Stewart Wallace's previous effort with the SF Opera was the very successful Harvey Milk, which was about San Francisco's most famous city supervisor. His latest opera, The Bonesetter's Daughter, uses yet another famous Bay Area icon, this time a work by writer Amy Tan on a lady with Alzheimer. Gay guys and old ladies, we can't deny that Wallace knows his core opera audience.

The Bonesetter's Daughter, which opens this Saturday at the War Memorial Opera House, is a big deal in the opera world. Or so we're told. Why? Because it's only the ninth world premiere of the SF Opera in its 85 years of existence, even though the pace as significantly accelerated lately, with Dr Atomic in 2005 and Appomattox last season.

Based on the book by the ubiquitous Amy Tan, we made the mistake of reading all 400 pages of it, slogging through what Sue Gilmore nailed as "estrogen-drenched domestic angst that entangles mothers and daughters in so many of her books." Being short on estrogen, we dismissed the first part of the book as chick lit: the main protagonist, Ruth dealing with her aging mother who slows fades into dementia, and with her relationship with her boyfriend, Art, with San Francisco in the background. (Yep, Amy Tan lives here).

Going to the roots of one's past involves, of course, traversing a giant vagina. Photo credit for this Bonesetter's Daughter rehearsal picture: Terrence McCarthy/SF Opera

Then the books leaves the here and now to go back in time to China, and turns into some adventurous, dramatic, page-turning epic. Making an opera out of this all of sudden sounded like a great idea. Chris Hampton told us that writing the libretto of Appomatox was a study in compression, you put as much story per line as you can, to finally get 37 pages of script. The Bonesetter opera compresses alright, and gives the lion share to the dramatic and the tragic. Don't fret if you haven't read the book, the opera is an abridged palimpsest, and to our domestic-angst-adverse point of view, all the better for it. Ruth's quest in the book is that of finding her voice as a writer (which is oddly metaphoricalized in the book by "marrying Art"). The opera has her married from the get go, and let's enjoy the Chinese roller-coaster ride. To see the genesis of the opera from the book, we warmly recommend Ken Smith's Fate, Luck, Chance (Chronicle Books).

Ruth will be sung by Zheng Cao, who can do a role other than Suzuki! She, as many of the performers, hail from China, which musical folk songs and instruments also influence Wallace's music. We hope that Stewart Wallace learned from Tan Dun to avoid the missteps of writing Chinese-themed opera: avoid Puccini-inspired "pentatonic lyricism." It seems Turandot stole all the best musical motives, and ruined it for everyone afterwards. We actually enjoyed the First Emperor, especially the imported musicians and percussions, and there's going to be a lot of imports in the Bonesetter Daughter. We're licking our lips for it.

As a final preview of the opera, we intended to have dinner at the location of Act I, the Fountain Court restaurant on Clement st. The web site says it's "closed for relocation." Too bad, we really wanted to know if the chef knew he became an opera character, singing happy chicken make happy families.

The Bonesetter's Daughter
Opens Saturday 9/13 at 8pm. Other performances on Tue Sep 16 2008 8 pm, Sat Sep 20 2008 2 pm, Thu Sep 25 2008 7:30 pm, Sun Sep 28 2008 2 pm, Tue Sep 30 2008 7:30 pm, Fri Oct 3 2008 8 pm