the operatic world making their role debuts. Sexy Canadian bass-baritone Gerald Finley (a great Don Giovanni) and American mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe take the parts of Sweeney and the crazily quick-witted meat-pie-shop proprietrix Mrs. Lovett for the first time. Conducted by San Francisco Opera Principal Guest Conductor Patrick Summers, the cast also includes Heidi Stober as Johanna, Elliot Madore as Anthony, Matthew Grills as Tobias, and Wayne Tigges as the despicable Judge Turpin. The production is directed by Lee Blakeley and designed by Tanya McCal.

Wow, that's only the plans for the fall! We will talk about Gockley's plans for the summer as the time draws closer.