Girls of the Golden West – San Francisco Opera

[Quiggin]

The new John Adams/Peter Sellars opera, Girls of the Golden West, about the vicissitudes of life in a remote gold rush mining town, has lots of beautiful singing in it. Julia Bullock is especially wonderful (Peter Sellers thinks she's new Lorraine Hunt Lieberson) but there are also J'Nai Bridges and Hye Jung Lee (the other girls) and Davone Tines who are all awfully good. Lorena Feijoo has a (too) brief dancing part as Lola Montez.

Oddly the reviews of Girls of the Golden West get stronger the farther you go away from San Francisco. Those in the Los Angeles Times and the San Jose Mercury News were raves while the Chronicle's was especially sour. 

Two clips of Julia Bullock. In Purcell Indian Queen –

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pacq0kgWuh0

and in a Julliard master class singing The Lad and the Bee of Hugo Wolf –

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZxlvIXwwb

 

 

Edited November 30, 2017 by Quiggin

[Helene]

Thank you so much for posting!  I so wanted to see this, but I couldn't do the trip.

I'm hoping this is one of the operas they stream on KDFC.  This would have been a perfect opera to be broadcast, had we had robust public TV.

[kfw]

I'd love to see this too, and I've been eagerly awaiting more reviews. I'm surprised the NYT hasn't run one yet (and I'm surprised they didn't review opening night of NYCB's Nutcracker). 

In regards to the LA Times review, this 

Quote

Time, if only we will listen, is on its side.

seems a little ironic in light of this. 

Quote

The audience needs to put it all together, and there is a much to put together, with nearly three hours of music. I attended the premiere Tuesday night and returned for the second performance Friday. That was not enough.

Would that we could all go back again and again with press tickets.

[Quiggin]

8 hours ago, kfw said:

Would that we could all go back again and again with press tickets.

Maybe he remembers the student days of going to standing room - which is not a bad option at the Opera house. $10 gets a pretty good view (the equivalent of orchestra row 28) and a good sound mix (balcony standing sound is more articulate but sometimes too bright),

I think there are two audiences in SF for opera - one very traditional, for whom the current production of Turandot (with Nina Stemme) is the standard and those who don't care about plot and would like to see the forms broken open. Los Angeles seems to be more adventurous musically these days. Take, for example, the recent evening at Disney Hall with Julia Bullock and Ryan McKinny of a mix of Samuel Beckett plays and Franz Schubert lieder (Schubert was Beckett's favorite composer - he would sing along at the piano). Even with the recent Diebenkorn-Matisse show at the Museum of Art you could see the same SF divide and conflict - the conservative Diebenkorn alongside the radical Matisse.

 

Edited December 1, 2017 by Quiggin

[kfw]

41 minutes ago, Quiggin said:

Even with the recent Diebenkorn-Matisse show at the Museum of Art you could see the same SF divide and conflict - the conservative Diebenkorn alongside the radical Matisse.

Wasn't that a wonderful show? I saw it in Baltimore last year, and John Elderfield spoke. 

[Helene]

14 hours ago, Quiggin said:

(Peter Sellers thinks she's new Lorraine Hunt Lieberson)

Now that's an endorsement!

What a lovely singer:  thank you for the links!

[Quiggin]

The NY Times posts an excerpt from Girls of the Golden West, "the ballad of Ah Sing", sung by Hye Jung Lee, as one of the "Eight Best Classical Music Moments of the Week". Anthony Tommasini reviewed it earlier this month in the Times, giving it a solid thumbs up.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/15/arts/music/best-classical-youtube.html?module=WatchingPortal&region=c-column-middle-span-region&pgType=Homepage&action=click&mediaId=thumb_square&state=standard&contentPlacement=7&version=internal&contentCollection=www.nytimes.com&contentId=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2017%2F12%2F15%2Farts%2Fmusic%2Fbest-classical-youtube.html&eventName=Watching-article-click&_r=0

 

[sandik]

And did you listen to the harp version of the Bach Toccata and Fugue -- I was gobsmacked.