Fifty degrees in San Jose is a bit chilly, but there is Irene Dalis
outside Montgomery Theater tonight, in the first intermission of the
premiere of "The Pearl Fishers." What is the founder/general director
of Opera San Jose doing on the street?  Smoking.

Myself, I know better (and have less gumption) than to question the
unfortunate habit, but others had been less reticent.  Her standard reply
is reported to have been: "So what do you expect me to do at 79 - change?"
The irony here is that Dalis is about to make a huge change, for herself,
for the company, perhaps even for the still-traumatized capital city of
Silicon Valley.  And that's what the conversation is about on the street:
the move to a new, much bigger home.

"Pearl Fishers" is the last production in this tiny, cozy, terribly
inadequate theater of 500 seats and not much else - such as a real
stage or pit or dressing rooms, etc.  When Opera San Jose opens this fall,
with "The Marriage of Figaro," it will be in its new home, an 1,100-seater,
the California Fox reconstructed at a cost of $75 million.  Dalis visited
the theater this week, and she is well pleased with the look-and-feel
of the place.

"Do you know," she asks in a rhetorical fashion, lighting another cigaret,
"that our budget - in the middle of what's happening with the economy -
will be $800,000 more next year than this year?" [The figures I have are
$2.9 million against an estimated $4.3 million for the next season - a
pretty penny more than what she is citing, but it will still be in the
*black*, most likely.]

"Do you realize," she says, "how wonderful and scary will it be not to
have the excuse we have had over the years?  It's one thing to have a
stage that holds 12 people [there were some 30 singers and dancers (!)
in tonight's production] and another to produce opera in a real theater
with a real orchestra pit and a stage the size of the San Francisco
Opera's.

"But the company will not change." Didn't you just explained what big
changes are coming?  "No," she says, "the nature of the company will not
change.  We will continue to give major performance opportunities to
young singers.  Not small roles, big ones."

That's how she had her own start, Dalis says.  She was still studying
when she selected, in a surprise move, for her stage debut at the Oldenburg
Landestheater in 1953 - as Eboli in "Don Carlo," something not on the
order of a Second Herald or even Fourth Maid.

No wonder she made Eboli her debut everywhere she went after that, from
the Metropolitan to San Francisco.  The San Jose-born mezzo then sang a
great deal in the War Memorial, including the US premiere of "Die Frau
ohne Schatten," in which she portrayed the Nurse.  "When was that?  Let's
see: must have been the year when my son was born, so it's 1959 or the
year after." [It was 1959.]

And then, suddenly, the conversation about young artists making their
debuts takes a strange turn. "I don't believe in this `common wisdom'
about Wagnerian tenors working their way through Mozart," she said,
stunning the visitor, whose favorite heldentenors are exactly from that
mold.  "No," Dalis says, waving away the objection.  "You should start
big, if you've got what it takes.  And you either have that or you don't.
That's why at Opera San Jose, we `start' young singers in big roles."

And that's that, the lights going down for the next act, and the visitor
glad not to have to take on the most formidable (and locally well-revered)
"Miss Dalis" herself on the issues of smoking and advisability of
heldentenors starting as Siegfried.  In her new house, Dalis will produce
Wagner, by the way, contributing to the local glut of "Flying Dutchmen"
- after the San Francisco Symphony's and before the San Francisco Opera's
productions.

Janos Gereben/SF
www.sfcv.org
[log in to unmask]