Doctor Atomic: Curtain down

Standing room was apparently sold out for the closing night of Doctor Atomic. By the time I showed up yesterday morning (around 9:15), people had already finished their Egg McMuffins and pulled out decks of cards. It was clear that people who weren't regular opera goers had turned out for this, because the line had formed on the other side of the lobby. Surprisingly disorienting.

I've found that when the standing room gets a little cozy, the needle flies off the Beeeeeeyotch-o-meter, and so it was last night. Last time I remember it being like this was for Dawn Upshaw and Thomas Allen in Cunning Little Vixen, when there was a woman who tried to cut the line by literally body-blocking me to prevent me from getting in the doorway. Last night we had a woman (who had gotten some serious training in biotech) squeezing herself into a space along the rail after everyone else had already staked out her territory, and then pushing other's peoples' clothes aside and jabbing her elbows into her neighbors (i.e., me). Confidential to Mme. Super-Beyotch: If you stop your self-righteous complaining and pause to think for a moment, it will become obvious that my suit jacket laid on the rail is in fact the width of my fairly slender body and not the width of three people, as you claim.

And yet, despite the evildoers and the inconvenience of standing for three hours (plus the lecture, because I had to protect my spot from Mme. Super-B's encroachment), I was glad to be there. Final brain dump in the second part of this post.

THE END

The ending appears to have been reconceived since opening night, and I am mighty conflicted about the result. "You'll get your explosion," John said during last night's talk, but as I've mentioned before, the lack of an explicit explosion was the most wondrous and poetic part of opening night's performance. Now there is a moment which is clearly the detonation: there is the timpani activity that woke Lisa up, followed by a growing rumble in the sound design till you can feel it on your skin, capped by the abrupt lighting shift to red and the cast looking up while still lying on their bellies.

What I can't remember from opening night are the lighting cues after that point. All I was aware of was a transition to a different space, that was quiet and reflective. And when the Japanese woman's voice emerged, it was gutwrenching as the waves of recognition rolled in. I don't know if we were actually in darkness, but it sure felt that way.

The effect these past couple of performances has been completely different. It seems that those who saw it opening night fell neatly into "got it: wow" and "didn't get it: huh?" camps, and the "huh?" camp was large enough that something had to be done to rectify the problem. The ending certainly has been clarified, so I think there are now far fewer "huh?"s.  They did it tastefully and the impact is still strong. But being a "wow," I'm saddened that a little piece of poetry has been lost to history, and grateful that at least I got to experience it once.

BALANCE

Opening night I was in O, center orchestra.  Tuesday I was in L, orchestra right. Last night I was standing, at the back of the orchestra, and last night's balances among singers and between singers and orchestra were by far the best. For the first time, I could hear every note that Kristine Jepson sang, including the big melismas. Like Lisa, I think that it may have much to do with the positioning of the sound board. Mark Grey is back there with all the standees, and I am glad to have been the beneficiary of that last night.

KITTY

Kristine Jepson does a commendable job as Kitty, especially stepping in as she did. But having heard her three times now, trying to keep an open mind each time, this was just not her role. She has some physical habits that are inappropriate and pulls her completely out of character, like the way she leans back and throws her head off to the right when she has big leaps up (and the higher the pitch the more off-center she gets), or the way she physicalizes each note in angular lines by moving up or down according to where the line goes. Among the amazing things about La Lorraine is her uncanny ability to communicate so much with a minimum of extraneous movement. Who can say for sure what she would have done with this role? But I fear that, in the end, this run suffered from her absence.

ORCHESTRA

In his talk last night, John mentioned that he was heartened that people were coming back to see it two, three, even four times. Each time has been a completely different experience for me, because I get to explore a new layer. This time I chose to focus as much as I could on the orchestra, letting the staging, singing, and supertitles shift into the background. It was like hearing the whole piece fresh. Who knew there was a three-hour symphony underlying everything? There were so many marvelous details that my ear grabbed for the first time; the Baudelaire section of Scene 2 in particular took on a degree of sexiness that I hadn't gotten before.

BROWNIES

I wonder if the Diet Scene issues can be resolved by restaging. Having Groves and Oppie parade in so solemnly and park center stage seems incongruous with the lightness inherent in their small-talk conversation. If the point of the scene is inanity, then visually we shouldn't be seeing profundity.

CHORUS

If the score undergoes any revisions, I hope they will consider revoicing the opening chorus. A comment I heard repeatedly throughout the run was that the chorus sounded surprisingly weak: so many people on stage, so little sound! Well, they'll inevitably sound small if only half of them are singing at any given time.  The middle voices start with the phrase "Matter can be neither created nor destroyed," and they're all in the low parts of their range, and then the outer voices do the octave high E's piano. I'm certain there's a way to revoice those chords so that more people are on the "Matter..." part of the phrase in meatier sections of their voices, and have it still sound hushed but present.

OPPIE

Gerald Finley has had to sing this role every other night since October 14, and I think it may have been too big a burden. The first night I heard an effortless ringing top in a very high-lying role. Tuesday I saw and heard him working, and last night I heard strain. I've heard Adams himself say something to the effect that he tends to write men's lines that sit a little too high for a little too long, and perhaps this schedule was made for a superhuman. Sadly, if it weren't for that, I wouldn't question the deliberateness of what turned out to be an especially affecting moment last night: when Finley sang the last (English) words of the opera--"Lord, these affairs are hard on the heart"--his voice caught just slightly at the end of "heart," right before he joined the rest of the cast on the ground.

PASQUALITA

By contrast, the character that has grown dramatically for me through repeated hearings is Beth Clayton's Pasqualita. Once the corn dance begins, the second act totally takes off, and her line "The dead are on the march!" has become ever more chilling and resonates even stronger now than the first time I heard it. Brava to Beth Clayton. This could have been such a cheesy new-agey quasi-mystical role in the wrong hands, but she did it right.

~~~~~~

And thus the curtains come down on SF Opera's Doctor Atomic run. My best wishes to this work for a long and healthy life, and continued growth. Off now to Stanford to hear Dawn Upshaw, eighth blackbird, and Gustavo Santaolalla play Osvaldo Golijov's Ayre with Heather!

Comments

[Robert Gable]

Agree about Kittie and Pasqualita; disagree about Oppie as I liked Finley better than the week before but again, that could be his Ives CD seeping into my perception. And I'm back to listening to Ives songs today, as a counter to all that operatic destruction this month...

[Alex Ross]

Thanks for the wonderful report, M. C. Wish I could have been there. Like you, I loved the ending exactly as it was, and I'm a little afraid of the idea of timpani jumping in there. When a major work comes along, it's our job as listeners to make sense of it, not the composer's job to try to make it clearer for us. Then again, Beethoven wrote a new ending for Opus 130 when people complained about the Grosse Fuge.

[Lisa Hirsch]

Is anyone in a position to ask Adams what motivated the change? Would he talk, if asked?

Rehearsals are not performances; it is possible he and Sellars weren't happy with the effect of the ending and decided to make the changes on their own. Adams wouldn't be the first composer to revise a work after its initial performance or run of performances: Puccini and Madame Butterfly, for instance.

[ACB]

Enjoy Ayre!! You're in for a treat - Dawn is absolutely stunning and impressive and fabulous in that piece. Give her my love, will you?

[sfmike]

What a wonderful wrap-up. The whole experience was great for everyone involved, I think -- the composer, director/librettist, performers, and audience. It wasn't negligible and we all get to brag decades later about being part of the world premiere BEFORE it was revised.

And yes, it is a 3-hour symphony, and the through-composed second act is probably the most ambitious thing Adams has ever attempted, which is saying something.

As for Standing Room Byaatches, it's best to go to the balcony on nights when there are too many people. Back in the old days when you could stand at the back of Dress Circle and the entrance was at the front doors, it really was a Land Rush. An usher would come out and tell everyone they were "not to run," but the second they had torn somebody's ticket, that person RAN, usually up a number of flight of stairs with elbows akimbo. No Byaaatch going to make my place!

Weeknights are really the time to go standing room. You can usually snag a seat after the first act too, if you're in the mood.

[mezzogregory]

Thank you, M.C- for your continued dedication to blogging/journalism on this topic. I look forward to seeing this piece put up by more forward looking opera companies in the nation.

Enjoy your next musical experiences.

(P.S. I haven't heard from Tim Krol in absolutely ages. Hope he's doing well. Thank you also for your support during my Met week.)
Hojoto

[Lisa Hirsch]

Land Rush indeed. I stood, memorably, though Rheingold, Walkuere, Makrapoulos Case, Midsummer Night's Dream, Turandot, and FROSCH in those days.

And, yes, M. C-, faboo roundup.

[Geraldine]

Hello again.

I know Beth - she sang Carmen to my Micaela for WNO a few years ago, and I have met her since in NYC. It's good to read a brava from you to her.

[M. C-]

So many comments, so little time...

Robert, the Ives is on the Amoeba Shopping List. I am most envious that you have it already.

Alex, I wish you could have come back for this. I feel very lucky to have been able to watch the piece change and grow through the course of the run. I've always thought it a shame that the only night that gets a review is the opening, especially when we're talking about a theatrical production.

Lisa, how true that rehearsals are not performances, and it's precisely that reason that musical theater shows get some real performances under their belt in New Haven before landing on Brawdway. It's sad that opera (and contemporary music in general) doesn't get that opportunity. We're so premiere-obsessed when it comes to new music, which is strange when any performer can tell you how much a piece will change after it's been performed a few times.

ACB, we've talked about this before, but I will restate the obvious: Dawn is a superhero. I'll try to write about the Ayre performance sometime (but perhaps Heather will grace us with her reactions first?).

SFMike, I find there are three major disadvantages to being up in the balcony standing room: you have no chance at all of being given an orchestra seat by a patron whose friend didn't show; the stage really is awfully far away; and the people-watching is much more fun on the orchestra level! Ah well, I too wish the Dress Circle were still open to standees. "Land Rush" is a perfect description, btw. It's going into the memory bank.

MezzoG, last time I sang with Tim was several months ago, and since then I think he's made the move down to LA. Great singer, smart musician, superfantastic guy. I'm glad we have a common acquaintance! As for Doctor A, it's coming your way (Spring 2008)...

Geraldine, I cannot wait to hear you sing. (Happy Birthday didn't count, I'm afraid!) Some moments of Beth's performance were so striking, they remain some of the most memorable events of the production. I'm glad to know she's a colleague of yours.

As for opening night, I feel very certain that the stage went black and then we heard the Japanese voice. It was, in my opinion, quite stunning and amazing. I was sorry it was so different the second time I saw the piece. I am really curious about the change, and hope to find out why they made that choice.

[Henry Holland]

I've been going to SFO since 1989 and I've always gotten the standing room tickets. I don't like downstairs at all; the overhang muffles the sound too much. I immediately go upstairs and get a spot on the right (looking toward the stage)--great sound.

Any ideas about opera's SFO is doing in 2006?

[Lisa Hirsch]

Tristan und Isolde: Christine Brewer's Web page at Askonas Holt, her agent, says she is under contract in SF. Other than that, dunno.

[Henry Holland]

That's a good start, as long as it's not Siegfried Jersualem singing Tristan. We'll find out the rest of the season in February, I guess.

[M. C-]

Via rysankekfreak at Civic Center, the rumor mill is spreading the following for the 06/07 season:

CARMEN
RIGOLETTO
TRISTAN & ISOLDE
MANON LESCAUT
BALLO IN MASCHERA
BARBIERE DI SIVIGLIA
FLEDERMAUS