With a 2015-16 season studded with masterworks freshly imagined and others fresh to the War Memorial Opera House stage, San Francisco Opera general director David Gockley bids farewell to the company he has led for the past dynamically changing decade. He retires in July, 2016.
The 10-production season, announced this week, opens fittingly enough with a Verdi opera, Luisa Miller, that Gockley has never mounted in his 44-year career, three decades of it spent at the helm of the Houston Grand Opera. Other highlights include a new production of Lucia di Lammermoor, the company debut of Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd, the San Francisco premiere of the David McVicar production of Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, a staging of Bizet’s Carmen by the incendiary Spanish director Calixto Bieito, a star-power cast in Janáček’s Jenůfa and the American premiere of a Gordon Getty-Claude Debussy double-bill based on Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher. Revivals of Verdi’s Don Carlo, Mozart’s The Magic Flute and Rossini’s The Barber of Seville round out the bill.
Gockley didn’t hesitate to acknowledge his personal signature on the new season. “I wanted to do a Don Carlo for sure,” he said in a phone conversation. “It may be my favorite piece.” Jenůfa earned a similar stamp of affection. As for Sweeney Todd, Gockley reflected on the success he had mounting that stunning Sondheim musical in Houston in the mid-1980s. “It’s a piece of genius that deserves the kind of operatic treatment we can give it,” he said. In order to accomplish it, Gockley enlisted the Houston Grand Opera and Paris’ Théâtre du Châtelet as producing partners.
The Bieito-directed Carmen will replace the 1981 Jean-Pierre Ponnelle production that Gockley termed “venerable but tired.” The general director handicapped Lucia, starring Diana Damrau and Piotr Beczala, as the possible “sleeper of the year” and foresaw a “shattering” experience from a Jenůfa cast led by Malin Byström and Karita Mattila.
“I absolutely adore Die Meistersinger,” Gockley added, noting that he has not been able to mount the piece since an English-language version in Houston in the 1970s. “The time has come to look at the human and comedic sides of Richard Wagner.”
Gockley is keenly anticipating the opening of the new Diane B. Wilsey Opera Center in the refurbished Veterans Building in 2016. A mini-season of three chamber operas for that facility’s 299-seat Atrium Theater will be announced in October. Gockley called the Center, which will bring a variety of the company’s artistic, technical and administrative operations under one roof, a cornerstone of his legacy.
Among his other enduring accomplishments are an endowment that grew from $45 million to nearly $200 million during his tenure, “union peace,” the Wagner Ring cycle that will return to San Francisco Opera in 2018 and the appointment of music director Nicola Luisotti to “strengthen the Italian repertoire, which really needed some attention.”
Both here and in Houston, Gockley focused a steady beam of attention on American works, both through revivals and commissions. The Porgy and Bess he mounted in Houston in 1976 was a transformative and widely-traveled breakthrough. So was John Adams’ Nixon in China, which premiered in Houston in 1987. More recently, with such standout San Francisco productions as Jack Heggie’s Moby Dick, Carlisle Floyd’s Susannah and the Show Boat revival (due to be released in April on DVD and Blu-ray), Gockley has gone a long way toward accomplishing what he hoped – “to have left the American opera repertory, in the broadest sense, in a better, stronger place.”
As for regrets, Gockley declined to mention specific projects – “because the book isn’t ever closed once something has been done once” – but said, “Certainly there are pieces that could have been done better, or should not have been done in the first place. And others that should have been pursued but weren’t.”
With his characteristic deadpan directness, Gockley used a single word to describe his anticipation of retirement: “Terror.” At this point I don’t know what I will do,” he continued: “ teach, mentor, consult on short-term kinds of things. I’ve done this day in and day out for almost 44 years. I don’t know what it is to stop.” At least through the end of the eventful 2015-2016 season, San Francisco Opera’s general director won’t have to find out. Subscriptions go on sale Mon., Jan. 12 at 1 p.m. Phone (415) 864-3330 or visit www.sfopera.com.
SAN FRANCISCO OPERA 2015–16 SEASON
Luisa Miller – Giuseppe Verdi
September 11–27, 2015
Soprano Leah Crocetto, tenor Michael Fabiano and baritone Thomas Hampson headline the company’s first revival of the Francesca Zambello’s production in 15 years.
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street – Stephen Sondheim
September 12–29, 2015
The 1979 Grand Guignol Broadway masterpiece takes its rightful place on the operatic stage, with Gerald Finley in the title role and Stephanie Blythe as his murderous, pie-baking co-conspirator, Mrs. Lovett.
Lucia di Lammermoor – Gaetano Donizetti
October 8–28, 2015
The creators of last year’s memorable Susannah, director Michael Cavanagh and designer Erhard Rom, offer a new production, with soprano Diana Damrau as Lucia and tenor Piotr Beczala as Edgardo.
The Magic Flute – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
October 20–November 20, 2015
The multi-media, English-language staging of 2012 returns, with Lawrence Foster making his conducting debut with the company.
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg – Richard Wagner
November 18–December 6, 2015
The David McVicar production features bass-baritone Greer Grimsley as Hans Sachs and Brandon Jovanovich (Lohengrin) as Walther von Stolzing.
Il Barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville) – Gioachino Rossini
November 25–December 9, 2015
First seen in 2013, the Emilio Sagi production stars Lucas Meachem as Figaro and Daniela Mack as Rosina, under Giuseppe Finzi’s baton.
The Fall of the House of Usher Double Bill
Usher House – Gordon Getty
La Chute de la Maison Usher – Claude Debussy
December 8–13, 2015
Edgar Allan Poe’s haunting tale gets the double-bill treatment in a U.S. premiere that pairs San Franciscan Gordon Getty’s work and a reconstruction of Debussy’s unfinished opera, both showcasing baritone Brian Mulligan.
Carmen – Georges Bizet
May 27–July 3, 2016
Spanish director Calixto Bieito, noted for his raw approach to sex and violence, updates the Bizet staple to the post-Franco era in a double-cast production that has drawn sharply divided reviews elsewhere.
Don Carlo – Giuseppe Verdi
June 12–29, 2016
Music director Nicola Luisotti conducts, with Michael Fabiano taking on the title role for the first time, opposite Bulgarian soprano Krassimira Stoyanova in her company debut as Elisabetta.
Jenůfa – Leoš Janáček
June 14–July 1, 2016
A new-to-San Francisco staging by Olivier Tambosi returns the Janáček masterwork to the War Memorial Opera House, with Swedish soprano Malin Byström in her company debut and Jiři Bělohlávek conducting.