Museum Mondays

Gustav Moreau, Salome Dancing for Herod, detail

Armand Hammer Museum, Los Angeles

December, 2024

 

MTT is 80!

Michael Tilson Thomas

Photo by Brandon Patoc (c), 2019

Courtesy of San Francisco Symphony

MTT turned 80 today! What a great life and career he has had, from southern California to Boston and Buffalo to London to the Bay Area. I had my beefs with programming at SFS during his last five years as music director of SFS, but whatever: he's a great conductor and a deeply loved person in San Francisco.

SFS has just scheduled a concert in honor of his 80th birthday - for April! - and tickets go on sale on January 28 at 10:00 a.m. The concert will include Britten's Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra (Variations on a theme of Henry Purcell) and Respighi's Feste Romane Festi Romani.

Friday Photo

 

Los Angeles City Hall

December, 2024

Music Executives Moving In and Moving On

I have been thinking that I need a music executive equivalent to the regular listings of conductor appointments, so, here we go. This is mostly from memory and I welcome updates from others.

Recently appointed:

• Matias Tarnopolsky to the NY Philharmonic, commencing January 1, 2025
• Kim Notelmy to the Los Angeles Philharmonic, commencing July 8, 2024
• Brent Assink to acting CEO of the Minnesota Orchestra, August, 2024
• John Mangum to CEO of the Lyric Opera of Chicago, commencing fall, 2024
• Michelle Miller Burns to the Dallas Symphony, leaving the Minnesota job

Open positions:

• Minnesota Orchestra, following Michelle Miller Burns's move to Dallas
• Philadelphia Orchestra, with Matias Tarnopolsky's appointment to the NY Philharmonic
• Dallas Symphony, with Kim Notelmy's appointment to the LA Phil
• Cincinnati Symphony, following the retirement of Jonathan Martin in February, 2025
• St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, after Jon Limbacher retires next year
• New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, after Gabriel van Aalst left for a different job

Updated December 18 to include Michelle Miller Burns and Gabriel van Aalst items.

Museum Mondays

Doctor Pozzi at Home, detail

Armand Hammer Museum

Los Angles, CA

December, 2024

 

Friday Photo

Cactus

Kew Gardens, Richmond

London, July, 2024

 

Santa Rosa Symphony Plays Mahler's Second Symphony, "Resurrection"

I'm having some difficulty finding downloadable press photos of either Esther Tonea or Gabrielle Beteag, the soloists in the Santa Rosa Symphony's Mahler 2 plus Jonathan Leshnoff's brief Warum hast du gelitten?, so you'll have to settle for a screen shot of an early printing of the title page of the score. Anyway, two reviewers were there:

• Lisa Hirsch, SFCV (Saturday)
• Joshua Kosman, On a Pacific Aisle (Sunday)

And there are two upcoming opportunities to hear Mahler's Second, with different orchestras (very different orchestras). I expect to attend both.

• Eric Kujawsky conducts the Redwood Symphony, Sunday, February 16, 2025 at 2 p.m. in San Mateo. This is a volunteer orchestra...and they're on their third traversal of the complete Mahler symphonies. Alex Ross spoke well of them some years ago.
• Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts the San Francisco Symphony, June 12, 13, and 14. This will be Salonen's last concert as the music director of SFS. Yes, you should be up in arms over his premature departure. 

Previously:

• Lisa Hirsch, SFCV, Esa-Pekka Salonen leads SFS in Mahler 2; September, 2022
• Joshua Kosman, SF Chronicle, Esa-Pekka Salonen leads SFS in Mahler 2; September, 2022
• Lisa Hirsch, SFCV, MTT leads SFS in Mahler 2, May, 2011
• Joshua Kosman, SF Chronicle, MTT leads SFS in Mahler 2, May, 2011

Anthony McGill and the Pacifica Quartet

Anthony McGill

Photo: Martin Romero

My next-to-last paid review of the year came out last week:

• Lisa Hirsch, SFCV and SF Chronicle
• Joshua Kosman, On a Pacific Aisle
• Michael Strickland, SF Civic Center
• Stephen Smoliar, The Rehearsal Studio

 

Museum Mondays

The Ninth of November, 1888, detail

by William Logsdale (1859-1944)

Guildhall Art Gallery, London

July, 2024

 

Releases of Note

Of possible interest:

•  The Merian Ensemble, The Book of Spells, Navona Records. "Comprised entirely of world premiere recordings, with works by Clarice Assad, Nicole Chamberlain, Jennifer Higdon, Mary Kouyoumdjian, Anne Leilehua Lanzilotti, Soon Hee Newbold, Kimberly R. Osberg, and Lynne Plowman,  each but one commissioned by the Merian Ensemble, The Book of Spells offers a gripping and intimate portrait of modern chamber music, performed with brilliance and precision by an ensemble of world-class soloists who are dedicated to the elevation of women’s voices in classical music." I've listened to the preview of this recording and liked it a lot.
• Shiuan Chang (composer), Earthing. William Wei, violin, and Evan Wong, piano. "Commissioned in 2020 by Dun Ren Hospital, a psychiatric facility in Taiwan, this album is a unique exploration of memory, understanding, and healing through music. Created for the hospital’s patients, the compositions are both a musical aid in their journeys and a reflection of composer Shiuan Chang’s own. Early in the composition process, Shiuan began to experience severe panic attacks, which transformed his creative path into one of personal introspection and resilience. The compositions resonate with empathy and connection, drawing from Shiuan’s experiences and the lives of Dun Ren’s patients, aiming to bring a sense of peace, familiarity, and shared understanding." I'm awaiting information on where this release can be purchased.
•  Zhenni Li-Cohen, A Letter, plays music of the Ukrainian composer Sergei Bortkiewicz (1877 - 1952). Lovely music in a 19th c. vein, beautifully played. Found on Spotify and YouTube Music.

Friday Photo

National COVID Memorial Wall

South Bank of the Thames

London

July, 2024

 

NY Phil New Executive Addendum

NYC Subway Stop

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

I expect that many readers of this blog are following Baltimore Symphony principal oboist Katherine Needleman on Facebook or her Substack. For a few years now, she has been a fearless public crusader about the sexism and abuse that's rife in the classical music world.

After the announcement about Matias Tarnopolsky, she was characteristically straightforward about a problem in his statements to the NY Times. Here's the bit she quoted, which is about the firings of Matthew Muckey and Liang Wang years after they allegedly raped Cara Kizer, who went to the police and was then denied tenure by the orchestra:

Tarnopolsky said he agreed to take the job partly because the misconduct case seemed to be resolved for the moment. (The two players are considering further legal challenges.)

“We begin with a clean slate,” he said. “And that’s really important.”

Her response:

My dear, dear hombre: you are not beginning with a clean slate. You may wish to be beginning with a clean slate, but you are not. Your dear partner, Gustavo Dudamel, may also wish for the same. But pretending you are beginning with a new slate sucks to women throughout the industry looking at your organization as a leading one. Maybe you don’t think any of us are running triple digit IQs and will fall for this line.

She is 100% correct. The culture of the NY Phil will take years, decades to repair.

She also wrote this:

The first issue is the way this upcoming partnership of Gustavo Dudamel and Tarnopolsky is described. It is as if this pair of men are the most important people in an orchestra. Music Director and President/CEO are the (usually, not always) white men who get up and make speeches, wear ties if they’re doing it right, shake hands, and raise money. (This is super important! Don’t misunderstand me.) They stand up, wave their arms, conduct 8-15 weeks out of about 42 per season, and come up with some idea of “sound” they will try to impose upon or develop with (if they are of the nicer ilk) the orchestra. They hire and fire people (kind of) and “oversee” programming, as if any one of them ever has employed some sort of true innovation. But I’ve sat in the same orchestra long enough—for almost a full generation now—to tell you that music directors and CEOs come and go. They are not the orchestra. They’re just not. Everyone is of course important—the janitors cleaning the hall, the people doing the significant organization and administration needed to run an orchestra, the teams of people raising money and writing grants, and the parking lot attendants and crossing guards. Everyone is important and necessary. But the people who are the orchestra are the people who have devoted their lives to it, who play there for their career, and watch multiple music directors and CEOs come and go like clouds passing in the sky.

She's correct in the above, as well. But it's also true that the wrong CEO and wrong music director can do damage to an orchestra. I'll list a few past and current situations where someone, usually the CEO and board, did lots of harm.

• Gerard Schwarz was mighty unpopular when he left the Seattle Symphony.
• Krishna Thiagarajan, the current chief executive at the Seattle Symphony, has apparently caused a huge amount of turnover and turmoil in the administration there.
• Michael Henson, the board, and administration of the Minnesota Orchestra locked the musicians out for more than a year.
• Matthew Spivey, Priscilla Geeslin, and the board of the San Francisco Symphony have managed to chase away one of the great conductors of our time, who is also one of the great composers of our time; they have failed to reach a fair agreement with the AGMA chorus members and are deep in talks with the orchestra.

Upcoming Choral Concerts of Note

Two choral programs of note in the next few weeks:

Kitka

The women's chorus, now in its 45th year, presents its annual Wintersongs concert. This year, it's focused on the Republic of Georgia and the supra, a ritual banquet. From their announcement:

This year’s Wintersongs series starts at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in Belvedere, December 7 at 8 p.m. followed by stops at St. Bede's Episcopal Church in Menlo Park, December 8 at 4 p.m.; Davis Community Church in Davis, December 14 at 7:30 p.m.; Peace United Church in Santa Cruz, December 15 at 7 p.m.; St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Oakland, December 20 and 21 at 8 p.m.; and Old First Concerts at Old First Presbyterian Church in San Francisco, December 22 at 4 p.m. Advance tickets are priced between $22.50 and $55 and may be purchased online via direct links at kitka.org/events.

California Bach Society

CBS, which is being led by guest conductors Magen Solomon and Derek Tam this season following the departure of its longtime music director, presents an attractive holiday program:

A Bay Area tradition, the California Bach Society annual holiday concerts are a wonderful way to celebrate this season of contemplation and joy. Under the direction of guest conductor Derek Tam, CBS pairs Renaissance and Baroque settings of nativity texts with 20th- and 21st-century composers’ renderings of the same texts, including works by Praetorius, Victoria, Schütz, Britten, and Poulenc. The program is framed by two Ave Marias—one a medieval chant, the other a ravishing setting by the 20th-century German choral master Franz Biebl. 

Derek Tam, Guest Conductor 

Friday, December 13, 2024, 7:30 p.m.

St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church, 500 De Haro, San Francisco

Saturday, December 14, 2024, 7:30 p.m.

First Presbyterian Church, 1140 Cowper St, Palo Alto

Sunday, December 15, 2024, 4:00 p.m.

First Congregational Church, 2330 Durant, Berkeley

Tickets: $40 (discounts for advance purchase, seniors, students, and under 30). For the greatest

discounts, please purchase tickets in advance at www.calbach.org. For COVID-19 protocols, consult

www.calbach.org/covid. Doors open 30 minutes prior to each performance.

Please note new 7:30 start time for evening performances this season!

650-485-1097 | http://www.calbach.org | info@calbach.org 

 

Music Librarians, East Coast and West Coast

Tristan und Isolde full score

San Francisco Opera music library

Photo: Matthew Washburn, courtesy of San Francisco Opera

Somehow, my Boston area music-writer buddy A.Z. Madonna of the Boston Globe and I had a long-distance mind meld, resulting in two articles about music librarians in two different publications. A.Z. focussed on the music librarians of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. I spoke with Margo Kieser, principal librarian of the San Francisco Symphony, Carrie Wieck, of the San Francisco Opera, and Drew Ford, of more small orchestras than I can believe. They were all wonderful to chat with and I am grateful to each of them and their organizations for their help.

When I spotted A.Z.'s article, I forwarded the link to my editors and immediately realized that I couldn't read it until I had filed my own article. I am just getting to it, so I will note that any similarities are entirely coincidental.

Here they are:

• A.Z. Madonna, Boston Globe
• Lisa Hirsch, SFCV

Matias Tarnapolsky to the NY Philharmonic

 

Matias Tarnopolsky

Photo by Jeff Fusco, courtesy of the NY Philharmonic

There had been rumors that the NY Phil was negotiating with Matias Tarnopolsky to succeed Gary Ginstling as President and CEO of the orchestra, following Ginstling's 18 months in those positions. Apparently they were true, as the orchestra announced Tarnopolsky's appointment today.

He has been president and CEO of the Philadelphia Orchestra since 2018. Previously, he was executive and artistic director of Cal Performances at the University of California, Berkeley. (This is the reason that he is the only head of a large U.S. orchestra with whom I am on first-name terms.) He has also been Vice President, Artistic Planning, at the New York Philharmonic, 2005–09, as well as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and BBC Symphony Orchestra. 

For more information, read the NYPO's press release and the NY Times article (gift link) about this appointment.

Museum Mondays

Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, as Cynthia the Moon Goddess

Mary Cosway

Tate Britain, London

July, 2024

 

Also Playing

Ildiko Komlosi as the Nurse

Die Frau ohne Schatten, 2013; Vladimir Jurowski conducting

Photo: Ken Howard, courtesy of the Metropolitan Opera

A side note to my earlier post about Die Frau ohne Schatten: I looked up Harold C. Schonberg's 1966 NY Times review of the first Met performances. (They weren't the first U.S. performances, an honor taken by San Francisco Opera.)

The review is quite a lot of fun. He calls the finale "vulgar" and remarks with some amusement about the staging effects, which showed off the stage elevator in the new Met. (The current production does as well.)

If you're a Times subscriber, you can see the review here: https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/.../1966/10/03/issue.html

BUT, regardless, what I most want to call out is the shows that were running on Broadway at the same time that Frau opened. They included:

• Tandy and Cronyn in Albee's "A Delicate Balance."
• Ethel Merman in a new version of Irving Berlin's "Annie Get Your Gun"
• "Barefoot in the Park," directed by Mike Nichols
• Lauren Bacall in "Cactus Flower"
• Arlene Francis, Walter Pidgeon, and others in "Dinner at Eight"
• Fiddler on the Roof," with Herschel Bernardi, dir. Jerome Robbins
• Mimi Hines in "Funny Girl"
• Ginger Rogers in "Hello, Dolly!"
• Barbara Bel Geddes and Gene Wilder in "Luv," directed by Mike Nichols
• Angela Lansbury in "Mame" ("The new smash hit musical")
• "Man of La Mancha"
• Gwen Verdon in "Sweet Charity"
• Barbara Harris, Larry Blyden, and Alan Alda in "The Apple Tree," a new musical directed by Mike Nichols
• Eddie Bracken and Mike Kellin in "The Odd Couple," directed by Mike Nichols.
• Lee Remick in "Wait Until Dark"

Mike Nichols had FOUR SHOWS running simultaneously.

 

SF Opera Tells Us a Couple of Useful Things

 

War Memorial Opera House

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

San Francisco Opera sent a patron email this afternoon that conveys some useful information!

• The Monkey King, by Huang Ruo and David Henry Hwang, premiers in November, 2025. We knew it was in the 2025-26 season, but not exactly when.
• You can buy tickets for it on February 4, 2025, which must mean that the season announcement is that day. It's a Tuesday, which is when the last I-don't-know-how-many season announcements have gone out. It's a bit later than the third-week-of-January standard SFO held to for many years, but earlier than this year's late February announcement. (Believe me, I have spent most of this year wondering whether that delay was owing to shows being cancelled or postponed, singer contracts bought out or amended, etc.)
• They've got a nice mug for sale and maybe I'll buy one.

Opera 2024

Here's a list of all of the operas I saw in 2024, posted now rather than on December 31 because I won't be seeing any operas between now and the end of the year. (I have already ruled out an East Coast trip for Die Frau ohne Schatten at the Met.) I mean....Gurrelieder doesn't count, right? I'll be basking in its glory at the LA Phil in a couple of weeks. An asterisk indicates that the opera was new to me. 

• Bulrusher, West Edge Opera*
• Jacqueline, West Edge Opera*
• The Finch Opera, Opera Parallèle*
• Balls, Opera Parallèle*
• Fellow Travelers, Opera Parallèle*
• The Righteous, Santa Fe Opera* (world premiere)
• The Magic Flute, San Francisco Opera, Opera San José
• Don Giovanni, Merola Opera, Santa Fe Opera
• The Abduction from the Seraglio, Festival Napa Valley
• Cosi fan tutte, Royal Opera, SFCM
• Innocence, San Francisco Opera* (U.S. premiere)
• Partenope, San Francisco Opera
• Der Rosenkavalier, Santa Fe Opera
• L'elisir d'Amore, Santa Fe Opera
• The Daughter of the Regiment, Livermore Valley Opera
• Tristan und Isolde, San Francisco Opera
• The Handmaid's Tale, San Francisco Opera* (West Coast premiere)
• Carmen, San Francisco Opera
• Un ballo in maschera, San Francisco Opera
• Bluebeard's Castle, San Francisco Symphony
• Erwartung, San Francisco Symphony
• The Merry Wives of Windsor, Pocket Opera*
• Florencia en el Amazonas, Opera San José*
• Dido and Aneaes, Festival Opera
• La voix humaine, Festival Opera
• La Bohème, Opera San Jose
• La Flora, Ars Minerva* (U.S. and modern premiere)

Does Pierrot Lunaire count? It's dramatic but not like Erwartung. I saw it twice this year and had never seen it before.

Babies. Babies! BABIES!

Die Frau ohne Schatten

San Francisco Opera

June, 2023

Johan Reuter (Barak) and Nina Stemme (Dyer's Wife)

Photo: Cory Weaver, Courtesy of San Francisco Opera

The Metropolitan Opera has revived the late Herbert Wernicke's production of Strauss and Hofmannsthal's monumental Die Frau ohne Schatten, giving me an opportunity to get up on a soapbox that's been waiting for me for roughly 18 months, since San Francisco Opera's magnificent staging of the same opera.

Back then, I had a couple of friends telling me, oh no, it's not about babies! They're just a metaphor! Look beyond the words of the libretto!

I'm here to tell you, they were wrong. There was a moment when I pointed out to one of them that the Spirit Messenger makes it quite clear with his first words, which happen to be the second speech in the opera, that Keikobad, the Empress's father, is monitoring her fertility, and he told me he'd never noticed that:

Not our master, not Keikobad but his messenger! Eleven of them have sought you out, a new one with each waning moon. The twelfth moon is down: the twelfth messenger stands before you.

That is, there's been a monthly visit from one of Keikobad's messengers. They're checking to see whether the Empress is pregnant.

I went through the libretto last year and compiled a list of references to babies and fertility in the libretto. Here it is, including the reference above:

1. Keikobad is monitoring the Empress’s fertility, as the Spirit Messenger says in Act 1.

2. Keikobad threatens to turn the Emperor to stone unless she obtains a shadow, though it’s hard to see what he has to do with the Empress’s lack of a shadow. Is it because they really like all of the sex they’re having?

3. The nurse says in Act 1 “He has not loosened the knot of your heart, no unborn babe stirs in your womb.”

4. Barak to the Dyer’s Wife: “If you give me children to cluster round the dishes each evening, I’ll see that none of them gets up hungry. I’ll applaud their appetites, and give thanks in my heart that it falls to me to fill their stomachs." (Touches her gently.) "When will you give me the children to feed?”

5. Dyer’s Wife to Barak: “Two-and-a-half years I’ve been your wife– and you have garnered no fruit from me and have not made a mother of me.”

6. Barak: “I don’t reproach you, my heart is content, and I will be patient and wait for the precious children which will come.”

7. The Nurse of the Dyer’s Wife: “Alas! And she is to bear his children, and waste her life here in obscurity!”

8. The Nurse and the Dyer’s Wife: “Have you wept tears of blood because you have borne no children yet to that block? Quickly, quickly, Do you yearn for them in your heart, night and day? Do you long for a troop of little dyers to trample through you into the world? Is your body to turn into a high road, your slim grace to be compacted under their feet? Are your breasts to droop and their glory to wither so soon?” WIFE “My soul has grown weary of motherhood before even tasting it. I live here in this house, and that man shall not come near me!”

9. Nurse: “Putting away motherhood for ever and aye from your body! And dismissing with that gesture of contempt the importunate babes that will not be born!”

10. CHILDREN’S VOICES through the fish: “Mother, mother, let us come home! The door is bolted, we can’t get in, it’s dark and we’re frightened! Mother, oh, alas!”

11. “.....Or call our dear father and tell him to open the door! Or call our dear father and tell him to open the door!”

12. Dyer’s wife, Act 2: ”I put away from my body the children as yet unborn, and my womb will not bear fruit to you or to any other man, for I have given myself to the winds and the night air, and am at home here and elsewhere, and as a sign of that I have sold my shadow: and the buyers are willing, and the price is glorious and its like will not be found!”

13. The Brothers: “She has sold it and prevented the unborn children coming from her body!”

14. Dyer’s wife, Act 3: “Placed in your care, so as to attend to you, serve, love and bow to you: see you! breathe you, live you! And give you children, best of men!”

15. Voices of Unborn Children, Act 3: (above, from the dome) "Listen, we will say: 'Father!' Listen, we will cry: 'Mother!' Come up here! No, come down here! All the steps lead to us!”

16. EMPEROR: “Those are unborn children, rushing down into life on the red wings of morning and coming to us, who were nearly lost; These strong ones hasten down to us, like starlight. You overcame yourself. Now heavenly messengers release the father and the children— the children yet unborn! They have discovered us, and come hastening down! (steps down from the bottom step”

17. Voices of Unborn Children, to the Wife: “Mother, your shadow! Look, how beautiful! Look at your husband crossing over to you!”

18. EMPRESS AND BARAK’S WIFE "Both casting shadows as we were chosen to do, both of us steeled in the flames of trial. Close to the threshold of death, to being murdered in order to murder, but now blessed with children, and we shall be mothers!" EMPEROR AND BARAK "Both casting shadows as they were chosen to do, both of them steeled in the flames of trial, but now blessed with children and chosen to be mothers!" (A curtain falls, concealing the four figures and the landscape from sight) VOICES OF THE UNBORN CHILDREN "Father, nothing more threatens you, look, Mother, that terror is already dispelled, that led you both astray. Was there ever a feast at which we were not secretly always the guests, and also the hosts! Brothers! Friends!"

The above doesn’t include Barak almost killing the Wife when he thinks that she has sold her shadow or the way that Keikobad blackmails the Empress into seeking a shadow by threatening to turn the Emperor to stone. 

It's really beyond me how you can read the above (not to mention seeing the opera) and not conclude that yes, this opera is, front and center, about having children, and how having children is necessary for women to be fully human.

These points didn't evade Joshua Kosman, who got up on his soapbox about Frau in July, 2022, a year prior to the SFO production, and they're not evading Zachary Woolfe, who reviewed the opera in the NY Times this week ("You might think a four-hour allegorical ode to pregnancy isn’t your thing. But I’m here to tell you: Just go."). I'm going to slightly argue with Woolfe's description of Barak as kindly. The text suggests that his Wife is basically a slave, that she's someone he paid for.

Nobody is denying that one of the central points of this opera is the Empress's transformation as she realizes that she cannot take the shadow from the Dyer's Wife, one of the great moments in all opera, but neither are they denying the opera's focus on fertility and babies. And Joshua Kosman was clear about how this opera lands at a moment when the right wing in the United States has not only gotten Roe v. Wade struck down, it is openly discussing restricting access to contraception, doing away with no-fault divorce, and so on. If somehow this isn't pretty clear to you after reading the above excerpts, well, read them a few more times.

 

SF Opera: 2025 Adler Fellows

War Memorial Opera House

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

San Francisco Opera has announced the 2025 Adler Fellows. The last few years of Adlers have been truly wonderful, a varied group of skilled young singers. 

First up, soprano Olivia Smith and bass-baritone Jongwon Han will be back as third-year Adler Fellows. 

Next, the returning second-year fellows are soprano Georgiana Adams, soprano Caroline Corrales, pianist Julian Grabarek, baritone Samuel Kidd, and tenor Thomas Kinch.

The new first-year fellows are soprano Mary Hoskins, pianist Ji Youn Lee, tenor Sam White, and baritone Olivier Zerouali. 

Soprano Arianna Rodriguez, mezzo-soprano Nikola Printz, bass-baritone James McCarthy and pianist Yang Lin have all concluded their fellowships.

I attended two of the Merola concerts and reviewed the Merola Don Giovanni production, and I don't envy anyone trying to choose which Merolini become Adler fellows. The singers in Don Giovanni were a strikingly polished group of singers, a cast that matched the strongly-cast main stage DG directed by Michael Cavanagh a few years ago. Best wishes to all of the 2024 Merolini and to the 2025 Adler Fellows.

 

SF Opera Pride Concert

 

War Memorial Opera House

 (photo: Reneff-Olsen Productions, courtesy of San Francisco Opera)

For the 2024-25 season, San Francisco Opera cut back to six operas and two concerts. The first concert, Eun Sun Kim conducting Beethoven's 9th Symphony, has taken place already. The second concert is next year, on Friday, June 27, 2025, on Pride Weekend, which is appropriate because it's a Pride Concert.

SFO announced the performers the other week, though the repertory has not yet been announced. Here's the press release, which is brief:

SAN FRANCISCO, CA (November 15, 2024) — Monét X Change, the multi-hyphenate performer most well known for her appearances on RuPaul’s Drag Race, will emcee San Francisco Opera’s Pride Concert on Friday, June 27, 2025 at the War Memorial Opera House. Classically trained in opera and winner of the fourth season of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars, Monét X Change is among the artists headlining this celebration of the LGBTQIA+ community. Expanding upon the Company’s annual Pride celebrations, the evening includes a special concert, immersive projections and more.

 

Mezzo-sopranos Jamie Barton and Nikola Printz and baritone Brian Mulligan will share the stage with the San Francisco Opera Orchestra conducted by Caroline H. Hume Music Director Eun Sun Kim for a genre- and era-spanning program mixing classical arias with queer anthems and music showcasing LGBTQIA+ composers, librettists, songwriters and themes. The high-octane evening will be enhanced by digital artist Tal Rosner’s video projections. Complete program and event information will be announced at a later date.

 

SAN FRANCISCO OPERA PRIDE CONCERT

Friday, June 27, 2025 at 7:30 p.m.

War Memorial Opera House, 301 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco, 94102

 

Monét X Change, emcee

Eun Sun Kim, conductor

Soloists: mezzo-sopranos Jamie Barton and Nikola Printz; baritone Brian Mulligan

San Francisco Opera Orchestra

 

Tal Rosner, video concept and direction

 

Complete program and event information will be announced at a later date. For information, visit sfopera.com/pride-concert.

 

Tickets are priced from $30–$225 and are available at sfopera.com, the San Francisco Opera Box Office at (415) 864-3330 and in-person at 301 Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco.

I've never seen Monét X Change, but Barton, Printz, and Mulligan are all great artists and I think I will have to go, genre mixing or not. I wonder if there will be a trapeze for Printz.

Friday Photo

Gonville & Caius College

University of Cambridge

July, 2024

 

San Francisco Symphony Program Update: Salonen/Wang

Esa-Pekka Salonen

Photo by Minna Hatinen, courtesy of San Francisco Symphony

I have no idea what the motivation for this program update is. For the February 13-16, 2025 programs, Yuja Wang was originally going to be the soloist for these works by Igor Stravinsky:

• Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments
• Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra
• Movements for Piano and Orchestra 

A press release today from SFS says that instead, she'll be playing the following:

• Ravel, Piano Concerto for the Left Hand 
• Rautavaara, Piano Concerto No. 1

Works by Debussy complete the program and those are unchanged.

 

Museum Mondays

London Mithraeum

Bloomberg Building

London, July 2024