Eun Sun Kim was named as the San Francisco Opera’snext music directoron Thursday, Dec. 5, and the following night she showed up for work. She had a good first day on the job.
The occasion was “The Future Is Now,” the annual showcase concert for the company’s Adler Fellows. Kim had already been engaged for this appearance, which involved conducting a dozen of the company’s gifted young artists (10 singers and two pianist-coaches) in a full 2½-hour lineup of operatic arias and duets. Now, suddenly, there was a whole lot more interest in the conducting than there usually is.
And here’s how well she handled it: That shift in focus lasted for about five minutes. Then everyone in Herbst Theatre went right back to thinking about the singers whose night this really was.
So that’s the Kim Paradox in a nutshell. She’s such a skilled and virtuosic performer that you almost have to remind yourself to pay any attention to her contributions at all.
Instead, the evening was devoted to a series of exciting and often brilliant star turns by the Adlers, some of whom are only halfway through the two-year fellowship while others are clearly poised for an immediate leap to stardom. As one singer after another took the stage to dazzle and delight, the program began to seem like an elaborate game of “can you top this?”
But let’s begin with the program’s most newsworthy selection — mezzo-soprano Ashley Dixon’s phenomenal performance of the aria “Dopo notte” from Handel’s opera “Ariodante.” After two years as an Adler, Dixon is far from an unknown quantity, yet this was the first time she had ever sung anything here from the Baroque repertoire.
It turns out she’s a master at it. She’s got a robust instrument full of beguiling vocal colors (OK, that we knew), as well as the formidable technical command to unleash streams of glittering coloratura with precision and panache. From her throaty low register to her commanding high notes, all of it was delivered with equal assurance.
This would have been a showstopper under any circumstances, but the fact that Dixon’s Handelian wizardry was such a well-kept secret only added to the jolt. It was like watching an ordinary person walk into a phone booth and emerge with a hitherto unsuspected superpower.
Even countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen — usually the finest Handelian on any given stage — had to take a back seat, but he compensated with a long-breathed, ravishingly beautiful excerpt from Berlioz’s song cycle “Les Nuits d’Été.”
The splendor of soprano Natalie Image’s artistry — her bright, piercing sonority, eloquent phrasing and seemingly effortless sophistication — is well known by now. But that didn’t detract from the exquisite pleasures of her solos from Mozart’s “Idomeneo” and Donizetti’s “Daughter of the Regiment.”
And there was more!
There was a duet from Rossini’s “Le Comte Ory,” rendered with charming verve by mezzo-soprano Simone McIntosh and tenor Zhengyi Bai. There was tenor SeokJong Baek,showing tenderness and power in arias by Puccini and Cilea, and the muscular joy of bass-baritone Christian Purcell’s accounts of music by Rachmaninoff and AmbroiseThomas. Tenor Christopher Oglesby shone in a lovely aria from Tchaikovsky’s “Iolanta,” and soprano MaryEvelyn Hangley and tenor Christopher Colmenero joined forces early on for a fine duet from Verdi’s “Don Carlo.”
Throughout it all, Kim provided musical guidance that was firm but pliant, delicate yet strong-limbed. At every point, you could feel her giving the singers just what they needed to excel, without ever drawing focus onto her.
It’s just what you want from an opera conductor, and it inspired optimism for the performances in the company’s coming seasons. “The Future Is Now” is, of course, meant to apply to the Adler Fellows, but I think no harm is done if we decide to apply the moniker a little more broadly.