Nobody gets accepted to the Merola Opera Program without a great amount of natural talent and a plausible claim to be heading toward a noteworthy career. So when the summer training program affiliated with the San Francisco Opera Center winds up with the annual Grand Finale concert, there aren’t really any disappointments.
What you do get, though, are a few young singers who already seem to have left their training days behind them.
This year’s iteration of the program wound up Saturday, Aug. 19, with a lively and often heartfelt cavalcade of solos and ensembles in the War Memorial Opera House. The repertoire was deftly chosen to include not only familiar excerpts by Verdi, Puccini and Wagner (the backdrop was a tilted structural grid that is evidently going to serve as the set for the Opera’s upcoming production of Wagner’s “Lohengrin”), but also selections from some important recent American operas, the Spanish comic operas known as zarzuelas, and even a bit of Rodgers and Hart.
All of it was strong. A few numbers — the ones that made you think, “Wait, am I listening to a full-fledged professional here?” — were breathtaking.
举个例子,the duet from Act 1 of Verdi’s “Simon Boccanegra,” rendered with extraordinary vocal luster by soprano Caroline Corrales and baritone Eleomar Cuello. This is the moment in which a long-separated father and daughter are reunited, thanks to a helpful portrait of her dead mother.
It’s a scene that can come off as slightly corny in isolation (the moment is irresistible in the context of the full opera), but the two singers infused it with a thrilling degree of theatrical and emotional vitality.
Corrales boasts a robust and luxuriant tone that she deployed with unerring precision through Verdi’s demanding melodic lines. Cuello’s dark, vivid sound was a perfect match for her.
Some of the most memorable solo turns, meanwhile, came in music that was probably new to most listeners. The 19th century mezzo-soprano, composer and all-around cultural icon Pauline Viardot, for example, left us an opera on the Cinderella story, “Cendrillon,” and South Korean soprano So Ry Kim gave a magnificent account of the Fairy Godmother’s first aria, brightly luminous and full of tender grace.
Mezzo-soprano Natalie Lewis commanded the stage with a regal, expansive rendition of “A quality of love” from Richard Danielpour’s 2005 opera “Margaret Garner,” with its noble melodies steeped in the inflections of the African American spiritual. And mezzo-soprano Simona Genga delivered a whirlwind of vocal power in a flamenco-tinged number from Ruperto Chapi’s 1889 zarzuela “Las hijas del Zebedeo.”
I was particularly heartened by the breadth of the repertoire on offer, which is presumably a clue that these artists’ careers promise to include more than just the standard works that continue to clog the schedules of too many American opera houses.
“Fellow Travelers,” composer Gregory Spears’ irresistible 2016 opera about the McCarthy-era “lavender scare,” is scheduled for its Bay Area premiere next June fromOpera Parallèle, and tenor Demetrious Sampson Jr. and baritone Cameron Rolling gave a tantalizing preview with “I Should Take You to Bermuda,” a duet of seduction that is at once beautiful and slightly creepy. It made a perfect companion piece to “Là ci darem la mano” from Mozart’s “Don Giovanni,” to which the same adjectives could apply, in a skillful rendition by soprano Shan Hai and baritone Kevin Godínez.
The program was conducted, supportively if at times sluggishly, by Kelly Kuo, and nimbly staged by director Tania Arazi Coambs, one of the summer’s Merolini. It concluded with nearly back-to-back bursts of tenor wizardry, first from Daniel Luis Espinal in another zarzuela, Federico Moreno Torroba’s “Luisa Fernanda,” and finally from Sahel Salam in the title role of Sigmund Romberg’s operetta “The Student Prince.”
As usual, there were more rewarding selections than the few I’ve listed. The program ran 2½ hours and featured no fewer than 22 singers, as well as the behind-the-scenes contributions of five pianist-coaches. Keep an eye out for all of them — every one of them is headed someplace good.
Reach Joshua Kosman:jkosman@sfchronicle.com; Twitter:@JoshuaKosman