Extraordinary performances by Paolo Gavanelli, Samuel Ramey and Donald
Runnicles virtually guaranteed that Lotfi Mansouri's final San Francisco
Opera production of his 12-year-long directorship will be remembered well.
Tonight's premiere of the Verdi Festival's "Simon Boccanegra" gained
strength from some of Mansouri's best collaborators, especially the
orchestra under Runnicles (once again at his best), a sterling performance
by Ian Robertson's Opera Chorus, Michael Yeargan's fine sets, and - for a
change, as of late - some remarkable singers, causing the kind of chicken
skin response one often experienced during the Adler regime.  The very
choice of this unjustly neglected, admittedly difficult work - lacking in
"big numbers" - is to Mansouri's credit.

Duets by Gavanelli and Ramey were fabulous.  Moments such as Gavanelli
singing "figlia!" in the recognition scene - his back to the audience, the
sound coming from the void, arching, climaxing, and dying away - will be
remembered along with great War Memorial highlights.  Runnicles not only
brought out highlights of the score which hides some of Verdi's most
beautiful orchestral passages, but he presided over a rock-solid,
consistent, standard-setting performance all evening long.

At a panel discussion a few days ago, Gavanelli and Runnicles were outdoing
each other in insisting on the primacy of the text in performance.  "Prima
la parola," they said, enthusiastically.  "No conductor has the right to
impose a tempo if it poses an obstacle to the text," Runnicles said, and
Gavanelli shook hands on that.  Tonight, Runnicles lived up to his word
on the importance of words.  The text and musical lines came across with
clarity and beauty - gift to the audience, a fine going-away present to
Mansouri.

Of course, there were some of the usual problems we've gotten used to in
recent years, especially Mansouri's support for inadequate, self-important
directors who go counter to that loyalty to the composer and the work which
made the Gavanelli-Ramey-Runnicles partnership so rewarding.

David Edwards got off on the wrong foot at the very beginning.  To put
Verdi on the stage, you do well by his work, not have an extra walk around
in a Verdi costume, staring at Maria/Amelia as a child in a dumb show -
repeated later and used to end the opera.  If you honor the music, you
don't bring down a curtain on the chorus mid-phrase.  If you want to convey
the story, you don't have the principals stand and convulse on top of
tables.  But, true to the Mansouri (and, alas, widespread) practice of
engaging overactive, deaf-to-the-music directors (such as Kupfer who has
been making Wagner singers perform while at a full gallop) still rule here
(and may yet have plenty of the Eurotrash variety of "look at me, I am
directing" kind under the incoming general manager).

Another Mansouri-worldwide problem, of course, is the lack of good tenors.
Tonight's Gabriele, Carlo Ventre, was mostly adequate (if you don't mind
weak high notes squeezed out laboriously), and during the final scene, he
actually fit into the musical ensemble rather well.

Carol Vaness sang Amelia better than it sounded.  She sang simply and well,
but the voice is not in a good shape, going shrill even when not pushed -
and Vaness certainly has the intelligence and good musical judgment not to
do that.  Nikolai Putilin, in his San Francisco debut, was an impressive
Paolo: big voice, dramatic presence, some deliberately strangled sounds
which were both effective and attention-diverting.  perhaps not a good
thing, in balance.

Another farewell tonight, a quiet, almost private one: Kori Lockhart
ending a 20-year (second) tour as editor of publications, and the author
of the invaluable fact sheet for every production.  Her work will be very
much missed.

Janos Gereben/SF, CA
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