“The Future Is Now,” the San Francisco Opera Center’s annual concert for its Adler Fellows, is a reliable highlight of the Bay Area classical season. Every fall, these budding young singers take the stage to showcase their skills, while we marvel at their fresh vocalism, enthusiasm, and promise.
This year was no exception. The Adlers’ performance on Friday, Nov. 15, at Herbst Theatre offered a fine blend of standards and rarities. The absence of any music by Puccini was the only repertory oddity.
You never know which of these singers will go on to major careers, but if I were the betting type, I’d put my money on the Canadian lyric soprano Olivia Smith, whose radiance, power, and interpretive insight mark her as something special.
On the program’s first half, she sang “Non mi dir, bell’idol mio” (Do not tell me, my beloved) from Mozart’s Don Giovanni with noble depth. She closed the concert with a thrilling rendition of “Amour, ranime mon courage” (Love, revive my courage) from Charles Gounod’s Romeo and Juliet, the aria in which Juliet resolves to drink the potion that will make her appear lifeless.
In between, Smith, soprano Arianna Rodriguez, and mezzo-soprano Nikola Printz reached across space and time in the radiant and moving trio “All along?” from Kevin Puts’s opera The Hours, based on Michael Cunningham’s novel of the same name (itself based on Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway). Their voices blended with near-perfect balance, and without scenery or props of any kind, they nonetheless conveyed their characters’ loneliness and anxiety. With excellent stage direction from Omer Ben Seadia, every performance on the program had dramatic force and point.
The concert, conducted by Benjamin Manis, who’s in town to lead the Opera’s sold-out production of Carmen, began with a brisk account of the Overture to Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro that segued neatly into that work’s opening scene. Rodriguez’s adorable, flirty Susanna paired beautifully in duet with bass-baritone Jongwon Han’s resonantly colorful Figaro. Throughout the evening, Manis provided sympathetic and visibly attentive support to each singer.
Han closed out the scene with Figaro’s “Se vuol ballare” (If you want to dance) and later showed off his stylistic versatility with a galvanizing performance of “O tu, Palermo” from Verdi’s I Vespri Siciliani.
If you heard the Welsh tenor Thomas Kinch’s brief appearance in the Opera’s triumphant run of Tristan and Isolde and wished his character had had more to sing, Friday’s concert was your answer. Few tenors have the blend of baritonal beauty, sterling control, and interpretive sensitivity that Kinch brought to “Gott, welch Dunkel hier!” (God! What darkness here) from Beethoven’s Fidelio and “Mamma, quel vino è generoso” (Mama, that wine is generous) from Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana. (Want more Kinch? Try to snag a ticket to the Nov. 26 performance of Carmen, when he’s scheduled to sing Don José.)
Printz delivered a dramatically arresting and brilliantly sung solo with the florid aria “Where shall I fly?” from Handel’s Hercules and joined with the bright-voiced soprano Caroline Corrales for a ravishing performance of the duet “Sorgi, o padre” (Arise, o father) from Bellini’s Bianca e Fernando. Corrales also gave a good account of Elvira’s difficult scene “Surta è la notte … Ernani, involami” (Night has fallen … Ernani, save me) from Verdi’s Ernani.
On a program much longer on drama than comedy, virtually all of the charm came from Rodriguez, whose solo turn was the serene “Berceuse” from Benjamin Godard’s otherwise obscure opera Jocelyn. Bass-baritone James McCarthy had just the right Slavic sound for an enthralling performance of the cavatina from Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Aleko. Baritone Samuel Kidd was a hearty, amusingly tipsy Hamlet in the drinking song from Ambroise Thomas’s operatic adaptation of Shakespeare’s play.
Soprano Georgiana Adams, who joined Kinch in the Mascagni for Mamma Lucia’s few lines, elsewhere sang arias by Handel and Mozart. She has a fearless attack, vehement power, and a good trill, yet her inconsistent tone left me unconvinced that these selections showed her at her best.
Coincidentally, the Opera Center announced the 2025 class of Adler Fellows on the same day as the concert. Expect new Adlers, returning Adlers, and another year of seasoning for all.
This story was first published in Datebook in partnership with the San Francisco Chronicle.
