Tag Archives: War Memorial Opera House

Frankenstein: Run to It!

You may have seen Frankenstein movies; the Frankenstein ballet is better. Nothing against Boris Karloff, the Monster (or Creature); he was so good in the 1931 movie that the story goes on and on. Before I tell readers more, I advise you to get tickets now. Frankenstein’s last day and night is May 4th. Week day tickets are available now at half price.

Go to this link: https://www.sfballet.org/productions/frankenstein-encore/

The most important aspects of this ballet are the wonderful performances. I saw it with Dores Andre as Elizabeth Lavenza, Victor’s fiancee; Max Cauthorn as Victor Frankenstein, the aspiring scientist; Nathaniel Remez as The Creature; Alexis Francisco Valdes as Henry Clerval, Victor’s best friend; Julia Rowe as Justine Moritz, when Victor and Elizabeth were young, Justine was a playful friend, but she had a tragic future. The entire company danced so well it is difficult to describe the feats they achieved. They had intensity as well as technique; theater skills that lifted them out of any staginess; lifts and jumps that were real though they seem unreal.

Jasmine Jimison as Elizabeth & Cavan Conley as The Creature, FRANKENSTEIN ballet by Liam Scarlett performed by SF Ballet, photo Lindsey Rallo

The choreographer of all this, Liam Scarlett, devised a way for a lift to go higher. The ballerina is lifted by the danseur; he catches her up from a jump; she makes a second jump into the air from his arms. I write that it is a second jump, but to jump one normally pushes off from the floor – or from something. Here, the ballerina engages her energy and ascends. Does the partner toss her up again? Maybe. Ballerinas are strong and equally brave as they are strong. That’s it.

The ballet has two amazing pas de deux for the leads. They dance together when they decide they will marry. It was lovely and did not hide their emotions. The elegant turning into each other and sometimes away from each other was continually inventive and beautifully executed.

Another pas de deux happens when Victor has lost The Creature. He is anxious and preoccupied. Elizabeth tries to calm him with some of the steps from their previous pas de deux, but they cannot get back to the Before The Creature feelings.

There are choreographic motivations demonstrated by Scarlett. Throughout the ballet, there are movements that look straight out of modern dance technique. This ballet has a full range of emotions, and basics of modern dance show emotion. If a person pulls her/his abdomen in and lets the contraction move the back into a curve, the onlooker will see pain or sorrow. Changes of direction are dramatic: What should I do? Is there someone to turn to? Scarlett has many ways to move large groups. In the ballet, there are people in a tavern. They are excited and questioning what is going on. That scene has thirteen dancers, including Victor. Scarlett differentiates these dancers: how do they stand, what do they do to look over a table, they break into separate directions or focus at the same spot. The ball to celebrate Victor’s and Elizabeth’s marriage features a large gathering of dancers. The couples dance filling most of the stage: Then, there are more dancers dancing closer and closer to each other in complex designs. In addition to the designs the dancers make, their designs, dancing so closely, and then more quickly; it becomes frightening.

Aaron Robison in Scarlett’s Frankenstein // © Lindsay Thomas

The music composed by Lowell Liebermann fits every turn in the plot and the changes in the characters. Victor goes from tremendous joy at succeeding creating a new life from pieces of other bodies to feelings of guilt and terror. The music underscores the work of Scenic & Costume designer John McFarlane. There are gorgeous sets in the Frankenstein mansion, the frightening fight with the Creator in the garden, and the dreadful execution of innocent Justine.I was especially glad to see appropriate costumes for the story’s era. It is late 18thc., around the time of the American Revolution. Think of Ben Franklin and his experiments with a kite and electricity. The Lighting by David Finn told the story just as much as the dance and music. It will surprise you.

San Francisco Ballet in Scarlett’s Frankenstein // © Lindsay Thomas

As the choreographer passed away, the ballet was staged by Lauren Strongin and Joseph Walsh; Walsh danced the role of Victor during this run.

The story is based on the book written by Mary Shelley, the wife of poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, and daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, author of The Rights of Women, and William Godwin, philosopher and writer. One night, in 1818, near Geneva, she was with friends during a great storm. Fall out from a volcano eruption half way around the world made the world dark for days. They decided they should each write a scary story. Mary’s was Frankenstein. The science at the time sought more knowledge about electricity. There was philosophical debate and curiosity about what is life.

Cavan Conley as The Creature & Esteban Hernandez as Victor in Frankenstein ballet by Liam Scarlett performed by SF Ballet, photo LIndsey Rallo

In the ballet’s Act I, scene 2, Victor’s mother dies. She was pregnant, fell to the floor, disappeared, but gave birth to Victor’s baby brother. That is a way of creating life. Victor wants to create life from body parts from the dead. He rejoices that the electricity he masters can create life, too. The Creature wants Victor to make another creature to be his partner. He learned to read – not explained much in the ballet – and learned that Victor wrote in his journal that his experiment had failed. The Creature became angry; he wanted love, but could he love?

The extraordinary, but real, Nathaniel Remez could not have been made. This other way of creating life is compared with Victor’s mother’s death and his brother’s birth. Remez performed majestically. He became the sad/angry Creature without love. His presence on stage was that of The Creature who killed the whole family, but Nathaniel Remez’s human beauty is not from AI.

Photos courtesy of San Francisco Ballet

BRILLIANT BALLET: SF BALLET’S CLASSICAL (RE)VISION

The San Francisco Ballet is a ballet lover’s dream: a company of gorgeous dancers who are precise, elegant, and bursting with energy and style. This season’s Program 2, CLASSICAL (RE)VISION offers SFB’s devoted audience a selection of five ballets.

On February 16, the program included Bespoke, choreography by Stanley Welch, music of Johann Sebastian Bach; Pas de Deux from After the Rain, choreography by Christopher Wheeldon, music of Arvo Part; Pas de Deux from Swan Lake, choreography by David Dawson, music of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky; Concerto Grosso, choreography by Helgi Tomasson, music by Francesco Geminiani after Corelli; and Sandpaper Ballet, choreography by Mark Morris, music of Leroy Anderson. The middle three were “Director’s Choice,” and can change places with other dances through the run of the program, February 11-22.

Bespoke is a moving showcase for twelve dancers: five Principals, five Soloists, and two from the Corps de Ballet. The two Corps members, Alexandre Cagnat and Ellen Rose Hummel, show that SFB has its future insured with outstanding artists. This is a wonderful ballet in its musicality, design, and restrained but powerful emotion. Not having read the program note before seeing the performance, this audience member missed an important layer of the dance. However, the dance works on its own without explanation. Stanley Welch uses the technical heart of ballet to create art that can speak to everyone, even those who have never stepped inside a studio. He builds the dance from the basic positions and movements all ballet students and dancers practice around the world. Seeing these movements performed exquisitely to each angle, forward and backward, jumping and spinning makes the dance lover’s breath stop for a second. It is familiar and unknown. The dancers accelerate their movements, join together, exit the stage and return. Something is happening to them. That something is time. It happens to everyone. It happens without our permission. It happens to dancers so soon, too soon. As it turned out, those long, straight arms I admired were meant to suggest a clock. Some movements were there to suggest life scurrying past our eyes as a dancer flies from our visual and emotional connection to him. At the end of this ballet, the dancers sink into the stage floor two by two. Two men together, two women together, males and females together. As the final couple sinks to the floor, the light closes over the rest of the stage. Only one spotlight captures the pained expression of the last dancer down. It is a wonderful ballet, beautifully danced.

Helgi Tomasson, Artistic Director of SFB, created Concerto Grosso in 2003 for the SF Ballet’s 70th Anniversary. It is terrific; brilliantly performed and exciting to watch. Five fabulous men danced at the height of their power and technical achievement. Once again, two members of the Corps showed that SFB has, in baseball terms, a very deep bench. All five danced at a great level of artistry. They included Lucas Erni, Corps; Max Cauthorn, Soloist; Benjamin Freemantle, Principal; MingXuan Wang, Corps; Lonnie Weeks, Soloist. This ballet sends shooting stars across the War Memorial Opera House stage. Graceful, lyrical, explosive, and soaring, the dancers showed all the virtuoso, versatile, thrilling dancing of San Francisco Ballet’s stellar male dancers.

See the San Francisco Ballet’s Program 2, now through February 22. San Francisco’s War Memorial Opera House, 301 Van Ness Avenue, SF. Contact: 415/865-2000 and www.sfballet.org

SF Opera’s Comic Triumph: Don Pasquale

San Francisco Opera presented Gaetano Donizeti’s delightful opera buffa, Don Pasquale, September 28–October 15 at The War Memorial Opera House. It was tremendous fun. The music is beautiful and funny. The four leads were splendid. It was a night to cheer Donizetti’s brilliance and the accomplishments of singers, conductor, orchestra, chorus, directors and designers whose work combined to create complete theater.

Premiered in 1843, the libretto, also written by Donzetti, puts stock figures in predictable actions with and against each other, but the plot twists in ingenious ways. Opera buffa is the opposite of opera seria, the serious dramas.There is a wealthy man in his 70s. His nephew, Ernesto, refuses to marry the wealthy woman his uncle selected for him; Ernesto loves a poor girl, Norina. The uncle is tired of supporting him, disowns him, and decides to marry a young woman. His doctor and alleged friend, Malatesta, takes Ernesto’s side and plots with Ernesto’s true love. She will present herself as sweet, innocent Sofronia, marry Don Pasquale, then make him demand a divorce to escape her domineering behavior and immense expenses. Norina will be able to marry Ernesto with Don Pasquale’s blessing and his money.

In this production created by Director Laurent Pelly, the nephew is a spoiled, lazy boy sponging off his rich uncle, not the pure rebel against authority he could have been. Norina also is something more and less than her character might have been in the commedia dell’arte from which opera buffa developed. She is a schemer who might be motivated primarily by love but might not. Even Malatesta, presented as the friend of both Don Pasquale and Ernesto seems to be motivated not only by friendship but also a pleasure in playing cruel games.

For this viewer, it was easy to feel sorry for Don Pasquale who put on a new suit and a toupee to meet his bride. He looked ridiculous but was so happy. The lesson, the closing song says, is that old men should not try to marry. And yet, though the others made him a fool and he sees that he acted the fool on his own, there was a charming liveliness in his hopes.

Bass Baritone Maurizio Muraro as Don Pasquale was amazing. His singing was great, and his physical comedy timing perfect. His expressions and actions were very, very funny. His ability to sing the rapid fire patter songs of Don Pasquale was astonishing; every note and syllable was clear and understandable, if one’s brain could keep up. His actions when he transformed himself into what he thought would attract the young woman were funny, his anger at Sofronia’s expenditures was funny, but over all, it was touching to see him try to cope with the abuse dished out by this angel turned devil.

Lawrence Brownlee, internationally acclaimed tenor, made his SF Opera debut as Ernesto. He was a lout, a lover, a disappointed suitor, and a house guest tossed out of the house. He played it all with fantastic aplomb always buoyed by his lovely lyric tenor voice. He was so romantic perched on the roof of his uncle’s house, longing for Norina, and so funny packing a closetful of shirts and then trying to figure out how to carry all his suitcases.

Director Pelly’s idea for the production was inspired by Italian movies from the 1950s. When the audience first sees Heidi Stober as Norina, she is in a black slip, leaning against the wall of her squalid room, and admiring a center-fold. Her clothes are piled on the floor. She has a cigarette. This image of the character does not appear again, but reveals some tawdry tendencies behind Sofronia. Ms Stober’s strong, dramatic voice made her dominance of the Don and plotting with Malatesta believable. Think ahead to a sequel in which Ernesto, not used to fending for himself, finds he’s married someone better at bossing him around than his uncle had been.

Baritone Lucas Meachem has a long relationship with the SF Opera. He was a Merola and an Adler Fellow and has sung numerous roles. It was exciting to see him in a different setting fulfilling the demands of comedy with distinction.

His energetic patter duets with Muraro were a pleasure. Malatesta’s double crossing drove the story ahead effortlessly. On October 4 and 7 the role was played by Edward Nelson, an Adler Fellow. Bojan Knezevic added comic confusion in a cameo role as the Notary who pretended to marry the Don and Norina. The SF Opera Chorus marched onstage as an army of gossipy servants hired by Sofronia. The SF Opera Orchestra was conducted by Giuseppe Finzi. From the beginning of the Overture, it was clear we were in for something extraordinary. Donizetti’s music represented all of the actions and characters. There was a theme which danced and limped that sounded like Don Pasquale’s happiness and hesitations. Theater wisdom says, “Tragedy is easy; comedy is hard.” Impossible to imagine if Donizetti found writing Lucia di Lammermoor easy, but the all star cast of this Don Pasquale acted and sang a comic triumph.

Pictures from top: Maurizio Muraro as Don Pasquale; Donizetti; Lawrence Brownlee as Ernesto; M. Muraro, Don Pasquale transformed; Heidi Stober as Norina/Sofronia intimidates Don Pasquale; H. Stober; Lucas Meachem, far left; L. Meachem & M. Muraro; all photos except picture of Donizetti ©CoreyWeaver/San Francisco Opera