Saturday night was the opening of the SF Opera summer season, with a production of Madama Butterfly with Patricia Racette as Cio-cio-san. It was also the first show under incoming General Director David Gockley, and the first live video simulcast of an opera on Civic Center Plaza. (UPDATE: Detailed broadcast history at Opera-L, courtesy of Janos Gereben.)
Since sfmike was on stage inside the opera house performing as a super, I figured I should cover the Civic Center beat in his absence. (UPDATE: My bad, he was out in the Plaza, blogging.)
It was a standard issue San Francisco night, windy and chilly. Who's going to want to sit on cold cement for 2 1/2 hours to watch an opera on Memorial Day weekend?, I thought.
Thousands, apparently.
The moneyed got chairs in a fenced off area...
...with free strawberries and what looked to be bins of Kirkland cookies from Costco.
The insipid Dianne Nicolini from KDFC played hostess, intoning in her saccharine way how beautiful the porta-potties looked and what a great audience we were. I don't know how everything that comes out of her mouth can sound like a QVC Flowbee pitch.
There was a pre-performance video intro to Madama Butterfly...
...and before each act there was a synopsis with a voice-over. (Note to SF Opera video production staff: you need me to do your voice-overs! Inaworld... where Japanese women speak Italian...)
There were some introductory remarks by David Gockley, including the announcement that the center supertitles are back (yielding much applause) and a request for people to write to Titles (at) SFOpera (dot) com with their reactions. I will write in to plead that they find a way to keep the supertitles visible to standees, of course.
And... Curtains up!
OMC and I were already freezing and quite hungry, so we headed off to Mangosteen to get a bowl of pho while waiting out the first act (Whisky whisky blah blah blah). We timed our return for the end of intermission, fully expecting the crowd to be clearing out, fleeing to warmer temperatures.
Wrong again: the plaza remained packed as people were lined up to refresh their coffee at the food stands by the red lanterns lining the walkways. We decided to stay through Un bel dì, loosely translated as "One fine day, he's gonna want me for his girl (shoobee doobeedoo wahwah)."
It occurred to me that this is the second time in a row I've heard Patricia Racette play an Italian-speaking Asian woman who kills herself.
The sound was surprisingly clear, without distortion, and the echoes off the surrounding buildings proved to be an enhancement if you were towards the front. The video was shot with four cameras and artfully done; it was generally well lit and well produced, with appropriate angles and none of that amateurish come-back-here-little-actor camera work that I sort of expected. (I'll reserve any comments about the performance till after I've heard the full production in the house, but Un bel dì was very fine, and worth the trip.)
So congratulations to SF Opera for pulling it off! Next time, might I suggest a Sunday matinee? It gets damn cold here at night.
In homage to the intrepid sfmike, who takes much better photos
I LOVE your photos and your remarks. And it was a fun evening. Also agree with you about the interminable first 20 minutes of the opera with all that "whiskey blah blah blah" but the "Ooooh Cio-Cio-San"'s from the geisha chorus women at the end of the wedding is one of my favorite campy moments.
And thank god everybody showed up to be supernumerary kogoro ninjas. That's a fairly complicated production.
Posted by: sfmike | May 28, 2006 at 01:52 PM
Totally awesome. And totally in keeping with that great article in the NYTimes today about "the future of classical music." Did you see it?
Posted by: ACB | May 28, 2006 at 10:23 PM
Fabulous! And heart-warming, if butt-chilling. Since thousands of SF-ers are intrepid and dedicated enough to enjoy opera-mit-windchill, I hope this inspires other cities to burst out of the confines of the stuffy (ok, and warm) auditoriums and spill art onto the streets for everyone.
Reading your account of this, the toasty mid-summer concerts in Central Park makes New Yorkers look like wimps who can only take their outdoor music with a good dose of humidity and perspiration. San Francisco rocks!
Posted by: Alex Shapiro | May 29, 2006 at 04:43 AM
Great coverage of the opening. Good to see so much people interested in opera. I guess the show must be extraordinary exquisite.
Posted by: Maria loves pictures | May 30, 2006 at 12:28 PM
Do you know of any video of the simulcast?
Tks,
KJ
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