Mozart, a Maid, and Dave Matthews

So I was at the opera house one afternoon, watching a dress rehearsal for The Marriage of Figaro, when I saw someone emerge from the wings far downstage--just a step or two. I assumed he was going to sing, until I noticed his jeans and polo shirt. He quickly adjusted one of the props, but that was it: This was the final run-through before opening night, so there were no dramatic glitches or performance-stopping do-overs, just pure entertainment at less than the price of a standing-room seat. (See August 31 post.)

I was sitting amid a group of high school students from the city's School of the Arts, who whooped and cheered after every aria and laughed heartily at all the funny bits. Figaro is the great sit-com of the opera world--all multiple deceptions and misunderstandings, as the servants Figaro and Susanna try to marry while avoiding the lecherous Count Almaviva, who wants to bed any maid he fancies, while breaking the Countess's heart--all to Mozart's wonderful music.

Later, students from this school and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music met with the woman who sang Susanna, soprano Danielle de Niese. You want to hate her: absolutely beautiful, lovely voice, fine comic actress ("You don't play the character from the neck up"), and she can't be much over 30. When she came into the room, she was so up. For one thing, she'd heard all that whooping and whistling. "Your response was just stunning," she exclaimed. "The premiere audience won't be like you guys. Now we're spoiled."

De Niese told her audience that Figaro is a great "starter opera," because "it's so funny" and, she did not say, light. It can be warm and human and even moving, but it's far less taxing for an audience than any of Wagner's librettos. It's a noticeable workout, though, for anyone singing Susanna, who is onstage for all but about 30 minutes: "When I took off my wig, I had the sweatiest hair ever! You're always singing at top soprano; you're in almost every ensemble; and your aria is at the end. I try to set up some timing where I can jump offstage and swig some water. I'm always looking for new ways to pace myself, new ways to rest."

Someone asked De Niese how she warms up. "Some people don't like to use their voice before they sing," she said, "but I talk to my parents all morning." (The woman is so vivacious, it was truly no surprise to hear this.) "Before a performance, I would like 45 minutes to focus.... I listen to my iPod and hum along"--to Dave Matthews Band, Coldplay, Beyonce, Katy Perry's new album--"Music is the thing that punctuates emotion. It's important to be open to music."

"It drives my dressers crazy," she added, "because I always have my earbuds in."

Background music: Scenes from SFO's Marriage of Figaro

Unforgettable

The first time you see any great opera is memorable, I think. It's like coming into Paris or Stonehenge or the Andes for the first time. No matter how often you return, how much you feel your love or admiration deepen, you can only experience that initial reaction once.

And sometimes, not often, it makes a story worth telling. Andy Ross, an Oakland-based literary agent, told me, "I'm the perfect Wagnerite." He's seen Wagner's operas countless times, and that includes five complete Ring Cycles. But his favorite production of any Wagner opera was his first. "It was Die Walkure at the Met in 1966 or '67," he says. "My uncle gave me a ticket. It turned out I was in the front row, center, about eight feet from the conductor, Herbert von Karajan. All the Wagnerites were offering to pay me for my seat. I found out why when someone told me that the elderly woman sitting next to me was Madame Maria Jeritza, the greatest Sieglinde of the 1920s [pictured above in her prime]. She whispered along with the role and was very impressed with the production."

Sieglinde is a big, expressive role: She must convey resignation and fear (of her husband, Hunding), dawning hope and love (for Siegmund, that opera's hero), strength and fortitude as she learns she carries Siegmund's child and must carry on without him. It's so moving to picture the aged soprano, so many years after the spotlight dimmed, singing in a whisper with Regine Crespin, one of the reigning sopranos of her era. Many consider Crespin the greatest French Wagnerian soprano of the century. The other outstanding Wagnerian sopranos were from Scandinavia--like Birgit Nilsson, whom Andy saw as Brunnhilde--Germany, Austria, or the U.S.

No wonder Andy never forgot his first Die Walkure. What I want to know is, what is the difference between a Wagnerian and a Wagnerite?

Background music: Regine Crespin as Sieglinde.

Super Days and Nights

It strikes me that being a supernumerary in a small role can be the best job at the opera. You're not just a face in the crowd, but you're not the scene's focus, and of course, you don't have to sing. In his five roles so far with San Francisco Opera, Christopher Smith (see end of August 31 post) has had a super career.

He had "a great role" in the June 2009 production of Puccini's Tosca, for instance. The opera's villain is Baron Scarpia, the corrupt chief of police of Rome, and the entire second act takes place in his quarters, as Scarpia tries to learn the whereabouts of an escaped political prisoner; has Tosca's lover, Cavaradossi, tortured offstage; and attempts to seduce Tosca in exchange for Cavaradossi's life. Christopher was one of Scarpia's six henchmen: "My job was to look mean in the background." (Though he doesn't look so mean above, in the foreground, right).

And then, toward the end of Act III, he was in the firing squad for the "mock" execution.

That summer, Christopher also played a policeman in a rare staging of George and Ira Gershwin's 1935 opera Porgy and Bess (not to be confused with the movie). The seven performances sold out, and "there was so much excitement with that opera, onstage and in the audience." I can vouch for that. The hum and buzz continued after the curtain dropped and we we left the opera house: The staging, acting, singing, and dancing were stellar. I want to mention that the director was Francesca Zambello, because she is directing next summer's Ring Cycle as well.

Oh, and Christopher may well be performing in at least one of the four operas, reprising his roles in Die Walkure, the opera that started all the excitement--I mean my excitement--this past summer. (See July 22 post.)

By the way, from now on when you click on a link to an opera--here, it's Tosca, Porgy and Bess, and Die Walkure--you'll open onto a YouTube clip from a performance. So: music!

I Second That Emotion

I took a walk with my friend Kelly Powers the other day, and as usual, we talked about books: what we've read lately, what we recommend, what we've thrown across the room. This time, we discussed the act of reading itself, and what a welcome refuge it can be. In that sense, all engrossing reading is "escapist," and hurray for that. Coincidentally, I had just finished Let the Great World Spin, which won last year's National Book Award for fiction, and had even typed up the quote below, in which a character from my escapist novel describes her own great refuge: opera.

Colum McCann's beautiful novel takes us into the worlds of several vastly different people in 1974 New York. One of them is Gloria, who lives in a god-awful housing project in the South Bronx (across from where several other female characters ply their trade), mourning the loss of her three sons, in Vietnam. It eased my heart, toward the end, to read how she had found respite, over the years, from such stress and pain. She doesn't need an orchestra seat, or even to be in the opera house, she tells us. All she needs is the balm of a resplendent voice:

"Everything falls into the hands of music eventually. The only thing that ever rescued me was listening to a big voice. There are years accumulated in a sound. I took to listening on the radio every Sunday and spent whatever extra grief money the government gave me on tickets to the Metropolitan. I felt like I had a room full of voices. The music pouring out over the Bronx. I sometimes turned the stereo so loud the neighbors complained. I bought earphones. Huge ones that covered half my head. I wouldn't even look at myself in the mirror. But there was a medicine in it."

Yes, and there are years accumulated in a sound. I hope you've been playing these "selected scenes" from the 2007 Madama Butterfly (see August 25 post) as you've been reading this.