The curtain opened Saturday night at the War Memorial Opera House on the David Hockney designed set of Turandot. Turandot? Had anyone surreptitiously advanced the SF Opera season opening night? Rather, the Merola program was closing their own season on the big stage, and -why not?- had borrowed the set. The singers selected in the Merola program might as well get used to it: their goal is to make it to production like this very Turandot, which will indeed feature four Merola alumni (Daniel Montenegro, Ryan Kuster, Hyung Yun, and Leah Crocetto).

From the crop of talent we heard, we would not be surprised a bunch of them will be there next time around. The evening program is a best-of list of famous arias, each carefully selected to the strength of their performer, so it's a smörgåsbord of vocal pyrotechnics and we can only mention a few which caught our attention. We had liked Jonathan Michie's Figaro in the Barber of Seville, and he did not disappoint. He sung John Adams' "Batter my heart" from Dr. Atomic, and wonderfully build up his aria. He started powerfully enough, but still gained strength at the reprise, as if his plea to God was even more urgent the second time. He imbued the lyrics with a poignancy that a drink at intermission had a hard time to dispel.