Living in the San Francisco Bay Area during a period when one of America’s best opera companies, the San Francisco Opera (SFO), offers no performances, is woeful. So one has to look for alternatives. In my temporary home base of Palo Alto, I discovered the West Bay Opera. This opera company, centered in the heart of Silicon Valley, was established in 1955 and is the second oldest running opera company in California after the SFO. Its founding father, Henry Holt (not to be confused with the American book publisher and author), was a Viennese concert pianist and conductor in the 1930s. Holt later moved to Palo Alto and started the Little Opera Guild organising opera workshops which soon developed into fully staged performances. The West Bay Opera company was established in 1974 and was spearheaded by Holt’s widow, Maria Holt. Its current general director and principal conductor is José Luis Moscovich, an Argentinian immigrant who was the executive director of the San Francisco County Transportation Authority for many years. An urban planner as opera musician!
West Bay’s second production of this season was Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’Amore. Although composed in 1832, this belcanto gem still relies on the traditions of eighteenth-century opera buffa: a leading bass role (in this case Dulcamara), a semi-serious plot with human characters with all sorts of shortcomings, feelings and emotions (Nemorino and Adina), more independence for the orchestral and instrumental parts, and elaborate finale ensembles. L’Elisir, after Eugène Scribe’s libretto for Daniel Auber’s Le philtre (1831), was written by Donizetti in a couple of weeks. The premiere on 12 May 1832 at the Teatro alla Canobbiana in Milan was a triumph. With L’Elisir d’Amore Donizetti, who was a prolific composer and wrote more than seventy operas, planted the seeds for the grand nineteenth-century Italian comic operas.
The plot revolves around Nemorino, a poor peasant, who is in love with the beautiful Adina. However, she agrees to marry the charming sergeant Belcore instead. In order to gain Adina’s love, Nemorino purchases a love potion from a traveling quack doctor, Dulcamara. Later, Nemorino decides to join Belcore’s army. Suddenly rumor spreads that Nemorino has inherited a fortune from his uncle, making him instantly popular among the ladies and Adina quite jealous. Finally, she ends her engagement to Belcore and agrees to marry Nemorino.
David Cox’s staging is inordinately traditional, and maybe a little bit too conventional, lacking lively visual humor (although my standards might be too high having seen Laurent Pelly’s masterly staging three times). All actions take place on an Italian piazza. Because of the limited size of the stage (all performances take place at the smallish, but cozy, Lucie Stern Theatre) a video screen is used to project high-resolution background images recreating an Italian countryside setting. The idea is to evoke L’Elisir in its original setting in a theatre of a size very similar to the Italian houses Donizetti was writing for in the 1830s.
The West Bay Opera Orchestra is made up of tenured musicians, some of whom belong to the SFO Orchestra. The small pit only fits twenty players. Therefore, the harp, timpani, percussion and some of the brass are put elsewhere in the theatre. The sound is piped in through a complex mix and set of high quality speakers. It sounded wonderful. It is not for nothing that we are in Tech Valley. Though the strings did not always sound in tune, the orchestra did a good job. Moscovich’s interpretation was light, sparkling and occasionally innovative. Especially in the ensembles he kept a firm tempo.
The cast included up-and-coming Venezuelan soprano Maria Fernanda Brea, making her company debut as Adina. Although sometimes lacking some dramatic involvement, the 23-year-old soprano, currently studying at the Manhattan School of Music, sang with brio and very musically. Veteran baritone Igor Vieira, who recently sang alongside Renee Fleming at the SFO in Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia, gave a convincing and peerless rendition of Dulcamara. The duet between Adina and Dulcamara at the end of the second act was undoubtedly the highlight of the performance. Bulgarian Krassen Karagiov was an excellent, but somewhat static Belcore. American tenor Chester Pidduck, sounding shrill and at times out of tune, disappointed as Nemorino. The West Bay Opera chorus, made up of volunteer musicians, did a great job.
L’Elisir d’Amore was performed at West Bay Opera between February 14th and 23rd.