Part Arthurian legend, part religious allegory, Lohengrin is a dreamy stormy creation for supersized orchestra, invisible brass quartets, singers with superhuman stamina, and audiences lucky enough to catch a rare production of Wagner’s romantic classic.
From the instant of its 1850 debut, the sumptuous creation was a huge world-wide hit, and for many scholars Lohengrin marka the last of Wagner’s traditionally structured operas, opening the door for his unprecedented “music theater” masterpieces, The Ring, Tristan und Isolde, and Parsifal.
Last week’s production of Lohengrin at the San Francisco Opera offers Wagner lovers a rare chance to hear the opera in all of its four and a half hour glory. And if it weren’t enough simply to hear the unparalleled San Francisco Opera orchestra and chorus channeling new heights of chromatic power, last week’s audience feasted on the voice of a true heldentenor, American Brandon Jovanovich (last year’s Sigmund and Pinkerton on 2010’s Madame Butterfly).
From the moment we heard Jovanovich’s Lohengrin bidding farewell to the swan boat that has brought him into the troubled court of medieval King Heinrich, we were spellbound. The audience literally gasped as Jovanovich effortlessly plucked long shimmering passages from the highest tenor register and spun the sound into pure crystal. And he did this over and over, all the while wielding a sword, convincing a king, and winning the heart of a beautiful maiden. (This is archetypal fairytale structure!)
If anything, this tenor’s voice only grew stronger, clearer, more confident as the opera moved into its second and third acts. And frankly it didn’t hurt this mythical knight one bit that in lean gracefulness he looked for all the world like he’d stepped off the cover of GQ.
All the other principals were fine, especially Kristinn Sigmundsson‘s articulate bass as King Heinrich, and the oft-stormy and mercurial contralto of Petra Lang as the scheming rival Ortud. Only Lohengrin’s love interest, sung from time to time with unfortunate shrillness by lovely Finnish soprano Camilla Nylund, failed to match the stunning Jovanovich. When he was on the stage, he owned it.
Unaccountably wooden staging threatened to sabotage the breathtaking sweep of Wagner’s music, which emerged as impossibly beautiful, as well as grandly inventive. It was very very difficult to believe that any of these heroes were really pining away for the statuesque Elsa, so robotic and disengaged were their gestures. In the end it didn’t matter. Our Lohengrin’s voice approached perfection, and the music itself was expressive enough for a dozen star-crossed lovers to meet, marry (yes, this is the opera with the infamous, much-performed “Wedding March”), and disappear. Kudos to concert master Ian Robertson whose handiwork reminds me exactly why I invest in season tickets each year.
