Printz Explores Sexual Identity Through Song

Last night the Schwabacher Recital Series, presented jointly by the San Francisco Opera Center and the Merola Opera Program, launched its 38th year of vocal recitals, returning to the Dianne and Tad Taube Atrium Theater. Readers may recall that the 37th season, which began in March of 2020, had to be cancelled after the first two performances because of the COVID-19 pandemic. As the pandemic continued, the Series remained cancelled in 2021; and last night marked the return of the four-concert event.

The Series was launched with a recital by mezzo Nikola Printz given the title En Travesti. The program was presented in three “acts,” whose programmatic titles all involved reflections on sexual identity:

1. La Premiere Femme
2. Un Ballo in Masculine-era
3. Neutrois

To some extent, these titles served as reflections on opera roles that Printz had previously performed, many of which were seen here in San Francisco.

This was particularly evident in their performances with Céline Ricci’s Ars Minerva opera company that revives forgotten operas from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In Giovanni Porta’s Ifigenia in Aulide, performed in December of 2018, they sang the role of Agamemnon; and the following year they sang the title role in Domenico Freschi’s Ermelinda. In the summer of 2019 they sang the role of Orpheus in Christoph Willibald Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice during the West Edge Opera season; and I have encountered them in two of Erling Wold’s narrative-based compositions, his suite War Poems and the surrealist chamber opera “UKSUS.”

Last night Printz performed in a different outfit for each of the three acts, and it was easy to align the outfit with the title of section. Each of those outfits identified how the personality of the vocalist reflected on the corresponding title. (At the conclusion of the first act, Printz’ accompanist, Erica Xiaoyan Guo, performed an étude by Louise Farrenc, the tenth, in the key of F-sharp minor, from her Opus 26 collection. This gave Printz time to change outfits. An intermission then separated the second and third acts.) While these visual cues were helpful, the signification of each song resided in the basic semantics of the words and the expression of meaning that emerged through how Prinz shaped those words around the notes set by the composer.

Guitarist Jon Mendle accompanying mezzo Nikola Printz (photograph by Kristen Loken, courtesy of San Francisco Opera)

From the listener’s point of view, the challenge of this program resided in the unfamiliarity of the repertoire. For much of the audience, the “comfort zone” was situated right in the middle of the second act with two selections by Franz Schubert. The “Ständchen” (serenade) setting from the D. 957 Schwanengesang (swan song) was followed by “Der Leiermann” (the organ grinder), which concludes the D. 911 Winterreise (winter’s journey), the latter being as bleak as it is brief. Even here, however, familiarity was stretched, since Printz sang these with Jon Mendle accompanying them on a nineteenth-century guitar. (Readers may recall that, in the fall of 2016, the Canadian Analekta label released Schubert Sessions, an album of sixteen songs sung by Canadian baritone Philippe Sly accompanied by guitarist John Charles Britton.)

Personally, my only other “anchor of familiarity” came during the third act with the performance of Benjamin Britten’s Cabaret Songs. In spite of the casual title, I have long enjoyed Britten’s settings of the sharp-edged wit in the four poems by W. H. Auden that he selected. In their “Neutrois” persona, Printz found just the right delivery to capture the spectrum of emotions residing in each of those poems; and their reading of Britten’s music could not have been better.

As far as the rest of the program was concerned, I was struck by my need to focus on the program book to follow almost all of the song texts. This was very much a journey rich in both denotation and connotation (as my former narratology colleagues would put it). Printz clearly appreciated the semantic depth of the waters into which they had wandered, but through their delivery the attentive listener could discover what it was about each poem on the program that motivated them to select it. Yes, taken as a whole, the program was a bit of a cerebral workout; but my “little grey cells” thrive on such workouts. Given the opportunity, I would probably listen to a second performance of Printz’ program in its entirety.