Nutcracker Season

The opera season just ended, and San Francisco Opera's Ring Cycle won't come around until next summer. I'll be spending the next six months looking behind the scenes when I can, and watching other music, theater, and dance performances. There are wonderful overlaps in the arts, especially in the Bay Area. But this post may be the first time anyone has linked the fearsome Richard Wagner with the Nutcracker.

That's because my French-horn-playing friend Bill performs with both the SF Opera and San Francisco Ballet orchestras. Two days after the season-ending opera, he began playing for the ballet's beautiful Nutcracker, which runs through December 27. I see it, live or on public television, almost every year.

I first met William Klingelhoffer when I went to the opera house to ask him about playing Wagner, whose operas are the world's longest (see August 3, 2010 post). With another horn player, Bill leads the opera orchestra's French horn section. As I explained a while back, Wagner demands eight French horns for the Ring--as opposed to the normal four--so when Bill is first horn, he's head of a section that includes four horn players who don't normally perform with his orchestra. He says it's like being a baseball pitcher, who's mindful of the whole game but also has to narrow his focus to simply getting those fastballs over the plate. Bill has to concentrate on making a big sound with all those other horns as well as on playing solos.

But a ball player sits in the dugout a lot. With Wagner, the horn functions as both woodwind and brass--a part of two sections of the orchestra--"so we're playing all the time," says Bill. "You have to pace yourself, like a pitcher paces himself over the game. You need something in reserve; I mean, the first act of Gotterdammerung is something like an hour and 45 minutes by itself."

So the two-hour-long Nutcracker is a piece of cake or candy (easy for me to say), although Bill knows how to challenge himself. "You know how a baseball player hits 'for the cycle,' meaning he hits a single, double, triple, and home run in the same game? Last year I played Nutcracker for the cycle: I played all four horn parts--first, second, third, and fourth--on various days in the same run!"

Bill says he's up to about 700 performances of Nutcracker all told. And you gotta keep things interesting. But he's sticking with first horn this year. "I'm imagining a more Zen approach: Nutcracker as meditation. Ohhhhhhmmmmmmmm....."




Nutcracker photo c Erik Tomasson, SF Ballet
Photo of Bill: me

My Afternoon with Domingo

I met Placido Domingo a couple of days ago. Wait, let me rephrase that. A couple of days ago, I met Placido Domingo! He is in San Francisco to sing Cyrano de Bergerac, by the undervalued Italian composer Franco Alfano. (Why this 1936 opera is performed so infrequently is a post in itself.) After rehearsal one afternoon, San Francisco Opera had a little "press chat" with Domingo in the red-and-gold mezzanine lounge at the opera house. SFO general director David Gockley did a fine job of interviewing him, both sitting on high stools against a long wall, our plush chairs in a semicircle around them.

Gockley reminded us of the heroic role Domingo played at the 1983 gala opening night. He'd been in Manhattan that day, preparing to sing at the Met; but when SFO's Otello lost his voice, Domingo was asked to step in. I just learned some of these details. The man was recently arrived from Europe yet. A helicopter took him to SF billionaire composer Gordon Getty's Lear jet, which happened to be in New York; Domingo flew across the country; the audience heard reports of his journey up the freeway (in a green Jaguar with police escort); and the show went on, just a few hours late.

Gockley told us that, in the '70s and '80s, Domingo sang in San Francisco about once a year. His appearances became more sporadic after he became general director of the Washington Opera and, now, Los Angeles Opera. He last performed here at a special tribute evening about 10 years ago, during which he sang one act each from Fedora, Samson et Dalila, and most wonderfully, Otello, one of his signature roles.

This week, I had a chance to remind Domingo of something unforgettable he did that evening. As he was taking his bows, the singers, some SFO luminaries, and several backstage staffers gathered soundlessly behind him. He did an impressive double-take when he saw them. And then, when Domingo noticed his longtime dresser, a distinguished-looking older man named Joe Harris, he brought him forward and introduced him. Harris was stunned and touched, and so was I.

When I shared this memory, Domingo looked at me sadly and said, "He died," and he squeezed my hands. "I know," I said. "I thought of you when I read his obituary."

When Domingo was here last, he received a San Francisco Opera medal, awarded from time to time to great performers, conductors, and others who've been important to the company. When Harris, who died three years ago, retired in 2004 after 44 years with the opera, he was presented one, too.

Music: Placido Domingo sings "Nessun Dorma," from Turandot.

The Music Goes Round and Round

It seems a little oxymoronic, putting Richard Wagner's name in front of a brass instrument associated with marching bands and Octoberfest. But as the people at wagner-tuba.com will tell you, the name of "one of the least well-known orchestral instruments in the world today" is "colourful yet ambiguous and causes confusion as to its true identify." In his operas, Wagner wanted to hear something bridging the tone between a French horn and a trombone, a smaller tuba that would integrate with the new (1835) bass tuba and better blend the sounds of the brass section.

When I tell you the Wagner tuba uses a French horn mouthpiece, you may--if you've been reading this blog and have a good memory--think of Bill Klingelhoffer, the San Francisco Opera's co-principal horn player (see August 3 post), who's the reason I'm writing this.

When a company performs the four operas in the Ring Cycle over the course of seven days, as SFO is doing next summer, the demands on the musicians seem almost unbelievable--especially when you multiply it times two more weeks. So you can imagine my lack of surprise when Bill told me that when he performed the Ring here before, the principal horn players divided the work. Bill played Das Rheingold, the other principal played Die Walkure, and they split up Siegfried and Gotterdammerung.

These days, though, Bill's co-principal is 20-something Kevin Rivard, who's so excited about playing his first Ring, says Bill, he wants to do the whole thing, with only an assistant to help out by...well, that's something I plan to talk to Kevin about. What will Bill be doing? Yep, he'll be on Wagner tuba.

So I guess you've figured out what's in the photographs. In the big one, you're looking at the intricate valve section with its seven tuning slides, each needing a separate adjustment. You have to take the whole thing apart to overhaul and clean it, and each tuning slide needs to be labeled first. The orchestra's two Wagner tubas have been getting spiffed up lately at A and G Music/Best Instrument Repair Co., "which, from its popularity over the years," the SF Chronicle noted a few years ago, "apparently lives up to its name." When Bill drove over there to pick them up, I went with him, and it was an unexpected glimpse behind the scenes.

Background music: Das Rheingold, Prelude-Act I

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

Word of the Day: Supernumerary

Those of you who don't think opera overlaps with popular culture have not been watching Mad Men. Or am I the only one who remembers a conversation Don Draper had in an elegant restaurant in the first of this season's episodes, when he was on a blind date with a young woman who told him she was a supernumerary at the Met? She explained that her task was to help fill the stage. "I do a lot of mock drinking," she told him. "I've been a wench, a courtesan, part of a harem.... I love the costumes and the music." In other words, she's part of a crowd and doesn't sing.

When she asked if he'd ever been to the opera, he said, "Only for business, so I've never enjoyed it." (So Don Draper: does he enjoy anything?) She invited him to a performance, of course, saying although they don't get paid, "they give the supers tickets."

At San Francisco Opera, the supers do get paid, a bit: $6 for each "out-of-house," or staging, rehearsal; $11 for every onstage dress rehearsal and performance. For Aida, the season opener, the supers will attend about ten staging rehearsals and five onstage rehearsals, and they'll be in 12 performances. That means the 19 men and 14 women who fit the costumes (that's how supers are usually selected) will earn about $250 each, plus two tickets to the final dress rehearsals for any operas they are in.

Aida is surely one of the operas that gave rise to the more colloquial name for supernumeraries, which is: spear carriers. (The local supers' newsletter is at spearheadnews.com.) You always see plenty of exotic-looking spear carriers in Aida's famous processional scene, with its stirring music and more or less Egyptian-style costumes. British fashion designer Zandra Rhodes created the sets and costumes for this "eye-popping production," from Houston Grand Opera. Just scroll back and look at the photo.

Christopher Smith, a super I met at the Werther casting call (see August 17 post), will be the one in the jackel-head, or Anubis, costume. He tells me supers usually get to wear two costumes per opera. For Aida, he says, he's "mostly in miniskirts and body paint"--not all that different from what he wore a few years ago in his first SFO production, Mozart's Idomeneo. In other words, "I feel mostly nekkid." (He's from Kentucky, and every once in a while exhibits a bit of a twang that sounds like the characters' in the FX channel's Justified.) But that's OK, because at least in the processional scene, "we come in real quick and we're off." Costume change!

A Year in the Ring Cycle (not to be confused with the spin cycle)

As you set out to read, I hope, this year-long blog, I can hear you wondering: Who are you? And possibly, if you're not an opera buff, What is the Ring?

To get things squared away right away: The Ring refers to Richard Wagner's magnificent cycle of four linked operas, The Ring of the Nibelungen, which can be--and usually have to be--enjoyed by themselves, like stand-alone episodes in a TV series. I'm a writer and editor based in the Bay Area, and one of the great experiences of my life was seeing all four operas performed, one after the other, over the course of a week in San Francisco, in 1998. Why am I telling you this? Because, yay: In June 2011, San Francisco Opera is presenting the entire cycle again, with different sets and singers, of course. It's a mammoth undertaking, involving both other opera companies and SFO's brand-new production of Gotterdammerung, the final opera. It'll take months to come together, and I'll be following it all.

Believe me, you don't have to be an opera lover to love the Ring. The story has everything: love, sex, greed, gold, dragons and giants, magic spells, heroes and villains, gods and goddesses, family strife, even the end of the gods' world--a grand moral and mythological tale conveyed through thrilling and accessible singing and orchestral music, usually with cool sets. Wagner not only composed the music, he wrote the libretto (story and lyrics) as well. This is rare.

In the summer of 1998, when the Ring opened in San Francisco's gilded opera house, I had just become the senior editor for culture at San Francisco magazine. Jerry Stark (my husband) and I went to opening night--on a Thursday evening, I think; then we went to a Saturday matinee, a Wednesday night performance, and finally a Sunday matinee. Each time, we drove in from Marin County with our new friend Dana Gioia, a poet and lecturer who wrote about classical music for San Francisco until he moved to Washington, D.C., to head the National Endowment for the Arts. (Could I make that up?) We sat amid the same Ring-loving people at each performance, discussing the previous opera as we settled into our seats.... We soldiered on with our day jobs, but with the music, the characters, and the epic tale constantly hovering on the edge of my attention, the Ring became the theme and focus of the week. I couldn't stop thinking about what I'd experienced and what was to come; everything else felt like a distraction. That Sunday, as I applauded the cast for the last time, I felt a little bereft.

Now, not only do I get to see the Ring again, I'll be watching the preparations. I'll be at the opera house as technicians tweak the lights for a dramatic scene in Siegfried (opera #3), for instance, and in the costume shop as new boots for the giants in Das Rheingold (#1) and costumes for the gods in Gotterdammerung are created. I'll be talking with conductor Donald Runnicles and some of the musicians about, for instance, maintaining the stamina to perform four long operas in one week. (Last time, I remember, some of the horns were sounding a mite ragged toward the end.) I'll catch up with some super Ring buffs, who, like solar-eclipse fanatics, fly to the site of their passion every time there's an occurrence. I'll also be blogging about SFO's other operas this year, beginning with Aida in September, and about Wagner (a genius and anti-Semite, so: controversial), and... and.... From time to time, I'll blog about other events in the ring of Bay Area arts as well.