I am sure that my colleague, SF Opera Examiner Cindy Warner,
will have much to write about what happened on the stage of the War
Memorial Opera House at this afternoon's first performance of Salome,
Richard Strauss' one-act opera based on the play by Oscar Wilde.
However, the score of this opera plays such an important role in the
history of twentieth-century music (important enough to provide the introductory material for Alex Ross' The Rest is Noise),
that this performance deserves an account on strictly musical grounds.
This account is even more important because this is the second opera of
the season to be conducted by the company's new Music Director, Nicola
Luisotti; and it strikes me as significant that, for this second
outing, he turned to the twentieth-century German repertoire rather than
that of the more traditional nineteenth-century Italy.
Clearly,
I was not in a position to follow every last detail of the musical
performance with score in hand; but I have to confess that, for all of
the many virtues of this particular staging, there were many times when I
could not resist taking my eyes into the orchestra pit. Familiar as I
was with Strauss' particular approach to motivic detail, I found myself
listening to relations among the motifs of which I had been previously
unaware. Also, as a result of remarks that Luisotti made at last Monday's Opera Insight Panel,
I realized how sparing Strauss could be with his resources. The pit
was pretty much filled to maximum capacity, but Strauss very seldom
pulls out all the stops. Watching Luisotti at work, I was reminded of
my experiences with the conducting talents of Pierre Boulez and my
ongoing recognition of his talent for recognizing "the importance of knowing where the climaxes are and making sure that they are recognized as such." Where opera is concerned, this is a matter of understanding the dramatic climaxes and then deciding which of those dramatic events are reflected through musical
climaxes. Listening to Luisotti at the Panel discussion, I realized
that he has given Strauss' score considerable attention; and the result
is a prioritization of those climaxes that serves both the dramatic
needs of the staging and the musical needs of the score itself.
I
was also stuck by the spatial decisions that Luisotti made in deploying
his resources in the pit. The two harps were center rear with almost
all the violins (first and second) to the left and the low strings to
the right. Further on the left behind the violins were all of the winds
behind which were the six horns. The rest of the brass was to the
right with the percussion behind them. This made for a spatial balance
that seemed to enhance the individuality of the many voices involved in
the "musical conversation," including the lowest of the wind parts and
the eerie use of double bass harmonics in the still moment of waiting
for Jokanaan's execution.
Last March
we had the opportunity to listen to Luisotti conduct at Davies Symphony
Hall without the benefit of an operatic context. For his program he
selected a suite of dances by Zoltán Kodály, Ernest Bloch's "Schelomo,"
and the fourth symphony of Johannes Brahms. In some ways one could view
the Bloch as an "opera without singers;" and the Kodály dances had
their own implicit sense of staging. The real challenge lay with the
Brahms; and, at the time, I found Luisotti to be unduly flamboyant for
this choice. However, the challenges of Strauss are decidedly different
from those of Brahms; and, while it was clear that Luisotti was
putting a lot of energy into his physical performance, it was also clear
that he was controlling that energy in the best interests of what was
happening both on the stage and in the score. On several occasions I
found myself comparing Strauss' Herod to the Captain in Alban Berg's Wozzeck;
and this left me curious as to how Luisotti would approach Berg's
score. I hope that my curiosity will be satisfied in the course of
Luisotti's tenure with the San Francisco Opera!
No comments:
Post a Comment