(Photo: Cory Weaver / San Francisco Opera)

We need Beethoven. Especially the 9^th Symphony with Schiller’s Ode to Joy. “Freude, schöner Götterfunken/Tochter aus Elysium,/Wir betreten feuertrunken,Himmlische/, dein HeiligtumFreude menschen gotterfunken./Oh friends, no more of these sounds!/Let us sing more cheerful songs,
More full of joy!/Joy, bright spark of divinity,/Daughter of Elysium,/Fire-inspired we tread Thy sanctuary!/Thy magic power reunites/All that custom has divided; All men become brothers/Under the sway of thy gentle wings.”

No doubt that’s why San Francisco Opera celebrated the 200^th anniversary of the work’s premiere performance in 1824, Beethoven himself, one of the conductors. The one-night-only sold-out concert was conducted by Eun Sun Kim of the San Francisco Opera Orchestra and Choruses in the War Memorial Opera House, one part of the Fall Opera Season, and the message rang out loud and clear, like a guiding star. The audience composed of both many newcomers and seasoned opera goers, shared the experience and took the message to heart. “Seid umschlungen, Millionen./Diesen Kuß der ganzen Welt!/ You millions, I embrace you./This kiss is for all the world!” If they couldn’t listen to what a man who couldn’t hear urged us to pay attention to, they would have lost. But that did not happen.

Four soloists, 72 choristers, 66 orchestra members sang this testament to peace and unity and human achievement with the wish that we hear what we need to hear. The whole production was directed by Morgen Robinson, lighting design by Justin A. Partier. The choruses, consisting of 36 tenors, baritones and basses, and 36 sopranos and mezzo-sopranos, were directed by Chorus Director, John Keene. The four principals were Jennifer Holloway, soprano, making her San Francisco Opea Debut, tenor Russell Thomas, and mezzo-soprano Annika Schlicht and bass Kwangchul Youn, these last two also performing in the San Francisco Opera production of “Tristan and Isolde.”

The highlight was undoubtedly the fourth and final movement, where the dramatic power of the music resounded, its monumental, heroic struggle bursting from the stage. Its granite angularity and conflict contrasted bravely with the preceding tonalities, drama smoothed out in Kim’s vision. Even the notable fugue of the second movement Scherzo, flowed rather than conveyed precise delineation. Here was an earlier 19^th century mood rather any foreshadowing of the revolutionary and epic statement that was to come.  The third movement, beginning languidly, kept that mood in the foreground.  But then, the fourth, the old world sawed off, the new one ironed on.

Here, the orchestra pounced. No more drapery. Instead of languid and lyric, there was muscular and dark. The soloists rose effectively out of this matrix of sound, particularly Russell Thomas, tenor, who sang with energy and vitality, and Jennifer Holloway, soprano. Kim conducted with high heat, and the audience answered in kind. The hall remained cued up for the ever-expanding quantity of the 24 minute pronouncement coming from all quarters of the stage and the completed concert shell, being used for the first time in this performance. It was a definitive declaration. We are one: remember. Clearly, cleanly, the magic was out.