San Francisco Opera Returns to the Stage for First Time in 20 Months – NBC Bay Space
The San Francisco Opera will return to the stage of the War Memorial Opera House on Saturday for the first time since December 2019, a pandemic-induced break that has robbed opera fans of their personal highs for around 20 months.
The opera celebrates its return with a five-performance symbolic performance of Tosca, its first production when it opened in the newly constructed war memorial building in 1932 during the depths of the Great Depression.
“Here we have another huge crisis behind us,” said Tosca director Shawna Lucey, “and we will reopen the opera house with this beloved title.”
On Wednesday the war memorial opened to the strangers of those times to a strange sight; Guests come to fill the seats for Tosca’s final dress rehearsal. The lights dimmed and the curtain rose as the audience settled in for a drama that seemed like a welcome escape from the drama they have been through for nearly two years.
“There is this human need to be together, right?” Lucey said, “To be together and experience rituals together, and theater is a ritual that we experience together.”
This time the ritual had a slightly different feeling as the guests wear masks and have to show proof of a Covid vaccination. It all seemed to subside when the orchestra kicked in and the singers took the stage.
The performance was more than just dusting off a worn-out opera classic. Apart from the fact that the kinks of the technical systems and the new Covid protocols were worked out, it was also the debut of the new music director Eun Sun Kim in the opera house. On Wednesday she waved her baton vigorously and spoke the words of passages in Tosca with her mouth, with Italian being one of the six languages she speaks.
“The music is phenomenal, it’s passionate,” said Lucey. “It is absolutely relatable, the story itself is absolutely convincing.”
While the opera house was closed for long periods of time, it did not go without activity. During the downtime, the company’s craftsmen built a new stage for the Fidelio opera, which could be used both indoors and outdoors. The opera took advantage of this versatility by taking advantage of the new stage during a limited performance by Barber Of Seville that was staged outside the drive-in at Marin’s Civic Center.
The costume store workers also took advantage of the production break to sew leftover costume fabrics for charities – and even worked with a UCSF doctor to develop a special Covid fabric mask that allowed the company’s cast members to be safe singing together.
And in a development that any patron’s hindquarters will likely appreciate, the opera replaced the war memorial’s 90-year-old seats for the first time.
“Seating comfort has come a long way in ninety years,” said Matthew Shilvock, Director General of the Opera, with a smile.
Like everyone else involved in the production, Shilvock was euphoric to see the guests again in those new seats that breathed life back into the venerable opera house – and sparked thunderous applause as the sad story came to an end.
“There’s nothing better than going back to this building, seeing the full orchestra in the pit, the full choir on stage,” said Shilvock, “and just feeling this huge onslaught of emotions and sounds approaching you.”
