SF Conservatory of Music: Handel's Flavio

The San Francisco Conservatory of Music's Historical Performance Department presented Handel's opera Flavio, rè de’ Longobardi this past weekend; I heard it on Saturday. There were different student casts for each performance but both were led by Department Chair Corey Jamason, & the ensemble was directed by Jamason, Elisabeth Reed, & Marcie Stapp.

The staging was minimal but effective: there were two stone benches on either side of the stage, in front of the orchestra, & surtitle screens let us know what the setting was. Unlike my René Jacobs recording, or the more recent one (which I haven't heard), this performance used female singers instead of counter-tenors; the women playing men were dressed in suits, & the directors had astutely advised them on how to sit in a masculine way, but there was no ungainly effort to hide the their essential femininity, which was not a problem. The women playing women wore stylish gowns.

The opera begins where many end, with two couples singing together about how complete & perfect their happiness is. Complications, of course, ensue, due to political rivalries, social tensions, & the wayward eye of the randy titular monarch. Sometimes the tone is lightly ironic, but there are also moments of genuine anguish & surprising violence – there's a duel that I thought would end in injury but instead (OK, spoiler alert for a 300-year-old opera!) ends in death. (In case you're wondering how I can have listened to a recording & not know this: I have a bad habit, due to limited time, of listening to things without necessarily reading along in the libretto; hence one of the revelations given to me by a live performance is often the plot.) Harmony is restored at the end, thanks to the benevolent monarch, who not only causes most of the problems but acts almost as a Deus ex Machina to resolve them.

The whole performance was a delight, from beginning to the end, almost three hours later: dazzling, moving arias followed one after another, all splendidly delivered by the young cast: mezzo Jaimie Langner as the arbitrary & self-amused Flavio; tenor Seth Hanson as the elderly counselor Ugone; bass-baritone Joseph Calzada as his seething rival counselor, Lotario; & then the four lovers, mezzo MonaLisa Pomarleanu as Ugone's son Guido, mezzo Cambria Metzinger as Ugone's charmingly flirtatious daughter Teodata, soprano Alissa Goretsky as Lotario's daughter Emilia, & soprano Hyesoo Kim as the courtier Vitige, in love with Teodata – all were excellent but I was particularly impressed with the two sopranos, Goretsky & Kim, who delivered their more emotionally wide-ranging roles with great depth & beauty.

The orchestra was also excellent (& I recognized some of the players, such as Yunyi Ji on harpsichord, from the Baroque Ensemble Concerto Competition concert in February). Like that concert, the opera was free to the public; all you needed was a reservation – it was a useful reminder that the Conservatory has lots of great offerings, freely available; if BART were running better, I would definitely be there more often.