SFO Announces January Video Streams

After wrapping up the calendar year by streaming a performance of Giacomo Puccini’s La bohème (whose first two acts take place on Christmas eve), the Opera is ON service presented by San Francisco Opera (SFO) will offer three new opera streams next month. As with the previous offerings, each will become available on Saturday at 10 a.m.; and free access will expire at the end of the following day. Each video will then be added to the archive available to subscribers and those that have donated $75 or more. Specifics for the five new offerings are as follows:

January 16: The first offering of the new year will be Charles Gounod’s 1867 opera Roméo et Juliette, which was first presented by SFO during its inaugural season in 1923. The appeal of William Shakespeare’s play among Parisians probably dates back at least as far as 1827, which is when Harriet Smithson played the role of Juliet in her own production of the play presented in Paris. Her appreciative audience included Hector Berlioz, who would compose a “dramatic symphony” based on the play (and would also marry Smithson).

While Berlioz used Shakespeare only as a point of departure for his composition, Gounod worked with a libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré which, at least in my opinion, did more than adequate justice to both the letter and the spirit of Shakespeare’s text. One could appreciate that respect for Shakespeare in the SFO 2019 production of this opera staged by Jean-Louis Grinda as his SFO debut. Grinda had the advantage of working with two Adler alumni that could not have been better suited to the plot.

Soprano Nadine Sierra made a return to the War Memorial Opera House and excelled at disclosing the many subtleties of Juliet’s character that Grinda had conceived. The same can also be said of how Grinda worked with tenor Pene Pati to develop the role of Romeo. While Grinda saw to the needs of Shakespeare, French-Canadian conductor Yves Abel provided an equally engaging account of the music. The running time of this production is approximately two and one-half hours.

An example of the visual spectacle of Samson and Delilah (photograph by Terrence McCarthy, courtesy of San Francisco Opera)

January 23: The second offering of the month is also French and is about ten years younger than Roméo et Juliette. Ironically, however, Camille Saint-Saëns’ Samson and Delilah was first performed in Weimar (in 1877 and sung in a German translation), rather than in Paris, which would not see a production until 1890. This opera has a long history of prioritizing spectacle over narrative. In the SFO production, which took place in 2007, there was no shortage of spectacle in the designs of Douglas Schmidt for the staging conceived by Nicolas Joël, realized for SFO by Sandra Bernhard. The title roles were taken by tenor Clifton Forbis as Samson and mezzo Olga Borodina as Delilah. The grand scale of the music was expertly conducted by Patrick Summers. This production also marked the beginning of the Opera at the Ballpark series of simulcasts to the Mitsubishi Electronic Diamond Vision Board in Oracle Park to an audience of about 15,000 viewers. The running time of this production is approximately two hours.

January 30: The month will then conclude with the 2014 production of Giuseppe Verdi’s La traviata (the fallen woman). Laurie Feldman staged a revival that was originally conceived by John Copley. The title role of the courtesan Violetta Valéry was sung by soprano Nicole Cabell, who had recently won the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition. Tenor Stephen Costello sang the role of her lover, Alfredo Germont; and baritone Vladimir Stoyanova performed as Alfredo’s father Giorgio. The conductor was Nicola Luisotti. This production was also simulcast in the Opera at the Ballpark series, but with a different cast. The running time is approximately two hours.

Access to free streaming is enabled through the SFO home page. For those interested in viewing any of the Opera is ON productions after free access has been terminated, there is a log-in Web page for donors and subscribers. There is also a Web page for those interested in becoming donors in order to benefit from full access to all available videos.