Saluting the Inexhaustible Peter Ilyich
Tchaikovsky is not always fully appreciated among listeners whose ennui is triggered too easily. In full disclosure, I plead guilty to staying away from some of his symphonies and certainly Piano Concerto No. 1, or, heaven forfend, the 1812 Overture — happy bicentennial and all. Strangely, however, after one zillion Nutcracker and Sleeping Beauty experiences, those still work for me. The praise for the great man is prompted here by last weekend’s fabulous experience at the San Francisco Ballet’s brilliant U.S. premiere of John Cranko’s revised 1967 Onegin.
In close to four decades of S.F. Ballet attendance, I remember few productions with more all-around excellence. Marvelous principal dancers, a superb corps de ballet, Martin West conducting the ballet orchestra on high-decibel fire — they all came together.
Any other company would have exhausted its riches on Friday’s opening night, with Vitor Luiz’ magnetic Onegin, Maria Kochetkova’s lyrical Tatiana, Clara Blanco’s vibrant Olga, and Gennadi Nedvigin’s stunning Lensky. Not S.F. Ballet.
It’s offering additional casts of the highest promise: Vanessa Zahorian and Davit Karapetyan on Wednesday, Sarah Van Patten and Pierre-Francois Vilanoba on Thursday, Yuan Yuan Tan and Ruben Martin Cintas on Friday; Kochetkova and Luiz return next Tuesday.
But what of Tchaikovsky? Cranko did not want to use the music of Onegin, the opera, and obviously other Tchaikovsky ballets would not do. Instead, Cranko and arranger-orchestrator Kurt-Heinz Stolze cobbled together a score for the evening-long work from Tchaikovsky’s orchestral and chamber-music works. Just to repeat: Eliminate the great Onegin score, avoid the dance-composer’s ballets, and come up with more than two hours of appropriate music.
And so, Act 1 begins with excerpts from The Seasons, Six Pieces for Piano, Op. 19, and Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture, music well serving the Letter Scene (minus the opera’s soaring finale).
Act 2 — which includes Tatiana’s birthday and rejection by Onegin, and the duel — also uses orchestrated excerpts from The Seasons, and Six Pieces for Piano.
I expected no easy substitute in the ballroom scene in Act 3 for the opera’s iconic and mighty Polonaise, and the Polonaise from Oxana’s Caprices didn’t quite do the job, but the rest of the act, including the climactic Grand Pas de Deux (Tatiana’s rejection of Onegin), soared on the wings of “Carnaval” from The Seasons, and Romeo and Juliet — with an interesting twist on the meaning of the music.
Admit it: Oxana’s Caprices is not something you hear every day. Nor is this youthful comic opera familiar under its other names: The Slippers or Vakula the Smith.
For every Nutcracker and 1812 Overture, Tchaikovsky had a dozen perfectly good pieces that didn’t quite catch on — Scherzo humoristique, Feuillet d’Album, a hundred songs (only half of which are regularly performed), the Grand Piano Sonata in G, Hamlet, and the excellent but rarely heard Iolanta among them.
But back to the Opera House: Beyond dealing with the music, there is the tremendous challenge of “Onegin in motion,” meaning translating Pushkin’s novel in verse, with its deep and subtle psychological background, into movement. It is both to Pushkin’s credit (to have created such a great work) and to Cranko’s (for his choreography) that it was done so well.
The Letter Scene, for example — easy to speak or sing, but dancing? — has the simple but effective device of Onegin stepping out of the mirror when Tatiana is gazing at herself while writing her bold love letter; the two engage in a passionate pas de deux — clearly in her dream.
Even the final scene, gorgeously danced by Luiz and Kochetkova, makes poetic and dramatic sense as she almost gives in to his belated and ardent suit, but orders him to leave, to a smattering of “atta girl!” applause from the audience, which soon rose to a more proper and entirely deserved ovation as the curtain fell.
A New Napoleon Rises in the East (Bay)
The last time Abel Gance’s legendary 1925 film epic Napoleon — or, actually, most of it, in Kevin Brownlow’s reconstruction — played in San Francisco, it took place in the Opera House in 1980, the orchestra playing Carmine Coppola’s score. Unlike many who claim to have been there, I actually was, Row O, Seat 1.Made with handheld cameras, with many scenes hand-tinted and the projection involving what’s called Polyvision triptych, Gance’s film is not for the fainthearted, either to produce or to experience it in its full 5½-hour length.
And yet that’s what the San Francisco Silent Film Festival is going for, in a complete restoration to be shown March 24–April 1, in Oakland’s Paramount Theatre.
Of special interest to this column: a new score by Carl Davis, who will conduct members of the Oakland East Bay Symphony. The event will be the U.S. premiere for both the reconstruction and the music; the London premiere took place in 2004.
Davis, 75, is an American-born English composer who has written music for over a hundred television programs, and scores for movies such as The French Lieutenant’s Woman. He’s perhaps best known for creating accompaniment to silent films, including some of Charlie Chaplin masterpieces, plus Ben-Hur, Wings, The Big Parade, and others.
“Warming up” for this venture many years ago, Davis wrote the score for Karl Grune’s 1928 Waterloo. That film was conceived as a response to Napoleon, which does not include the Battle of Waterloo. Much else is missing from Gance’s film, planned as part 1 of 6. Napoleon ends with the invasion of Italy, leaving history between 1796 and Napoleon’s death in 1821 on the director’s ambitious drafting board.
Opera Companies: and Then There Were... ?
Among victims of the continuing meltdown among opera companies big and small:Fremont Opera
David Sloss’ Fremont Opera is suspending operations, effective immediately. Sloss writes:
The three operas we have produced (La Bohème, The Barber of Seville, and La traviata) have been enthusiastically received by audiences and critics alike. But each production costs about $100,000, and we do not see the prospect of generating enough community and audience support to continue presenting opera at the high artistic standard which has been our hallmark.Fremont Opera thanks all those who have helped us over the past four years — donors, patrons, sponsors, volunteers, and performers. We believe in what we did, and all who have been part of it can be proud.
San Antonio Opera
San Antonio Opera has announced canceling its production of Don Giovanni scheduled for February, “to use the hiatus to attempt to address the organization’s financial obligations with creditors as well as plan for the next phase in the future of the regional opera company.”
This development comes against planning for the opening of its city’s Tobin Center for the Performing Arts in 2014, a $165 million project that was to serve the opera company along with other organizations.
Danish National Theater
The Royal Danish Theater, Denmark’s principal opera and ballet company, lost its artistic director and is laying off 100 employees — 10 percent of the workforce — in response to government budget cuts.
Khatia's Return
Napa Valley Symphony Executive Director Richard Aldag enthusiastically seconds all the praises for pianist Khatia Buniatishvili, adding:You should know that the Napa Valley Symphony will be the first to present her in recital in the Bay Area at the Napa Valley Opera House on March 1, 2013. Put it on your calendar!If that’s too far away, check her schedule for appearances elsewhere.
Bravi to Stagehands!
Watch the Los Angeles Philharmonic getting ready for the “Symphony of a Thousand”... give or take a few.The stage at Walt Disney Concert Hall usually holds the maximum of 100 musicians. During the upcoming concerts of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony, Gustavo Dudamel conducting the combined L.A. Phil and his old Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela, there will be 300 performers. The video shows how that’s made possible.
Chamber Music SF Gears Up for New Season
Beginning next month, Chamber Music San Francisco will present a season of nine concerts in San Francisco (Herbst Theatre and the S.F. Conservatory) and five each in Walnut Creek (Lesher Center for the Arts) and Palo Alto (Oshman Family Jewish Community Center). CMSF founder/Director Daniel Levenstein is combining famous artists and young talent, shown in the lineup (with San Francisco dates):
Tokyo Quartet, Feb. 12; Tchaikovsky Piano Competition Gold Medalist Daniil Trifonov, Feb. 28; pianist Stephen Hough, March 18; violinist James Ehnes, April 2; pianist Olga Kern, April 15; clarinetist Richard Stoltzman and guitarist Eliot Fisk, April 28; Brandenburg Concertos, May 6; violinist Sergey Khachatryan, May 13; violist Geraldine Walther & Friends, June 3.
Levenstein is proud of the organization’s eight seasons and says that “the economies of scale generated by integrating three concert series mean that everybody wins: the artists, our organization, and (especially) the audiences.”
Besides the Trifonov recital — a kind of homecoming for the young virtuoso he first presented as a Guzik Foundation Award winner at age 17 four years ago — Levenstein calls attention to the Tokyo Quartet concert, because the announcement of the retirement of the quartet’s two remaining Japanese members next year means that this is likely to be the final performance here in the current configuration.
Schubert’s Cello Quintet, with cellist Jean-Michel Fonteneau — of the Ravel Quartet and S.F. Conservatory chair of chamber music — is a highlight of the concert.