SF Opera's “Partenope” offers Old Hollywood glamour, with little subtext

With a full century behind them, SF Operas' 2023-24 season felt like throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks. There's a lot of speculation as to why (especially from another post that I won't link to here that attempts to draw parallels between SF Opera and the struggling SF Symphony), but if I had to do a personal guess, I would say it is the century itself. The pre-show closing speech thanks the audience for the last 100 years of support and hopes for another hundred years. To do this, you'll need to give people something to talk about.

This was certainly the case last year. Even if recent productions (Omar, The elixir of love) yielded mixed results, but also showed an attempt to take bold risks, particularly aesthetically. Last show Innocence It is perhaps the undeniable triumph of the season in its marriage of traditional operatic style with bold visuals and delicate subject matter. The SF Opera wants people to look at it literally and figuratively for a long time.

Their season finale, an expressionist take on Old Hollywood and German on Handels Partenope (until June 28 at the War Memorial Opera House), the result is about as mixed as it gets. It's one of those old stories about outdated gender politics that goes on longer than it should. Still, you can't really argue with the music of the guy who wrote Hallelujah for Messiah. At least part of its gender politics can be attributed to its attempted Shakespearean cross-dressing for laughs, but it's also a show where the cis-male characters are so defined by their lack of masculinity that their roles are traditionally played by the castrati. (This production is for countertenors only.)

The story, now set in 1920s Paris, revolves around the eponymous Partenope (French soprano Julie Fuchs), no longer a queen as in the original, but just a Jean Harlow-like object of all desires men. As befits someone of this distinction, she has many suitors vying for her affection, such as the hapless Armindo (New York-based countertenor Nicholas Tamagna). However, the lady seems particularly seduced by Arsace (Italian countertenor Carlo Vistoli). Unbeknownst to everyone, Armindo's friend and supposed traveling companion, Eurimene, is actually a disguised Rosmira (Argentine mezzo Daniela Mack), Arsace's heartbroken ex who wants revenge on him for leaving her the way he did.

The confusion is great. Battles are fought. Romance is found. Happy forever. Additionally, apparently having nothing else to do with the character of Emilio (American tenor Alek Shrader), this production sees him walking in the background commenting on the characters, in a look slightly reminiscent of that of Henry Spencer Eraser head.

As for the recent SF Operas production The magic flute, I find myself appreciating abstract German Expressionist-type design as much as the next film noir fan. Yet in both cases I have to wonder what service this does to the story? For this production, I don't know what set designer Andrew Lieberman and lighting designers Adam Silverman (original) and Gary Marder (current) were going for with this supposedly zany comedy? Sure, a comedy can use the noir aesthetic (just watch the movie Barton Fink), but here it's about trying to insert a square peg into a round hole. Additionally, the lighting is so balanced on one side that often entire actions of the characters are lost in the shadows.

Additionally, the livestream I saw seemed to lack a significant number of subtitles, which caused further confusion. It was easy to capture the characters' emotions through the body language and expressions of the performers (kudos to all), but there were tunes where it seemed like only the first two lines were translated into English, the rest untranslated into Italian, and maybe another last line or two in English. If you're going to include the entire text, you might as well let us know what it says.

Then there's the aforementioned gender politics, men not being real men (hence the sight of Hadleigh Adams Ormonte in a dress with two swords) and women all being conniving vixens who just need to love to melt their cold hearts. Or something. Perhaps the reason they chose the 1920s motif was to evoke the kind of times when such stories were still common. Yet the aforementioned Harlow and the incomparable Greta Garbo created characters who didn't exist solely for the sake of the men around them — which is exactly what the idiot types in these stories thought. This production of Partenope has no real subversion of tropes, just a change of facade.

As the last livestream of the season (there were only two), this one did pretty well. I was very impressed by the cross-cutting choices made during the curtain raises and salutes, with cameras on different members of the orchestra for the first and on members of the public for the second. There was a moment where the image zoomed in too close for some reason, but I think that might just have been a technical gaffe. It certainly didn't change the stream itself, although I often asked why there weren't subtitles.

Next season promises six shows proper and four one-off plays, hardly a sign of a struggling company (as many local theater companies actually are). There will be covers, premieres and other experiments to be carried out. In other words, it will be the SF Opera. Partenope it seems they are the ones entering the new century of entertainment in the greatest city in the world. Stumbling is a good thing; this is necessary to find your stride.

PARTENOPE runs through June 28 at the War Memorial Opera House, SF. Tickets and more information here.