Gary Payne

I came to San Diego in the fall of 1990. All through the decade, I took advantage of the chance to buy student tickets for the San Diego Symphony and the San Diego Opera. However, the 1990s were a dark era for classical music and opera in San Diego. Any given concert was prone to some sort of glaring error. In many ways, those concerts established my concept of San Diego as something of a classical music backwater. To this day, I go to concerts with a cringe hidden just below the surface of my now wrinkling face. It is a sort of musical PTSD.

Given this context, the miracle that is the Rady Shell at Jacobs Park becomes all the more miraculous. From the structure itself, to the setting, to the camera work and sound quality, everything about The Shell reeks of top-shelf quality and execution.

The sound, from where I was sitting, struck my ear as if it were a proper orchestral concert, as opposed to a flat wall of blaring speakers. The coordination of camera shots with what was happening within the music was spot on, and the tight shots on the soloists added to the audience’s experience of their performances.

The concert started with a new composition by Californian composer Mason Bates. The pieces showed off the audio abilities of the venue’s sound system, with electronic elements added to the orchestra. However, the piece was generally forgettable.

The concert started in earnest with cellist Alisa Weilerstein performing Saint-Saëns’s Cello Concerto No. 1. Previously, I had heard Weilerstein perform only the Benjamin Britten Cello Concerto, which is, shall we say, not quite as expressive as Saint-Saëns. Weilerstein’s effusive playing during the performance mesmerized the audience.

Next, bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green stepped onto stage and into the character of Satan himself. Green blasted his way through Mephistopheles’s aria “Le veau d’or” from Gounod’s Faust. Following this bacchanalian effort were arias from Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, Rossini’s The Barber of Seville and South Pacific. Each character from each piece was fully present in Green’s performance. He didn’t just display his impressive voice, he showed us characterization, as if we were in a fully staged operatic situation.

French pianist Jean Yves Thibaudet was the final solosist of the evening. Thibaudet has been a mainstay of the world’s stage since the aforementioned 1990s. He was at The Shell to perform Gershwin’s iconic Rhapsody in Blue. And it was during his performance that The Shell began to display its full capabilities, as images were projected around the Shell’s fringe. The concert was now hitting on all cylinders as the visual arts became entangled with the musical arts.

Music Director Rafael Payare and the San Diego Symphony were the stars of the final piece of music, Stravinksy’s Firebird Suite. The orchestra shook off the COVID hangover which was present in some of the earlier pieces, and brought the concert to a quite satisfying conclusion.

Then came the fireworks. In one night, The Rady Shell established itself as a destination.