What do you think of when you hear the word “art”? Probably, you don’t think exclusively of oil paintings in palatial European museums. But that’s what art meant to most Westerners until the last century, when it was “freed” from museums and flooded into everyday experience—whether it be in the form of sidewalk stencils, street performance art, sheets draped across Marin County or a giant spiral in the middle of the Great Salt Lake.
We still expect to see some kinds of art indoors, though. Opera is a prime example. Usually, the only place you can see it is from a plush red seat in a gilded auditorium. One might wonder, what would opera look like if you could free it from its confines? That’s exactly what the San Francisco Opera is doing with their SF Opera Lab.
On February 11, we got our first taste of what opera looks like when you let it run free. On that day, SF Opera Lab held their first pop-up at Public Works in the Mission, offering a preview of their upcoming season. The standing-room-only event was buzzing with life as attendees, many of whom were newbies to opera, sipped specialty cocktails and listened to modern renditions of classic opera tunes. It was a casual event for a type of art that isn’t usually associated with blue jeans and IPAs, but it was easy to swing along as artists jumped up onto the wooden stage wearing street clothes while a whimsical slideshow of memes was projected behind them.
Photo courtesy of Kristen Loken.
SF Opera Lab’s shows, which run shorter than “regular” operas—around 80 minutes for most of the shows, with no intermission—are intended to go way beyond what most people think opera is (or should be). Even if you don’t consider yourself an opera fan, you’d likely be intrigued by these genre-pushing shows. One of their spring productions is a “cine-concert,” a projection of the film The Triplets of Belleville with a live jazz singer, a jazz band and Foley artists performing the sound effects.
The SF Opera Lab season kicks off on March 11 with Winterreise, the Franz Schubert song cycle performed in a collaboration between South African artist William Kentridge, baritone Matthias Goerne and pianist Markus Hinterhäuser. Then, Svadba-Wedding runs from April 2 to 10. It’s a fantastical a capella story of six best friends going wild and baring their souls the night before a wedding. Written by Serbian-Canadian composer Ana Sokolović, Svadba-Wedding is an exhilarating tale that’s rooted in Serbian poetry and the magic and fantasy of ordinary moments.
Photo courtesy of Donat (SMCQ).
Best of all, you form an intimate part of the story: the audience sits in mixed groups at tables, serving as the “guests” of the wedding as it happens around you (instead of onstage). The ticket comes with a reception that includes a DJ, champagne and wedding cake from Tout Sweet Patisserie. If you, like me, thought that the 2011 comedy Bridesmaids would have been even better with an avant-garde, musical, pagan touch, you really won’t want to miss this.
SF Opera is so devoted to the idea of the Lab that they’ve built an entirely new space to host it (that is, when it resides indoors, which is by no means a given). The Dianne and Tad Taube Atrium Theater, located within the new Diane B. Wilsey Center for Opera and next door to the War Memorial Opera House, is a 299-seat venue with an open-ended look that more resembles an infinitely malleable, lofted gallery space (as opposed to the traditional 3,000-seat War Memorial Opera House). One major difference between the two spaces? Cupholders in the Atrium Theater. Yup, you can drink during SF Opera Lab’s shows.
Photo courtesy of Stefan Cohen.
People have been taking art out of museums for over a century now. But opera? It’s anyone’s game. That’s what makes SF Opera Lab’s experiment so exciting and diverse: their hybrid performances cross genres and touch all kinds of other organizations in the city, all while creating theater that’s palatable to arts-curious people of all ages. Oh, and did I mention it’s waaaay cheaper than opera usually is, with some tickets starting at $25 and most seats being general admission? It’s like an R&D lab that pushes the limits of theater. And no one’s really done this before, least of all in San Francisco.
SF Opera Lab’s season kicks off with Winterreise (March 11–13) and follows with a pop-up at the Chapel (April 1), Svadba-Wedding (April 2–10), ChamberWORKS (April 7 and 20) and “The Triplets of Belleville” Cine-Concert (April 14–23) before concluding with Voigt Lessons in May (May 6 and 8). Find tickets and more info at SF Opera Lab’s website.
Main image courtesy of Stefan Cohen.