Seraphim don’t fly coach in San Francisco

“I’m an Angel, First Class – how’ya doin”? I am behind stage at the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco, touring the set of Jake Heggie’s “It’s a Wonderful Life”, a brave – brave? What am I talking about? – heroically risky remake of the beloved James Stewart Christmas heartwarmer movie of 1946, and – “Just like that!”, – I’ve met my very first Angel.

Well, not really “mine”. I’ve recently got over the old Jesuit trope of having my very own guardian angel, permanently on call. Too many things have gone wrong. They either don’t exist, or they’re useless.

Seasonal aside: Santa Claus is, of course, another issue. Asked by his elder, sceptical, siblings why at the age of 8 he still believed in Santa Claus, many years ago I overheard our younger son, Peter wisely announce, “Because I think it’s best to”. Same here. It’s also why I still believe in Brexit.

Back in San Francisco I reach out to shake this very real and feathery angel’s … um … what does one shake? His wing? His hand? I settle for his hand. “I’m from London”. How lame, It’s all I can think of saying to my very first Angel. Pathetic.

He is getting hooked – into wings that is – which will really make him fly, or at least seem to go up and down a lot. From behind they feature a complex harness; solid metal seat – every angel comfort catered for; attachment devices hooked to two stout cables; and neatly folded wings. Seraphim don’t fly coach in San Francisco.

Oh, the wings. They’re enormous and activated by a hydraulic device that Angel First Class can click while careening above the stage. The careening bit is controlled by someone else. “There are four angels, how come they don’t bump into each other?” Ray, the set designer who is conducting our small tour of six, looks pitying. “They go up and down in different spaces. It just looks like they’re all together from the front. (“you pillock”, unsaid). It’s a “hoptical” illusion”.

Illusion or not, it takes three safety technicians to check out each harness. Angels fly up forty feet into the gallery and have their very own gantry – a sort of Seraphim bench – to perch on, sitting out much of the action when it’s angel free.

As we dive deeper behind the scenery there’s a set of duplicate angel wings, lined up in a row, on stands – “wings lite” – minus the hydraulics and safety gear, swapped for the “flying” wings when the angels join the rest of the chorus on terra firma.

It’s ten minutes to curtain up and I’m amazed at the peace and order on stage. I’m shown a brand new sooper-dooper, Tardis-like control mechanism which bristles with every modern digital device, massive screens showing the on stage action unfolding from every angel – I mean, angle.

Ray is proudly showing off. “The Stage Manager can do everything with this”. But spoiling the Dr. Who uber tech is a scruffy, out of place massive ring binder ($2 from Staples) bristling with random post-it notes on every page. “That’s really the most important piece of kit on stage”.

The Stage Manager in headphones is the magician pulling the Tardis levers; angel flying, every lighting change and effect, snowstorms, a descending Christmas trees, a shower of gold and the complex system of rising and falling doors through which George Bailey, the hero of “Life”, walks into a different chapter of his existence and onto which are projected thematic images.

From the evocative, softly spoken traditional instruction, “Maestro to the Pit, Maestro to the Pit”, Mr. Headphones will be in charge of a mind-boggling series of events depending on micro-second timing. Many productions can recover from the occasional “goof”, but an angel falling 40 feet unannounced into the action would be a bit of a showstopper.

The doors. They are the size of conventional doorframes. Each represents a day in the life of George Bailey. Some rise and fall at the touch of a lever, allowing the cast to enter from below stage. Others leverage 90 degrees to the vertical and the characters walk through them, emerging into a different day.

There are some fixed to the angled stage and others fixed above, onto which the shifting images are projected, angled so that the whole set has perspective and a vanishing point.  “We’ve developed them since the first run in Houston”, says Ray. “They used to be mirrors but the lighting reflected randomly so we now project onto doors instead and they rise and fall.” The production has changed radically in its three previous iterations and is now in a practical form that will endure, important for cost reasons.

I’ve elbowed my way into the exclusive tour courtesy of my companion for the evening, a former President of San Francisco Opera Guild, Karen Kubin. Karen knows just about everyone. Passing through the lobby she introduces me to the composer, Jake Heggie.

Chirps up I, “Bit of a risk taking on an American icon and turning it onto an opera, isn’t it?” Mr. Heggie replies that he thought long and hard about that, but decided eventually, “What the hell? It’s bang or bust”, tastefully avoiding the more vulgar common usage.

So, bust? For my bucks it is “bang”. Enduring hit. There is a canard flying round the reviews that “Life” is not an opera at all. Maybe a Broadway show? It’s – heaven forfend, reach for the smelling salts, Lady Bracknell. “It’s a musical”! Pointless debate. It really doesn’t matter “what it is”.

Musically, maybe it’s a bit of Puccini, laced with Bernstein, Sondheim and Lloyd Webber. But the essential thing is that it’s pure “Heggie”; as musically engaging as his previous operas, “Moby Dick” and “Dead Man Walking”.

Jake Heggie is a composer who defies the post war, nihilist convention of fashionable, abrasive atonality – reductio ad absurdum in pieces that are actually silent (John Cage’s “4’33”, 1952). Mr. Heggie actually writes music. You know, that outdated, boring old thing kicked off by Hildegard of Bingham in the 12^th century, full of pleasing harmonies, changing tempi, bell-like fourth intervals, surprising slides from major to minor, diminished chords when you least expect them, flowing scale-driven melodies. The pesky notes that – for reasons we still can’t really fathom – grab the heart, cause tears to flow and joy to erupt.

Now – to the plot. This is for the one reader who has not seen Frank Capra’s 1948 film, “It’s a Wonderful Life”. After reading, please identify yourself and submit to a course of corrective cultural training.

We are in Bedford Falls, a nondescript American small town, 1916 – 1945, following the life of George Bailey (played by tenor William Burden) – an unexceptional, decent but ambitious townsman (repeated refrain, “I’m gonna see the Parthenon, the Coliseum”). George has to settle for life in Bedford Falls instead when his brother, Harry Bailey (baritone Joshua Hopkins), marries unexpectedly, takes a job with his father in law and leaves town, and George is lumbered with running the Bedford Falls Savings and Loans Company.

Savings and Loans is “socially responsible” (cue ethical-investing violins) and without George’s gentle hand on the tiller the good folk of Bedford Falls will have no homes and fall victim to the nefarious Mr. (evil hath no first name) Potter. He’s a rack-rent, huckster, property-developer trying to take over the Presidency. Oops! I mean, town.

George is married to Mary Hatch (soprano Andriana Chuchman), a childhood sweetheart who had promised when they were kids to “Love you (George) ‘til I die”.

With lots of twists and turns focused on George’s frustrated ambitions he builds new homes for the “folks”, but reaches a crisis when $8,000 is carelessly misplaced by his bumbling Uncle Billy (tenor, Keith Jameson) and Mr. Potter calls in the bank inspectors.

George decides to end it all and is perched on a bridge on Christmas Eve, about to jump, when  – cue Clara, Angel Second Class.

Of course, in the film the angel was Clarence, but since 1945 the diversity thought police have been called in, hence Clara. No wings yet earned, hence Second Class. She’s been around for 200 years and hasn’t yet negotiated a Brexit deal with the EU Commission ….. Sorry, sorry. That’s this season’s Westminster Christmas Pantomime.

Perched in heaven, she spots an unusual level of prayer activity in Bedford Falls as everyone worries about George and what rash thing he might do. She is sent down with a promise of earning her wings if she sorts the problem. It’s said they’re looking out for her in 10 Downing Street.

To save George, Clara (South African soprano, Golda Schultz) jumps off the bridge into the river, forcing George to rescue her, so setting the scene for her to show how life would be hell if he had never lived and why he shouldn’t jump. Potter would have thrown all the good folk out of their houses. The flaw in this plot is that by then he’s jumped already – to pull her out – but that’s being picky.

George cheers up, goes back home and the townsfolk he has helped come by to chip in – “Heard you were in trouble, George” – thus sorting out the bank examiner problem. It’s a yuletide Bedford Falls version of ECB quantitative easing, with George playing the part of Greece, under a Christmas tree.

Clara has saved the day, earns her wings, ascends heavenwards and there is a mighty celebratory chorus.

Ms. Schultz was a stupendous Clara. She is well cast; elfin-like, mischievous, with an unfussy crystal soprano voice and can act her socks off, even when she is in the background observing all the foolish humans, unseen, as she is for much of the action. Her face was constantly expressive, never still.

She made frequent use of “the old lifted hat ploy”. When she took her hat off time stood still for the earthlings, who froze in mid action and she got on with the libretto, which moved the plot along lickety spit. Hat back on, off we go again. The clever point was that much more of the film’s detailed action could be included in the libretto without spoiling the natural flow.

Mr. Burden (George), who has a vast past catalogue of international appearances to his credit, made his San Francisco Opera debut in 1992. He pulled off the almost impossible task of not being Jimmy Stewart, yet carving out his own George Bailey convincingly, while still tipping his hat to the maestro Stewart performance stylistically.

The staging was spectacular – and, of course, as seasonally decorative as in the film. The lights go up on a snow scene across which is written the title, “It’s a Wonderful Life” in distinctive script, as used by Mr. Capra in the film’s opening titles. Neat touch from set Designer, Robert Brill.

Librettist Gene Scheer, also a composer who has written songs for the likes of Renée Fleming, Stephanie Blythe and Nathan Gunn, craftily wove iconic lines from the film into the libretto. George to sweetheart Mary: “The moonbeams will shoot out of your fingers and toes”, as he offers to “Reach for the sky and lasso the moon” for her in the scene when they are falling on love outside the ruined home – “the old Granville House” – which will one day be theirs.

I pitched up with some trepidation, fearing “Life” would be a mish mash of nostalgia, undershoot the power of the film’s moral tale – turn out to be just Christmas hokum. It was anything but. It sits comfortably with the film, complementing its memory with operatic drama. The moral tale is as relevant today for middle America as it was in 1946, Possibly more so.

Mr. Heggie has taken George Bailey at his word. He has reached to the musical sky and lassoed his own moon, a work that deserves a permanent slot in the Christmas calendar.