The fifth opera would have been Verdi’s “Nabucco”, starring Cornell MacNeil in the title role, with Giuseppe Zampieri as Ismaele, Margarethe Bence as Fenena and Janis Martin as Anna. A photograph of that cast appears below.

[Below: a photograph of the cast for the Thursday night performance of Nabucco, with, from left Ismaele (Giuseppe Zampieri), Abigaille (Lucille Udovick), Nabucco (Cornell MacNeil), Anna (Janis Martin), Zaccaria (Giorgio Tozzi) and Fenena (Margarethe Bence); resized image, based on a photograph, courtesy of the San Francisco Opera.]

But I saw the final Monday night (a “non-subscription” performance, added to meet the demand for tickets) in which Ettore Bastianini was Nabucco and Renato Cioni was Ismaele. Although Bence was supposed to have been the Fenena, circumstances required a cast change. There being no cover for Fenena, Janis Martin, the Anna, was enlisted into service, as will be described below.

An Italian Tribute with an Italo-American Cast

The 1961 “Nabucco” was a new production (revived in 1964 with Tito Gobbi and in 1970 with Cornell MacNeil). San Francisco Opera Historian Arthur Bloomfield illuminates the production’s background: “[It] was an unusally festive event, celebration of the 100th anniversary of Italy’s unification being a central element of the evening.”

Of the production itself Bloomfield noted that “Nabucco was unveiled in a near-Cinemascopic production by Andreas Nomikos which mixed spaciousness (a diagonal shaft of columns backing off toward the eye here, a painted backdrop path flowing into infinity there) with the immediacy that came from a then-novel use of a raked stage . . . [Stage director Paul] Hager had a field day, tumbling terrified Hebrews from the wings onto the sloping temple floor as the first act battle spilled to the stage.”

In retrospect, one notes that this celebration of Italian unification was comprised in the earlier performances by an American-born cast for the principal roles, excepting only the Ismaele or Giuseppe Zampieri. MacNeil (Nabucco), Udovick (Abigaille), Tozzi (Ismaele) and Bence (Fenena) were all American-born. In this, the final performance, the presence of Bastianini and Renato Cioni (replacing MacNeil and Zampieri) doubled the Italian-b0rn principals, but the final tally  still had a majority of American artists in the five principal roles.

Ettore Bastianini’s Nabucco

The San Francisco Opera, whose founding general director was the Italian conductor Gaetano Merola, and whose second general director was the Austrian emigre Kurt Herbert Adler, was at the forefront of promoting reconciliation between the artists and audiences of nations in the postwar era.

Thus, I was among the first American audiences to see such Italian baritones as Giuseppe Taddei and Tito Gobbi, and had only a few days before seen, for the first time, the great baritone Ettore Bastianini. The operatic careers of both Taddei and Bastianini were sidetracked as they were conscripted into the Italian army and air force respectively, and, even though Gobbi was able to perform in Italian houses during the war years, his international career had to await the war’s end.

As I have reported, I saw Bastianini the two times in 1961, including his magnificent Renato (see 50 Year Anniversaries: Brouwenstijn, Bastianini, Zampieri in “Ballo in Maschera” – San Francisco Opera, October 12, 1961), and then, singing with Renata Tebaldi, twice again in 1965, both times as Carlo Gerard in Giordano’s “Andrea Chenier”.

[Below: The young Italian baritone Ettore Bastianini; resized image from ettorebastianini.com.]

I’m usually good on remembering details, but a half century later, I can’t recollect exactly why I changed from the Thursday night to Monday night “Nabucco” (perhaps for reasons related to my college work), although I do recall that my friend, the elderly doorman, Mr Fisher, (whom I mentioned in my feature on the 1961 Leontyne Price “Butterfly”) sat in the seat next to me for that Monday performance.

Later events showed switching the nights was the right choice. Bastianini, singing the title role at age 39, but only once in San Francisco, would die of throat cancer only six years later. (I was able to see MacNeil perform the role several years later.)

Lucille Udovick’s Abigaille

The 31-year Abigaille was Colorado-born Lucille Udovick, most of whose career was based in Europe. Afflicted with a spinal problem that shortened her career, she took on roles requiring a voice of power and in the case of Abigaille, coloratura agility as well.

Her only other role in San Francisco was the title role in the 1961 production of Puccini’s “Turandot” (which was not on my series). I believe she was an under-appreciated artist, aspiring to sing roles that others regarded as “voice-killers” and doing a creditable job of it.

[Below: Colorado soprano Lucille Udovick as Abigaille; resized image, based on a photograph, courtesy of the San Francisco Opera.]

Renato Cioni’s Ismaele

In the five seasons I had been attending Italian operas performed by the San Francisco Opera, I had seen Italian tenors at the Fox Theater in San Diego (Giuseppe Campora as Pinkerton in Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” and Mario Del Monaco in the title role of Verdi’s “Otello”) at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles (Roberto Turrini as Gabriele Adorno in Verdi’s “Simon Boccanegra” and Gianni Raimondi as Edgardo in Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor”) and at the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco (Giuseppe Zampieri, both as Gabriele Adorno and as Riccardo in Verdi’s “Ballo in Maschera”).

On this Monday night, there was a cast change that permitted me to see one of the younger Italian tenors of the postwar era, the 32 year old Renato Cioni. He was a tenor associated with several of the contemporary superstars, including Maria Callas. I myself was to see him perform Rodolfo (with Victoria de los Angeles as Mimi) in my first live performance of Puccini’s “La Boheme” and, subsequently Rodolfo to Renata Tebaldi’s Mimi.

[Below: Renato Cioni as Rodolfo and Renata Tebaldi as Mimi; resized image, based on a historic photograph.]

Cioni was also Elvino to Joan Sutherland’s Amina in my first performance of Bellini’s “La Sonnambula”, and Enzo to Leyla Gencer’s Gioconda in my first performance of Ponchielli’s “La Gioconda”, and Ernani to Leontyne Price’s Leonora in my first performance of Verdi’s “Ernani”.

Cioni remained San Francisco Opera’s most important Italian-born tenor until 1967, when another tenor from Italy, Luciano Pavarotti, six years Cioni’s junior, took San Francisco by storm. Both tenors sang in 1967 and 1968, but from 1969 through 1981, the end of the Kurt Herbert Adler era, Pavarotti would reign as the Italian-born tenor at the San Francisco Opera.

Giorgio Tozzi’s Zaccaria

The Chicago basso, Giorgio Tozzi, whom I had also seen perform the roles of Fiesco Grimaldi in Italian (see 50 Year Anniversaries: “Simon Boccanegra” with Tito Gobbi, Giorgio Tozzi – October 6, 1960) and Tsar Boris in English (see 50 Year Anniversaries: An American “Boris Godunov” Starring Tozzi and Dalis – San Francisco Opera, September 21, 1961), returned to the Verdian basso cantante repertory as the Hebrew prophet Zaccaria.

It was still regarded as sufficiently unusual for an American basso to be considered an international calibre opera star that RCA Victor Records’ publicity department renamed George Tozzi as Giorgio. But Tozzi, both as artist and teacher, did a large part in establishing that high reputation that so many American bass-baritones and basso cantantes have had (and still have) in the opera houses of the world.

[Below: Illinois basso Giorgio Tozzi; resized image, based on a promotional photograph.]

Janis Martin’s Fenena

According to Arthur Bloomfield’s history, Janis Martin received the request Friday night, October 20th, to learn the part of Fenena in order to perform it the evening of October 23rd. (Some accounts have an even shorter duration.) General Director Adler enlisted San Francisco Opera’s pre-eminent assistant to the artists, Otto Guth (soon to become a favorite of Pavarotti, who worked with Guth for so many of his role debuts).

As I entered the opera house, the buzz about the 22-year old Martin learning an entire role in little more than a day was a main topic of conversation, and a warmly sympathetic audience (and a well-cued prompter) was in her corner. It was a proper “star is born” triumph.

Martin continued to have a full plate of smaller comprimario, some little more than a walk-on, each season through 1964 (in which “Nabucco” was revived for Gobbi, with Martin cast, from the earliest stages, as Fenena). Two years after that, Martin returned to San Francisco Opera in major mezzo-soprano roles, including Venus in “Tannhauser” with Jess Thomas and Regine Crespin. Then as her voice matured, she tackled the dramatic soprano repertory, ultimately singing all three Bruennhildes in one of the 1990 cycles of Wagner’s “Der Ring des Nibelungen”.

[Below: California mezzo-soprano Janis Martin; edited image, based on a promotional photograph.]

Francesco Molinari-Pradelli was the Conductor. Gwen Curatilo replaced Janis Martin in the small role of Anna.

Even though I never saw Udovick again, and Bastinini only twice more in 1965, I saw Cioni in several major roles through 1968. Tozzi performed at San Francisco Opera through the 1978 season (memorably performing Baron Scarpia to Magda Olivero’s Tosca), and Janis Martin was an important presence in the San Francisco Opera cast lists in many seasons through 1990.

It was a thrilling end to a wonderful six-opera sampler of the 1961 season of the San Francisco Opera.

I traded the fifth opera (Verdi’s “Nabucco” starring Cornell MacNeil) for a later performance of the same opera, starring Ettore Bastianini). The sixth opera was the American premiere of Britten’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream”. As appealing as the idea of seeing the Britten work might have been, limitations of funds and available time (with term papers and mid-terms looming) caused me to decide that should I trade the opera by the 48 year old Britten  for the work of another composer who was born 100 years earlier than Britten – Richard Wagner.

Having already seen San Francisco Opera perform two of Wagner’s works with great casts – “Die Walkuere” with Birgit Nilsson, Leonie Rysanek, Nell Rankin, Ludwig Suthaus and Hans Hotter (see Die Walkuere – November 4, 1956 ) and “Lohengrin” with Sandor Konya and Irene Dalis (see 50 Year Anniversaries: Sandor Konya, Irene Dalis in “Lohengrin” – San Francisco Opera, October 27, 1960), I couldn’t resist the cast that General Director Kurt Herbert Adler had assembled for Wagner’s “Die Meistersinger von Nuernberg”.

Paul Schoeffler’s Hans Sachs

The Hans Sachs was the great German baritone Paul Schoeffler – my first Barak in Richard Strauss’ “Die Frau ohne Schatten” (see see The Woman Without an Equal – Leonie Rysanek in “Frau ohne Schatten”: San Francisco Opera, September 24, 1960) and Don Pizarro in Beethoven’s “Fidelio”.

[Below: Paul Schoeffler was Hans Sachs; resized image, based on a photograph, courtesy of the San Francisco Opera.]

Here was Schoeffler, a master of the German vocal arts, portraying Hans Sachs, the greatest of the Master Singers. The audience was treated to an evening of lyrical singing, in which Wagner’s legato lines were observed by all three of the principals (the Sachs, the Walther and the Eva).  It was as if Schoeffler were the embodiment of Sachs.

Lisa Della Casa’s Eva

The Eva was the Swiss soprano, Lisa Della Casa, the great interpreter of the operas of Richard Strauss and Mozart, who is one of the most physically beautiful opera stars ever to grace the operatic stage, reminding many of such great mid-20th century film stars as Elizabeth Taylor. At 42, she was a sumptuous Eva, singing as beautifully as she looked (even in a blonde wig that covered her stunning brunette locks).

[Below: Lisa Della Casa is Eva; edited image, based on a photograph, courtesy of the San Francisco Opera.]

Della Casa was an engaging actress. San Francisco Opera historian Arthur Bloomfield’s adjective to describe her voice was “velvety”, and that seems to me as apt a description as any.

She appeared in two seasons at the San Francisco Opera (1958 and 1961) for a total of nine performances at the War Memorial and five at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. She had also appeared in 1961 as the Countess Almaviva in Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro”, but this performance as Eva was the only time I was ever to see Della Casa.

Fritz Uhl’s Walther von Stolzing

Although I was appreciative of Fritz Uhl’s Florestan, with its great and challenging aria Gott! welch’ Dunkel hier! (see 50 Year Anniversaries: Brouwenstijn, Uhl, Schoeffler, Horne, in “Fidelio” at the War Memorial – San Francisco Opera, October 5, 1961), it was the much larger role of Walther that I felt truly displayed his lyrical vocal gifts.

[Below: Fritz Uhl as Walther von Stolzing; resized image, based on a photograph, courtesy of the San Francisco Opera.]

Alas, this was the last time I saw Fritz Uhl.  No Wagner was performed in 1962, and the Wagnerian tenor roles for the two seasons after that would be Jon Vicker’s Siegmund in “Die Walkuere” and Sandor Konya in the title role of “Parsifal”.  By mid-decade Jess Thomas, a heldentenor with San Francisco Opera roots, would become a dominant presence at the War Memorial Opera House, and would have first call on the Wagnerian tenor roles for years to come.

Geraint Evan’s Sixtus Beckmesser

Although this performance was the last time I would see Schoeffler, Della Casa and Uhl, there was one of the principals, Geraint Evans (later Sir Geraint), whom I was to see many more times in San Francisco. The Welsh bass-baritone had already become a consummate character actor in San Francisco.  Debuting in the 1959 season, in the three seasons from 1959 to 1961 he performed 33 times (20 in San Francisco, the remainder in Los Angeles) in nine different roles, including the title role in Berg’s “Wozzeck” and Figaro in Mozart’s “Nozze di Figaro”.

I had already seen him as Paolo Albiani in Verdi’s “Simon Boccanegra” (see 50 Year Anniversaries: “Simon Boccanegra” with Tito Gobbi, Giorgio Tozzi – October 6, 1960). As one would expect, his irascible Sixtus Beckmesser, one of the great comic roles in Wagner, was a striking portrait.

[Below: Geraint Evans as Sixtus Beckmesser; resized image, based on a photograph, courtesy of the San Francisco Opera.]

In my notes to myself, I made the observation that of all the performances I had seen in 1961, the most completely satisfying of the amazing group was this Leopold Ludwig-conducted “Meistersinger” – my personal pick for “best performance of the season”.

But there was one more performance for which I had tickets, and that one, Verdi’s “Nabucco”, turned out to be one of the most memorable nights in San Francisco Opera history.

Between San Francisco Opera’s 1956 and 1960 seasons (including its Southern California tours) I had seen a lustrous group of legendary Verdian performances: sopranos Renata Tebaldi (Maria Amelia in “Boccanegra”), Leyla Gencer (Violetta in “La Traviata”), Herva Nelli (the title role in “Aida”) and Gabriella Tucci (Maria Amelia); mezzo-soprano Blanche Thebom (Amneris in “Aida”); tenors Mario del Monaco (the title role in “Otello”) and  Giuseppe Zampieri (Gabriele Adorno in “Boccanegra”); baritones Robert Merrill (Germont in “Traviata”), Mario Zanasi (Iago in “Otello) and Tito Gobbi (Boccanegra); and bassos Boris Christoff and Giorgio Tozzi (both as Fiesco in “Boccanegra”) and Nicola Moscona (Ramfis in “Aida”).

The “Ballo” performance, like the “Aida” and  ”Otello” was conducted by Fernando Molinari-Pradelli. The “Ballo” evening added two important Italian opera singers to my “observation” list of distinguished Verdians: baritone Ettore Bastianini (Renato) and coloratura soprano Graziella Sciutti (Oscar).

Notes on the Vocal Performances

The San Francisco “Ballo” was my second and last performance by Zampieri (Riccardo), whom I only saw in the two Verdi roles. But Zampieri’s stylish Gabriele Adorno and Riccardo were a convincing introduction to the excitement produced by a healthy Verdian spinto tenor voice, particularly when heard in the sonic splendor of the War Memorial Opera House.

The opera’s very first scene provides first Zampieri’s Riccardo and then Bastianini’s Renato the opportunity to display their vocal powers in their respective arias La rivedra nell’estasi and Alle vita che t’arride. That scene would be memorable for those arias alone, but the scene also includes Oscar’s brilliant ballata and ends with a rousing chorus, in which the Riccardo and his courtiers leave  his chambers disguising themselves for their encounter with Ulrica.

That finale always seems as energetic as a Parisian can-can. In fact, every scene in “Ballo” can and should be a tour de force. Molinari-Pradelli and this cast provided just that.

[Below: Renato (Ettore Bastianini, right) brings news of the realm to Riccardo (Giuseppe Zampieri, left); edited image, based on a photograph, courtesy of the San Francisco Opera.]

“Ballo” also permitted Brouwenstijn, who had debuted with the San Francisco Opera a week in her signature role of Leonore in Beethoven’s “Fidelio” (see 50 Year Anniversaries: Brouwenstijn, Uhl, Schoeffler, Horne, in “Fidelio” at the War Memorial – San Francisco Opera, October 5, 1961) to demonstrate that she, performing Amelia, was equally great as a Verdian dramatic soprano.

Molinari-Pradelli, who was one of a group of European-based conductors that Adler used to recruit talent, especially during the first decade he was at the San Francisco Opera helm, had conducted “Ballo” in Amsterdam starring Brouwenstijn and Zampieri. Surely the long association between conductor, soprano and tenor, assured that the extended duet Teco io sto for Brouwenstijn and Zampieri would be triumphant, with Brouwenstijn’s beautiful phrasing portraying the agony that this tortured character feels.

In my notes to myself at the end of my six opera season I expressed the opinion that Brouwenstijn’s Amelia was the greatest female performance I had seen that year, and that Bastianini’s Renato was the greatest male performance.

In reflecting on Zampieri, I believe that the performances in which I saw him were at the height of his career. Tenor Luciano Pavarotti described him just a few years later as a great tenor, who had become very wealthy, but was not singing well, and was canceling often. Pavarotti noted that although Zampieri was popular with opera audiences in Vienna and with the superstar Austrian Conductor Herbert von Karajan, Pavarotti was asked to take over some of Zampieri’s Viennese assignments, which proved to be a major stepping stone to Pavarotti’s international success.

[Below: Dutch soprano Gre Brouwenstijn was Amelia; image based on a promotional photograph.]

Scuitti was a sprightly Oscar, memorable in the ensembles. Although she had other assignments in the 1961 season, this and a 1970 turn as Despina in the premiere of a new production of “Cosi fan Tutte” by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, were the only times I heard her in live performance. (She later was a stage director for three later productions at the San Francisco Opera in 1984, 1997-1998 and 2000.)

The Ulrica was the 31 year old American contralto Margarethe Bence. Born into a German family, her career was based in postwar Europe, particularly at the Stuttgart Opera. She was originally expected, in addition to her Ulricas, to sing three performances as Fenena in Verdi’s “Nabucco”. However, on the night of Friday, September 20, the second “Ballo” of the season  (according to San Francisco Opera historian Arthur Bloomfield), soprano Janis Martin, who was performing the much smaller role of Anna in “Nabucco”, was informed that, over the weekend, she must learn the role of Fenena so as to replace Bence in  that coming Monday’s (September 23) “Nabucco” performance.

Thus, one of the great feats in San Francisco Opera history came to be, as Martin, a future Bruennhilde in three operas of Wagner’s “Der Ring des Nibelungen”, was provided coaching to have a role ready for performance on extremely short notice. Thus Bence, a noted Bach specialist who herself sang at the Wagnerian festivals in Bayreuth, was best known in San Francisco as being the artist whose indisposition led to a major boost to Janis Martin’s operatic career.

[Below: Contralto Margarethe Bence was the Ulrica; resized image of a promotional photograph.]

The San Francisco 1961 sets utilized the Swedish setting of the story, in the court of Swedish King Gustavus III, the 18th century monarch whose assassination at a masked ball was the inspiration of the story. Sweden was the location for a new production at San Francisco Opera (for Jose Carreras and Katia Ricciarelli) in 1977, as well as the currently used Zack Brown production that was purchased in 2006 from another company. But the next outing for “Ballo” in San Francisco would be a new production for Leontyne Price and Sandor Konya, in which the opera was located in Boston.

Some Comments on a Half Century of “Ballo” Productions

Verdi’s “Ballo in Maschera” is one of the most musically and dramatically effective of Italian operas. It could be considered a docu-opera in the sense that, like Donizetti’s “Anna Bolena”, “Maria Stuarda” and “Roberto Devereux” or Verdi’s “Don Carlos”, there is a mix of historical fact and total fiction. Gustavus III of Sweden was indeed assassinated at a masked ball in 1792. A few factoids about Gustavus were incorporated into the opera’s libretto: Gustavus did have a fortune teller predict his assassination; he did receive a letter (in this case, from a man) warning him about the conspiracy to kill him at the upcoming masked ball; and he did pardon his assassins as he was dying.

Onto this rootstock of historical anecdotes is grafted a story that has virtually nothing to do with Gustavus or  of Swedish affairs of state. Three people are in a situation not unusual in human history – a man (in the opera, Renato) is married, and his close friend (in the opera Riccardo) and his wife (Amelia) find themselves in a repressed sexual attraction to each other. But so long as that attraction is not actualized, there is nothing about which anyone should be concerned.

The opera’s plot unfolds through a series of coincidences. Riccardo overhears Amelia’s confession that she is struggling with her attraction to him and wants to subdue it. With that information, Riccardo  pursues her in a manner that results in their discovery by her husband in a compromising situation, and that suggests to the husband that his friend and wife have betrayed him.

Furious, the husband kills his friend, then finds, to his regret, that the facts, as he understood them, were wrong. (Of course, had the husband not surprised the couple at a time they were both vulnerable, the imagined betrayal might have become a reality.)

There are several mischiefs that interfere with our enjoying the presentation of this rather simple story. One is the mid-19th century political geography, in which the political power structure that governed cities that might wish to present Verdi’s opera, were adamant that no opera about crowned heads of Europe being assassinated be performed.

That non-starter was addressed ultimately by the mischief of moving the action of the opera from Sweden to Colonial Boston, even if some of the characters (i.e., Ulrica, Oscar) or the situations (masked balls) didn’t seem to fit in the Massachusetts of the Puritan era or the New England of Colonial times. I have written elsewhere that the opera’s characters and story would better fit the Southern U. S. cities of Charleston (South Carolina), Savannah or New Orleans, and the New Orleans Opera indeed has located the opera in the Crescent City (see Louisiana Locale, Impressive Casting for Paul Groves’ First “Ballo” – New Orleans Opera, November 18, 2011.)

In the mid-20th century, with no local censors around sensitive about the assassination of 18th century crowned monarchs, it became fashionable to return the action to the Sweden of Gustavus III, the Swedish monarch who actually was shot to death at a masked ball. Since the opera contains the anecdotal historical bits (fortune-telling, warning notes, pardoning of assassins), it seems harmless enough, as long as one understands that the plot about the repressed romance between Gustavus and Amelia is not historical, and is certainly not the motivation that led the Swedish count, whom we associate with Renato, to assassinate Gustavus.

But another mischief arose out of the opera’s return to Stockholm. The historical King Gustavus (if his sexual orientation could be accurately identified from the bizarre accounts we have of his sexual practices), seemed to be more gay than not. Because in the late 20th century, some people noticed that openly gay characters were under-represented in opera, that if the original Swedish setting of “Ballo” could be restored, that Gustavus could be portrayed as gay.

That Verdi and his librettist gave us nothing in the story line of the opera, be it situated in Boston or Stockholm, to make this gay orientation plausible, seemed not to daunt the likes of concept directors Goeran Gentele or Goetz Friedrich (see Power Verdi: Chanev, Marambio, Ataneli in Deutsche Oper Berlin “Ballo” – April 25, 2009).

I have argued in the past that it is possible in at least one very specific case to improve an opera’s dramatic logic if two characters are portrayed as gay, whether or not that would have occurred to the composer (see The Donizetti Revival, Second Stage: Radvanovsky, Grigolo in Pascoe’s WNO “Lucrezia Borgia” – November 17, 2008). However, the mid- and late 20th century notion that some purpose is advanced through gratuitous changes in the sexual orientation of characters, even if such changes make nonsense of the opera’s plot, seems to me to be a disservice to everyone.

Having seen well-conceived, easily defended and thoroughly enjoyable productions of “Ballo” set in Sweden, in Boston, and even in Louisiana, I am an agnostic as to what should be the geographical home for the opera, but do feel this is an opera to be played straight, preserving the storyline to which Verdi gave his approval.

It was the second of three occasions I had to witness the legendary performances of German bass-baritone Paul Schoeffler, whom I had seen the previous season as Barak in Richard Strauss’ “Die Frau ohne Schatten”.

Yet, even with all the memorable performances from Brouwenstijn, Schoeffler, and Uhl, it was Marilyn Horne in her role debut as Marzelline, who was to become by far the most famous of the artists with American audiences.

Brouwenstijn in San Francisco

Brouwenstijn, 46 years old in 1961, was heralded as the world’s greatest Leonore in Beethoven’s only opera. She was a tall, handsome woman that reminded many  of the contemporary superstar actress, Ingrid Bergman. Equally accomplished in the jugendlich Wagnerian soprano and dramatic Verdi roles (I was to see her one week later in one of the latter), she was a credible actress, and one I would place in the first rank of the great soprano voices that I heard at San Francisco’s War Memorial Opera House.

Brouwenstijn sang only two roles at the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco – Leonore in “Fidelio” and Amelia in “Ballo in Maschera”, each role performed twice. I saw her first performance of each role, meaning I saw half of her total performances in San Francisco.

[Dutch soprano Gre Brouwenstijn as Leonore; resized image of a photograph by Carolyn Mason Jones, courtesy of the San Francisco Opera.]

She sang five other performances as part of the San Francisco Opera Company –  one each of “Fidelio” in the tour cities of Berkeley, Los Angeles and San Diego, and a single performance in the title role of Verdi’s “Aida” and as Amelia in Verdi’s “Un Ballo in Maschera” in Los Angeles.

Fritz Uhl’s Florestan

Her Florestan was the 33 year old Austrian tenor Fritz Uhl, appearing in San Francisco the year after he recorded the role of Tristan opposite Birgit Nilsson’s Isolde in Conductor Georg Solti’s Decca recording of Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde”. Like Brouwenstijn, Uhl sang only four performances in San Francisco, two as Florestan and two as Walther in Wagner’s “Die Meistersinger”.

Also, like Brouwenstijn, I saw him in each role, meaning that I saw half of all of his performances in San Francisco. Besides the four nights in San Francisco, he appeared as Florestan in the tour cities of Berkeley, Los Angeles and San Diego, and twice as Walther in Los Angeles for a total of nine performances with the company.

[Austrian tenor Fritz Uhl was Florestan; resized image of a promotional photograph.]

Uhl had a lighter, more lyrical voice than Ludwig Suthaus, the other heldentenor that I had seen five years earlier (who had been Tristan on the famous HMV recording with Kirsten Flagstad). In fact, Uhl had sung the title role of Gounod’s “Faust” in his 20s. He made several studio recordings, and appeared in the Bayreuth Festivals. Obviously a rising star at the time I saw him, he sang beautifully.

Uhl was a contemporary of Vienna’s Leonie Rysanek, and one reflects on how young these two artists were when they took on the dramatic roles in the German repertory by their late 20s. This seems particularly surprising for Uhl, who possessed a voice that, were he beginning his career today, might well have spent a decade or so in the French and Italian lyric repertories, before moving into any Wagner role, much less Tristan.

Marilyn Horne’s Marzelline

The San Francisco Opera’s General Director assigned the role of Marzelline, rather than to a light-voiced soubrette as often happens, instead to the larger voiced mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne. This decision always made sense to me. After all, Beethoven wrote less than a half a dozen arias and no principal in the opera has two to sing. Requesting Horne to sing this role (containing one such Beethoven aria O waer ich schon mit dir vereint) to me was a welcome casting decision by Maestro Adler.

Although the 26 year old Horne had appeared three times the previous season as Marie in Berg’s “Wozzeck” and had one of the smaller roles in Puccini’s “Gianni Schicchi” for a single performance, her role debut in this first “Fidelio” was only the fifth time she had ever appeared in performance at the War Memorial Opera House.

[Below: Mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne as Marzelline; edited image of a Carolyn Mason Jones photograph, courtesy of the San Francisco Opera.]

Paul Schoeffler’s Pizarro

Many of my first performances of specific operas were performed by the San Francisco Opera in those postwar decades during which the European operatic infrastructure was still being rebuilt from the destructiveness of World War II. The great European singers were welcomed in San Francisco and its tour cities. Therefore, so many of my early experiences with opera were in performances in which legendary singers appeared. Thus, my first Don Pizarro in “Fidelio” was the bass baritone Paul Schoeffler. Portraying a villainous functionary of an oppressive state, he sang Pizarro’s aria Ha! Welch ein Augenblick with the expected sinister dramatic flair, but still beautifully.

[Bass-baritone Paul Schoeffler as Don Pizarro; edited image of a Carolyn Mason Jones, courtesy of the San Francisco Opera.]

In previous posts, I have referred to Schoeffler’s operatic career in Germany, during decades in which he was unavailable to countries at war with that nation. (See The Woman Without an Equal – Leonie Rysanek in “Frau ohne Schatten”: San Francisco Opera, September 24, 1960 and 50 Year Anniversaries: Schwarzkopf, Boehme in San Francisco “Rosenkavalier” – September 29, 1960.)

San Francisco Opera’s Adler, who himself fled Vienna for the United States in the year of the Anschluss, welcomed such German artists who did not or could not flee such as Schoeffler, Suthaus, and Elizabeth Schwarzkopf to his company. Thus, I was able to experience first hand seeing great artists who were trained in the German performance traditions of each role.

Mid-season 1961

On three consecutive Thursday nights, I had seen great masterpieces by Mussorgsky, Puccini and Beethoven, with performances by Leontyne Price, Gre Brouwenstijn, Marilyn Horne, Irene Dalis, Sandor Konya, Fritz Uhl, Paul Schoeffler and Giorgio Tozzi. Yet I was only half through my season, with three more operas I had never before seen, and more legendary performances by great artists of the day on which to report.

[Below: Lieutenant Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton (Sandor Konya) is pleased finally to be alone with Cio Cio San (Leontyne Price); edited image, based on a Carolyn Mason Jones photograph, courtesy of the San Francisco Opera.]

Had casting considerations worked out, I might have first seen Price four years earlier in the title role of Verdi’s “Aida” in San Diego. The reasons why this might have been demonstrates how different casting for opera performance at major opera houses is now than 54 years ago. Since one of Callas’ commitments was a performance of the title role of Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor” at the Fox Theater in San Diego, and since the unknown Gencer was scheduled to sing Violetta in Verdi’s “La Traviata” at the Fox the previous week, there was concern that having a “non-star” like Gencer sing both Violetta and Lucia for the only two performances in an important tour city would not go over well with San Diegans (nor sell enough tickets).

The solution was to replace “Lucia” with Verdi’s “Aida” (See Callas Fired, An Opera Changed – S. F. Opera’s “Aida” at the Fox, November 7, 1957.) But of the two available Aidas on the tour, Leontyne Price was an unknown, whereas Herva Nelli was the soprano star of the Toscanini complete recordings of Verdi’s “Otello” and “Requiem”, so Nelli was given the San Diego assignment. In hindsight, of course, either the Gencer Violetta/Gencer Lucia or the Gencer Violetta/Price Aida would have given San Diego performances of historical significance back to back. (I saw Gencer in both her roles that season, by traveling to Los Angeles to see her Lucia where the San Francisco Opera company tour performed all the season’s operas.)

[Below: Leontyne Price as Cio Cio San at the Metropolitan Opera; resized image of a Louis Melancon photograph, from www.nytimes.com.]

That Thursday night “Butterfly” was the second of the only two performances of the opera at the War Memorial that season, and those two performances were the only times that Price sang the role of Cio Cio San in San Francisco.

I found the performance riveting. Paradoxically, although the character is 16 years old, this is not a part for teenagers to perform. The soprano portraying her must have a large, mature voice and Price’s in the 1960s had achieved its full maturity.

However, this was not one of the roles on which her performance reputation is based. The San Francisco Opera a half century ago was one of the opera companies where singers and their recordings influenced the season’s repertory – sometimes to give an artist performance experience before the recording was made, but more usually to promote the artist’s new recordings in the San Francisco Bay Area (and of course, Los Angeles and the other tour cities). Price’s appearance in San Francisco’s “Butterfly” coincided with the RCA Victor recording of the opera, which provides a studio quality documentary of her vocal sound at the time I saw her.

Her Pinkerton, the Hungarian tenor Sandor Konya (who lived his life elsewhere in Europe, rather than behind the Iron Curtain in the country of his birth), himself had a major studio recording in the title role of “Lohengrin”, but, otherwise, he is regrettably under-recorded. His large spinto voice and luxurious legato fit nicely with the War Memorial Opera House acoustics.

[Below: Sandor Konya as Pinkerton; resized image of an historic photograph.]

I had seen Konya twice before – as Dick Johnson in Puccini’s “Girl of the Golden West” (50th Birthday Celebrations: Dorothy Kirsten Rides High in “Girl of the Golden West” – San Francisco Opera, October 1, 1960) and the title role of Wagner’s “Lohengrin” (50 Year Anniversaries: Sandor Konya, Irene Dalis in “Lohengrin” – San Francisco Opera, October 27, 1960) – at the War Memorial Opera House the previous season, and was to see him several times since.

Konya was one of the most ubiquitous of San Francisco’s lead tenors in the first half of the 1960s, but then became a regular at New York City’s Metropolitan Opera, and sang only one performnce in San Francisco afterwards. But that one performance  (in which he substituted for an indisposed tenor), was a 1974 Pinkerton to Pilar Lorengar’s Butterfly. I had the good fortune to see that performance, from the first row, sitting just to the left of the conductor, Kurt Herbert Adler, who was also the conductor for Price and Konya in 1962.

The other principals were Metropolitan Opera mezzo-soprano Mildred Miller (Suzuki) and Croatian baritone Vladimir Ruzdak, the latter described by San Francisco Opera historian and this website’s guest contributor Arthur Bloomfield as possessing a “big, open, Italianate sound”. This was the only season that either artist sang with the San Francisco Opera. Although each sang three roles in the season, I saw each of them only this once.

By the end of the 20th century “Madama Butterfly” was the hands down most popular opera written in that century. With a tenth of the 21st behind us, the opera seems to be increasing in popularity – and, judging from such studies as Julian Budden’s authoritative analysis of all of Puccini’s operas, at last also in critical respect.

The changes between 1961 and 2011 in performance style for “Butterfly” were not as dramatic as for “Boris Godunov” which I had seen the week before. However, the 20th century preference for the three act verson of “Butterfly” has given way in all of the opera houses I have attended this century to a two act version. There are a couple of alternatives from the original and the three revisions that Puccini composed, as how to perform the opera in two acts. Either way, the two act version allows the audience to experience Butterfly’s all night vigil waiting for Pinkerton’s ship, without the interruption of a half-hour intermission midway.

Apres l’opera

I confess to not being an opera goer who looks forward to going backstage to greet the artists. It never really appealed to me, after an exhilirating performance, to just stand around in the backstage area for what can be a considerable time waiting for exhausted artists to get out of their costumes and take off their makeup, so they can exchange pleasantries with those few of their fans able to get past the stage door.

However, at the “Boris Godunov” performance the week before (see 50 Year Anniversaries: An American “Boris Godunov” Starring Tozzi and Dalis – San Francisco Opera, September 21, 1961), I had gotten into a discussion with an elderly gentleman, a Mr Fisher, one of the War Memorial’s doormen, whose duties were confined to those allowing those people who had already entered the opera house, to leave momentarily for whatever purpose. Since there was little for him to do, he loved to talk to me about opera. He continued the conversations before and during the “Butterfly” performance intermissions. Then he said to me, “If you don’t have to get back to your dorm right away, I’ll take you backstage to meet Leontyne Price”.

So, this doorman, who seemed to have powers that exceeded all other such functionaries I have met since, at opera’s end took me through one of the doors from the opera house’s main lobby to the backstage area. We ran into conductor Francesco Molinari-Pradelli and Mr Fisher said to me, have Maestro sign your program. Molinari-Pradelli leafed through it until he found the notice that he was conducting the new production of Verdi’s “Nabucco” and signed with a flourish. Then Mr Fisher introduced me to Kurt Herbert Adler, who also signed the program.

Then a group of about eight of us waited at Miss Price’s dressing room door until she opened it and greeted us and autographed our programs. One of the party said, “Miss Price, I must commend you for your stoic performance”. She replied  in her charming Mississippi accent. “Oh, I save the crawling around for Scala” (pronouncing Scala with the short “a” as in “scalper”).

That’s my report about a performance of “Madama Butterfly”, that I attended as a college Freshman, 50  years ago. As I write this, I am looking at that 1961 “Butterfly” program with those autographs from Leontyne Price and the Maestri Adler and Molinari-Pradelli, and remember that this all came about simply from striking up a conversation about opera with Mr Fisher, who guarded the only door at the War Memorial Opera House that patrons in 1961 were allowed to exit and then re-enter.

Even as an entering college Freshman, I had a taste for opera and so invested in my very first subscription to the San Francisco Opera, an orchestra seat on the center aisle in Row V. In those days the San Francisco Opera had the “regular subscription series” that constituted the Tuesday and Friday nights in each week of the Fall season. There were two other series, one Thursday and one Saturday night. I took the six opera Thursday night series.

[Below: Basso Giorgio Tozzi as Tsar Boris Godunov; resized image, based on a photograph, courtesy of the San Francisco Opera.]

The first opera was Mussorgsky’s “Boris Godunov” in my first live performance of that work, and the first performance of the opera that season.

I had, in my early teens, invested in the four disk long-play album of Rimsky-Korsakov’s radically (and quite elegantly) re-orchestrated version of the opera in Russian, with Boris Christoff and Nicolai Gedda (both of whom I saw in San Francisco Opera performances, but neither in a Russian opera). But this performance was in English, as would be later San Francisco Opera performances in 1966. Rimsky-Korsakov’s orchestration was used in 1961, and was still considered the edition of choice by most opera houses.

Although this was the seventh season in which “Boris” was presented at San Francisco Opera’s War Memorial Opera House, it was the first time ever in English. In 1956, it had been mounted in Russian for Christoff (with Hans Hotter as Rangoni, the only time in his career singing a role in Russian), but the previous years when the title role was assumed by Ezio Pinza (1945, 1946 and 1948) and Nicola Rossi-Lemeni (1951 and 1953) the opera was sung in Italian.

So my performance, only the ninth “Boris” ever performed at the War Memorial, was the first ever in English and the first with a basically all American or at least all English-speaking cast in the main roles. The False Dmitri was Albert Lance, an Australian, in his American debut season, whose successful career in France has caused him to be described as a “French tenor”. Of the principal named roles, only the Rangoni,  Plinio Clabassi, was European born.

Although Giorgio Tozzi was of Italian descent, he was born in Chicago and named George. It was the publicity department of RCA Victor records that Italianized his first name. This was the second role I had seen Tozzi perform, after seeing him first as Fiesco Grimaldi in Verdi’s “Simon Boccanegra” (see 50 Year Anniversaries: “Simon Boccanegra” with Tito Gobbi, Giorgio Tozzi – October 6, 1960. Four years before that, I had seen Christoff perform Fiesco. (The next San Francisco performances of each of the roles that Christoff had sung in 1956 were sung by Tozzi in 1960 or 1961.)

My colleague Arthur Bloomfield’s remarks recorded in  his 1922-1978 The San Francisco Opera about the 1961 “Boris” gives his impressions of the staging: “Tozzi offered a lyric but reasonably gripping Boris, minus rugged Slavic vocalism but not prettified. [Stage Director Dino] Yannopoulos went for broke, practically crucifying our tragic protagonist at the end of the Clock Scene as he fell back, arms outstretched, against a fallen table. At another point in the show Herbert Handt, the Shouisky, could be caught peering over the back of Boris’ chair like some Charles Addams character who’d just come out of a manhole”. The American character tenor Handt, later a conductor, appeared at San Francisco Opera only in the 1961 season.

The Varlaam was Kieth Engen, a California basso almost whose entire 40 year career was based in Munich, and who changed his first name from “Keith”, so that the German pronunciation of his name name sounded as “Keet” instead of “Kite”. He sang five roles in San Francisco in 1961 (I saw him in three of them) but appeared there only that season. Of him, Bloomfield remarked “The busy Mr Engen was an unusually boozy Varlaam who reeled more vigourously than his predecessors”. Other members of this “American Boris” cast included the Pimen of New York born Joshua Hecht (a student of superstar soprano Rosa Ponselle) and the Missail of Howard Fried.

Although Engen, Handt and Clabassi spent only one season in San Francisco, the Marina, Irene Dalis, had a much longer association with the opera company. She was my first Amne (see The Woman Without an Equal – Leonie Rysanek in “Frau ohne Schatten”: San Francisco Opera, September 24, 1960) and Ortrud (see 50 Year Anniversaries: Sandor Konya, Irene Dalis in “Lohengrin” – San Francisco Opera, October 27, 1960) with several more roles in operas to come that I would be seeing for the first times.

[Below: Irene Dalis as Marina; edited image, based on a photograph, courtesy of the San Francisco Opera.]

In these seasons, in which an opera was often performed only a couple of times a season, a role might be split between two artists. In the “full subscription” performance three or so weeks later, Marilyn Horne was the Marina. At each “Boris” performance the evening’s Marina was appearing in the role the only time she sang it at the War Memorial Opera House. (It was Dalis that was Marina during the single “Boris” performance in Los Angeles.) There were very few roles that Dalis and Horne shared in their respective repertoires, but there was one that I saw Dalis perform in 1962 and Horne in 1966 – Princess Eboli in Verdi’s “Don Carlo”.

The language in which “Boris” was performed in San Francisco (Italian in the 1940s and early 1950s, English in 1961 and 1966 and Russian in 1956 and from 1973 on) is not the only change in the performance styles that one can note over the years. Because there exist two separate versions composed by Mussorgsky, each of which has one or more scenes that the other does not, there has never been a definitive version for performance in San Francisco that has “settled” how the opera will be staged. For example, Marina’s and Rangoni’s scenes do not appear at all in the 1869 version (the one chosen by San Diego Opera for performance in 2007 and by the San Francisco Opera in 2008).

[Below: Giorgio Tozzi as Boris Godunov; resized image, based on a historical photograph from The Telegraph of London's website at telegraph.co.uk.]

And in the early performance history in San Francisco, the version with Marina’s “Polish scene” was used but the scenes with Rangoni were deleted. Over the years, the indecision of what to keep and what to use has provided many opportunities for learned essays in the opera programs and elsewhere about how the opera should be performed.

But in 1961, seeing my first “Boris” in person with a great cast in the wonderful War Memorial Opera House was a great joy. I was hearing the opera with the vibrant Rimsky-Korsakov orchestration, that remains a forbidden pleasure, even as the fashion has long-since moved to performing the opera with the orchestration that Mussorgsky himself wrote. This, of course, is a topic to which I will return again (and again) in the future.

For my reviews of more recent performances, each of which discusses the performing editions and production choices, see: World Treasure: a Stunning Dallas Opera Revival of Tarkovsky’s Classic, Insightful “Boris Godunov” – April 1, 2011, and also,

Ramey at S. F. Opera in Fascinating 1869 “Boris” Production – November 2, 2008, and also,

Furlanetto’s, San Diego Opera’s, Compelling 1869 Version of “Boris Godunov” – January 30, 2007.

This is a subject that we will return to in future posts, discussing in more detail why it was so in the past and why it is less so now, but this particular post is one of a series of features observing the 50 year anniversaries of operatic performances I attended as a teenager and thoughts that each occasion evokes.

Of the five performances I saw in 1960, I have left the discussion of the 50th anniversary of my first “Rosenkavalier” to the end of December 2010 for two reasons. First, next month is the hundredth anniversary of the opera’s first performance. I am scheduled to review a performance of that opera just a few weeks after the 100th birthday at San Diego Opera, and it seems right to concentrate my discussions of performances of Richard Strauss’ most famous opera nearer to the centennial date.

Second, historical forces had created a political and military alignment of the four nations listed as the home countries of opera’s standard repertory. Each of the four during the greater part of the first half of the 1940s were enemy nations of the United States of America and its wartime allies.

Kurt Herbert Adler and the Movement for Postwar Reconciliation

German National Socialism incorporated (many would say expropriated) German art and music, with operatic performance adhering to doctrinal considerations. Two of the major Nazi leaders were rival patrons of the two largest Berlin opera houses, Goebbels of the Deutsche Oper Berlin and Goering of the Berlin Staatsoper. Unlike today, in which most major international opera stars contract with individual companies for a month or two at a time, a singer was sometimes associated year round with a single house. In the German and Austrian houses, Nazi party membership was expected, and in the case of the rare artists who were exempted from such a requirement (such as heldentenor Ludwig Suthaus), one knew that powerful patrons shielded them.

An ambitious artist might engage in maneuvers in house politics to advance a career or (a point made by Arthur Bloomfield in our recent correspondence on this point) resign themselves to a surface acceptance of  the unpalatable doctrines of the society in which they found themselves, and, as an escape, immerse themselves in their artistry.

If those politics were consonant with the interests of a totalitarian state – especially one that failed, as did the Nazis, Italian fascists, and later the Soviet Union – the course of one’s career could be the subject of review by those of nations that defeated or outlasted the totalitarian state. I have posted a picture of tenor Mario del Monaco in his Italian army uniform. A picture of the young tenor Giuseppe Campora in a fascist youth organization uniform is extant. But Decca Records and San Francisco Opera were among the institutions of the victorious Allied Nations that welcomed both early in the postwar years.

The German artists I had seen in my first five years of opera-going – Suthaus, Hans Hotter, Paul Schoeffler, Kurt Boehme and Elizabeth Schwarzkopf – spent the years of World War II in German and Austrian houses. Schwarzkopf, associated with Goebbels’ Deutsche Oper was especially scrutinized by Western opera company intendants, and even following her death in the 21st century, an occasional author will revive the “what did she do during the war” controversies. But recording company EMI gave her postwar career a boost, and the San Francisco Opera, under the Austrian emigre Kurt Herbert Adler, sponsored her American debut in San Francisco. Ultimately, even the New Year Met, which, under Sir Rudolph Bing, tended at first to be less willing to buy into the concept of a Schwarzkopf reconciliation, invited her to perform on their stage.

[Below: Elizabeth Schwarzkopf as the Marschallin; edited image, based on a historical photograph.]

I am again supplementing my five-decades old recollections with selected quotations from a contemporary source, the major history of the opera company by my friend and colleague, Arthur Bloomfield, then opera critic for the San Francisco Examiner. Again, so that is clear which remarks are mine and which are his, I will so identify each paragraph that quotes him and place it in parantheses and unbolded italics. The quotations are (occasionally non-substantively edited) excerpts from Arthur Bloomfield’s 50 Years of the San Francisco Opera,1972, San Francisco Book Company, San Francisco, California.

(Bloomfield: The Marschallin was sung by Elizabeth Schwarzkopf, who made her operatic debut on the [War Memorial] Opera House Stage September 20 [1955]. In an interview the 39-year old soprano, an early starter, noted that she did not sing so much in opera anymore, and indeed, she had something resembling a phobia about the supposed pressures of opera engagements in the U. S. But Adler met her after a concert in Los Angeles and persuaded her to come. His persuasion was San Francisco’s gain; her highly inflected and near-youthful interpretation of the Marschallin was, if not agreeable to all, on a very high plane of distinction. With Frances Bible an excellent Octavian [as she was in the September 29, 1960 performance] . .  . [the 1955] performance set a standard for seasons to come.

[The 1960] “Rosenkavalier” brought a new Ochs in Kurt Boehme, the distinguished Munich bass. Here was a Lerchenau with a battering ram belly and cheeks that shook like bowls full of jelly, a giggly, bumptious, overgrown boy of an Ochs. He missed the pathos that lies in the part but he did sing it gorgeously besides being a barrel of fun. Varviso’s warm lyric touch in the pit was a big asset.)

Elizabeth Schwarzkopf performed for the San Francisco company  for a total of 53 performances in seven roles, between 1955 and 1964. Of those 53 performances, 34 were at the War Memorial in San Francisco, 15 were at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles and four at the Fox Theater in San Diego. Two of the seven roles constituted most of her operatic performances in California – she was the Marschallin 17 times (12 in San Francisco) and Fiordiligi 14 times (nine in San Francisco). I saw her perform both, each in two separate seasons.

All of Kurt Boehme’s performances occurred in 1960, with five performances (split between the three California cities) of Ochs and three (split between San Francisco and Los Angeles) of King Henry in Wagner’s “Lohengrin”.

[Below: Kurt Boehme as the Baron Ochs of Lerchenau; resized image, based on a historical photograph.]

Boehme’s boisterous Ochs was a intensely accessible and likeable portrait. Over the years I have seen a range of behaviors in onstage Ochses, from an earthy Josef Greindl to Regine Crespin’s Marschallin (San Francisco, 1967) to a rather more suave and dignified Kristinn Sigmundsson to Soile Isokoski’s (San Francisco, 2007).

Sophisticated Ladies

Boehme was a wonderful foil to the cooly elegant, very refined, slightly distant Marschallin. In total I saw Schwarzkopf in three roles, Fiordiligi (1956 and 1963), the Marschallin (1960 and 1964) and Donna Elvira (1962). As one reflects on these three women (Fiordiligi, the Marschallin and Donna Elvira) and their experiences during the duration of the operas in which they appear, it may well be that they held a significance for Schwarzkopf. These are sophisticated women whose dealings with Ferrando, Guglielmo, Don Alfonso, Prince Octavian, Baron Ochs, Don Giovanni and Leporello, we as the operatic audience are privileged to observe. Schwarzkopf was able to find and project the underlying strength in each of these roles. Another role that Schwarzkopf performed in two different seasons with San Francisco was the “Figaro” Countess.

I can envision these four ladies – as characterized by Schwarzkopf – in conversation with each other, each recognizing the others’ station and experience, but always retaining their dignity and reserve. I can even imagine a comment from the  Marschallin when Donna Elvira is out of earshot: “Poor dear, such a scandal, but he got what was coming to him”.

(One notes that each of these four portraits were shared with both of the tour cities – Los Angeles and San Diego.)

A Vivacious Varviso

The Swiss conductor, Silvio Varviso, performed 82 times for the San Francisco company in two distinct time periods. The earlier period was a three year period between 1959 and 1961, in which he was used as a utilitarian conductor, most of whose assignments were the standard repertory works, such as Verdi’s “Rigoletto” and “La Traviata” and Puccini’s “La Boheme”. The most notable assignment of his first period was conducting the United States premiere of Britten’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream” in 1961, with Geraint Evans as Bottom and the 26 year old Marilyn Horne as Hermia. However the 1960 “Rosenkavalier” was the only time I saw him conduct in this earlier period .

[Below: Silvio Varviso, conductor of the San Francisco Opera "Der Rosenkavalier"; resized image of a historical photograph.]

He returned in 1971 for an additional 40 performances at the War Memorial Opera House through 1982, that included some of the most lustrous casts in that “Golden Age” decade, all of which I saw for at least one of his performances – Sena Jurinac, Christa Ludwig, Helen Donath and Manfred Jungwirth in “Rosenkavalier”; Gwyneth Jones, Josephine Veasey and Martti Talvela in Verdi’s “Don Carlos”; Birgit Nilsson, Yvonne Minton, Jess Thomas and Kurt Moll in Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde”; Federica von Stade, Renato Capecchi and Giorgio Tozzi in Rossini’s “Barbiere di Siviglia”; Ileana Cotrubas, Giacomo Aragall, Dale Duesing and Samuel Ramey in Puccini’s “La Boheme”; Anna Tomowa-Sintow, Giacomo Aragall, Wolfgang Brendel and Evgeny Nesterenko in “Don Carlo”; and Hermann Prey, Lucia Popp, Tom Krause and Helena Doese in Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro”.

Now, fifty years after my first live performance, it is time to wish “Der Rosenkavalier” an early happy 100th birthday.

For a review of the latest San Francisco Opera performances of “Rosenkavalier”, see: S. F. Opera – A Center for “Rosenkavalier” Excellence: June 24, 2007.

When San Francisco Opera announced its 1960 season, Tebaldi was scheduled to return, among assignments, to sing Maria Amelia again, with Italian recording artist Tito Gobbi as Boccanegra, Maria Amelia’s father.  The often ill Tebaldi (who had suffered from childhood paralysis) was felled by arthritis and, on doctor’s advice, had to cancel all of her performances that autumn in San Francisco, a city over 6000 miles away from her home.

Her replacement was announced to be Lucine Amara, whom I associated with roles much lighter than Maria Amelia, such as Musetta in Puccini’s “La Boheme” and Nedda in Leoncavallo’s “I Pagliacci”. As a young Tebaldiano, who had, after all, seen as great a “Boccanegra” cast as I could imagine just four years prior, I thought it best to spend time and fortune on operas I had not seen yet.

This was my first season that I was living near enough to San Francisco to buy seats at the War Memorial Opera House. I scooped up “dress circle” seats (behind the Grand Tier in the lower balcony, which is just above the horseshoe ring of boxes) for performances I could schedule that had famous artists of the day – Schwarzkopf in Richard Strauss’ 49 year old “Der Rosenkavalier”, Rysanek and Schoeffler in the Strauss’ “Frau ohne Schatten”, Kirsten, Konya and Gobbi in Puccini’s “Girl of the Golden West” and Konya in Wagner’s “Lohengrin”.

I also had a ticket to see Anna Moffo in Bellini’s “La Sonnambula”, but a conflict required me to work out a change in performances. At the opera box office, I was told that the office had just received a nice center orchestra seat for the upcoming “Simon Boccanegra” whose price was only $10 (sic!, that really was the center orchestra price in 1960), for which my exchanged dress circle would cover most of the cost. Of course, since the days of junior high school, I was told by every classical music buff (there are probably some even now in junior high school) that the only place to sit in any concert hall or opera house is in the less expensive seats in the balcony, because “the sound is better”.

But, I decided to test that urban legend, and bought the seat the box office offered, and found myself in awe of how being that much closer to a live operatic performance so totally changed the experience. The very next season, as an entering freshman in college, I bought a subscription for an aisle seat in center orchestra and have had a subscription in the orchestra section at San Francisco Opera each season since 1961 (since 1965, next to the conductor’s podium).

The Lowdown on Downloads

When I posted my remembrance of the 1956 “Boccanegra” performance on its 50th anniversary, I had the studio recording of “Boccanegra” with my 1956 Fiesco, Boris Christoff and 1960 Simon, Tito Gobbi.  The lack of an accessible recording in their “Boccanegra” roles of Christoff’s co-principals in 1956 – Warren and Tebaldi – was frustrating, In the case of the 1960 “Boccanegra” performance, besides the famous studio recording with Gobbi and Christoff, there are now several more historical performances, including the recordings, with reasonable sound, of “Boccanegra” broadcasts with combinations of Warren, Tozzi and Gobbi, and the 1960 performance’s Gabriele Adorno, Giuseppe Zampieri.

Now, five decades later, I sit at my laptop recollecting that experience and sharing my thoughts with the world. But in 2010, I find myself with the ability to supplement my thoughts with references to documentary evidence, most particularly the recorded legacy of many of the operatic artists whose performances I am remembering. This is the result of a contemporary phenomenon – the transformation of popular music by Apple i-pod and i-tunes. I am describing only the tiniest sliver of a relatively obscure corner of the music scene. But my 50 year retrospectives, I do expect, will be transformed by the widening catalogue and increasingly easy accessibility of inexpensive mp3 downloads.

Four years ago, if you perused the available mp3 downloads offered on the website of the best known Internet merchant, you would find comparatively little operatic material available. Now it seems every day brings new downloadable operatic treasures from both studio recordings and broadcasts. And, unlike the past, in which one might have to buy (or download) an entire album to have access to an individual artist in a role, you can now buy one aria by Artist A, a duet by Artists B and C, and longer portion of an act with other artists, and build your own playlist of performance excerpts to approximate, say, the composition of a cast you have seen, or whatever you wish to do. I have a “1956 SF Opera ‘Boccanegra’ cast playlist” and one for the 1960 cast. And we are only up to 1960 in my “50 year anniversaries”.

Notes on the “Boccanegra” Prologue: Electing a Pirate as Your Sovereign

Like Verdi’s “Il Trovatore”, “Simon Boccanegra” is based on a play by the Romantic Era Spanish Playwright Antonio Garcia Gutierrez, an exact contemporary of Verdi and Wagner. In both of these Verdi operas, events take place in one generation that have profound consequences for the next generation, with characters from the older generation (Ferrando and Azucena in “Trovatore”, Fiesco, Paolo and Simon in “Boccanegra”) impacting the lives of those of the younger (Manrico, di Luna and Leonora in “Trovatore”, Maria Amelia and Gabriele Adorno in “Boccanegra”.) “Trovatore” relies on exposition narratives from the older pair to explain what happened in the past, but “Boccanegra” has a prologue for this purpose.

Onstage, in “Boccanegra’s” somber prologue, only a few dozen paces from me, was that consummate actor  and superb baritone, Tito Gobbi as Boccanegra, the compatriot of Maria Callas on so many of her recordings, interacting with another consummate actor and superb singer, the Welsh baritone, Geraint (later Sir Geraint) Evans. With credible actors, the odd idea of bestowing the powerful position of Doge of Genoa on a corsair, with the idea of controlling him from behind his throne, gains some plausibility.

[Below: Tito Gobbi as the pirate, Simon Boccanegra, in the opera's prologue; edited image, based on a historical photograph from the CBS Interactive Music Group.]

I already had spent time in an earlier post on Tito Gobbi’s performances at the San Francisco Opera (see 50th Birthday Celebrations: Dorothy Kirsten Rides High in “Girl of the Golden West” – San Francisco Opera, October 1, 1960), in association with the “Fanciulla” production I had seen the weekend previous to this “Boccanegra” night.

[Below: Tito Gobbi as Doge Simon Boccanegra; edited image, based on a historical photograph, from CBS Interactive Media Group.]

The highlight of the Prologue is Fiesco’s great aria Il lacerato spirito. Even with Christoff’s memory still in my mind (constantly reinforced at the time, of course, by the stereo recording of the opera with Christoff and Gobbi that I own to this day), Tozzi’s sonorous basso was delicious to hear. What is more, nearly contemporary documentary evidence exists to support my assertion. One needs only to go to the “Mp3 downloads” section at amazon.com and insert “Il lacerato spirito” and (as of the date of this post) 43 options appear, including two separate live performances with Tozzi. (I can even construct a playlist consisting of some of the other bassos I have seen perform the role, such as Christoff and Cesare Siepi.)

Chicago-born Tozzi was associated with 139 performances with the San Francisco Opera of 28 roles in five cities.  Of these, 103 performance of 27 roles occurred at the War Memorial in San Francisco. He debuted in San Francisco in 1955 and performed every season between 1955 and 1964, returning in 1966 and 1976 through 1978. Subsequently, Tozzi joined the voice faculty of Indiana University, where he is a distinguished emeritus professor. Among his students whose work is regularly reviewed on this website is bass-baritone Kyle Ketelsen.

[Below: Giorgio Tozzi; photograph from bass-baritone Kyle Ketelsen's website, www.kylek.net.]

Geraint Evans was nearly as prolific a performer with San Francisco Opera as Tozzi, with 126 performances of 18 roles, of which 93 regular performances (i.e., not student matinees) of 16 roles took place at the War Memorial. Although his Paolo was a memorable role, he was best known in San Francisco  for the title roles in Berg’s “Wozzeck”, Verdi’s “Falstaff” and Mozart’s “Marriage of Figaro”, Sixtus Beckmesser in Wagner’s “Die Meistersinger” and Papageno in Mozart’s “The Magic Flute”. Each of these five roles he performed in two or more seasons.

“Boccanegra’s” Next Generation

After a two decade interval, we meet two new principal characters – a woman whom Boccanegra learns is his long-lost daughter Maria Amelia (Lucine Amara) and her lover and conspirator against Boccanegra’s reign, Gabriele Adorno (Giuseppe Zampieri).

Amara, the American born soprano from an Armenian family, possessed a light, lyric soprano, that lacked the spinto weight that I have always believed is required for performing the big Verdi roles in the large American houses. My colleague, Arthur Bloomfield, regards her as underappreciated as a Verdian, describing, in his history of the San Francisco Opera, her dolcissimo passages in the Nile scene of Verdi’s “Aida” as “just right”; yet he conceded “often she was overwhelmed [as Aida] and one yearned for more weight”.

My impression of Giuseppe Zampieri as Adorno was quite different. One of the impressive group of Italian spinto tenors seen in San Francisco in the postwar years (I have already reported on performances by Giuseppe Campora and Gianni Raimondi, as well as the tenore di forza Mario del Monaco), I still regard him as one of the more effective Adornos of the past five decades at the War Memorial.

One can sample Zampieri as Adorno and Tozzi as Fiesco singing together in the beautiful duet Vieni a me, ti benedico and Zampieri in Adorno’s extended solo passage that begins O inferno and includes the passage Sento avvampar nell’anima and the aria Cielo pietoso rendila.

[Below: Conductor Leopold Ludwig; historical photograph from CBS Interactive Music Group.]

Conducting the opera was Leopold Ludwig, who was midway in his 20 year career as music director of the Hamburg Staatsoper. Two weekends before, he had conducted my first performance of “Frau ohne Schatten”, and in the subsequent eight seasons I would see him conduct 16 additional performances, including ten operas I was seeing for the first time.

I will report more on Ludwig, in an observance next year of one of his 1961 performances.

For my recent reviews of this opera, see: Hvorostovsky, Guryakova, Berti Excel in Houston “Simon Boccanegra” – November 4, 2006, and

Verdian Back to Basics: San Francisco’s Satisfying “Simon Boccanegra” – September 21, 2008.

I have already noted 1960 performances of Puccini’s “Fanciulla del West (Girl of the Golden West)” [See 50th Birthday Celebrations: Dorothy Kirsten Rides High in “Girl of the Golden West” – San Francisco Opera, October 1, 1960] and Richard Strauss’ “Die Frau ohne Schatten” [See The Woman Without an Equal – Leonie Rysanek in “Frau ohne Schatten”: San Francisco Opera, September 24, 1960].

The next observance is my very first Wagner opera at the War Memorial, “Lohengrin”.

[Below: Sandor Konya as Lohengrin (Bayreuth 1958), in a historical photograph from www.cs.princeton.edu.]

To supplement my recollections five decades later, beginning with this observance, I am adding selected quotations from a contemporary source, the major history of the opera company by my friend and colleague, Arthur Bloomfield, then opera critic for the San Francisco Examiner. So that is clear which remarks are mine and which are his, I will so identify each paragraph that quotes him and place it in parantheses and unbolded italics. The quotations are (occasionally non-substantively edited) excerpts from Arthur Bloomfield’s 50 Years of the San Francisco Opera,1972, San Francisco Book Company, San Francisco, California.

(Bloomfield: The “Fanciulla” revival served to introduce Sandor Konya, the new Hungarian tenor, to America. A tallish, sturdy Dick Johnson, he delivered his listeners a pingy spinto sound that carried a sizeable emotional charge. The fact that he tended to lumber about the stage  (there are roles more comfortable than Johnson), and the fact that his projection was occasionally a bit insecure or grainy – these mattered not so much in earshot of Konya’s lyric charms. He followed the Johnson with a superior Lohengrin, a fresh Rodolfo, and a Rhadames which, while stiff in movement, intermittently called to mind the singing of Lauri-Volpi. He was immediately re-engaged . . .)

In my 50 year observance of “Fanciulla”, I spoke of the welcome ubiquitouness of Sandor Konya at San Francisco Opera during the first half of the 1960s (see 50th Birthday Celebrations: Dorothy Kirsten Rides High in “Girl of the Golden West” – San Francisco Opera, October 1, 1960.) Besides doing two of the Wagnerian jugendlicher tenor  title roles of “Lohengrin” and “Parsifal” (the latter in 1964), he also sang four different Italian opera roles opposite Leontyne Price. (Konya was the tenor in no fewer than five of my first performances of a given opera – two Wagner, two Puccini and a Verdi).

In both Wagner and the Italian roles he had a glorious tenor voice, that shone in the War Memorial Opera House, warmly baritonal in the lower registers with a smooth transition to high notes of the tenor range whose sound soared above the San Francisco Opera Orchestra playing at full volume in the open orchestra pit. To this day, I believe no Lohengrin that I have heard surpasses him. I regard it as a great compliment to say that an artist sings Lohengrin as well as Konya did.

Even though I regard him an underrecorded artist, there does exist a nearly contemporaneous recording of “Lohengrin” with Konya, conducted by Erich Leinsdorf, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. For those who want to hear what I call bel canto Wagnerian singing, invest in an MP3 download from that recording of Konya singing “In fernem Land”.

In this recording, Konya sings the uncut version of the aria that contains an entire section – the second verse, with somewhat different music – that Wagner reluctantly removed as the opera was readied for performance. If more Wagnerians (and opera lovers in general) can hear the uncut aria, sung by an artist like Konya, perhaps conductors and artistic managements of opera companies can be persuaded to present “Lohengrin” without the cuts it has endured for a century and a half.

The Elsa was the well-received Ingrid Bjoner, in her only role in San Francisco. But it was the seconda donna, the Ortrud of 35 year old Irene Dalis, whom I had already seen for the first time earlier that season as the Amne (nurse) in Richard Strauss’ “Die Frau ohne Schatten”, whose importance to  the San Francisco Opera was of much longer duration than Bjoner’s and greater significance (and to me as well).

[Below: Irene Dalis as Ortrud; resized image, based on a historical photograph, from www.cs.princeton.edu. ]

Not only was Dalis my first Amne and Ortrud, in subsequent seasons she introduced me, in live performance, to the roles of the Marina in Mussorgsky’s “Boris Godunov” (1961) and Princess Eboli in Verdi’s “Don Carlo” (1962), and three other major Wagnerian roles – Kundry in Wagner’s “Parsifal” (1964), and two in 1967, Fricka in “Das Rheingold” and Isolde in “Tristan und Isolde” (1967).

Dalis sang in 68 performances for the San Francisco Opera, 48 regular performances at the War Memorial Opera House and twice in student matinees there. She sang 14 roles between 1958 and 1973. For those who never heard her and wonder what she sounded like, she is the Kundry in what many regard as the best recording of “Parsifal” ever made, the live recording (under studio conditions) from the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, conducted by Hans Knappertsbusch in 1962, in her prime at age 37, within two years of the performance I chronicle here. In all I saw her 12 times, all at the War Memorial. (Her Parsifal in that recording is Jess Thomas, whom I will have a lot to say about in these 50 year anniversaries, but that is still a bit in the future.)

(Bloomfield: Although Adler was tending to make conducting assignments on a nationalistic basis . . . there was a major exchange in 1960 when Molinari-Pradelli took over “Lohengrin” (following in the steps of Cleva) and Leopold Ludwig assumed responsibility for “Boccanegra”. The Italian Wagner was immensely vibrant, spontaneous and to the point, the German Verdi more elegantly controlled but forceful.)

Despite his foray into the Wagnerian repertory in 1960, Molinari-Pradelli was the leading conductor for the Italian repertory during the years 1957 through 1966. He was the conductor for no fewer than 16 of my “first times” for live performances of operas.

[Below: Conductor Francesco Molinari-Pradelli; edited image of historical photograph, from www.cs.princeton.edu.]

I will have more to say about Molinari-Pradelli in 50 year anniversaries of operas from the 1961 season, to be posted in the next calendar year.

(Bloomfield: The revival of Leo Kerz’ 1955 “Lohengrin” (hardly a full-dress production) brought some lovely projections and misty lighting effects. The swan was now a stationary emblem-like object behind a scrim. Even though it looked, as Alfred Frankenstein put it, like a Mexican postage stamp, a fairly satisfactory compromise was struck between the creaky old-fashioned swan boat and ultra-modern invisibility.)

Leo Kerz was a Polish emigree, who studied theatrical arts in Berlin during the 1920s. On his arrival in the United States he became involved with production and lighting design, and perhaps is best known in the United States for his production designs for the Broadway production of Ionesco’s “Rhinoceros”.

Kerz’ approach to operatic sets and lighting at the time was regarded as non-traditional. The disappearance of the concept of a solid swan in “Lohengrin” did result in some ridicule, but the ideas of Kerz and other European designers that Adler brought to San Francisco looked to the future of operatic production, rather than the past.  We will return to this subject in future posts.

Swan Song for the “Thoroughly Modern Lohengrin”?

One last note, in reflecting on a half century of viewing “Lohengrin”. For the first century of “Lohengrin” performances it was assumed that the opera was the presentation for the operatic stage of Wagner’s conception of a medieval myth about a Christian knight, who was son of one of the knights who guarded the Holy Grail. Eighty years ago the course of German history began to be affected by the appearance of a leader who proposed, among his many ideas, that the stories of Wagnerian operas, in fact, supported courses of action whose consequences most of the world forcibly rejected.

A reality of the past half century is that several production designers have incorporated themes of 20th century totalitarianism into “Lohengrin” productions. But we may well have reached a time that people may become open to the idea that “Lohengrin” really is a medieval tale, something a little more than a fairy story, but something that has taken on too much baggage as production designers have pushed the story closer to us in time.

Perhaps we are at point where we can return to the idea of the Knights of the Grail, and Parsifal and Amfortas at Montsalvat, and little Lohengrin being raised in a milieu that does not produce a “worldly”, certainly not a streetwise, young man.  But Lohengrin is one who accepts both the religious fervor and the belief that magical spells do occur that a medieval upbringing in a magical place has instilled in him.

As some of the insightful, even if misguided, “Lohengrin” productions of the past few decades age out  - whether they envision a Brabantian Soviet Socialist Republic or a Nazi hierarchy that “Lohengrin” is somehow supposed to symbolize –  we should begin to retire the idea of Lohengrin as a citizen of the 20th and 21st centuries.

For recent reviews of “Lohengrin” productions time-shifted to the 20th century, see: Summers Leads Sumptiously Sung “Lohengrin”: Houston Grand Opera, November 13, 2009, and also:

Countdown to the Wagner Bicentennial: James Conlon Conducts Bel Canto “Lohengrin” – Los Angeles Opera, November 20, 2010.

My musical tastes as a teenager in San Diego encompassed most of what the other kids liked – I still have five of the cube-shaped record boxes filled with humdreds of 45 hit rock and roll singles. But I also liked opera, and was probably the only kid around that had bought the five-LP complete recording of Richard Strauss’ “Die Frau ohne Schatten” (catalogue A4505), starring Leonie Rysanek as the Empress and Paul Schoeffler as Barak.

A few years later, in Fall 1960, a year before entering college, I bought a ticket to attend my very first performance at San Francisco’s War Memorial Opera House – in a time when an orchestra seat for the San Francisco Opera was only a fraction of the price of a five LP complete opera recording – to see Rysanek and Schoeffler in “Frau ohne Schatten”. Thus, with a familiarity with the opera’s music that I suspect was unmatched by most Californians at the time, I nestled into the plush War Memorial seats to revel into the high tessitura of the 33-year old Rysanek’s Empress.

This was the third role that I had seen Rysanek perform. She was a 29-year old Sieglinde in Wagner’s “Die Walkuere”, in an all star performance with Birgit Nilsson (like Rysanek, in her American debut season in San Francisco and Los Angeles), Nell Rankin, Ludwig Suthaus and Hans Hotter (see Die Walkuere – November 4, 1956.)  In 1957 (when she was age 30) she was my first Ariadne in Strauss’ “Ariadne auf Naxos” with Sir Richard Lewis as Bacchus (see Young Rysanek Promotes Strauss at L. A.’s Shrine – “Ariadne auf Naxos” – November 1, 1957.)

Although Rysanek was an international star of the first rank, every one of her performances that I attended were San Francisco Opera productions, in Los Angeles or San Francisco. Because she did not appear in San Francisco from the 1961 through the 1972 seasons, I consider her San Francisco Opera performances from her 1956 American debut season through 1960 as the time of the “Young Rysanek” and the performances from 1973 on as the time of the “Mature Rysanek”. The 50th anniversaries of her 1973 Elizabeth in Wagner’s “Tannhauser” and her Chrysothemis in Richard Strauss’ “Elektra”, the next season she appeared in San Francisco, will not take place until 2023.

The “Young Rysanek” phase included a total of 20 performances (spread between 10 different roles) in San Francisco, nine performances in Los Angeles, each a single performance of a role, and one performance each in Berkeley and San Diego. (She sang the role of Amelia in Verdi’s “Ballo in Maschera” on a single occasion, in German with the remainder of the cast singing in Italian, when she rescued a performance by substituting when the originally scheduled artist was unexpectedly hospitalized.)

Ponnelle Masters His Craft

The “Frau ohne Schatten”  production was by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, who first impressed San Francisco audiences as the set and costume designer for a production of Orff’s “Carmina Burana” appropriate to an opera stage – a production I was to see in 1964 and 1971 (see: 50 Years Ago: Jean-Pierre Ponnelle’s American Debut at San Francisco Opera.)

Ponnelle’s sets and costumes were considered lavish when they first appeared for the opera’s American premiere in 1959 (intended for Rysanek who had to cancel her 1959 appearances because she became ill, and scheduled again for 1960 when Rysanek returned to San Francisco to appear in the production that had been created for her).

Yet, as impressed as San Franciscans were with the sets and costume designs of the 26 and 27 year old Ponnelle (and of the 37 year old Ponnelle’s amusing production of Rossini’s “Cenerentola” in 1969, elegant productions of Mozart’s “Cosi fan Tutte” and Verdi’s “Otello” in 1970 and one of Puccini’s “Tosca” in 1972 with a controversial “point of view”, it was when the 41 year Ponnelle returned to San Francisco in 1973 as a concept designer-director for Verdi’s “Rigoletto” that the historic and revolutionary series of Ponnelle productions for San Francisco Opera moved into an entirely new phase.

[Below: Barak the Dyer's home and workplace, as designed by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle; edited image, based on a Bill Cogan photograph, courtesy of the San Francisco Opera.]

Persons who regularly read my interviews with various opera professionals, may recall my interview with Christopher Hahn, now General Director of the Pittsburgh Opera, but who in the 1980s was one of the San Francisco Opera administrators who provided support to the artists. His recounting of Leonie Rysanek’s work ethic and Jean-Pierre Ponnelle’s extraordinary creative energy is worth re-reading. (See Christopher Hahn, New Pittsburgh Opera Chief, Reflects on Career in Opera Administration, which includes historic photographs of Ponnelle and Rysanek, courtesy of the San Francisco Opera.)

Another notable cast member was Irene Dalis, who sang the part of the Empress’ Nurse (the Amne). Later in the 1960 season she sang the role of Ortrud in Wagner’s “Lohengrin”. I will include more about Dalis in my 50 year anniversary observation of  the 1960 “Lohengrin” later this Fall. But I believe it is worth noting that Dalis, who was born in San Jose in the Southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, is one of the many American singers whose careers General Director Kurt Herbert Adler promoted. The comments of an American opera superstar of a past generation that Adler did not do enough for American artists never made much sense to me.

[Below: the Empress' Nurse (Irene Dalis) visits the Dyer's Wife (Marianne Schech) at Barak's place; edited image, based on a Bill Cogan photograph, courtesy of the San Francisco Opera.]

On the other hand, Adler, who left his native Austria for the United States in the 1930s, took over the leadership of the San Francisco Opera only eight years after the end of World War II. This was a time when the operatic infrastructure in Germany, Austria, Italy and France was slowly being rebuilt after the devastating impact of the War on these four great world centers of opera. The physical damage was surely matched by the emotional impact on artists for whom the international careers we now take for granted for world class talents, were simply impossible.

But the established artists of Germany, Austria, Italy and Vichy France during the war were more often than not expected to tow a political line to get the opportunity to perform at all. After the Allied victory, the artists associated with defeated regimes faced a not always totally forgiving world in the postwar era. Sir Rudolph Bing, general director of the New York Metropolitan Opera, would spend considerable time on establishing what “party membership” might have entailed, whereas Adler, the Austrian immigrant who would not stay in a Vienna that joined the Anschluss, tended to focus more on how well the artist sang, say, the Marschallin or Fiordiligi.

It was simply a fact that almost any artist that remained in Germany or Austria during the War had to be a party member to perform. Schoeffler, during the war, performed regularly for the Vienna Staatsoper and Bayreuth and Salzburg Festivals. Marianne Schech (who sang the Dyer’s Wife in the American premiere performances of 1959 and those of the 1960 season) sang for the Duesseldorf Opera for most of the war and the Dresden Opera for the remainder.

There is some evidence that several of Adler’s casting decisions had a strategic purpose beyond having the world’s greatest voices singing in the operas he mounted in San Francisco. Adler was in touch with a generation of European conductors who were helping normalize the opera world after the war’s destruction. He and his predecessor Gaetano Merola had been active in promoting reconciliation with artists who had spent years behind enemy lines.

Obviously, casting such artists provided American audiences with the authentic German-trained heldentenor and heldenbariton sound.  Having the opportunity to hear great German artists singing on American soil - Ludwig Suthaus was my first Siegmund and Hans Hotter my first Wotan in Wagner’s Walkuere – even if in the latter parts of their careers – was a wonderful experience for a young opera goer. I suspect that many of the artists themselves must have been deeply affected by the reality of their performing in a part of the world that had been closed to them throughout the war.

Adler obviously noted that the fact that Suthaus and Hotter starred in major new complete opera recordings of German operas early in the LP era. Another such artist was Paul Schoeffler, the Barak of the Decca/London recording with Rysanek. In the live performance in San Francisco he brought a robust delivery and yet intensely sympathetic quality to the Dyer’s role. I was fortunate to have heard him again twice in the next season, in the role of Don Pizarro in Beethoven’s “Fidelio” and, most impressive of all, as Hans Sachs in Wagner’s “Die Meistersinger”.

[Below: Bass-baritone Paul Schoeffler, the Barak in the 1960 San Francisco Opera production of "Die Frau ohne Schatten"; resized image of historic photograph.]

Where Rysanek Rocked

The younger artists like Rysanek at least had a few years of peacetime that could be invested in their vocal training, even if some of the greatest opera companies were shuttered for several years at war’s end.

And some, like Rysanek, had the fortune to come to the attention of the major recording studios when the technology of the LP made recording operas much more feasible than in the days of operas spread over albums of 78s of three minutes duration each.

Technological feasibility is not enough to assure that studio opera recordings will be made with star quality casts and conductors.  At that very time, however, the profits gushing from rock music made such companies as RCA Victor and Decca (London Records) cash rich and interested in the prestige they felt came from recording classical music. My purchases of rock and roll 45s helped subsidize Rysanek triumphs in such complete recordings as Verdi’s “Macbeth” and Richard Strauss’ “Ariadne auf Naxos” for RCA and Strauss’ “Frau ohne Schatten” for Decca.

[Below: the young Leonie Rysanek listens to a playback of her performance as Lady Macbeth in a complete recording of Verdi's "Macbeth" for RCA Victor records; resized image, based on a photograph from richardmohr.com.]

Rysanek was without equal in that postwar generation in the role of the Empress. She had the requisite power in her upper range that permitted the sound of her voice to soar above the large orchestra and Strauss’ thick orchestration. Her voice also had the flexibility to produce the glistening arpeggios and other vocal ornamentation that make the role so magical. She brought conviction to the part as well. She genuinely loved the role and clearly Adler loved her in it, authorizing a second new production for Rysanek in 1976 – one of the most expensive endeavors in the history of the San Francisco Opera.  Strauss expert Karl Boehm conducted, and the production was revived again in 1980 with Rysanek and Birgit Nilsson as the Dyer’s Wife.

The lush, Romantically melodic, post-Wagnerian music of “Frau ohne Schatten” has always appealed to me. I confess, however, that in the early days I often wondered what Hofmannstahl’s libretto for the opera was about. Yes, I had read the accounts of his fascination with symbolic images, and of other people’s Jungian take on the storyline. Yet, at the end I would still find myself wondering what the opera is really about?

It was my wife who settled the issue for me. She said I should just consider that some stories are simply fairy tales, and that I should not try to analyze them. That worked for me, and actually helped me deal with Puccini’s “Turandot” and Wagner’s “Flying Dutchman” as well. So I find myself at peace when I enter the surreal land of Keikobad and the Emperor who might turn to stone and the Falcon’s Voice and the fishes in the frying pan and the Dyer’s Wife bartering her shadow. And having Rysanek, Schoeffler and Dalis there to guide me through that world was a wonderful introduction to the acoustics of the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco, for which “Frau ohne Schatten” seems a perfect fit.

For a previous discussion of a performance during San Francisco Opera’s 1960 season, see: 50th Birthday Celebrations: Dorothy Kirsten Rides High in “Girl of the Golden West” – San Francisco Opera, October 1, 1960.