“Lohengrin” is a long, lustrous opera about an extraterrestrial knight who visits an earthly society to right a wrong and save its heroine from being charged with a crime she did not commit. No surprise that there is love and betrayal, brutality and overweening ambition in Wagner’s pre-”Ring” opera.
Onstage at the War Memorial Opera House, this new-to-San Francisco “Lohengrin,” co-produced with the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and Opera Vlaanderen, Belgium, features a nearly all-star cast, and orchestral playing and choral forces that can only be described as heavenly.
On opening day Oct. 15, San Francisco Opera Music Director Eun Sun Kim led an expansive, fiery performance, finely detailed and drawing all forces together with explosive intent. With players in the 70-plus orchestra positioned onstage, below stage, backstage and in the organ bay at Grand Tier level, the scene looked downright dangerous at times, but musically everything came together like a charm throughout the nearly five-hour performance.
Director David Alden’s much-ballyhooed 2018 production (settings by Paul Steinberg) is a rather dreary affair with a dark focus on Lohengrin’s hometown Brabant as a fascist society, with swan-swastika flags and Nazi salutes to the fore.
Wagner placed the opera in a militaristic society, and so directors these days seem to feel obliged to leave the original 10th-century trappings and Wagnerian pageantry behind and update, in this case to Europe at war in mid-20th century.
Needless to look for the famous swan moment—the statue in the square is just another reference to fascist power. (That said, lighting designer Adam Silverman’s projections of enormous flapping wings representing Lohengrin’s arrival and departure are workable.)
New Zealand tenor Simon O’Neill is a powerhouse Lohengrin. His voice has a heroic sheen that recalls Jon Vickers in his prime, yet he can soften and beautify the tone when called for. American soprano Julie Adams’ Elsa partners him with gleaming high notes that express extremes of passion in their love duet (surprising the level of ardor as the two were left to sprint around a sterile white nuptial bedroom) or anger over the knight’s refusal to tell her his name.
Equally strong is the villainess couple who would destroy them: Romanian-Hungarian mezzo Judit Kutasi in her local debut nearly set the stage on fire as a dark-voiced Ortrud; her mate Telramund was sung with grisly drive by American baritone Brian Mulligan, and Icelandic bass Kristinn Sigmundsson gave a pointed dramatic performance as King Heinrich, who gathers the armies that will defend Germany against invaders. Thomas Lehman was vocally impressive as the King’s Herald.
Along with the “Il Trovatore”’ that opened San Francisco Opera’s 2023-24 season, the company’s Verdi-Wagner project in which Eun Sun Kim conducts an opera by each composer each season has been well launched, with promise of many exceptional performances to come.
“Lohengrin” continues at 7 p.m. Oct. 18, Oct. 21, Oct. 27 and Nov. 1 at the War Memorial Opera House, 301 Van Ness Ave., San Francisco. Tickets are $26 to $426. The Oct. 21 performance will be live-streamed, with tickets at $27.50. For more information, call (415) 864-3330 or visit sfopera.com.