THERE is your Isolde for the Twenty-Aughts, and - one hopes - beyond.
In one of the most thrilling recent vocal performances in the War Memorial,
Nina Stemme sang a blazing finale in tonight's "Flying Dutchman," sang
all out, heroically, fearlessly, her Senta saving the cursed hero, her
voice promising great Wagnerian performances to come.  (With Christine
Brewer around, and coming to San Francisco soon, the heldensoprano market
is doing well.)

Right up with Stemme, Walter Fink sang a remarkable Daland - deep, secure,
sonorous, beautifully phrased, powerfully projected.  If Juha Uusitalo's
merely adequate Dutchman were better, this would have been one of those
performances that make the Opera's continued neglect of broadcasting and
recording all the more lamentable.

Stemme and Fink almost upstaged the advertised attraction of the evening
- the debut of Sara Jobin, conducting "Dutchman," being the first woman
to preside over a Wagner production in the Opera House; indeed, the first
woman to conduct a mainstage production in the company's 81-year history
when she picked up the baton just last month for "Tosca."

Upstaged, perhaps, but not obscured: Jobin, who got a hero's (I mean
heroine's) welcome just for showing up, conducted a remarkable performance.
Not everything was grand, but enough to impress.  Another Jobin distinction:
at 34, she is one of the youngest Wagner conductors around.  And, while
gender is immaterial on the podium, age matters.

Jobin conducted some wonderful, lyrical passages, and she made the
orchestra storm as if she were an octogenarian male with exceptional
testosterone levels; whenever the music had a dance beat to it (and
"Dutchman" does that, frequently), Jobin's direction was unerring,
heart-warming.  The problem - likely to have been caused by inexperience
- was lack of consistency, some erroneous balances (although the singers
mostly received excellent support), and what makes a Wagner conductor
truly special: an effortless, smooth forward momentum.

Mentored by one of the best Wagner conductors around, Donald Runnicles,
Jobin had plenty of opportunity to watch and learn from that inexorable
movement Runnicles maintains most of the time, but not enough of it was
there yet tonight.  Especially in the first half of the performance,
there were some unconnected elements, a kind of East-European bumping
along, almost a sense of coarseness.  Toward the end, however, especially
during that sensational finale, Jobin's orchestra took off in a relentless,
passionate flight to great heights.

On the Christopher Ventris Watch: the tenor, who can be very good or
less, depending on the occasion, sang an Erik that was mostly pretty,
but time and again, effort was audible when going to high notes.  It's
rather strange because Ventris can hit high notes with ease, but tonight
- as on some other occasions - there is a problem in the process of
ascension.

The Nikolaus Lehnhoff/Raimund Bauer production is a queer duck, good at
times, plain silly otherwise.  Duane Schuler's lighting design is what
makes it work - the brilliant backlighting, the glowing fire-red environment
- there is impressive, effective work here.  But the metal hoops, the
spinning spinners, the top-hat-and-cane uniforms, the uniform baldness
of the population, etc., etc.  - these are merely distractions...
fortunately not enough to ruin the musical excellence.

Fink's performance was all the more notable because he's been suffering
from a cold for several days now, and there was a question if he'll go
on.  Once on stage, there was nothing but health and power.  Fink is not
alone in fighting a cold: several days of record-low temperatures in San
Francisco (40 degrees!  horrors!) resulted in a more coughing, throat-clearing
and noisy sniffing than I have heard in many a moon.

Always puzzled and impressed by the ability of singers not to cough on
stage (when was the last time you heard one?), I realized tonight that
artists don't do so well while in the audience.  Just across the aisle,
Sheri Greenwald stayed in her seat resolutely during a 30-minute-long
violent coughing fit, making me wonder what she would have thought of
somebody doing that to her in her singing days.

Janos Gereben
www.sfcv.org
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