Coughs don't kill performances; people do.

Before its $90 million renovation, the San Francisco War Memorial Opera
House had fleas.  Today, it has dust.  Dust irritates.  Irritation results
in coughing.  Those are the facts.  But it still matters who *you* are.

On the one hand, there are the hundreds who hacked through six hours of
"Goetterdaemmerung" tonight, in the worst case of mass coughing spasms in
my memory.

But look: there, on stage, is Jane Eaglen, with a bad cold (duly
announced), and she sings through what is perhaps the heaviest, most
difficult soprano role in all opera and does she cough? Maybe a couple of
times, but very discreetly.  In an astonishing demonstration of guts and
will power, she actually went through the Immolation Scene and finished --
although it was watching a high-wire act quite without a safety net.

So there is the cacophony of coughs, a Bruennhilde who may *really* die any
second, and Wolfgang Schmidt's dry, tiny, tinny, often off-pitch Siegfried
-- and what do we have? A prescription for disaster, and yet beyond all the
obvious problems, still a *potentially* great experience.

To appreciate the evening, you don't need to memorize Norman Vincent Peale.
Beyond all the making of a "Goetterdaemmerung" from hell, you have Wagner's
music and Donald Runnicles' orchestra.  There is the option: you can
kvetch all you want about the many, many problems of the evening, but if
you listen to the music -- there is enough gold to go around.

With all the distractions, even Runnicles wasn't up to the tremendous
standard set in the other operas, especially "Die Walkuere" and
"Siegfried," holding back the orchestra for Schmidt, putting on the
soft-pedal to help Eaglen through the finale.

Even in the Eaglen crisis, there was some good.  The lady with the big but
not particularly beautiful voice produced a better sound as she was scaling
it all down, out of necessity.

Right off the bat, Elena Zaremba's First Norn shook the walls, Catherine
Cook and Kristine Ciesinski doing fine in the evening's best set --
abstract trees and that sideways Stonehenge head.  Eric Halfvarson, who
has never sung anything below a spectacular level in San Francisco, was
a superb Hagen, in voice, in acting.

Marjana Lipovsek, a singer who really make the most of a small voice, was
the fine Waltraute, Tom Fox's Alberich and Alan Held' Gunther worked well.

With a health Eaglen and another Siegfried, this "Goetterdaemmerung" may
yet be wonderful.  As is, however, I wish the SFO "Ring" ended with "Die
Walkuere."

Janos Gereben/SF
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