Action in the Orchestra Pit at SFO Opening

Last night in the War Memorial Auditorium, the San Francisco Opera (SFO) launched the Summer Season, which will offer the final three operas in the 2018–19 season. The first work to be performed was Georges Bizet’s Carmen, an opera that SFO has been presenting since 1927, back when it was still under the direction of its founder, Gaetano Merola. Merola was the conductor on that occasion; and last night saw the debut of this new (to SFO) production’s conductor, James Gaffigan.

Gaffigan is best known here for his performances with the San Francisco Symphony. However, he has already made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera; and in Europe he has conducted at both the Dutch National Opera and the Bavarian State Opera. Those who have seen him in Davies Symphony Hall know that he can sustain highly-charged rhetoric without ever compromising the discipline of his command. Such talents were immediately evident in his interpretation of the opening Prelude, boiling over with intense energy while it was clearly evident that he was aware of what every individual instrumental voice was doing. Indeed, his chemistry with the orchestra was consistently on the money over the course of the remaining three Entr’acte sections.

Would that some of that talent were more evident up on the stage. Gaffigan consistently knew how to balance the orchestra against the vocal resources, but those resources left too much to be desired too much of the time. In many respects the most satisfying work came from bass-baritone Kyle Ketelsen as the bullfighter Escamillo. However, that may be because his appearances are few (even if critical to the narrative); and, as a result, the scope of his musical expressiveness is limited.

Debuting soprano Anita Hartig (photograph by Cory Weaver, courtesy of the San Francisco Opera)

The same could be said of soprano Anita Hartig, making her SFO debut in the role of Micaëla. From a strictly narrative point of view, her contribution to the plot is even more limited than Escamillo’s; and her only really solid presentation of character does not arise until the third of the opera’s four acts. (The staging by Francesca Zambello also has her viewing Don José’s murder of Carmen from a distance.) However, if Hartig had little to contribute to the “big picture,” she still knew how to make the most of every appearance, always keeping her character clearly defined.

Less impressive was tenor Matthew Polenzani, giving his first performance in the leading role of Don José. In many respects the entire scenario is structured about the diverse conflicted states with which José must cope in his relationships with the different characters in the cast. As could be suspected, Polenzani had his usual solid command of vocal tone; but he never seemed to be confidently grounded in negotiating the twists and turns of the narrative.

Nevertheless, there was a solid foundation to Polenzani’s vocal delivery that never emerged and sustained in mezzo J’Nai Bridges’ account of the title role. Her voice lacked the intensity that makes Carmen such a seductive character, and her bearing on stage suggested that she had not yet drawn any consistent conclusions on how to inhabit the role. At the risk of trivializing matters, by all rights, when Carmen is on stage, it should be virtually impossible for eyes to be on anyone other than her. Bridges, on the other hand, would fade into the background far too many times, leading one to wonder why José should be obsessed with her.

Part of the problem the vocalists may have had can probably be traced back to Zambello’s staging. Given the abundance of dramatic insights that could be mined last summer during the revival of her production of Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelung (the ring of the Nibelung), it was hard to understand why her realization of Carmen should come across as so shallow. Too many times it seemed as if the “why” behind who being where and when was little more than arbitrary; and, as a result, there were too many occasions in which group movements about the stage seemed to lack any sense of coordination. Indeed, the high point of such coordination came with the staging of the chorus street urchins during the changing of the guard in the first act.

Given that Carmen has had so many SFO productions unfold over a period of more than 90 years, it was more than a little disappointing to find that, this time around, it was not getting a particularly fair shake.