When you get to be 100 years old, you can throw yourself a whale of a party. And if the centenarian in question is an opera company, the music comes with the territory.
Since 1923, theSan Francisco Operahas been at the center of the city’s cultural life, providing a wealth of musical excellence and consistent innovation, and seeking out ways to make that bounty as widely available as possible.
It’s a legacy worth celebrating, and the 100th Anniversary Concert that filled the War Memorial Opera House on Friday, June 16 — the capstone of the most consistently successful season the company has assembled in decades — did justice to the occasion.
For three hours, the stage was filled with a parade of vocal artistry from established veterans to newly minted stars. Three of the company’s finest conductors — music directorEun Sun Kim, former music directorDonald Runniclesand former principal guest conductor Patrick Summers — took turns in the pit. The San Francisco Opera Chorus, ably led by directorJohn Keene, showed off its gleaming, cohesive artistry in music of Verdi and Boito.
Yet perhaps the evening’s most stirring aspect was the feeling of community that was palpable throughout — a sense that the San Francisco Opera, more than simply a vehicle for near-nightly musical splendors, amounted to a spiritual gathering place for company members and audiences alike.
SopranoPatricia Racette, who began her career here in 1989 as a participant in the Merola Opera Program and has returned again and again to give the Opera House some of its most unshakeable memories, put it in starkly emotional terms.
“I can’t imagine my life, professionally speaking, without San Francisco,” she told The Chronicle during the after-concert dinner hosted at the Taube Atrium Theater next door. “I’m so grateful for this artistic community, for this company, and for the city I called my home for almost nine years.”
Racette helped emcee the program along with general director Matthew Shilvock and mezzo-soprano Susan Graham, another operatic luminary whose entire career has been oriented toward San Francisco. Graham in particular brought some pizzazz to the nonmusical portions of the evening, going off-script to regale the audience with yarns about her time here and the company’s importance to her development.
“I went completely rogue,” she confessed afterward. “But it was just such a powerful sentimental reliving of the arc of my whole career. We all have such a rare love affair with this company.”
That love was easy to detect throughout the evening, which included a limpid account by Graham andsoprano Heidi Stoberof the love duet “Pur ti miro” from Monteverdi’s “The Coronation of Poppea,” tenor Brandon Jovanovich’s ringing renditions of arias from Puccini’s “The Girl of the Golden West” and Tchaikovsky’s “The Queen of Spades,” a dynamic duet from Giordano’s “Andrea Chénier” from soprano Ailyn Pérez and tenorMichael Fabiano, and tenor Russell Thomas’ thrillingly extroverted performance of “Odi il voto,” an aria from Verdi’s “Ernani” that is generally cut and was being performed by the company for the first time.
Some of the most unforgettable performances simply transcended the occasion, leaving listeners with musical memories that are unlikely to fade anytime soon. Soprano Karita Mattila, her voice as clarion and tireless as ever, delivered a blistering account of the Kostelnicka’s aria from Janácek’s “Jenufa,” one that harked back to herunforgettable deliveryof the role here in 2016.
“打击我的心”,华丽的约翰·多恩ting that concludes Act 1 of John Adams’ “Doctor Atomic” (a San Francisco commissioned premiere in 2005) was given life in an extraordinarily probing performance by baritone Brian Mulligan. And sopranoNina Stemme, currently illuminating the company’s production of “Die Frau ohne Schatten” by Richard Strauss, sailed effortlessly and beautifully through the “Liebestod” of Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde.”
许多音乐数字是伴随着一个extended slide show, mining the company’s archives for cherished memories from the distant and more recent past. There were portraits of the company’s distinguished roster of past general directors, going back to legendary founder Gaetano Merola, and of its more recent series of music directors (the position was only created in 1986).
There were stills from dozens of the company’s past production, nimbly curated by theme — love duets for the Monteverdi duet, Handel operas for Graham’s rendition of “Ombra mai fu” from the composer’s “Xerxes,” scenes from “Tosca” for “Tosca.” For longtime patrons, many of these images stirred happy memories; others would probably have been grateful for some captioning help.
Still, it was an aptly celebratory evening — warm, communal and full of sparkling music to help observe the landmark. It also augured well for the company’s future in an uncertain environment.
“The arts are struggling for so many reasons, and COVID really kicked us in the gut,” Racette remarked afterward. “But coming out of this, I saw resilience, passion and a commitment to this art form.”
Here’s to the next hundred years!
Chronicle Senior Arts and Entertainment Editor Mariecar Mendoza contributed to this report.
Reach Joshua Kosman:jkosman@sfchronicle.com; Twitter:@JoshuaKosman