From around the world: San Francisco.(North America)(San Francisco Opera's three-opera festival)

A three-opera "festival" in June and July brought to a close Pamela Rosenberg's first year as San Francisco Opera's active producer (and second as general director). Not all has gone well lately for the eighty-year-old company. Money problems have imposed an all-around belt-tightening, with effects on repertory and staff that will echo into future seasons and threaten Rosenberg's early, glowing proclamations of "Animating Opera," her five-year plan to lend fresh luster to the look, as well as the substance, of the medium.

Even so, the bottom line--artistically at least--on the Rosenberg impact so far sends unmistakable signals that, for better or worse, the whole town has something to talk about now. To a company whose previous strengths have been largely in the eminence of its singers' roster, in repertory cautiously chosen and traditionally staged, she has applied a vigorous shake-up. Of twelve productions in the 2002-03 season, four were created by longtime Rosenberg colleagues from her time in German houses, and all four (Messiaen's Saint Francois d'Assise, Handel's Alcina and Janacek's Kata Kabanova last fall, and Berlioz's La Damnation de Faust last June) were couched in production values that moved the whole concept of operatic drama miles beyond previous practices in San Francisco.

This is not the same, however, as declaring San Francisco's brand of innovation aglow with success. In the concert hall, for which it was written, or on the opera stage, for which it has been adapted by many hands, Berlioz's gloss on Goethe ends up disconnected if dazzling (seen June 14). To these values, director Thomas Langhoff added further disconnections.

Jurgen Rose's set was a large, suspended box, the grayish-whitish walls of which converged in the far distance. The chorus, in black tie, sat outside the box, on three sides; occasionally its members peered into the box and gesticulated at the action inside. Faust, in rumpled professorial garb, puttered with his books. Mephistopheles showed up in trenchcoat and red baseball cap. Later on, there were Sylphs, clad (if that's the right word) in leather and in vinyl thongs. (A postcard to subscribers warned that this scene might offend delicate sensibilities; an estimated eighty people turned in their tickets, but several more requested seats farther up front.)

Donald Runnicles conducted, with his usual high regard for pace and color; still, something in Berlioz's unique sense of orchestral timbre seemed muted by having all that glorious ...