Every year about this time, the grand medallion at the top of San Francisco’s War Memorial Opera House lights up, the gold curtain rises and the young artists in the Merola Opera Program show off what they can do with a full orchestra on the big stage.
The program, part of the San Francisco Opera Center, is a kind of opera boot camp: long days of coaching, staging, studying scores through the summer and culminating in the Grand Finale.
All 29 artists featured this summer (23 singers, five pianist-coaches and a stage director), chosen from more than 1,300 applicants, look forward to operatic careers, some on the biggest stages of the world.
Saturday’s finale was a dazzler with nary a Verdi, Puccini or Wagner on the ticket, which included arias, duets, trios and ensembles from Rossini, Donizetti, Mozart, Bellini, Richard Strauss and a few others. Among the well-chosen newer selections, were, notably, a duet from Jake Heggie’s “Dead Man Walking” (soprano Elizabeth “Hanje” Hanje and mezzo soprano Lindsay Martin) and a ravishing solo from Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut up in My Bones” sung with high drama by bass-baritone Justice Yates.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.L-R, soprano Elizabeth “Hanje” Hanje and mezzo-soprano Lindsay Martin’s selection from Jake Heggie’s “Dead Man Walking” was among the contemporary pieces in the Merola Grand Finale on Aug. 17 at the War Memorial Opera House. (Courtesy Kristen Loken)
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.L-R, soprano Lydia Grindatto and mezzo-soprano Simona Genga’s stood out in a selection from Bellini’s “Norma.”(Courtesy Kristen Loken)
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Soprano Mary Hoskins dazzled in “Zweite Brautnacht” from Strauss’ “Die ägyptische Helena.” (Courtesy Kristen Loken)
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Baritone Sihao Hu opened the Merola Grand Finale with a light-hearted aria from Rossini’s “Il barbiere di Siviglia.” (Courtesy Kristen Loken)
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Tenor Michael John Butler and soprano Viviana Goodwin stood out in a selection from Mascagni’s “L’amico Fritz” in the Merola Grand Finale. (Courtesy Kristen Loken)
Steven White conducted with passion and precision, and staging, not an easy task, by director-choreographer Anna Theodosakis, a program participant, was outstanding.
The nearly three-hour program could have been cut —the addition of a Korean song for the large Korean contingent and a few others on the program seemed something of an overload, but the length speaks to San Francisco Opera Center Artistic Director Carrie Ann Matheson’s ambitious plans for her team, and if it was overlong, the large audience remained rapt to the final curtain and offered a well-deserved standing ovation at the end.
The bright tone of the evening was set in the first selection, baritone Sihao Hu’s comical, lusty rendering from Rossini’s “The Barber of Seville” followed by a duet from Donizetti’s “Don Pasquale” sung with grand flair by soprano Moriah Berry and baritone Olivier Zerouali.
Every year there are Merola singers with fully fledged voices who are ready at the gate. This year’s standouts included soprano Mary Hoskins singing a fire-powered aria from Richard Strauss’ “Die ägyptische Helena”; Hyungjin Son displaying a large and bronze-toned baritone in “‘Suoni la tromba” from Bellini’s “I Puritani,” a fine match with bass-baritone Benjamin Sokol; soprano Lydia Grindatto and mezzo Simona Genga in their deeply dramatic duet from Bellini’s “Norma,” and in another perfect pairing, soprano Alexa Frankian and tenor Giorgi Guliashvili in a duet from Tchaikovsky’s “Iolanta.”
Personal favorites were honey-toned tenor Michael John Butler and soprano Viviana Aurelia Goodwin singing “Suzel, buon di” from Mascagni’s “L’amico Fritz,” a selection from an opera that should be performed more often; the “Pappataci” trio from “Italian Girl in Algiers” performed with detailed humor and irony by tenor Angelo Silva and bass-baritones Donghoon Kang and Benjamin Sokol; and soprano Tessa McQueen’s high-flying, brilliantly colored Juliette with tenor Nathan Bryon singing Romeo in Gounod’s opera about doomed love.
A nice touch was the choice of “I’ll See You Again,” a Noel Coward song, for the finale. The stage was filled with sparkling gowns and tuxedos as the Merola Class of 2024 graduated with honors.
