The marketing campaign for San Francisco Opera's summer season invites audiences to enjoy "The Gamble of Love." Artistically, the company has taken a bit of a gamble, too -- and it mostly pays off.
The monthlong season, which runs through July 10, offers three works in rotation which, despite the advertising slogan, have little in common, except that none of them is a surefire box-office favorite -- Tchaikovsky's "The Queen of Spades," Mozart's "Cosi fan tutte" and Bizet's "The Pearl Fishers." This past weekend, they were performed on three consecutive nights, and though the house was never full, the audiences were enthusiastic.
The highlight was a searing production of the Tchaikovsky, a dark tale of obsession and delusion adapted from a Pushkin short story. The main character, Gherman -- superbly sung by the young tenor Misha Dydyk, is so determined to wrest the secret of three winning cards from an aged Countess that he seduces her granddaughter Lisa to gain access to their home and then frightens the old woman to death. The ghost of the Countess appears and tells him the cards -- Three, Seven, Ace. He bets all his money, but the final card turns out to be the Queen of Spades. The opera ends with Gherman committing suicide.
The production, created for the Welsh National Opera by Richard Jones and John Macfarlane, is hallucinatory in its intensity, as befits Tchaikovsky's haunting score. Among the brilliant stage effects is a scene in Gherman's bedroom in which the audience's sense of disorientation is heightened by seeming to view him from above -- his bed is propped upright against the back of the set. The final scene in a gambling hall is also striking, dominated by an enormous round card table that slopes ominously toward the front of the stage.
In addition to Dydyk, the terrific cast includes soprano Katarina Dalayman as Lisa (she, too, commits suicide, though by placing a plastic bag over her head instead of jumping into a canal as specified in the text); mezzo Hanna Schwarz as a marvelously decrepit Countess; and a promising young baritone, John Hancock, as Prince Yeletsky, Gherman's rival for Lisa's affections. Donald Runnicles, the company's music director, led the orchestra in an impassioned performance.
The gambling theme carries over to Mozart's bittersweet "Cosi fan tutte," whose plot revolves around a wager. The cynical Don Alfonso bets his two young friends, Ferrando and Guglielmo, that their sweethearts will not remain faithful if put to the test.
The ensuing disguises, courtships, betrayals and reconciliations are set to some of Mozart's most sublime music. And the six singers -- most of them returning from last fall when the production was new -- make a fine ensemble.
As Ferrando, tenor Paul Groves displayed a fresh, ardent tone that became meltingly beautiful when he scaled back the volume. Nathan Gunn was terrific as Guglielmo, his hearty baritone brimming with macho confidence until he gets his comeuppance. The leading ladies were almost as good. Soprano Alexandra Deshorties tended to go shrill on some of her high notes but did a fine job in Fiordiligi's two showcase arias. Mezzo Katherine Rohrer, as her sister, Dorabella, made up in verve what she lacked in vocal allure (she offered more of the latter as Paulina, Lisa's friend in "The Queen of Spades").
Two veterans rounded out the cast -- baritone Richard Stilwell an authoritative presence as the manipulative Don Alfonso, and mezzo Frederica von Stade a delight as the wily housemaid Despina. Conductor Anne Manson and the orchestra did a fine job of keeping the score bubbling along, while not slighting the many moments of heartrending emotion.
The production by John Cox has seamlessly updated the action from 18th century Italy to Monte Carlo at the outbreak of World War I. In the opening scene, Don Alfonso is working as a croupier in a casino, making the wager all the more plausible. Cox tends to favor broad humor over subtlety, but he and director Jose Maria Condemi never strike a seriously false note.
The weakest of the offerings is "The Pearl Fishers," written when Bizet was just 24, a full decade before he composed his masterpiece, "Carmen." It's hard to know how this work fits the gambling theme, except that the hero and heroine "roll the dice" by declaring their love despite the risk of death.
The plot of "The Pearl Fishers" is in fact a textbook example of operatic absurdity -- a love triangle set in ancient Ceylon, a country the composer had never visited. It survives in the repertory chiefly because of a magnificent duet for the tenor and baritone ("Au fond du temple saint"), whose main theme the composer wisely reprises throughout the opera. Unfortunately, Bizet wrote little music of interest for the heroine, Leila, the virgin priestess assigned to protect the fishermen while they are at sea collecting pearls.
The cast was more workmanlike than inspired, with the exception of tenor Charles Castronovo as the hunter Nadir. His small but attractive voice negotiated the high tessitura and extended line of his big aria with considerable elegance. Soprano Norah Amsellem didn't fare so well in the coloratura reaches of Leila's music, and baritone William Dazeley lacked the power to make much impact as Zurga, leader of the fishermen. Conductor Sebastian Lang-Lessing did his best to bring out the hints of what Bizet would later accomplish.