After a fantastic business event in Berkeley on a beautiful day, I am back in San Francisco for a school-night opera evening. it starts at the Hayes Street Grill for some seafood, and the drive up from Silicon Valley have me some new updated views of the city, approaching from Berkeley/Oakland!
The Ft. Bragg sole is fantastic, and my only complaint in the category of first world problems is that the do not have any full bodied reds by the glass. Life is rough 😉
While navigating traffic on the Bay Bridge, I had listened to the SF Opera 2016/2017 Season podcast on how Red Chamber was introduced as new production. The intro paragraph that Matthew Shilvock quotes, reminds my of the opening of Victor Hugo‘s Les Miserables, basically saying „this is important because.“
This classic Chinese epic recounts a love triangle between a young nobleman, his spiritual soulmate and a beautiful heiress. Commissioned by San Francisco Opera, this world-premiere opera is by Bright Sheng, one of the most important Chinese-American composers today, and Tony Award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang (M. Butterfly).
When I first learned that David Henry Hwang and Bright Sheng were working on an opera based on the novel, I could not help but ask “How?”
Stan Lai, Director
The libretto only retains 7 of the 40 major characters, so the adaptation was truly an exercise of distilling the original complex story to its essence. What better way to do so than falling back to a love triangle as a backdrop to tell tales of complex politics at the Chinese Imperial Court.
As it turns out, it was opening night for this season and Director Stan Lai was sitting with the Gunn‘s in the box next to me, and was rushing to stage eight when the curtain fell. A memorable evening, for sure.
StageAficionado 