Hey campers! This one’s coming to you from the security line at SFO – I’m headed home for a long weekend with my Schwegfam! We’re seeing “Hamilton” (yes, this will be my fourth time, and yes, I know that’s absurd), hitting up our favorite restaurants, and hopefully heading to the State Fair and out on the lakes, weather permitting. I haven’t seen my parents since May and June, respectively, and my sibs since March…so this is a long-overdue reunion!
After a long summer break from writing, I have a ton to catch up on from pretty much all of 2018. It’s been a banner year for having adventures, but not a great one for recording any of it…oops. The undoubted highlight of my summer was, indisputably, seeing my first full Ring Cycle at the San Francisco Opera in June! While I had seen “Das Rheingold,” the first of the four operas, in Minnesota, I had never seen the other three, and experiencing them all in just one week was a wild ride and total adventure.
Doing a full Ring Cycle is a cultish, hardcore, elite-opera-lover thing to do – so naturally I needed to do it. Over the course of our six-day cycle, I met opera fans who have done the full Cycle as many as 22 times – people who travel all over the world to experience it, spending thousands of dollars and years of their lives obsessing over it and discussing it with like-minded fans. As a first-timer, I found that the brotherhood of other Ring lovers was warm, welcoming, and enthusiastic – we made friends over the course of the week during intermissions, at restaurants beforehand, and even in the pool of my apartment complex.
Of course, who better to do a Ring Cycle with than my favorite opera friend Michael? He flew out to California early, spent the weekend in Yosemite being a beast and climbing Half Dome, and rolled into town on Monday night. We kicked off our week of operas with Rheingold on Tuesday:
First, cocktails at Laszlo. We went with mezcal-based drinks: a Melanie for me and a Margot for him.
Then we headed two doors down for an unbelievably good dinner at Lolinda – Argentinean wood-fired meats, including the most incredibly tender tongue I’ve ever had, and a Chappellet cabernet that was revelatory for me.
Rheingold was fantastic – we actually happened to see the same Wotan (the bass) that we had seen in Minnesota in November of 2016! The SF Opera production was set at the turn of the 20th century, and was set-designed gorgeously.
For me, Die Walkure, our second show, was the standout of the cycle. We raced downtown after a long day in Muir Woods and at Lagunitas, and made it to our seats with only three minutes to spare. At the first intermission, we discovered that the balcony of the opera house had been converted to a German beer garden, serving brats and giant soft pretzels with enormous German beers. Bonus: the view of the Civic Center is absolutely stunning from the balcony…
I was blown away by Swedish soprano Irene Theorinn singing Brunnhilde – her “Heilegin hoy” aria at the beginning of the second act got a spontaneous ovation from the audience, which is incredibly rare for Wagner. The entire third act, where Wotan curses her (his daughter) to sleep, left me in tears- the music is ridiculously rich, evocative and moving, and they really left it all out there during the scenes. As soon as my tears dried, we headed out and made it home…after midnight, after four and a half hours of opera! The Ring Cycle truly is a marathon, and I think we were really feeling it after an early morning, strenuous day, and mad dash downtown.
We fortunately had Thursday off from opera for a rest day, so we didn’t pick back up until Friday. This time, to avoid another frantic rush-hour race into the city, we packed formalwear and spent the day downtown exploring, thinking we would grab drinks and change before the show. So we popped to Epic Steak for oysters and Iron Horse champagne (of course). As we finished, I headed to switch my jeans out for a gown, and almost shit myself when the zipper zipped onto the dress midway up. The restaurant manager, who happened to be in the other stall, tried to fix it and, instead, ended up ripping the entire zipper out of the dress.
Not going to lie, I had a moderate panic attack. I didn’t have a gown, and we had dinner plans with another couple in an hour, and I was NOT about to wear jeans to the opera. Thankfully, there’s a stand-alone Rent The Runway in the downtown Neiman Marcus…
…where an absolute angel staff member hooked me up with a gown in five minutes flat. (She seriously deserves a prize for dealing with my panic-sweating, tear-stained, frantically-rushed spaz self with such grace and patience.) That gown was definitely out of my comfort zone…I tend to default to black dresses for the opera just because they’re elegant, understated, and most of all, safe. I’m not the kind of person who likes to stand out, and nothing stands out quite as much as full-length gold sequins…
…especially when coupled with a very low neckline and a very slinky fit. The funniest thing, for me, was that as uncomfortable and self-conscious as I was, I was besieged with compliments all night. Michael, being who he is, found it more and more amusing as I felt more and more awkward…and ended up making a game of it. So there you go… “Siegfried” was most memorable, for me, for the fact that I dressed up like a human disco ball.
(The opera, for what it’s worth, was spellbinding.)
Saturday was another day off for us, and we spent it in Napa…our non-opera activities will have to be a post of their own, because this is getting long. Sunday brought us the six-hour behemoth that is “Gotterdammerung,” “the fall of the gods,” which legit ends in fire, flood and death to all parties. It is heavy, and it is dark. And I adored it.
I found myself in tears again as the opera drew to an end – in part because it was so ridiculously emotional, but also because I was so sad that this gorgeous, immersive adventure was coming to an end. It felt like coming up for air having held my breath for a long time when the lights came up after the show…I was completely jolted.
We went to The View Lounge to dissect a little over cocktails while enjoying, you know, the view…and immediately started discussing the Cycle. Both our opinions were largely favorable – the casting was impeccable, the staging innovative and cohesive, and the orchestra faultless. The Ring is extraordinarily demanding of every person involved, and the way the San Francisco Opera rose to the challenge of putting on three consecutive weeks of Cycles was insane. I’m already thinking ahead to trying to catch it at the Met in New York next May…anyone feeling like 16 hours of German opera?!