FROM AROUND THE WORLD: SAN FRANCISCO.(Review)

Verdi has always occupied a special place in the repertoire of San Francisco Opera, so it was appropriate that the company devoted its June 2001 season to celebrating the centenary of the composer's death. And a celebration it was, at least with regard to two of the three works they staged.

Few operas have as puzzling a reputation as Simon Boccanegra. The score is perhaps the loveliest, certainly the most tender and affecting that Verdi ever wrote, yet productions are comparatively rare. We are usually told that this is because the music is unremittingly somber and the dramatic situation lacks interest, but as the San Francisco production revealed, this is patently untrue. David Edwards's reworking of Elijah Moshinsky's 1991 Covent Garden production gave this tale of political intrigue and separated families powerful theatrical life. Within Michael Yeargan's cool, surprisingly adaptable neo-classical setting, Edwards juxtaposed realistic action with striking passages of symbolic representation -- for example, a large blue silken cloth represented both the mantle of the doge's power and the sea itself, upon which that power was based. The simplicity of the staging and the careful observation of the ways in which personal emotion and political ambition color and modify each other showed that Simon Boccanegra is as complete a work of theater as any of Verdi's other mature works.

The quality of the production was severely tested on the evening of June 22. Paolo Gavanelli, who had made quite an impact as Boccanegra in earlier performances, had contracted a viral infection and by the end of the Council-chamber scene was quite inaudible; his role was taken over by the production's Paolo, Nikolai Putilin, who had never sung the role onstage before. Also, Carol Vaness did not begin the role of Amelia with the confidence one expects from her. Hence, early in the evening the vocal success of the performance appeared seriously imperiled. Samuel Ramey's intense Fiesco, however, became the center from which the performance found its energy and gained its assurance.

Donald Runnicles, perhaps out of consideration for Gavanelli, adopted unusually slow tempos and sometimes seemed to tone down the orchestra. This served to enhance the poetry of the drama and made this most intimate of scores that much more personal and engaging. The death of Boccanegra had about it an aura of quiet exaltation that one does not often encounter in the opera house. This was intensified by the curious interpolation of the figure of Verdi himself, who at the beginning of each act and at the end of the opera came on to gaze at the characters of his imagination, which encouraged us to see them as projections of his own painful and sometimes questionable relationship with his children. At a regular performance, this conceit might strike one as pretentious, but in a season devoted to celebrating the composer, it was unexpectedly apt.

The second cause for celebration was the Violetta of Mary Dunleavy at the matinee of La Traviata on June 23. Dunleavy's voice has an uncommon clarity, flexibility and sweetness of tone that compel rapt ...