But in its peak scenes, even the set seems calm. "The Pearl Fishers" isn't going to make anyone forget "Carmen," the composer's unrivaled masterpiece. A camper scared off a bear - then the grizzly came back and killed her.Flooded San Francisco residential tower 33 Tehama may not be habitable until 2023.Bay Area frozen foods giant Amy’s closing production plant after one year.Horoscope for Tuesday, 7/19/22 by Christopher Renstrom.Restaurant and private members lounge to be built controversially in San Francisco's 'public' Salesforce Park.No record of Harvard degree for Warriors' Nicole Lacob despite Kendrick Perkins taunt.Monster waves 'completely wipe out' condos in Hawaii amid 'historic' swell.Some of the crowd scenes run to busy milling, and he tends to place his principals in rather static configurations. Vivid as it all is, the set's flat-look conventions seem to stymie director Andrew Sinclair at times. Rhodes scribbles out a mighty storm and then a fire on her rolling backdrops. The "Pearl Fishers," which originated as a joint production by San Diego Opera and Michigan Opera Theatre, delivers eye candy by the pound. Bass Mark Coles, as the high Brahman priest who discovers the lovers in the clinch, projects a dignified dismay. Conductor Sebastian Lang-Lessing, who leads a generally graceful performance from the pit, seems a bit demure and detached here as well. When the wraps come off, in her big love duet with Castronovo, there's still something cloaked about her performance. And she's better in her mysterious veiled mode. As a bonus, in her midriff-baring costume, she sports a jewel in her navel.īut Amsellem's pitch wasn't always accurate on opening night. Her trills are tight, she floats her high notes weightlessly and her pianissimos are a minor marvel.
Amsellem offers a formidable technique to meet the musical demands of Lei¨la. His voice is attractive throughout and sometimes ravishing, and he looks comfortably bold as a bare-chested lover. He may not get the girl, but Zurga carves out the evening's most commanding figure.Ĭastronovo and Amsellem are fine if something less than electric as the lovers. But Amsellem's somewhat stiffly expressed pleas seem unavailing in the presence of Dazeley's agonizing Zurga. He's joined by Lei¨la at the end of the scene. Wrenched up by it all, Dazeley sings most of "O Nadir, tendr'ami" from his knees, in a raw and probing musical monologue.
Dazeley, in the evening's most authentic and piercing moment, scours out the rage, guilt, shame and unfulfilled passion that's been eating away at him over the double betrayal of Nadir and Lei¨la. It comes at the top of the third act, when Zurga broods alone onstage. She and Nadir soon recognize one another and rekindle the flame, with predictably bad results.īut "Pearl Fishers" has one other great treasure to offer as it paddles and storms its way along. The opera lavishes plenty of coloratura and not much else on the role of Lei¨la (soprano Norah Amsellem). She's committed to a chaste vigil on a cliff as protection for the pearl fishing industry. The woman who once divided them promptly arrives in town, of course, as a veiled virgin priestess. Yes, Eugéne Cormon and Michel Carré's libretto plays hopelessly fast and loose with both coherent storytelling and characters' psychology along the way. Friendship, sexual jealousy (they both once loved the same woman), religious purity - these are the foundations that will be tested and tremble over the next three acts. The musical stakes are clear, and strikingly laid out by Dazeley and Castronovo in their lustrous fusion of voices. Put it down to precocity if you like, but Bizet's genius for melody and dramatically heightened mood is fully present in "Au fond du temple saint." Against the soft shimmer of flutes and harp, sharpened by oboe and clarinet when a strain of rivalry creeps in, the two friends strike a vow of loyalty that is both soaring and steady, idealistic and firmly grounded. Then, in one transfixingly beautiful duet, it's suddenly clear why this early and patchily made piece, composed when Bizet was 24, might be worth all the fabric and fuss. But it's not until Zurga's old friend Nadir (tenor Charles Castronovo) turns up and the two get reacquainted that the opera kicks in.
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