Graham shines in S.F. Opera’s epic ‘Trojans’

There was an abundance of delights to savor in the huge production of Berlioz’s “The Trojans” that opened Sunday afternoon at the San Francisco Opera, with five hours’ worth of sumptuous music, elaborate spectacle and epic vision. But the one that will stay with me longest and most piercingly was the performance of mezzo-soprano Susan Graham as Dido, the Carthaginian queen pulled back into love almost against her will and then betrayed by the demands of empire.
On a day that saw Graham receive the San Francisco Opera Medal to celebrate the 25th anniversary of her debut with the company, she marked the occasion with one of the most powerful showings in her long history on the stage of the War Memorial Opera House — a tour de force of vibrant vocalism and searing theatricality.
Dido (or Didon, in Berlioz’s French libretto) comes into view only midway through the work’s five-hour epic sweep, after the Trojans have seen their city torched by the victorious Greeks and Aeneas has escaped to make his way to Italy and establish the Roman empire. The newly founded city of Carthage is just a way station on his path to glory.

Rage, resignation
But Dido asserts herself as a character with all the force of a queen and a lover, and Berlioz’s magnificently expressive writing tracks her course in inimitable strokes — from the inner conflict that informs her early scenes as a ruler, to the rapture of her all-too-brief romantic idyll with Aeneas, and finally to the combination of vindictive rage and tragic resignation of her abandonment.
All of that and more came through in Graham’s arresting performance. Her robust vocal tone sounded practically unweathered, and as rich in color as ever. In duets with the bright-toned, tireless tenor Bryan Hymel, making his company debut as Aeneas, and with the lustrous mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke as her sister Anna, Graham provided lush and impeccable partnership.
And in the last act, when she has to hold the audience spellbound through the sheer emotional potency of her singing, Graham rose to the occasion with unbridled virtuosity. The tragic downfall of this regal character has rarely seemed so galvanic.
Under other circumstances, a performance like this would have been enough to carry an entire operatic production. Yet “The Trojans” — which has not been performed at the San Francisco Opera since 1968 — operates on such a monumental scale that Dido’s fate is only one part of a large and sprawling undertaking.
In adapting Virgil’s “Aeneid,” a work for which he maintained a lifelong passion, Berlioz took the opportunity to draw on everything he knew about music and theater. The score boasts a wealth of ingenious orchestral inventions, both subtle and grandiose, and an enormous cast. It includes ballet interludes and choruses, intricate polyphonic ensembles and exquisitely direct solo vocal writing. The music is rich in thunderous effects and detailed tone painting.
It is also, at least to this taste, a bit blocky in its dramaturgy; each episode comes with its own sonic proscenium, as it were. A listener simply takes that as a premise of the performance, and grants Berlioz the license to toss in a pair of lascivious sentries, say, for no other reason than that he feels like it.

Runnicles’ return
Sunday’s performance dodged that issue in large part because of the welcome return of former Music Director Donald Runnicles, whose work in the pit evoked wonderful memories of his command of expansive form. The orchestra sounded fantastic under his leadership, with surging, tumultuous string textures and impeccably pointed playing from the woodwinds (no one works the woodwinds like Berlioz). And the canny ebb and flow of individual scenes and entire acts served as a testament to Runnicles’ overarching mastery.
The afternoon’s other noteworthy return was that of soprano Anna Caterina Antonacci, whose performance as Cassandra marked the first of her two assignments with the company this summer. (She’ll return to the War Memorial on Saturday, June 13, to create the central role in the world premiere of Marco Tutino’s “Two Women,” ceding the part of Cassandra for two performances to Michaela Martens.)

Antonacci, who has not sung here since 1998, gave a riveting account of the character — the only one among the Trojans who foresees the doom that will come from the wooden horse the Greeks have left outside the city gates. If her repertoire of twitchy gestures and loony eye rolls seemed a bit outsize for their purpose, there was no denying the intensity and fervor with which she conveyed the character’s plight, or the vocal majesty she brought to the assignment.
In a work that is as much about the clash of nations as about individual personalities, the chorus carries much of the dramatic weight, and Ian Robertson's Opera Chorus, joining their voices in full-throated splendor, filled that role splendidly. From the besieged and increasingly terror-stricken Trojans of the first acts to the optimistic Carthaginians singing the praises of their queen, this was a vigorous and multi-faceted performance.
Scattered throughout the afternoon were other contributions of nobility and grace. Christian Van Horn gave a muscular performance as Dido’s minister Narbal, tenor René Barbera sang sweetly in his set piece as Dido’s court poet Iopas, and tenor Chong Wang, an Adler Fellow, brought down the house in Act 5 with a remarkably soulful and beautiful rendition of the homesick lament of a young sailor.

Vast panoramas
David McVicar’s production, a co-production with Covent Garden, La Scala and the Vienna State Opera directed here by Leah Hausman, captures the extravagance of Berlioz’s conception in vast scenic panoramas. Troy is a shadowy pile of metal and fortifications just waiting to be turned into rubble, Carthage an open, sun-drenched expanse that forms a pointed contrast. The Trojan horse itself — a sort of scary steampunk cousin to the title character in the Broadway hit “War Horse” — would be counted a small miracle of stagecraft if not for the fact that it’s enormous.

San Francisco Opera: “The Trojans,” through Wednesday, July 1, War Memorial Opera House, 301 Van Ness Ave., S.F. $96-$384. (415) 864-3330. www.sfopera.com.

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