Eun Sun Kim Follows Verdi with Wagner

Yesterday afternoon San Francisco Opera (SFO) Music Director Eun Sun Kim led the first of six performances of Richard Wagner’s Lohengrin. This complemented her first coupling of operas by Giuseppe Verdi and Wagner, a pairing strategy that she plans to continue in successive seasons. The staging by David Alden was new to SFO was shared with the Royal Opera House (ROH) Covent Garden and Opera Vlaanderen. Peter Relton made his SFO debut serving as Associate Director. The performance lasted approximately four hours and twenty minutes, true to Wagner’s capacity for prolonged durations.

This is one of several Wagner operas based on medieval German romance. It was composed shortly after another opera with a similar literary source, Tannhäuser. The plot is a convoluted account of conflicting factions at the court of King Heinrich der Vogler, sung by bass Kristinn Sigmundsson. His authority is challenged by Friedrich of Telramund (baritone Brian Mulligan making his role debut) and his wife Ortrud (mezzo Judit Kutasi making her American debut and role debut). They accuse Elsa von Brabant (Merola and Adler alumna soprano Julie Adams, making her role debut) of murdering her brother Duke Gottfried (mute role taken by James Coniglio), who is still a child. The King rules that the dispute must be settled by combat, but Elsa knows of her champion only as a knight from her dreams. That knight turns out to be Lohengrin (Merola alumnus tenor Simon O’Neill), who defends Elsa’s honor and asks for her hand in marriage but with the warning that she never ask his name. He also spares Friedrich’s life and rejects the King’s offer to declare him Duke of Brabant, preferring to be known only as Protector.

Elsa (Julie Adams) and Lohengrin (Simon O’Neill) in their wedding chamber (photograph by Cory Weaver, courtesy of SFO)

Much of the duration of the opera involves the aftermath of Elsa’s defense. The second act concludes with her wedding ceremony. However, the familiar “bridal chorus” only surfaces at the beginning of the third act. Nevertheless, these are darkest episodes of the narrative, including the death of Friedrich, the revelation of Lohengrin’s name, and the transformation of his swan into Gottfried. The legitimate transfer of power has now been realized, but Gottfried can barely hold his sword of authority.

This makes for considerable content and complexity of the narrative. One can appreciate the need for extended duration to unfold all of the necessary details. However, even with the clarity of Alden’s direction and Kim’s conducting, the overall duration tends to take its toll in a flagging attention span. Mind you, the music does not deserve to be cut, since it is the primary “drive” behind the unfolding of the narrative. We simply have to accept that Wagner was still ascending his “learning curve.” Fortunately, he had established a firmer (and more successful) grasp of pace by the time he began working on his Ring operas!

Mind you, Lohengrin has no shortage of stimulating and engaging moments; but Wagner had not yet mastered the command of weaving all of those moments into an attention-seizing narrative.