For San Francisco Opera General Director Matthew Shilvock, opera is above all a “vehicle for human emotion.” In the first season he has planned and programmed since succeeding David Gockley in 2016, Shilvock has assembled a 2018–2019 fleet of those music/drama vehicles that run from such familiar models as Tosca and Carmen to the relative rarities of Donizetti’s Roberto Devereux and Handel’s Orlando to a new work by company favorite Jake Heggie based on the holiday film classic It’s a Wonderful Life.
A season-opening, verismo double-bill of Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci, Richard Strauss’s Arabella, and Antonin Dvořák’s Rusalka complete the slate of eight offerings. That’s down one production from the current season, which concludes with this coming summer’s revival of Wagner’s Ring cycle. Wonderful Life, co-commissioned in the Gockley years, is the only title Shilvock inherited from his predecessor.
The issue of revivals — or in this case the absence of them from the War Memorial Opera House in the 2018–2019 season — is central to Shilvock’s debut. While only Tosca is a San Francisco-originated new production (Wonderful Life was co-commissioned with the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music and Houston Grand Opera, which mounted the world premiere in 2016), everything on the 2018–2019 season will be new to San Francisco Opera goers’ eyes and ears. Add to that the fact, as Shilvock points out, that Roberto Devereux, hasn’t been heard here in almost 40 years, Orlando in over 30 years, and Arabella in 20 years, and a season studded with familiarities doesn’t sound quite so familiar after all.
Even the brand-name superstar Plácido Domingo, who will sing a special concert on October 21, hasn’t appeared at the Opera House here since 2010, in Cyrano de Bergerac. Everything old, it seems, is new again.
The 2018–2019 season will bring plenty of fresh names to San Francisco Opera. They include the Greek baritone Dimitri Platanias in an American operatic debut as Cavalleria’s Alfio and Pagliacci’s Tonio, Swedish tenor Daniel Johansson in his company and role debut as Matteo in Arabella and Italian soprano Carmen Giannattasio, who will sing her first-ever Tosca in her S.F. Opera debut as Puccini’s tragic heroine. Six conductors are taking their first turns in the Opera House pit.
Among returning singers, mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke will make her initial assay of the title role in Orlando, while mezzo J’nai Bridges, who turned heads this season in Girls of the Golden West, takes on Bizet’s fiery eponymous heroine in Carmen for the first time. Soprano Sondra Radvanovsky (Norma) sings Elizabeth I in the last of Donizetti’s bel canto Tudor queen operas. Tenor Brian Jagde is Tosca’s Cavaradossi. Tenor Matthew Polenzani plays his first Don José in Carmen. Soprano Ellie Dehn and baritone Brian Mulligan headline Arabella. Tenor and company stalwart William Burden plays the redemptive Jimmy Stewart role of George Bailey in Wonderful Life by Heggie (Moby-Dick, Dead Man Walking).
Shilvock sounded ebullient in an interview as he savored the “proud moment” of announcing his first season — the company’s 96th. “We’ve come to the end of the journey of planning and embarked on the one of executing. It’s very exciting.”
He described the season as falling into two camps of “emotive storytelling.” One, exemplified by Rusalka, Orlando, and Arabella, tap “archetypal fairy tales that have a strong sense of fate or destiny as a guiding force.” The other — Tosca, Carmen, Cavalleria Rusticana, and Pagliacci — are “raw, visceral expressions of human emotion at its most basic, compelling level.”
The general director was eager to talk about the new production of Tosca, directed by Shawna Lucey and designed by Robert Innes Hopkins. The aim, said Shilvock, is to “do it in a way that respects the time and place” of the Puccini piece while “bringing some thrilling new ideas.” Scenic designs call for a first-act red church interior, based on a Baroque church sanctuary in Sicily. That “surrounding feel of red,” Shilvock continued, will pervade the other acts.
The singer-turned-director José Cura has worked his own transformations on Cavalleria /Pagliacci, transposing the action from southern Italy to a Buenos Aires barrio where “everybody,” as Shilvock put it, “is in everybody else’s business.” Both operas take place on the same set and incorporate singers from one in non-signing roles in the other.
Shilvock expressed a strong personal connection to Arabella: “It’s one of my favorite operas — an exquisite fairy tale, a tale of true love.” The British-born general director joked that Roberto Devereux deserved to be done for its overture alone, a set of variations on “God Save the Queen.”
With financial concerns very much in mind, Shilvock and his board trimmed the 2018-2019 season to eight productions, five of which are rentals from other companies. The annual budget will drop by an estimated $3 million, to $73–74 million. Plans for using the company’s smaller facility, the Taube Auditorium in the Wilsey Center for Opera, are in a holding pattern for now. Shilvock said Ring rehearsals will occupy a lot of the time there for the first half of 2018. No chamber-scale productions are currently in the offing. “We’re taking a very reflective look at the best way to use that space,” said Shilvock.
Meanwhile, plans for coming mainstage seasons are underway, including “sketches” for the company’s centennial in 2022–2023. Shilvock expressed a broadband agenda of maintaining high creative standards, “resonating with the community’s diverse, predominantly northern California audience,” and “celebrating the totality of the opera experience.”
Behind his policy statements, you can hear the sound of Shilvock’s engines revving.
The complete 2018–2019 San Francisco Opera season is as follows:
Fall 2018
Cavalleria Rusticana by Pietro Mascagni / Pagliacci by Ruggero Leoncavallo
September 7–30
Cast includes: Ekaterina Semenchuk (Santuzza), Roberto Aronica (Turiddu), Dimitri Platanias (Alfio), Marco Berti (Canio), and Lianna Haroutounian (Nedda)
Conductor: Daniele Callegari
Production: José Cura
Revival Director: Jose Maria Condemi
Production from Opéra Royal de Wallonie-Liège
Roberto Devereux by Gaetano Donizetti
September 8–27
Cast includes: Sondra Radvanovsky (Elisabetta), Russell Thomas (Devereaux), Jamie Barton (Sara), and Artur Ruciński (Nottingham)
Conductor: Riccardo Frizza
Director: Stephen Lawless
Production from Canadian Opera Company
Tosca by Giacomo Puccini
October 3–30
Cast includes: Carmen Giannattasio (Tosca), Brian Jagde (Cavaradossi), and Scott Hendricks (Baron Scarpia)
Conductor: Leo Hussain
Director: Shawna Lucey
San Francisco Opera production premiere
Arabella by Richard Strauss
October 16–November 3
Cast includes: Ellie Dehn (Arabella), Brian Mulligan (Mandryka), Heidi Stober (Zdenka), and Daniel Johansson (Matteo)
Conductor: Marc Albrecht
Director: Tim Albery
Co-production of the Santa Fe Opera, Minnesota Opera and Canadian Opera Company
It’s a Wonderful Life by Jake Heggie, libretto by Gene Scheer
November 17–December 9
Cast includes: William Burden (George Bailey), Golda Schultz (Clara), Rod Gilfry (Mr. Potter), and Andriana Chuchman (Mary Hatch)
Conductor: Patrick Summers
Director: Leonard Foglia
Co-commission and co-production of San Francisco Opera, Houston Grand Opera, and Indiana University Jacobs School of Music
Special Event
Plácido Domingo in Concert
October 21
Summer 2019
Carmen by Georges Bizet
June 5–29
Cast includes J’Nai Bridges (Carmen), Matthew Polenzani (Don Jose), Anita Hartig (Micaela), and Kyle Ketelsen (Escamillo)
Conductor: James Gaffigan
Production: Francesca Zambello
San Francisco Opera production, originally created by Opera Australia based on the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden and Norwegian National Opera co-production
Orlando by George Frideric Handel
June 9–27
Cast includes: Sasha Cooke (Orlando), David Daniels (Medoro), Heidi Stober (Angelica), Christina Gansch (Dorinda) and Christian Van Horn (Zoroastro)
Conductor: Christopher Moulds
Director: Harry Fehr
Scottish Opera production
Rusalka by Antonín Dvořák
June 16–28
Cast includes: Rachel Willis-Sørensen (Rusalka), Brandon Jovanovich (The Prince), Ferruccio Furlanetto (Vodnik – Water Gnome), and Jamie Barton (The Foreign Princess)
Conductor: Eun Sun Kim
Production: David McVicar
Lyric Opera of Chicago production