San Diego Opera

The 1987-88 season of San Diego Opera looks like a celebration of Italian opera's favorite son, Giuseppe Verdi. At a press conference Wednesday, Ian Campbell, general director of the company, announced that the four-opera season will begin Oct. 10 with Verdi's "Rigoletto" and will close with "Il Trovatore," opening Feb. 27, 1988. As a postscript to the season, again to be presented in Civic Theatre, the company will perform Verdi's Requiem, March 9, 1988.

SAN DIEGO - Devout opera companies caring to connect with Holy Week easily can. Along with the obvious choice of Wagner's "Parsifal," contemporary composers such as Harrison Birtwistle ("The Last Supper") and John Adams ("The Gospel According to the Other Mary") have been contributing to the cause. On Easter Eve, San Diego Opera looked a little further afield, however, by offering the first major American production of Ildebrando Pizzetti's "Murder in the Cathedral" at Civic Theatre.

San Diego Opera will present five fully staged productions and two non-subscription concerts for 1998-99. The operas will be Verdi's "Falstaff" (Jan. 23-Feb. 3), Carlisle Floyd's "Of Mice and Men" (Feb. 13-21), Mozart's "Cosi fan Tutte" (March 6-17), Humperdinck's "Hansel and Gretel" (April 10-18, 1999) and Verdi's "Un Ballo in Maschera" (May 1-12, 1999).

Like every other form of art, operas can be inspired by just about anything - historical events, myths, epic poems, plays, even movies. Often, such operas go on to eclipse their inspiration. Puccini's "Tosca," derived from a play by Victorien Sardou, is a good example; so is Verdi's "Rigoletto," based on a tragedy by Victor Hugo. But not all make that leap. Some remain in the shadow of their progenitors. How that affects an opera's appeal varies. But it's a topic worth raising as several such works are soon to be featured on Southern California stages, beginning Saturday with a production at San Diego Opera of Ildebrando Pizzetti's "Murder in the Cathedral," based on T.S. Eliot's verse play.

New to San Diego Opera, and now refurbished with a new rake, new lighting and a different wardrobe, Neil Peter Jampolis' Tulsa Opera production of "Lucia di Lammermoor" has an aura of Scottish brooding and Italian melancholy, exactly the mix one expects in Donizetti's most popular operatic tragedy. And it has the sensitive touch of a probing operatic mind--that of stage director Rhoda Levine.

San Diego Opera is not much-practiced in Wagner. Over the past 13 years, San Diego has grown into a substantially larger and more nationally prominent city. And over the past 13 years, its opera company has grown as well in prominence. But missing from Civic Theatre have been the operas of the composer considered the supreme challenge for any company. Sunday night, a new production of "Lohengrin" ended San Diego's Wagner drought.

The first gala after the start of the Gulf War opened on a sober, thoughtful note. Champagne, the ritual liquid that rinses away the cares of the world so that galas can, in fact, be gala, flowed early Saturday evening, but the first moments of the San Diego Opera's Season Opening Night Celebration were devoted to an address by event chairman Sandra Pay.

Although San Diego Opera begins 1985 with performances of that operettic chestnut "The Merry Widow" this week, General Director Ian Campbell insists that the company is broadening, rather than narrowing, its horizons. And though productions at the Civic Theatre will be reduced in future seasons from six to four, Campbell denies cutting back. "We are presently laying out a five-year plan in which we will be changing the way we present opera in San Diego," Campbell explains.

If the San Diego mayoral race had happened in Afghanistan, United Nations election monitors would still be trying to straighten it out, and warlords might be settling it with guns. Placid San Diego isn't a warlord kind of place, but it is caught anyway in a battle about what democracy means: Is it the will of the voters or adherence to a set of rules? Does it matter if the rules are as inconsistent as the Red Queen?

A new production of Wagner's "Der Fliegende Hollaender" is included among the four offerings in San Diego Opera's 1986-87 season. "Hollaender," directed by Bernd Benthaak and designed by Bill Gorgensen will be presented at the Civic Theatre Feb. 7, 10, 13 and 15, 1987. The cast includes Roger Roloff (in the title role), Sabine Hass (Senta), Kevin Langan (Daland) and Siegfried Jerusalem (Eric). Matthias Kuntzsch will conduct. The season will open with Puccini's "Tosca," (Oct.

Mezzo-soprano Suzanna Guzmán hosts "Open Call," KCET's new Thursday evening show featuring performances at Southern California's top arts schools and institutions. The L.A. native maintains an active performing schedule - her next gig is singing the role of Bertha in San Diego Opera's production of Rossini's "The Barber of Seville," opening April 21 - and helps groom young artists as the director of L.A. County High School for the Arts' Office of Community Engagement. Tell me about "Open Call.

How many tweets does it take to cover the entire span of opera history? The San Diego Opera wants to find out and has launched a Twitter project in which it will tweet about everything from Monteverdi to Mozart to Philip Glass on a daily basis. With more than 400 years to cover -- and at a rate of two tweets per day -- the project could take years to finish. The project, which can be found at #operahistory, launched in early November. The company said it has started at the beginning of opera history -- around the year 1580 or so -- and will continue into the 21st century.

Perhaps there is a hardy Brit or two who has attempted to surf the North Sea, but no one will ever confuse sunny San Diego beaches or tony La Jolla with a grim, 19th century Suffolk fishing village northeast of London. Even so, San Diego Opera -- which opened an atmospheric, conscientious, honest production of "Peter Grimes" on Saturday night in Civic Theatre -- comes by Benjamin Britten's great opera honestly. The composer and the tenor Peter Pears happened to be staying in nearby Escondido in 1941 when they came across an article about the George Crabbe poem on which the opera is based, and there the seeds of Britten's first major, and most famous, opera began.

MORE than 80 years after its premiere in 1925, Alban Berg's expressionistic first opera, "Wozzeck," can still rattle an audience. The atonal music keeps the ear alert and off balance, and the raw subject matter of a soldier driven to murder by his superiors' cruel treatment, a mad doctor's experiments and his common-law wife's betrayal continues to offend a sense of fairness and moral order. It's a work, in short, for our time.

Ferruccio Furlanetto sang his first U.S. Boris Godunov to open the San Diego Opera season Saturday at the downtown Civic Theatre. It was a resounding success. The first Italian to sing the title role of Mussorsky's opera at the Maryinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, Russia, where the work premiered, Furlanetto is fondly remembered for his commanding, nuanced Philip II in Verdi's "Don Carlo" for Los Angeles Opera in September.

In the new Los Angeles Opera production of Verdi's "Don Carlo," the "money" notices have gone to a singer who has long been a stalwart of San Diego Opera but is only now making his L.A. company debut, Ferruccio Furlanetto. The Italian-born basso is playing not the opera's title role but one that may be even more important: Spain's Philip II, "a ruler," as Times music critic Mark Swed put it in his review, "torn between his lust and responsibility, between the church and state."

Recite the repertory of opera in Southern California and it sounds like stuttering. "Madama Butterfly" at the Music Center; "Madama Butterfly" in Orange County. "Cosi Fan Tutte" here (Opera Pacific last season), "Cosi" there (San Diego Opera this season). "Hansel and Gretel" comes this spring to San Diego, this fall to Los Angeles. In September, "Falstaff" was one of the opening operas of the current L.A. Opera season.

If the San Diego mayoral race had happened in Afghanistan, United Nations election monitors would still be trying to straighten it out, and warlords might be settling it with guns. Placid San Diego isn't a warlord kind of place, but it is caught anyway in a battle about what democracy means: Is it the will of the voters or adherence to a set of rules? Does it matter if the rules are as inconsistent as the Red Queen?