So here we have, on the Opera side of Grove Street and very near to Mother
Russia, Elena Zaremba's grand Dame Quickly, following Olga Borodina's
sometimes great/sometimes bored Dalilah, last summer's Amneris sung by
Larissa Diadkova and next summer's Marina Domashenko Carmen.

But what about the SF Symphony side of Grove, who would show up there -
Galina Gorchakova, to make it Five of a Kind?

No, tonight it was Diadkova's turn again, with SFS, in the Dvorak Stabat
Mater, but with an unpleasant twist.

Framed, betrayed, ambushed, poor Larissa sounded like. . . just another
Russian mezzo, a hard-to-believe happening. Who did this to her? The same
conductor who also did in Vance George's splendid SFS Chorus, another fine
singer, and the whole audience in Davies Hall.

Jiri Belohlavek may be authentically Czech but he is no friend of Dvorak.
He served up a Stabat Mater without a leg to stand on, a pompous-pious,
lethargic, funereal performance, taking the heart out of, killing the
romantic beauty of the work with sloppy, ponderous direction.  Poor
Diadkova:  she tried hard at the beginning of "What man would not weep,"
only to be reigned in, slowed down, until the music died.  Worse yet, her
"Inflammatus" was reduced to something utterly without fire, pain or -
ultimately - grace.

Stanford Olsen, an otherwise wonderful lyric tenor, met the same fate, and
by the time the great "Make me truly weep with you" arrived, Olsen seemed
disinterested in what is normally a prime opportunity for the tenor. . .
and I cannot blame him.

Two other soloists didn't need Belohlavek as an excuse for sub-par
performances, they did themselves in.  Baritone Gustav Belacek has a big -
if strange - voice, but he doesn't really sing, not music anyway.  If I
never heard Conductor B.  or Baritone B.  ever again, it'll be just as
well.

The remaining member of the quartet of soloists presented another story
- this too is unfortunate on a curiously joyless night.  Pamela Coburn
has been a good, reliable, occasionally brilliant soprano for two decades
now, but the voice heard tonight had little resemblance to the opera and
oratorio singer I remember.  Rough and unsettled, this voice belonged
either to an indisposed singer or to one in crisis; I hope it's the former,
temporary condition.

Janos Gereben/SF
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