Iron Tongue of Midnight

Call Me Cynical

2012-01-26T16:20:00.000-08:00

Email from LA Opera trumpets a new web site feature: select your own seat! We're happy to finally be able to offer this! And we're waiving the handling fee for online orders for Simon Boccanegra and Albert Herring tickets, starting on January 29!

Um, well, yes, it is a good thing that LAO has caught up with every other major presenting organization I've bought tickets from in the last five or six years. Why they didn't enable this module from Tessitura long ago is beyond me. And I consider handling fees for online orders to be vile. Roll those fees into overall ticket prices so customers - your audience members - don't feel nickeled and dimed.

I Am Ashamed of Myself.

2012-01-24T16:06:00.000-08:00

This afternoon's background music is Orinoco Flow and Exile. Feel free to post derisive comments when you pick yourself up off the floor.

A Bit More on Pricing and Audience Segmentation

2012-01-24T11:52:00.000-08:00

Elsewhere on the intertubes, a friend suggests that if all the tickets aren't sold, the price was too high, and that's the justification for the American Mavericks pass.

Well, hold your horses. It's more complicated than that.

As the biggest game in town, San Francisco Symphony has many constituencies, or market segments, or niches that it's trying to fill. People attend for social reasons; because they want to hear the old classics and not much more; because they want to hear the latest and greatest; because they want to hear particular soloists; because their husband/wife/spouse/partner/companion likes that stuff; because they're professionally interested; because they're music students; etc, etc.

SFS wants to both sell the maximum number of tickets and make the maximum possible revenue. The two needs are somewhat in conflict. The perfect price for selling out the house every time might be under the price that maximizes revenue, and there's major risk in pricing seats too low. That is, if you start with a high price, it's easier to offer discounts than to say "Ooops! We advertised this seat last June for $75, but now it's $95."

Only the airlines can get away with that kind of pricing. It's easy to understand why an orchestra might not want to get into airline-style pricing.

Here are some of the segments SFS has to take into account in deciding on prices:

People who plan ahead
People who make decisions spontaneously
People who have the money to pay full or full subscriber prices
People who are bargain hunting
New listeners the orchestra wants to get hooked
People who are risk averse

I plan ahead, have money to buy at full subscriber prices, and I'm risk averse. I would have wept if I'd missed seeing the Janacek/Debussy program. (I can't count on being assigned a plum review, either.) The above doesn't take into my particular craziness, either: I care mostly about repertory.

So the question is, what's too high? If people buy at a particular price point, it wasn't too high for them. If every seat does not sell, you then look for the next price at which tickets will sell. SFS does this with their apparently-annual January sale, which is going on right now, with rush tickets, with dumps to Goldstar, and with passes like the Mavericks pass. SF Opera typically does the same thing: some seats turn up on Goldstar, and they've been known to do half-off sales. That's how I got a $225 seat to Die tote Stadt for $100 or so.

As I said, it's complicated. I'm fine with SFS's January sale because 1) it is now predictable and 2) I understand the reasons for their needing to find buyers for unsold inventory. But the Mavericks pass is an enormous discount. And there is certainly some risk of audience resentment, when someone like me slaps her forehead and wonders why she didn't save a few hundred bucks by waiting to buy tickets. Or save even more by not buying tickets at all.

Slightly updated at 12:15 p.m.

Pricing and Audience Resentment

2012-01-24T08:59:00.000-08:00

Drew McManus had an article at Adaptistration the other day called Placebo Pricing and the Ticket Price Quandry; he points to Joe Patti's Butts in the Seats article Info You Can Use: Forget Dynamic Pricing, Use Placebo Pricing. Both articles are well worth a read, followed by some contemplation as to how events are priced and why.

Ticket discounting is rampant in various ways. Some presenters just plain have inexpensive tickets, from amateur choruses to the wonderful Old First Concerts. Others have rush ticket programs, such as the senior rush and standing room tickets at San Francisco Opera or the $20 rushes at SF Symphony. I showed up for that Susan Graham recital expecting to pay full price, but got a very nice rush seat instead; probably if I'd gone to the Eco Ensemble program Saturday night, I would have gotten the same deal.

For the last several years, San Francisco Symphony has had a big more-or-less half-off sale around the end of January. I know people who buy short subscriptions for the fall and gamble that they'll be able to get discount tickets for the spring. I've taken advantage of that sale myself a few times, but this year I bought most of my tickets up front at subscriber prices. There have been some exceptions; for instance, I don't have tickets to any of the chamber music programs coming up, and I bought a rush to see Shostakovich's 14th Symphony.

I know why presenters offer these discounts: it's better to sell a seat at a discount than to have it empty, for all sorts of reasons.

But I heard about a particular San Francisco Symphony offer today that I have to admit fries me just a teeny little bit, hence the "audience resentment" part of my blog title. Among the many tickets I bought last fall, after quite a bit of hassle, are tickets to three programs in the American Mavericks series. They're orchestra seats that I bought at the subscriber price which gets something like $10 or $15 off per seat.

As of this week, SFS is offering a $100 pass to all of the American Mavericks programs. You buy the pass in person or over the phone, then redeem the pass for tickets anywhere in the house other than Loge and Side Box, subject to ticket availability.

You also get a CD and a DVD.

Now, the fact that this pass is available at all means that very likely I can get rush seats for any concerts I don't already have tickets to. But it is an unusually blatant discount; for a third of what I paid for three seats, a gambler who waited can get into nine concerts.

Of course, nothing is keeping me from buying the pass and going to a few additional concerts. It's just....maybe rewarding the wrong behavior, when a subscriber starts kicking herself for having bothered to buy tickets in advance.

Don't Do This

2012-01-24T08:32:00.000-08:00

The LAPO sends along email ostensibly containing the Hollywood Bowl 2012 season announcement. However, what's in the mail is a pretty graphic and a link. Click the link and you're taken to a pretty web site, where if you click the correct link, a 23-page PDF downloads.

Folks, just don't do this. Don't make people click twice just to download your press release. Paste the essentials - say, five pages of essentials - into the email, with a "more details" link that goes directly to an HTML page.

P. S. This is why I haven't actually read the press release yet.

The Countess Finds a New Home

2012-01-22T22:45:00.000-08:00

In last week's NY Times Magazine, Dan Wakin had an article about the late Bernard Greenhouse and his beloved Stradivarius cello, known as the Countess of Stainlein. Today, he follows up with a short, sweet article: the Countess was sold to a Canadian patroness of the arts, who plans to lend it to a young Canadian cellist. The cello sold for more than $6 million, which was the minimum asking price.

I'm glad that the cello will be played; it's unfortunate that great old string instruments are so expensive that only the wealthy or investment syndicates can afford to own them. And it's worth keeping in mind that Christian Tetzlaff, one of the world's greatest violinist, plays a modern instrument that cost something like $30,000 new. He sounded pretty damn good on it in San Francisco two weeks back.

What killed me in the Times Magazine article was the news that upon his death, Gregor Piatigorsky's cello was lent to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, with the provision that cellists could apply to play it, but the family would have to approve the application. In the 35 years since Piatigorsky's death, there's been one request, which was turned down.

String instruments need to be played. Maybe that cello is getting regular workouts from a museum staff member; maybe there is some provision that Dan Wakin didn't report on. But I wish that cello were being played regularly, in practice and in concert, by someone who loves and cherishes it.

Susan Graham Update

2012-01-20T15:31:00.000-08:00

My earlier posting now links to the review on Out West Arts. Brian and I were at the same concert, even though we weren't within 350 miles or 2 days of each other.

Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps?

2012-01-19T19:29:00.000-08:00

Anthony Tommasini is surprised that Fabio Luisi can conduct American music well:

But on Sunday afternoon Mr. Luisi, conducting the Met Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, revealed another dimension to his artistry. Who would have expected this Italian maestro to be so at home conducting Copland’s jazzy Clarinet Concerto, let alone an aria from “Wuthering Heights,” the only opera by Bernard Herrmann, of “Psycho” fame?

Let's take that paragraph and sub in another name or two:

But on Sunday afternoon Mr. Levine, conducting the Met Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, revealed another dimension to his artistry. Who would have expected this midwestern American maestro to be so at home conducting Verdi's Simon Boccanegra, let alone exceprts from Goetterdaemmerung?

Or how about this?

But on Sunday afternoon Mr. Oazawa, conducting the Met Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, revealed another dimension to his artistry. Who would have expected this Japanese maestro to be so at home conducting Debussy's La Mer, let alone choruses from Saint Francois d'Assis, the only opera by Olivier Messiaen?

Decisions, Decisions

2012-01-19T10:11:00.001-08:00

It's one of those weekends:

Christopher Maltman at Herbst, tonight
Pablo Heras-Casado at SFS (I have a ticket for this)
The Enchanted Island Saturday morning
Eco Ensemble at Hertz Hall, Saturday
Paul Jacobs at Davies, Sunday afternoon

Eastman Kodak

2012-01-19T06:40:00.000-08:00

Eastman Kodak, one of the great industrial companies, has filed for bankruptcy.

I have a nice digital point & shoot, but also several film cameras, which I still use. I have shot many a roll of Tri-X - yes, I like grain - and T-Max and Kodacolor and Ektachrome. (I use other B&W films, too; my favorite is Ilford XP-2.) I still have a roll of (unused) Kodachrome around here someplace, but the last lab that could process it closed a year or two back, sadly.

Kodak changed photography. Before its cameras and films, a photographer had to do it all: lug around a big camera and glass plates, and, usually, a mobile darkroom and chemicals. In the 1890s, Kodak began to offer a small camera that came pre-loaded with a long roll of film. Once you had finished shooting it, you sent the whole camera back to Kodak. In return, you received your photographs, developed and printed, and the camera, which had been loaded up again.

Kodak changed photograph again in the last 35 years, by inventing digital photography. Oh, yes, they did, but couldn't figure out how to capitalize on it, despite their incredible depth of knowledge. I hope they'll manage to survive. I don't know what I'll do without Tri-X.

Separated at Birth?

2012-01-18T21:36:00.000-08:00

San Francisco Opera logo (dates from the beginning of David Gockley's tenure; based on the opera house chandelier):

Los Angeles Opera logo (new; "visually encompasses the company's past and future; the design comes from the interior of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion"):

Dark Today

2012-01-18T06:47:00.000-08:00

You can't read Iron Tongue of Midnight today because I am protesting SOPA and PIPA. Call your Senators and tell them what bad policy those bills are.

Season Announcement Season: Lyric Opera of Chicago

2012-01-17T14:45:00.000-08:00

H/T La Cieca; I'm not on LOC's press list:

Elektra (New production) Christine Goerke, Jill Grove, Emily Magee, Alan Held Sir Andrew Davis/cond., David McVicar/dir.
Simon Boccanegra (Covent Garden production) Thomas Hampson, Ferruccio Furlanetto, Krassimira Stoyanova, Frank Lopardo . Sir Andrew Davis/cond., Elijah Moshinsky/dir.
Werther (New production) Matthew Polenzani, Sophie Koch, Kiri Deonarine, Craig Verm. Sir Andrew Davis/cond., Francisco Negrin/dir.
Don Pasquale (Dallas Opera production – “new to Chicago”) Ildebrando D’Arcangelo, Marlis Petersen, René Barbera, Corey Crider. Stephen Lord/cond., Sir Thomas Allen/dir.
Hansel and Gretel (LOC production) Elizabeth DeShong, Maria Kanyova, Jill Grove. Ward Stare/cond., Richard Jones/orig. prod.
La bohème (San Francisco Opera production – “new toChicago”) Ana María Martínez/Anna Netrebko, Dimitri Pittas/Joseph Calleja, Elizabeth Futral. Emmanuel Villaume/cond., Louisa Muller/dir.
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (New production) James Morris, Johan Botha, Amanda Majeski, Bo Skovhus. Sir Andrew Davis/cond., David McVicar/orig. prod.
Rigoletto (“New staging with Lyric sets/costumes”) Andrzej Dobber/Željko Lucic, Albina Shagimuratova, Giuseppe Filianoti, Andrea Silvestrelli. Evan Rogister/cond., TBA/dir.
A Streetcar Named Desire (“Staged concert performance”) Renée Fleming, Susanna Philips, Teddy Tahu Rhodes, Anthony Dean Griffey. Evan Rogister/cond., Brad Dalton/dir.

Thomas Hampson as Boccanegra? Well, if Placido could do it.....I am not a big Meistersingeri fan, and at this point in his career, Sachs seems a bit much for Morris. Elektra and Hansel look good, for sure.

Season Announcement Season: San Francisco Opera

2012-01-17T14:14:00.000-08:00

Just the facts, and not all of them:

Rigoletto; double-cast with 12 performances; Luisotti/Finzi; Lucic/Vratogna, Kurzak/Shagimuratova, Demuro/Lomeli
I Capuleti e I Montecchi; Frizza; DiDonato, Cabell, Pirgu, Owens; co-production with Bavarian State Opera
Moby-Dick (SF Opera co-commission); Summers; Costello, Heppner/Jay Hunter Morris, Smith, Lemalu, Trevigne, O'Neill, Orth
Lohengrin; Luisotti; Jovanovich, Nylund, Lang, Grochowski, Sigmundsson, Mulligan
Tosca; double-cast with 12 performances; Luisotti/Finzi, Georghiu/Racette, Massimo Giordano/Jagde, Frontali/Delavan
The Secret Garden; SFO commission; cast & production team to be announced at a later time
Tales of Hoffman; Fournillier; Dessay, Polenzani, Coote, Van Horn
Cosi Fan Tutte; Luisotti/Dehn, Lotzsch, Stober, Demuro, Sly, Vinco
The Gospel of Mary Magdalen; SFO Commission; Christie/Cooke, Kanyova, Burden, Gunn

Also announced: SFO commission to Tobias Picker for Dolores Claibourne, set for the fall of 2013; reliably rumored to star Dolora Zajick.

The season announcement and full details are on the SFO web site, which was updated earlier today to include the 2012-13 season.

Commentary:

I will skip Rigoletto (unless I think one of those sopranos can make me forget Swenson) and stand through Tosca (with Racette, of course - why do you ask?). Those operas will be the season's cash cows, plus Rigoletto is a nod to the Verdi centenary even though it's early. The rest of the season looks good, and there's an attractive array of singers new and returning.

I'm particularly happy about Sasha Cooke's debut, based on having heard her live at SFS and on the Met HD Doctor Atomic. I might have considered skipping I Capuleti, which I saw 20 years ago when it last appeared here, but it would take wild horses to keep me away from JDD in pants. Moby-Dick has been well received; do I see it with Heppner or JHM?

Hoffman, sure; wouldn't miss Polenzani. Cosi, sure, because it does not come around every ten minutes. The surprise commission, sure; and of course I'm very much looking forward to Mary Magdalen, based on having loved Mark Adamo's Lysistrata.

$20 Million to Juilliard's Early Music Program

2012-01-16T18:22:00.000-08:00

Bruce Kovner, chairman of the board of the Juilliard School, has donated $20 million to its early music program - which was started with money he donated. He also gave the school a trove of manuscripts several years ago.

Graham: Which Concert Did You Hear?

2012-01-16T11:31:00.000-08:00

Susan Graham gave a recital at Cal Performances the other night, and reactions are varied.

Jason Victor Serinus in SFCV
Joshua Kosman in the Chron
John Marcher at A Beast in the Jungle
Opera Tattler
Out West Arts heard Graham in the same program in SoCal

At least one other blogger was there beside me, and I hope he will eventually weigh in on the recital.

As for my opinion. Among other things, I have to wonder whether I am really cut out for vocal recitals, especially those that run two hours. I think the last one I attended (and reviewed) was Anne-Sophie von Otter in the fall of 2005. (Right, I have missed quite a few really good ones along the way, and previously, most prominently, every last LHL recital.) It's not so easy to listen to one voice for so long; there's a built-in lack of variety even when it's the greatest artist in the world on stage.

And lest there be any doubt, Graham is among the greats of our time, a singer who pretty much has it all: a beautiful and beautifully-controlled voice, great technical facility in fioriture, skill with languages, a fine actor, and, well, sincerity. I believe every word that comes out of her mouth; there are no false notes.

I loved most of her program, especially the French songs, and thought the half-dozen plus encore from Wilhelm Meister a real stroke of genius, especially the contrasting settings (by Liszt, Duparc, Wolf, and Thomas) of "Kennst du das Land?" The Poulenc set on the second half, with its delicacy and wry tone, suited her especially well. She was magnificent and touching in the Purcell scena that opened the concert.

Still, I found myself feeling faintly dissatisfied afterward. It's not that she did anything wrong. The whole recital, including the funny and often sexy encores, was immaculately done, everything where it should be. But I was never deeply moved and also never got the sense that she was taking chances or pushing her own limits. I think this might be what Jason is getting at in his review (although see below for comments on one area where he faults her).

Next question: is that a problem, or a mismatch of what the artist is offering in a particular program with my hope for being transported or overwhelmed in some way? I think it's perfectly reasonable for an artist to offer a program that is superbly performed in every way (as this was) and that isn't an attempt to plumb the depths. After all, half the program was French, where the emotions and intellect are engaged in a different way from, say, German or some English (see Britten) works. And French chanson seems the perfect match for her, or was the other night.

As for the Horowitz setting of Lady M.'s major speeches from the Scottish play: Jason, honestly, the reason she didn't grab you in that is that the composer didn't give her a damn thing to work with. The texts, so different from each other in mood and style, were set to music that hardly varied. Sure, she could have shrieked more, but I doubt the composer called for it, and in his particular idiom, it would have been out of place. The idiom itself is flat - all that damn parlando - and the magnificence of the texts simply overwhelmed the mediocrity of the idiom.

This got me thinking: how many great Shakespeare operas are in English?

(pause for reflection)

Right, two. Verdi and Reimann - and even poor Thomas, whose Hamlet is not very good - all have the luxury of setting paraphrases, a choice that Thomas Ades made in setting The Tempest. How Britten got away with setting Shakespeare, and creating music to match the language, is one of the great triumphs of composition.

As to the critical distinctions, I think Jason's speculations about Graham's motives for this program are just that - speculation, and unnecessary speculation. I've heard a couple of tiny signs of age in her singing (a few unnecessary glottal attacks, a surprising amount of sliding around - perhaps a style choice? in Xerxes), but I think the comparative restraint of the other evening had more to do with the repertory she was singing than anything else.

Update: Yeah, couldn't stand the cute but inaccurate headline. A mezzo, but not mezzo.
Update 2: Added a link to Brian's review on Out West Arts. He heard exactly what I heard. And so much for spontaneity; she sang the same program as in Berkeley.

Extra! Extra!

2012-01-14T16:58:00.000-08:00

The crazy and wonderful Janacek Sinfonietta takes 26 brass to play, quite a bit over the usual complement even for a Wagner opera. San Francisco Symphony kindly provided me with the following:

Horns – Robert Ward, Jonathan Ring, Bruce Roberts, Jessica Valeri, Doug Hull (assistant)

Trumpets –

On stage: Mark Inouye, Micah Wilkinson, Jeff Biancalana

On the terrace: Ron Blais, Michael Tiscione, Jeff Lewandowski, Justin Emerich, Scott Macomber, Brad Hogarth, Adam Luftman, David Burkhart, John Freeman

Some position detail for the terrace trumpets:

Balcony 1 Adam Luftman

2 Mike Tiscione

3 Jeff Lewandowski

4 Justin Emerich

5 Scott Macomber

6 Brad Hogarth

7 David Burkhart

8 John Freeman

9 Ron Blais

Bass Trumpet – Mark Lawrence, Timothy Owner

Trombone – Timothy Higgins, Paul Welcomer, Chris Hernacki, John Engelkes

Euphonium – Matt Tropman, Bruce Chrisp

Tuba – Jeffrey Anderson

Le Martyr de Saint Sebastien has some unusual orchestration too, like three harps and two keyboard players.

Harp: Douglas Rioth, SFS principal; Jieyin Wu and Karen Gottlieb

Keyboard: Robin Sutherland, SFS principal; Marc Shapiro
UPDATE: corrections to some player names, plus more detail about who was where in the trumpets.

Ligeti Violin Concerto Orchestra

2012-01-14T16:52:00.000-08:00

SFS has kindly sent me the full list of everyone who played in last week's spectacular performances of the Ligeti violin concerto:

Christian Tetzlaff & Michael Tilson Thomas, of course!

Violin I – Alexander Barantschik (scordatura), Mark Volkert, Jeremy Constant

Violin II – Dan Carlson, Paul Brancato

Viola – Jonathan Vinocour (scordatura), Yun Jie Liu, Katie Kadarauch

Cello – Peter Wyrick, Amos Yang

Bass – Scott Pingel

Flute – Robin McKee (doubling on recorder), Catherine Payne (doubling on recorder)

Oboe – Jonathan Fischer (ocarina)

Clarinets – Luis Baez, Steve Sanchez (doubling on ocarina), David Neuman (doubling on ocarina)

Bassoon – Steven Dibner (doubling on ocarina)

Horns – Nicole Cash, Jonathan Ring

Trumpet – Mark Inouye

Trombone – Timothy Higgins

Timpani – David Herbert

Percussion – Jack Van Geem, Tom Hemphill

Harp – Douglas Rioth

Y'all were great; it was a privilege to hear such a great piece played so very beautifully. Deepest thanks.

A Deep Bow

2012-01-13T23:13:00.000-08:00

As a blogger, I spend a lot of time complaining about things worth complaining about, and often about things that really aren't. Goodness knows, I have complained a lot about Michael Tilson Thomas, especially when SFS seasons give short shrift to new music or seem boring.

This season, though, has been exceptional, and after a night like tonight's - the Janacek Sinfonietta and Debussy's Le martyr de Saint Sebastien, two wild and wonderful pieces - there's not much to do other than bow deeply and kiss his feet, and be grateful that the centennial makes it possible for him to get the kind of funding you need to put on those pieces. The Janacek with its 26 brass, the Debussy with its spectacular staging, narrator, singers, chorus, three harps....you get the picture.

New to the Blogroll

2012-01-12T14:17:00.000-08:00

I added Zerbinetta's blog Likely Impossibilities a couple of weeks ago (and should have added her, and been reading her, long before that). Today I've added cellist Jon Silpayamanant's blog Mae Mai. A big welcome to you both (and apologies to Zerbinetta)!

Wagner World Wide

2012-01-12T14:09:00.000-08:00

A useful site for Wagnerians:

www2013:Wagner World Wide

In their own words:

In recognition of composer Richard Wagner’s (1813-1883) bicentennial in 2013, the Forschungsinstitut für Musiktheater(fimt) at the University of Bayreuth is planning a multi-year series of events to take place around the world under the general heading WagnerWorldWide 2013 (WWW 2013). This will culminate in a conference to be held in Bayreuth during the summer of 2013 coinciding with the launch of a new staging of Wagner’s opera cycle, Der Ring des Nibelungen.

The events leading up to the 2013 conference will vary in size and scope, from individual lectures and seminars, to fully fledged conferences, all centered around an exploration of Wagner’s current meaning and worldwide significance, in five specific areas of inquiry (Topics):

Sounds good to me!

Current State of NYCO

2012-01-11T13:25:00.000-08:00

A friend forwards email sent by George Steele to NYCO's mailing list, and it's hard to see any chance of the organization pulling out of the current spin and surviving to stage opera:

Dear Friend,

I am writing to bring you, a supporter of New York City Opera, up to date on our negotiations with the American Guild of Musical Artists (AGMA) and Local 802 American Federation of Musicians--the two unions that represent the artistic heart of our organization: the principal singers, the New York City Opera Orchestra and New York City Opera Chorus, along with our wonderful dramatic and musical staff.

As you may have read, on Saturday evening, after months of good-faith negotiations with representatives from the two unions, both rejected the Company's most recent offer. Because the unions have pledged to strike our performances, we simply cannot afford to pay for rehearsals until we have an agreement.

We are hopeful the process will move forward over the coming days and that we will together find a resolution to the tough questions that face all of us.

I look forward to keeping you apprised of developments as they occur in the days ahead. Meanwhile, I thank you--NYC Opera's loyal friends and supporters--for your continued support and understanding.

With best wishes and deepest gratitude,

George Steel
General Manager and Artistic Director
New York City Opera

Perhaps I Should Not Have Responded

2012-01-10T13:29:00.000-08:00

Greg Sandow quotes David Gockley's gloom-and-doom from a year ago - before following up - and I responded, though my response is awaiting moderation.

Found on the Web

2012-01-10T10:24:00.000-08:00

Obviously this has been posted for a while:

Research on the Web seems to be fashionable these days and I guess I'm no exception. Recently I have been working on the Google search engine with Larry Page

I have no idea whether Sergey and Larry are still on leave or if Sergey's Stanford web page is still there because, why not?

Good New for the Merola Program

2012-01-10T06:26:00.000-08:00

The Merola Program of San Francisco Opera has received a pair of bequests totally almost $3.5 million. From the Jack H. Lund Charitable Trust comes about $2.49 million; from the Blanche Thebom Trust comes a bit over $1 million.

Lund was a long-time opera fan and collector of opera memorabilia; Thebom, a mezzo-soprano, had a long and distinguished career as a singer.

Other good news is that the Merolini will perform two fully staged operas this summer (and I have never seen either): Mozart's La Finta Giardiniera and Argento's Postcard from Morocco.

While we're at it, here's the Merola summer schedule:

SCHWABACHER SUMMER CONCERT

Thursday, July 5, 7:30 PM
Herbst Theatre
$40/$25

OUTDOOR SCHWABACHER SUMMER CONCERT

Saturday, July 7, 2:00 PM
Yerba Buena Gardens

FREE

POSTCARD FROM MOROCCO

by Dominick Argento
Libretto by John Donahue
Thursday, July 19, 8:00 PM
Saturday, July 21, 2:00 PM
Cowell Theater at Fort Mason Center
$60/$40

LA FINTA GIARDINIERA

by W. A. Mozart
Thursday, August 2, 8:00 PM
Saturday, August 4, 2:00 PM
Cowell Theater at Fort Mason Center
$60/$40

MEROLA GRAND FINALE

Saturday, August 18, 7:30 PM
War Memorial Opera House
$45 Orchestra Premium and Grand Tier Premium

$35 Orchestra and Grand Tier
$25 Dress Circle

Alexis Weissenberg

2012-01-09T22:09:00.001-08:00

The pianist Alexis Weissenberg has died, age 82, of Parkinson's disease, at his home in Lugano, Switzerland. The Times obituary is here.

I don't know his work at all, but the life story is certainly colorful.

He Likes a Challenge

2012-01-09T13:26:00.001-08:00

Complete text of a Metropolitan Opera Cast Change Advisory:

Roberto Alagna will sing the title role in Gounod’s Faust this evening, replacing Joseph Calleja, who is ill.

Alagna sang Faust last month on December 23 and 28 and will sing the role of Cavaradossi tomorrow evening in the season premiere of Puccini’s Tosca. Alagna has frequently stepped in on short notice at the Met, most notably in the fall of 2007 when he sang two performances of Roméo in Roméo et Juliette substituting for a colleague, then two scheduled performances of Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly before taking over as Radamès in Aida for one performance on very short notice.

It is extremely rare for an opera singer to perform leading roles on two consecutive evenings, but Alagna volunteered because he enjoys the challenge. “To sing Faust and Tosca on consecutive nights makes my adrenaline flow,” he said. “This is what makes being an opera singer so exciting for me.”
Faust is conducted by Alain Altinoglu and also stars Marina Poplavskaya, Kate Lindsey, George Petean, and Ferruccio Furlanetto in other principal roles.

San Francisco Opera Teasers

2012-01-09T12:10:00.000-08:00

I'll update this posting (and republish it with a new time stamp) as the correct guesses arrive.

January 8: The hint is a photo of Rita Hayworth in the film.....Gilda! Well, so, Rigoletto.
January 9: The hint is Shakespeare's coat of arms. People guessing Otello: no, no, no. They just performed it a couple of seasons ago (badly). Other guesses are Macbeth (again, performed recently), Romeo, or I Capuleti. My sources say the latter.

SFS, This Week and Next

2012-01-09T10:47:00.000-08:00

SF Mike at Civic Center had a great post the other week about the upcoming programs at San Francisco Symphony. I agree with every word.

You've missed the (incredible) Ligeti Violin Concerto, but this week's program of Janacek's Sinfonietta and Debussy's Le martyr de Saint Sebastien should be one of the highlights of the season, with its two idiosyncratic and marvelous works. The Janacek isn't done often because....it requires 25 brass. You won't have another shot at it for 10 or 15 years. Goldstar has cheap tickets, so if you haven't bought your Janacek/Debussy ticket yet, go for it.

Pablo Heras-Casado's program next week looks great too! I cannot believe that I will get to hear the Dallapiccola for the second time.

For Sacred Harp Singers

2012-01-09T10:09:00.000-08:00

This will be fun (probably I cannot go):

24th Annual All-California Sacred Harp Singing Convention
Two Full Days of Singing!
Saturday and Sunday, January 14-15, 2012

This traditional gathering of shape note singers from across the country comes to the Bay area once every three years. Sing early American 4-part hymns and enjoy a traditional noontime potluck lunch. No Admission Charge.

Casa de Flores
737 Walnut Street
San Carlos, California
http://maps.google.com/?q=737+walnut,94070

Schedule (both days):
9:00 Registration
9:30 Singing
12:00 Potluck lunch
1:00 More singing
3:30 Cleanup

For details and updates, and a printable PDF flyer, please visit the Convention web site at:
http://fasola.org/sf/convention/

Holy Cow!

2012-01-08T18:54:00.000-08:00

Let's get the rest of today's SFS program out of the way quickly: the opening Liszt piece, Prometheus, had its moments, but I cringed when they got to the fugue, in exactly the same way I cringe when a pianist hits the fugue in Schubert's Wanderer Fantasy. Back slowly away from the counterpoint, boys, and leave it for people who know what they're doing.

The Tchaikovsky First, Winter Daydreams, which occupied the whole second half of the program, was worth staying for, if only because it's not performed often. It probably should be played more often; it's certainly appealing, with lots of big tunes and a few looks forward. The slow movement is awfully long, and I wish the scherzo had gone rather faster, but whatever. It's something of a rarity, it's not that technically challenging for anyone in the orchestra (or on the podium), and they had to play something on the second half of the program.

But I bought my row H seat in the orchestra for just one reason: to hear Christian Tetzlaff in the Ligeti Violin Concerto. Holy cow! What a piece! And what a performance!

It is insanely complicated, between the microtones, the rhythmic and metrical complexities, the fact that it's really a concerto for a bunch of soloists, the crazy solo part. Look at this scoring:

Two flutes (first double alto flute and alto recorder, second doubling piccolo and soprano recorder), oboe (doubling soprano ocarina in C), two clarinets (first doubling E-flat clarinet and soprano ocarina in F, second doubling bass clarinet and alto ocarina in F), bassoon (doubling soprano ocarina in C), two horns, trumpet, tenor trombone, timpani, two suspended cymbals (medium and low), crotales, tubular bells, gong, tam-tam, two woodblocks, tambourine, snare drum, bass drum, whip, two Swanee whistles, glockenspiel, xylophone, vibraphone, marimbaphone, and strings; the orchestral strings include five violins (one with scordatura), three violas (one with scordatura), two cellos, and one bass.

That percussion battery took three guys to play. "The orchestral strings include" means the orchestral strings ARE five violins, three violas, two cellos, and one bass. "Scordatura" means that Alexander Barantschik and Jonathan Vinocur were playing instruments tuned to other than the standard tuning. They had their own seats directly in front of MTT, effectively making them something of a trio with Tetzlaff. Back in the violin section were Mark Volkert, Jeremy Constant, and a second stand of violinists I couldn't identify from my seat.

For all of that, the structure of the piece and its major musical features are not difficult to hear, even if we hadn't had James Keller's excellent program notes and a clear and helpful spoken intro by MTT. He sounded slightly apprehensive; while I haven't seen the score, I can only imagine that it is a bear to rehearse and lead.

Stylistically, it's typical of Ligeti, combining some big, folklike tunes (and folk tunes) with immensely complex compositional techniques. Some of the techniques are old (variations; passacaglia); some are newish (microtones). It is beautiful - and sometimes very funny, though I was the only person I saw smiling at the ocarina entry (!).

All of the parts are extremely difficult. The solo part...holy shit. Demanding doesn't begin to tell the story; the soloist has to be comfortable at vast extremes of pitch and dynamics, have the highest level of virtuoso skill, and the musicianship to make it all make sense.

Christian Tetzlaff has all of that and obviously loves the piece. He was superlative, and so was everyone else on stage. I was on my feet at the end; the orchestral players gave the soloist a hand of their own; I was sorry to see how many audience members sat on their hands and didn't appreciate the greatness of piece and performances.

Muzyka Nowa

2012-01-08T11:00:00.000-08:00

Q2, the new-music branch of New York City's WQXR, will have a broadcast festival of contemporary Polish music starting on January 16 and running through January 22. The program looks great; a fine combination of familiar composers and many new to me. The landing page is www.wqxr.org/poland.

Highlights include:

*An audio stream of In Memoriam Henryk Mikołaj Górecki recorded at (Le) Poisson Rouge in New York City in November, 2011 in front of a sold-out audience

* Two full-day, 24-hour marathons of contemporary classical Polish music

* Polish-born, New York City-based composer Jakub Ciupinski plays D.J., exploring the breadth of Polish contemporary music

* An interview with Henryk Mikołaj Górecki’s son, the Texas-based composer Mikolaj Górecki

* Warsaw Autumn Festival and UNSOUND Festival spotlights

The full press release is below the cut. I'll be listening!

Q2 Music, WQXR’s Online New Music Station, Presents

“Muzyka Nowa: A Weeklong Celebration of Contemporary Polish Music”

An Online Festival of Special Programs and Events at www.wqxr.org/poland

Monday, January 16 through Sunday, January 22

(December 20, 2011, New York, NY) – Inspired by the outpouring of local and international attention around the recent one-year anniversary of Henryk Mikołaj Górecki’s passing, Q2 Music, WQXR’s online station for contemporary classical music, offers an in-depth exploration of Polish contemporary music. From 20^th Century greats Lutoslawski, Penderecki and Gorecki, to lesser-known and emerging Polish composers such as Andrzej Krzanowski, Krzysztof Wołek, and Aleksander Nowak, “MUZYKA NOWA” will provide a week’s worth of wonderful Polish music.

“MUZYKA NOWA” will consist of blocks of contemporary Polish music, two 24-hour marathons of new music, live Warsaw Autumn Festival recordings, composer-curated shows, and a webcast of In Memoriam Henryk Mikołaj Górecki, recorded live at Greenwich Village’s (Le) Poisson Rouge, along with curated playlists.

Festival highlights include:

*An audio stream of In Memoriam Henryk Mikołaj Górecki recorded at (Le) Poisson Rouge in New York City in November, 2011 in front of a sold-out audience

* Two full-day, 24-hour marathons of contemporary classical Polish music

* Polish-born, New York City-based composer Jakub Ciupinski plays D.J., exploring the breadth of Polish contemporary music

* An interview with Henryk Mikołaj Górecki’s son, the Texas-based composer Mikolaj Górecki

* Warsaw Autumn Festival and UNSOUND Festival spotlights

All programming is available at www.wqxr.org/poland

Muzyka Nowa is presented in association with the Polish Cultural Institute New York.

FULL PROGRAMMING SCHEDULE BELOW

In Memoriam Henryk Mikołaj Górecki: Recorded at (Le) Poisson Rouge

Thursday, January 19 at 7pm,

Encore play Saturday, January 21 at 1pm

Recorded at New York City’s (Le) Poisson Rouge on November 8, 2011, this sold-out concert paying tribute to the 1-year anniversary of the iconic composer’s passing, featured compelling performances of String Quartet No. 2 with JACK Quartet and Kleines Requiem für Eine Polka, Op. 66 with Signal ensemble under the direction of Brad Lubman.

Polish Composers from 20^th Century Masters to the Next Generation

Weekdays from noon-4 pm

Host Nadia Sirota explores the wealth of contemporary Polish classical music, from established 20^th century giants such as Penderecki, Szymanowski, Lutoslawski and Gorecki to Poland-based composers whose sound has yet to be widely disseminated in the United States, such as Andrzej Krzanowski, Krzysztof Wołek, and Aleksander Nowak . Host Sirota will also play in-concert recordings of Polish new music, from New York City as well as the Warsaw Autumn Festival and UNSOUND, both from Poland.

Jakub Ciupinski Hosts

Monday, January 16 and Tuesday, January 17at 7 pm

Encore presentations Thursday, January 19 and Friday, January 20 at 10 am

Jakub Ciupinski is the Polish-born, New York-based composer who will host two hour-long shows exploring the breadth of contemporary Polish music.

Warsaw Autumn Festival and UNSOUND Festival Spotlights

Throughout-the-week audio highlights from Warsaw Autumn Festival’s colorful history and UNSOUND Festival’s focus on advanced music.

An Interview with Mikolaj Górecki

A web-exclusive Q&A with Mikolaj Górecki, Texas-based composer and son of Henryk Mikołaj Górecki exploring the influence of his father, the state of contemporary Polish music and the importance of Polish culture on his own music. There will also be an on-demand playlist of his favorite music.

WQXR is New York City’s only all-classical music station, immersing listeners in the city’s rich musical life. WQXR presents new and landmark classical recordings as well as live concerts from the Metropolitan Opera, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and the New York Philharmonic, among other city venues. WQXR broadcasts essential shows such as the Metropolitan Opera Radio Saturday Matinee Broadcasts, the New York Philharmonic This Week on Thursday evenings, the McGraw-Hill Young Artists Showcase on Wednesday evenings, and Symphony Hall each weeknight. For listeners in search of the new, WQXR also operates Q2 MUSIC, a 24-hour-a-day online music station dedicated to contemporary classical composers, cross-genre adventures, and performances from New York City’s edgier venues. WQXR.org provides essential playlist info for online listening, as well as original content, host blogs, NYC cultural news, videos, and a free WQXR mobile App.

The Polish Cultural Institute New York, established in 2000, is a diplomatic mission dedicated to nurturing and promoting cultural ties between the United States and Poland. The Institute initiates, organizes, promotes, and produces a broad range of cultural events in theater, music, film, literature, and the fine arts. It has collaborated with such cultural institutions as Lincoln Center Festival, BAM, Film Society of Lincoln Center, The Museum of Modern Art, Jewish Museum, PEN World Voices Festival, Yale University, and many more.

From the Diary of Samuel Pepys

2012-01-08T10:56:00.000-08:00

7 January 1659/60:

...After he was gone I went home, and found my friends still at cards, and after that I went along with them to Dr. Whores(sending my wife to Mrs. Jem’s to a sack-posset), where I heard some symphony and songs of his own making, performed by Mr. May, Harding, and Mallard. ....

From the Diary of Samuel Pepys

2012-01-08T10:45:00.000-08:00

4 January 1659/60:

...Then I spent a little time with G. Vines and Maylard at Vines’s at our viols...

Hmmmmm.

2012-01-07T18:50:00.000-08:00

A reader ~~challenged~~ asked Joshua Kosman to come up with a list of CDs to help him become familiar with the orchestral music of the last 50 years - let's say that means back to 1960, though we're cheating a little there.

Joshua came up with a fine list, except that almost all of it is from the last 30 years and almost all of it is in, hmm, I'm not going to be able to come up with a good phrase to cover all of those guys 'n gals. Without having heard it, I think I'd pitch the Kernis symphony in favor of something by Saariaho, say, Graal Theatre, even though that would make his list even more Finn-heavy, and I'd swap Magnus Lindberg's Seht die Sonne for the composer's fantastic Clarinet Concerto.

I'm kinda shocked that there's nothing on his list by Shostakovich.

And, really, you can't survey the orchestral music of the last 50 years without throwing in something big by a high modernist or two. Can't we get one of Carter's big essays out there? Some Stockhausen? Birtwistle? Wuorinen?

Boulez?

Election Season

2012-01-07T10:17:00.000-08:00

It's 2012 and yes! There is a presidential election in the United States. I am not exactly a politics junkie, but I do read some politically-oriented blogs and sites. Here are a few you might want to read, from the ~~commie-pinko-rat~~ progressive/liberal wing (if you're not a progressive/liberal, you'll have to find your own):

FiveThirtyEight, now relocated to the NY Times.This is actually a nonpartisan blog dedicated to poll analysis.
Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize-winning economist; read his columns on M & F as well
Brad DeLong, economic historian at UC Berkeley
Electoral-Vote, where the Votemaster is an expat US citizen living in Holland

There are plenty more out there: Daily Kos, etc.

The Republican Primaries

2012-01-07T10:05:00.000-08:00

It's a sorry sight, sorrier than usual, as the Republican candidates vie to move as far to right as possible in order to placate "the base." Mitt Romney, who signed a health care law as governor of MA that's a lot like the federal health care law, has to deny that the federal plan is any good; he also has to say how wrong he was to sign the MA marriage-equality bill. 'Nuff said; he is, of course, lying.

Here are a few tidbits about the Republicans. Even more than the Democrats, they're for the richest and most powerful, and far less interested in the other 99% of us:

Ron Paul criticized by (conservative) David Frum
Karen Santorum had an abortion, but her husband would outlaw them for us.Also see the discussion on Brad DeLong's blog.
Blogger Jesse Taylor on why progressives shouldn't even be thinking of supporting Ron Paul.

Getting Ready for Le Martyr de St. Sebastien at SFS?

2012-01-07T09:49:00.000-08:00

You're more likely to have a recording of the Janacek Sinfonietta, I know. Here's what I did: I bought a copy of the Ansermet recording from eClassical and downloaded it to one of my computers. I've listened to it several times this week.

And yesterday, I discovered that Google Books has Le Martyr....and the published book includes Debussy's score. So I can sit at the computer listening and follow along in the score.

Upshaw Postpones Concert

2012-01-06T11:59:00.000-08:00

From San Francisco Performances:

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – San Francisco Performances announces that the January 28 recital with soprano Dawn Upshaw and pianist Stephen Prutsman has been rescheduled to Sunday, April 1, 2012 at 7pm at the Herbst Theatre. Dawn Upshaw is withdrawing from upcoming performances in January 2012 in order to complete recovery after successful surgery to remove a small malignancy (unrelated to her 2006 breast cancer). Her physicians have confirmed that the prognosis for a full recovery is excellent, and she expects to resume her performance schedule next month.

I'm sorry to hear about the surgery and the reason for it; wishing the great singer a swift and complete recovery.

From the Source

2012-01-05T21:57:00.000-08:00

Over on Facebook, San Francisco Opera is having a teaser contest for the upcoming season, starting on January 8. I'm not planning to participate, but I note that they've let slip the news that the season will be nine operas. We can assume 6 in the fall, 3 in the summer.

Season Announcement Season: LAO Rumor & Gossip

2012-01-05T15:16:00.000-08:00

Hoisted from the comments:

The LAO information I've heard so far is that the Britten opera will be Gloriana. D'Arcangelo has already confirmed in the press that he'll sing Don Giovanni here next season. They will likely present a Wagner opera and I've heard that it will be Parsifal. And one last tidbit, Angela Meade's press folks have confirmed she will be making a starring appearance in LA next year. Assuming it is not in one of the aforementioned operas, that could lead to a number of possibilities given what she sings

Season Announcement Season: Seattle Opera

2012-01-05T14:11:00.000-08:00

Seattle Opera was actually first out of the gate, a couple of weeks ago. Their 2012-13 season, with the vague theme of varieties of love, will be:

Turandot
Fidelio
La Cenerentola
La Boheme
Suor Angelica/La Voix Humaine

Lots of Puccini, with whom I guess opera companies feel they cannot go wrong; also, the summer of 2013 will include the last bring-up of the Wadsworth Ring, which of course is expensive. If I lived in Seattle, I'd be buying plane tickets instead of opera tickets....except for the Ring.

NYPO Names New Executive Director

2012-01-04T10:00:00.000-08:00

Following what was apparently an exceptionally difficult search, the NY Phil has named Matthew VanBiesen as its new executive director. He'll come on board in the spring some time and will overlap a bit with Zarin Mehta, who is retiring after quite a few years at the orchestra. The overlap is smart, believe me, with a job of this complexity and visibility. Also very smart is that he won't be directly involved in the current labor negotiations.

Dan Wakin's story contains one odd bit: the orchestra won't discuss any of the terms of VanBiesen's contract. Hello, the salary will come out in a 9900 in a couple of years, plus, anyone with some knowledge of orchestra management and access to Adaptistration can figure out the range by just looking at the pay for the executives at the BSO, LAPO, SFS, PO, CO, and CSO. It'll be in the $650K to $1M range, but probably not more than the $807K that Zarin Mehta is earning.

VanBiesen is coming to the NYPO from Melbourne, where he has only served for about two years. The orchestra he runs currently receives half its funding from the government, while the NYPO gets, well, I assume approximately nothing from government sources. Just noting that this didn't work out so well at San Francisco Opera, where Pamela Rosenberg simply had no idea of the fund-raising demands of her job and evidently strongly disliked that particular responsibility.

VanBiesen previously served in Houston, and it looks as though he did an impressively good job there: he took over during a terrible time for the orchestra and everything improved greatly under his leadership. He will have a few challenges in NY too:

While relatively inexperienced and a leader of organizations with less than half the Philharmonic’s $69 million budget, Mr. VanBesien faces enormous challenges: persistent and large deficits, labor friction, hefty pension liabilities, the lack of an established summer home like the Boston Symphony’s at Tanglewood, and competition from orchestras visiting Carnegie Hall. Problems even extend to the orchestra’s widely scorned auditorium, Avery Fisher Hall: Philharmonic officials say the hall needs renovations, which will displace the orchestra for an extended period, according to plans in the works with Lincoln Center, which owns the building.

I have no idea how long the next renovation of Avery Fisher Hall is expected to take, but 18 months of camping out didn't hurt San Francisco Opera back in the day. I have many complaints about Lotfi Mansouri's leadership at SFO, but how he managed the retrofit of the opera house and the workings of the company during the retrofit aren't among them.

Rolling on the Floor

2012-01-02T17:46:00.000-08:00

Peter Gelb has an article in the Huffington Post defending the Lepage Ring. I started laughing right here, half-way through the third paragraph:

Of course, because our Ring is revolutionary, not everyone supports it.

I was still laughing when I got to this, in the next paragraph:

I strongly believe in Lepage's literal but imaginative approach.

Of course, he offers nothing to demonstrate the revolutionary nature of the Lepage Ring...because it's not. "Literal but imaginative" doesn't equal revolutionary, and he must know that. The character interpretations are middle of the road; most reviewers have mentioned that the singers don't seem to have much directorial guidance, in fact. The damn Machine is a big old distraction, adding little value for a lot of time and money. Rheinmaidens who swim are nothing new; see photos of Met and Bayreuth productions going back to, um, 1876 for swimming Rheinmaidens.

Hopefully, with the completion of the cycles, this Ring will stand out as one of the Met's greatest feats.

No, Peter. It's going to stand out as one of the Met's biggest wastes of money.

Season Announcement Season

2012-01-02T17:36:00.000-08:00

It is early 2012, meaning we can expect season announcements to come fast and furious over the next several months. First up in the Bay Area will be San Francisco Opera, which announces the 2012-13 season on January 17. No press conference, no reception, just a press release. Opera Tattler's guesses about the season are here. I can't say I'm thrilled. Once around with I Capuleti was enough; I would happily skip Tosca for the next ten years even with La Racette; don't need to see Rigoletto again soon. That leaves me with Lohengrin, Moby Dick, and The Gospel of Mary Magdalen, assuming OT is right.

I have one prediction about the upcoming announcements: we can expect lots of Verdi and Wagner to appear in calendar year 2013 during the bicentenary of the two composers' birth. I'm hoping that with Verdi we'll hear some of the rarities, not more of the usual.

Unpublished Letter to the Times (Another One)

2012-01-01T13:23:00.000-08:00

The Times Sunday Dialog this week is about the ostensible value of a third party. Here are the Times letter and responses. I rolled on the floor alternately laughing and weeping when I read the letter. Here's my unpublished response:

To the Editor:

Robert A. Levine is making a joke by suggesting that the U.S. needs a "centrist third party," right? Either that, or he is unaware that the Democratic Party has been pushed so far toward the center that for the last 20 years it has embraced policies well to the right of that great liberal, Richard M. Nixon, and that the Republican Party is out on the fringes someplace compared to what it espoused as recently as the 1970s.

What the country actually needs is a Democratic Party dedicated to its own past ideals: support of unions and working people, progressive taxation, a sound safety net, full employment, environmentalism, support for the public schools. Only the Green Party and various Socialist factions embrace these ideals today, sadly.

Very truly yours,

Lisa Hirsch

[While my mention of the Green and Socialist parties might look like agreement about the need for third parties, I do not welcome the potential splitting of the left-of-center vote in national elections. See, for example, the 2000 Presidential election. Just a few of Ralph Nader's 90,000 votes in FL would have tipped the election to Al Gore and perhaps the last decade would not have been so disastrous for the U.S. I do fully support third parties in local and state elections.]

Memorable Music

2011-12-31T18:16:00.000-08:00

Okay, not quite done.

I'm not going to do a standard 10-best. I'm just going to try to list some of the best or most memorable performances I attended, whether concert or opera.

Chamber Music

Pavel Haas Quartet. I never posted a review of this, but the young Czech group was absolutely splendid in their Bay Area debut early this year. They played an idiosyncratically beautiful rendition of the Debussy quartet; rather than the usual airy transparent sound that quartets seem to aim for, they played with dark mahogany tone. Gorgeous and very different. The program also included quartets by Haas and Schulhoff, which got great performances as well.

Fleischmann Memorial Concert. Okay, the chorus piece, Stravinsky's Renard (with Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting) and the Donatoni piece were all fine, but the star work was Pierre Boulez's sur Incises, led by the Maitre himself. What a gorgeous piece! Three pianos, three harps, three percussionists; a half-hour of bliss.

Ades/Calder Quartet. Mostly Ades, all great.

Opera

Ring Cycle, San Francisco. The full rollout of the Zambello Ring, intelligently and thoughtfully directed - okay, with a few lapses! - and a host of fine performances. Stefan Margita's brilliantly sung and acted Loge; Elizabeth Bishop's not-a-shrew Fricka; Andrea Silvestrelli's Fasolt and Hagen (why he didn't get Hunding and Fafner instead of Fasolt, I'll never know); Jay Hunter Morris's lyrical and charming Siegfried - bet you've never heard him called charming before; and of course Nina Stemme's Brunnhilde and the great conducting of Donald Runnicles.

Turn of the Screw, LA Opera. My first live production of Britten's masterpiece. Patricia Racette's first Governess; superb performances from all, especially young Michael Kepler Meo as Miles and William Burden's terrifying Quint.

Ariadne auf Naxos, West Edge Opera. Great direction of Strauss's postmodern opera and mostly terrific singing.

Le Comte Ory, Met HD broadcast. Juan Diego Florez, Diana Damrau, Joyce Di Donato. What's not to like? I thought the play-within-a-play framing unnecessary and distracting; the great singing and acting made up for a lot. JDD: hot hot hot.

Nixon in China, Met HD broadcast. The great American opera, up there with Porgy & Bess. Peter Sellars keeping the lid on it reasonably well, with a mostly excellent cast and the composer conducting.

Orchestral

Mahler 2 and Mahler 3 at SFS/MTT. Splendid and moving performances of each; I didn't notice until it was all over that the 3rd lasted a good 15 minutes longer than a typical performance.

RVW London Symphony, SFS/Vanska. Too bad about Barantshchik's overly understated Mendelssohn violin concerto on the same program. The RVW was truly great.

Verdi Requiem and Shostakovich 14, Conlon/SFS. Holy cow. Two great, great performances of very different pieces. Death-haunted Shostakovich, terrifying Verdi. Yeah, I did skip Pictures at an Exhibition. Seriously, it would be a pygmy next to the great Shostakovich.

Sibelius, Salonen, Wagner, SFS/Salonen. Esa-Pekka Salonen's own violin concerto paired with the gorgeous Pohjola's Daughter and excerpts from Götterdämmerung, with the great Christine Brewer in the Immolation scene.

Last of the Year?

2011-12-31T16:55:00.000-08:00

Honestly, I should have just announced a hiatus. I have a bunch of concerts I'd like to write up, and goodness knows there's been some time to do so in the last week or so, since I have been off work most days since a week ago Friday. But mostly I've been puttering around the house and reading, and also setting up this new iMac, which arrived Thursday, a week early.

Big thanks to people on the Well and Google+ who gave me some excellent advice, such as "iPhoto plays nicely with Flickr," which is my photo site of choice, and "why, yes, that iMac can read your Windows-formatted external hard drive, so forget about Migration Assistant."

That would the Migration Assistant software that took 12 hours to hang without migrating any data from my soon-to-be-retired Dell. Apple, maker of intuitive and easy to use products, has known it was buggy for at least six months and has not bothered to fix the problems. I think it took a half-hour at most to read 10,000 photos and 1200 other files off the portable hard drive. There is probably a support note somewhere on apple.com that tells you to just plug in your Windows-formatted backup drive and read everything onto the iMac, but it's not the first thing that comes up when you search for data migration info.

As long as I'm complaining about Apple, is there any damn reason the iMac stand is adjustable as to angle but not height? Did St. Steve think it would be aesthetically displeasing to have an adjustable stand??

As to why I bought an iMac rather than another Dell, once I did an apples-to-apples machine comparison, the Apple premium was maybe $200. I decided I'd go with the nice hardware and excellent software integration, plus, I am a Mac user at work, so I have only one platform to think about now. (Except that the work machine is on Leopard and the iMac is on Lion....)

As to what this year was like for me, lots of good music but not enough vacation time; more upheavals at work, all of which worked out well for me (I work in a great tech pubs group that is on important and interesting project, and I am very happy with the people we report up through). We lost our beloved Molly B. and now have a lovely still-newish dog, Lila the Werewolf. My mother is recovering well from a broken hip suffered about a month ago. My partner is busily writing grant proposals. We swear we are taking a real vacation this year, as soon as possible.

In any event, I hope your 2011 was good and that your 2012 is as good or better.

Funding Best Music Writing

2011-12-29T10:15:00.000-08:00

The excellent series Best Music Writing of the Year has been dropped by the Da Capo Press. Bad news, indeed, but the good news is that series editor Daphne Carr is launching a music-writing indie press of which Best Music Writing will be "the flagship publication." You can donate to this excellent cause right here.

The Times Does It Again

2011-12-22T15:41:00.000-08:00

Or rather, they don't.

Once again, their year-end audio feature The Music They Made includes no one from the realm of the classical, and precious few from the jazz world. Montserrat Figueras, Sena Jurinac, and Salvatore Licitra, Lee Hoiby, Daniel Catan, and Peter Lieberson, Robert Tear, Eugene Fodor, Milton Babbitt, and many I didn't memorialize didn't rate a mention or a clip.

The Crowd Cheered

2011-12-21T13:55:00.000-08:00

The U.S. armed forces join the rest of the armies of the western world in allowing LGB people to serve openly. Not only don't planes fall out of the sky or ships sink, but a lesbian couple got the first-kiss honor when one of their ships docked, and the crowd cheered. Read about it here.

Reactions to the Record 3: April 12-14, 2012

2011-12-21T13:14:00.000-08:00

I knew this was coming, and here it is: the third Reactions to the Record symposium at Stanford University, April 12-14, 2012.

The 2009 and 2007 symposia were utterly fascinating, for anyone who is interested in performance styles, how they change, and what we can learn from old recordings. The attendees and speakers range from academics (some quite famous) to performers to impressarios to interested amateurs (that'd be me). There have also always been great concerts associated with R2R.

The presenters for next year are:

Richard Taruskin
Daniel Leech-Wilkinson
Kenneth Slowick
Jonathan Bellman
José Bowen
Clive Brown
David Milsom
Edward Herbst
Anna Schultz
Allan Evans

Operatic Miscellany

2011-12-21T09:29:00.000-08:00

I didn't like Clark Suprynowicz's Caliban Dreams earlier this year at Berkeley Opera, but his upcoming MACHINE, to be presented by The Crucible, here in Oakland near W. Oakland BART, might just get me out the door. Tickets are $45 to $65 except for the closing night gala, when they're $150. Performances are on January 11-14 and 18-21, 2012. That's next month, if you've lost track....Farther afield in both time and space, The Industry, a Los Angeles organization that "produces new interdisciplinary work that merges music, visual arts, and performance to expand the traditional definition of opera," presents Crescent City, a new opera, from May 10 to 27, 2012. I am so there:

Crescent City is a hyperopera by composer Anne LeBaron, widely recognized for her work in instrumental, electronic, and performance realms, and librettist Douglas Kearney, a poet, performer and recipient of the Whiting Writer’s Award. The opera, which incorporates installations by six contemporary LA-based artists, tells the epic story of a mythical city, decimated by one hurricane and on the verge of being wiped off the face of the earth by another, and the voodoo priestess determined to save it. A roving band of revelers spreads chaos throughout the streets of the city, capturing the action of the opera with live video along the way.

Their second production will be Gordon Beeferman's The Rat Land.....On the other side of the country, Opera Manhattan has proclaimed December 23 Hansel & Gretel Day. I'll drink to that; Humperdinck's great opera is among my favorites. Go see it soon, at Opera Manhattan or, if you want to pay a lot more for a seat much farther from the stage, at the Met, where you can see Richard Jones's wonderful Welsh National Opera production.

The Decline of Copy-Editing

2011-12-16T21:58:00.000-08:00

You have to wonder:

China Mieville's novel Kraken uses it's where its is clearly meant, just a few pages in. GROAN.
Mary Roach's Packing for Mars apparently never got a full read-through from someone who was paying attention, including the copy editor she thanks in the acknowledgements. There's a person who is introduced 2/3 of the way through the book, then again maybe 50 pages later. I caught it, but no one else did. Perhaps if there had been an index??
Siddhartha Mukherjee's The Emperor of All Maladies is written rather breathlessly, works much too hard for dubious analogies (just state the facts, doc!), and in several places seems to repeat itself within a page or two. What?

Hell Week

2011-12-16T21:54:00.000-08:00

What I did during Hell Week:

Flicka Gala, Dec. 3 (still need to blog)
BSO, Dec. 6 7& 7
SFS (Salonen program; still need to blog), Dec. 10

I'm soooo glad I didn't try to squeeze in more....because around midnight or 1 a.m. Sunday night / Monday morning, my mother fell and broke her hip. I arrived at Summit at 1:45, somehow beating the ambulance there. She had surgery Monday evening, squeezed into the orthopedic surgeon's schedule (same excellent doc who fixed her broken wrist a decade ago). She is now in skilled nursing at her retirement residence, doing fine, etc.

So in addition to working T - F, I ran to the hospital multiple times on the 5th and every morning or evening for the rest of the week, then dashed off to work. You could say this was a little wearing. My partner came back from seeing her family on Dec. 8 and promptly got sick. I have been laid up since Wednesday with the same thing she had. Three days of a mild fever, what fun.

Advent Calendars

2011-12-14T09:26:00.000-08:00

Two of my favorite blogs (Entartete Music and IanVists) are running their blogs as Advent Calendars this month. (I note that Ian mentions from time to time that he is not a Christian.)

Entartete Music's calendar walks you through the story and music of The Nutcracker. Start here, where blog author Gavin Plumly explains.
IanVisits gives you a tour of Victorian Christmas advertisements. Start here.
Also: Angry Birds Seasons is rolling out one new level of Wreck the Halls daily. Still waiting for a paid Android version so I never have to see the ads again!

Plain Speaking

2011-12-13T14:00:00.000-08:00

Via Adaptistration -

Deborah Borda, CEO of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, called the Philadelphia Orchestra's withdrawal from the AFM pension fund "an abrogration of responsibility." More in Dan Wakin and Mary Williams Wash's NY Times article.
Jeffrey Kahane tells it like it is at the Colorado Symphony.

I Stand Corrected

2011-12-12T16:35:00.001-08:00

Turns out you CAN do a shell swap on a MacBook Pro - that is, swapping the hard drive into a new shell, same as with a Lenovo. I wuz wrong.

Also Sprach Salonen

2011-12-11T22:18:00.000-08:00

E-PS tweets:

Back with Mahler6. Form can be annoyingly labyrinthine, directionless, orchestration always beyond reproach. Sibelius is the exact opposite.

Think of Beethoven 1st: all proportions perfect. In Mahler the poetry of geometry is replaced by a narrative. A powerful one for sure.

Sibelius had a gift for organism-like musical forms. His orchestral technique was never completely reliable Most of my colleagues agree.

[I am a fan of Salonen's Sibelius; would pay folding money to hear him conduct Mahler....or anyone else, for that matter.]

Clarification

2011-12-11T18:12:00.001-08:00

I rewrote and added a couple of bits to my previous posting, owing to having implied something I didn't intend to imply.

Further to Previous

2011-12-11T10:04:00.000-08:00

So I ragged on Greg Sandow for his Methode-is-Mac, Dawn-is-PC tweet. His reply tweet said the Methode worked fine for him, how had it failed me?

Well, Dawn is far, far superior to Methode at removing grease. I have to wonder just what Greg washes if he's not aware of this.

Spelling it out a bit more, he prefers the prettiness of the Methode bottle to the actual functionality of Dawn, which comes in a plainer container.

The Mac/Windows comparison he's making ~~is exactly~~ has some parallels here. I know, because I use both platforms. I'll tell you, the MacBook Pro I use for work sure is beautiful - and fragile, unlike the Lenovo I had for work up until 18 months ago. I have a couple of dents in the MBP, which has a shell like an old person's skin. I swear you could run a Lenovo over with a truck and it would still work: I once accidentally spilled water on mine, and it took the techs three minutes to remove the hard drive and pop it into a new shell. No data loss, no reconstruction necessary, no loss of work time.

UPDATE: ~~Try that with a MacBook Pro and you'll find yourself with an expensive paperweight. I know this because I spilled coffee on my first MBP.~~ Turns out you can do a shell swap on an MBP. Who knew?

Yeah, the MBP is beautiful, and silent (no fan! Offensive to Jobs!), and more thoughtfully designed. Is the beautiful (and fragile) design worth the hundreds more it costs over an equivalent Lenovo?

As to the software, if you've been using Macs for 20 years because you couldn't stand working on a command line (I could) or you hated the Windows 3.1 (okay, it really wasn't great), then you're not aware that GUIs won and Windows XP and 7 look and act a lot like OS X.

Putting it another way, the Mac certainly does win on prettiness and polish. On pure functionality, the two platforms are close to equivalent. If you find the Mac easier to use than a Windows machine, it's most likely because it's what you're used to.

Clarified and added to because calimac thought I was saying "Macs suck," which I did not say and did not mean to imply. (Sandow, by the way, was a Windows user until recently, so not in the class of people who find the Mac easier to use because it's all they've used for the last 20 years.)

Carter 103

2011-12-11T09:32:00.000-08:00

Elliott Carter turns 103 today. The birthday party for him at the 92nd St. Y the other day included several works he wrote in the last year, two from just last month. And this week I was lucky enough to hear the marvelous Elizabeth Rowe and the Boston Symphony in his Flute Concerto, a masterpiece and a superb addition to the flute repertory. Read Joe Barron's lovely tribute to the composer here.

Happy birthday, Mr. Carter! Looking forward to whatever is coming from your pen in your 104th year.

The BSO Comes to Town

2011-12-10T13:04:00.000-08:00

I saw both BSO programs this week, and my review is now posted at SFCV. I liked them a lot, as you can see. Opinions around town were somewhat divided -

Joshua Kosman wasn't too happy, though he liked some of the performances. I'll note that the BSO programs were announced before Levine's resignation. As Joshua has noted on his own blog, the BSO was way behind in figuring out that Levine needed to be eased out and a search committee formed, but they knew a year ago what would be performed in SF. He's right that there were some ensemble problems, especially in the first movement of the Mahler, but overall, I was mightily impressed by the playing. More below.
SFMike was mightily impressed.
John Marcher was too.
calimac is in Joshua's corner.
Janos Gereben (no link) was thrilled by the Bartok and Ravel. He told me so, anyway!

About that huge ensemble that Mike mentions. Well, the Wednesday concert was an all-hands-on-deck affair. I noticed on Tuesday that the BSO strings were a whole lot more present, with a fuller sound, than the SFS strings tend to be. My companion Wednesday evening thought it was a bigger orchestra than SFS. Just for the heck of it, I counted the string sections of each orchestra as listed in the programs. They're essentially the same size. SFS lists three more violins total, but the BSO has two violinists on leave; same number of cellos and violas; Boston has one more bass.

So the difference in sound has to do with the absolutely quality of the string sections or with the music directors' respective demands or with the historical sound of the orchestra. I'm doubtful about the matter of absolute quality, for the simple reason that it is so damn hard to get a job playing in an orchestra. Everybody who auditions has first-class technical skills. Historically, I've no idea what these two orchestras sounded like; I barely went to SFS before the mid-90s and really have only been a regular since 2004.

I was also interested in the variation in wind sound. The BSO winds, which I describe as characterful and calimac calls pungent, are indeed less blended than the SFS sound. You either like it or you don't. Again speaking historically, the blended sound is more modern. Listening to pre-WWII orchestras, you get more distinctive wind and brass sounds.

The BSO's principal clarinet and oboe both have bigger, somewhat fuller sounds than their SFS counterparts; Elizabeth Rowe's sound is somewhat more complex than Tim Day's silvery purity. They're both great players; I wouldn't tap one over the other.

As for the brass, well, I'll take ours, which seem to have ascended into the stratosphere over the last couple of years.

If Only I had $700 Million Sitting Around

2011-12-10T11:39:00.001-08:00

...and I were an extremely experienced and clever real estate developer, I'd buy the Battersea Power Station, London.

This Exchange Says Something About Greg Sandow

2011-12-09T18:46:00.000-08:00

@gsandow Greg Sandow

Was using Methode dish soap, in elegant bottle. Bought Dawn -- bottle is squat, ugly. Feel like I've devolved from a Mac back to a PC!

@LisaIronTongue Lisa Hirsch

@gsandow But Greg - Dawn gets the job done better than that Methode stuff.

Coming to an Opera House Near (Some of) You

2011-12-09T15:19:00.000-08:00

From a press release about Christine Brewer's schedule:

A week after her Carnegie Hall appearance, the soprano will make her much-anticipated Los Angeles Opera debut (March 14 & 17), starring in the hit Santa Fe Opera production of Albert Herring, which she headlined last season.

Road trip!

The Press Release

2011-12-09T13:31:00.000-08:00

Alex Ross comments on Twitter about the strangeness and sadness of the Levine press release today. "How can he remain music director of the Met if he cannot conduct until Fall, 2013, at the earliest?"

Well, that is the $64,000 question, isn't it? Does administrative work, planning, and working with young artists make a music director?

But it's easy to understand why the Met would send out this particular press release, complete with Levine's personal statement (which tells us a few previously-unreleased details about just how bad his condition has been, like the three surgeries last spring and the three month stay in rehab this fall).

Levine would clearly like to return to the Met. We don't know the details of his contract and how those details deal with a situation like this. There may be required payments to Levine when he's on the disabled list; there may be particular conditions that have to be met before he can be said to be unable to meet the contract requirements (for example, an allowable period of disability might be set).

We can take as literally true the Met's need to sign conductors for next year without a huge scramble like the one the BSO undoubtedly had to make earlier this year when Levine resigned his job there. As it is, most conductors they'd want to step in for Levine already have work someplace else.

The Met may or may not want Levine to return at this point, given his health over the last couple of years. The press release therefore has to support Levine while leaving open the possibility that he won't return. The Met does not want to let him go in a way that makes it look callous or unfeeling or unsupportive of Levine.

There are other factors at work. If Levine ultimately leaves, the Met needs breathing room to find a new music director. We don't know whether Luisi can just step in, because there's that contract he has in Zurich. Getting a new MD on board is not so easy, as um the Boston Symphony knows. And the Philadelphia Orchestra. Everybody with the requisite skills has a job already. (Unless the Met willing to go out on a limb by hiring someone young and inexperienced.)

So there's a lot of careful balancing of the words here, to allow for both Levine's return or resignation/replacement and for everyone to come out of it looking suitably professional. Strange and sad it is, but also doing its best to walk a very, very fine line.

James Levine

2011-12-09T13:04:00.000-08:00

The conductor lives, but we won't see him on the podium for a while. A press release from the Met says that James Levine has withdrawn from all performances at the Met through the 2012-13 season.

I have been telling people that if Levine couldn't manage Götterdämmerung in January, he wouldn't be conducting full Ring cycles in April. Fabio Luisi is on the podium for those.

The full press release and a personal statement from Levine follow the cut. Levine is optimistic about a full recovery and hopes to resume his conducting responsibilities. However, if he is unable to continue or must retire, this smooths the way for such a withdrawal.

James Levine Withdraws from Met Conducting Assignments

Through the End of Next Season

Met Music Director focusing on long-term recovery

from most recent injury and surgery

Principal Conductor Fabio Luisi to conduct this season’s Ring cycles

in April and May

New York, NY (December 9, 2011) – Music Director James Levine will not conduct at the Metropolitan Opera for the remainder of this season, or during the 2012-13 season, in order to allow for a full recovery from the spinal injury he suffered last August. After falling while on vacation last summer, Levine underwent emergency surgery that forced him to withdraw from his performances in the first part of this season.

Due to the severe injury to his spinal cord, Levine’s doctors have said that his post-operative recovery will be a long-term process. Since September he has been at a rehabilitation facility, which he will be leaving shortly. While his condition has greatly improved in recent months, it is uncertain exactly when he will be fully recovered and able to return to conducting.

Following recent consultations with Peter Gelb, the Met’s General Manager, Levine has decided not to conduct for the remainder of the current season, or for the entire 2012-13 season. Although he might be ready to start conducting sooner, the decision about next season had to be made now in order to secure the services of replacement conductors for the works Levine had been scheduled to lead. The Met’s 2012-13 season and casting will be announced this coming February.

“While this is a blow to Jim, our company, and his many fans, we want to make it possible for him to eventually return to the Met,” said Gelb. “The extended time off will give him the opportunity to recover fully, while also providing the Met with the chance to offer the best replacement conductors for next season.”

A personal statement from Levine follows this release (see below).

As Levine continues his recovery, it is anticipated that he will gradually resume his other Music Director duties including coaching and planning, and artistic leadership of the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program.

Luisi, who has already substituted for Levine this season leading the new productions of Don Giovanni, Siegfried, and Götterdämmerung, will also conduct the the cycles of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen this coming April and May, with the exception of the last two performances of Siegfried and Götterdämmerung on May 9 and May 12 matinee. Conductors for those two performances will be announced shortly.

The conductor who will replace Levine for the Met Orchestra concert at Carnegie Hall on May 20 will also be announced shortly.

As planned, Luisi will conduct the new production of Manon, which premieres March 26, and the revival of La Traviata, which opens April 6, although he will be replaced for the last four performances of the Traviata run (April 21, 25, 28, and May 2) to allow for the Ring performances he will be taking on. The replacement conductor for the four La Traviata dates will be announced shortly.

Contact:
Peter Clark / Lee Abrahamian
Metropolitan Opera
(212) 870-7457
pclark@metopera.org / labrahamian@metopera.org

Statement from Music Director James Levine

December 9, 2011

Early last summer I had to undergo three back surgeries to address a condition known as stenosis, from which I was suffering a great deal of pain. The issue has been successfully resolved, and I am no longer in any pain. But at the end of August, just a week before I was to begin rehearsing at the Met, I fell and injured my spinal cord, which required emergency surgery. Fortunately none of the earlier surgeries were compromised. Since then I have been in the hospital on a regimen of rehabilitation and intense physical therapy. After three months, I will finally return home at the beginning of next week but will continue the rehab and therapy as an out-patient.

Spinal cord injuries are well-known for taking a long time to heal. No two people recover at the same rate and the rehab typically is over a long period. Although my doctors and therapists have been very pleased with my progress, and I see the positive results, I am frustrated that I am not yet approaching a complete recovery. However, based on my progress during the initial phase of recovery, my doctors and therapists feel that, given time and continued therapy, the prognosis is excellent.

Since the Met must plan its seasons far in advance, I am now in the position of having to predict when I will again be ready to conduct. I have met at length with Peter Gelb and other members of the Met family to discuss this. We have come to the conclusion that it would be profoundly unfair to the public and the Met company to announce a conducting schedule for me that may have to be altered at a later date. I do not want to risk having to withdraw from performances after the season has been announced and tickets sold. With that in mind, I have reluctantly decided not to schedule performances until I am certain I can fulfill such obligations. The Met’s 2012-13 season needs to be finalized, and the best conductors available must be contracted now. As my condition improves, I feel confident I will be ready to conduct again soon, but I cannot risk a premature announcement. It is disappointing to come to this conclusion, but I know it is the right one.

On a more positive note, I look forward to resuming my other responsibilities as Music Director. I will continue to collaborate with Peter Gelb on long-term artistic plans, work with the artistic administration on future planning, coach singers, and work with the participants in the Lindemann Young Artist Development program.

I am particularly grateful to Fabio Luisi and the other conductors who have taken over my duties, often on short notice, and I am delighted that Fabio is now a more permanent part of the Met team in the important role of Principal Conductor.

Teresa Nielsen Hayden Gets Something Everybody I Know Would Kill For

2011-12-09T10:05:00.000-08:00

A mention and a link on Paul Krugman's blog.

Personal to SFS

2011-12-07T23:42:00.000-08:00

Take out an option to hire Ludovic Morlot at some point in the future, eh? The contract at Seattle will keep the BSO from stealing him to replace Levine.

Floating Around My Head

2011-12-01T21:52:00.000-08:00

On the shuttle back from work today, a couple of measures of music popped into my head, with the text "En hiver, la mort meurtriere." A quick web search told me right away that very likely I was hearing Hindemith's "Six Chansons" to texts of Rilke. Looking at the poems, the music came roaring back.

I swear I hadn't thought of this music in 25 or 30 years. I must have sung it at Stony Brook with Maggie Brooks; I'm sure I didn't sing it with Jim Olesen at Brandeis.

That got me looking up some Milhaud that I did sing at Brandeis. I'm reasonably sure I was thinking of Les Deux Cites.

Here's the lovely Hindemith:

DId You Miss Götterdämmerung at San Francisco Opera?

2011-12-01T13:36:00.000-08:00

Catch it this Sunday night on KDFC at 8 p.m. From SFO's email:

Tune in to hear Götterdämmerung, the final installment in Wagner's epic masterpiece, The Ring of the Nibelung, recorded in summer 2011. With Nina Stemme, Ian Storey, Gerd Grochowski, Andrea Silvestrelli, Daveda Karanas, Melissa Citro, Gordon Hawkins, Ronnita Miller, Heidi Melton, Stacey Tappan, Lauren McNeese and Renée Tatum; conducted by Donald Runnicles. Hosted by KDFC's Dianne Nicolini.

Tune in to kdfc.com or your FM dial, 90.3 San Francisco; 89.9 North and East Bay; 89.7 Eureka; 92.5 Ukiah-Lakeport; or Comcast Cable 981. For more information on San Francisco Opera radio broadcasts, visit sfopera.com/broadcast.

Dear Drivers:

2011-12-01T13:33:00.000-08:00

About half the cars I see on the road are silver, gray, slate blue, or some other color that can be difficult to see even in good driving conditions. When it's foggy out, as it was Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday mornings, your damn cars are invisible. And I should know: I drive a silver 2000 Honda Accord. My previous car was slate blue.

So for the love of god, TURN ON YOUR HEADLIGHTS. In foggy conditions, they're not to help you see. They're to make you visible to others.

Thank you.

Jurinac and Figueras Obits

2011-11-28T07:07:00.000-08:00

The NY Times catches up; both obits are by Zachary Woolfe:

Sena Jurinac (Rudolf Bing had a few things to say about her nonappearance at the Met.)
Montserrat Figueras. ("...a kind of Patridge Family of early music"?? I prefer "the Savall cabal," my own coinage.)

Letter to the Times, Unpublished

2011-11-26T17:42:00.000-08:00

Anonymity on the Internet is the subject of this week's Times Sunday Dialog section of the Sunday Review. It started with a letter from Christopher Wolf of the Anti-Defamation League. Read his letter, letters of response, and his reply here. I sent in a letter that didn't get published in the Times:

To the Editor:

Christopher Wolf of the Anti-Defamation League must have spent much less time on the Internet than I have if he sincerely thinks that a real or legal names policy in any way improves the quality of conversation. I have seen many forums made uncivil by people writing under their (apparently) real names.

He must also not have thought much about the political dissidents, members of sexual and ethnic minorities, and members of other groups who would put themselves at great personal risk if they were to participate in Internet discussions under their real names. There's a handy list of people so affected at the Geek Feminism Wiki. I strongly encourage Mr. Wolf to read it.

Yrs truly, &c,

It's worth noting that this blog is under my real (legal) name and almost everything I've said on the Internet is under my real name. I've occasionally posted pseudonymous comments at the NY Times, but that's about it. But I care a lot about those for whom anonymity or pseudonymity is a matter of survival; I'm friends with plenty of people in that situation.

I Live in the Computerized Home of the Future, Circa 1979

2011-11-26T17:19:00.000-08:00

They got just a few things wrong:

I mix my own drinks.
The video phone fits in my pocket.
My clothes are not that dorky.
Tape? What's that?

WQXR's Beethoven Piano Sonata Marathon

2011-11-23T20:52:00.000-08:00

Missed last Sunday's Beethoven piano sonata marathon at the Green Space in NYC? The nice people at WQXR have created a video archive of the whole darned thing, in convenient two-hour chunks. Listen to it at your leisure, in whatever order appeals.

Sena Jurinac

2011-11-23T16:16:00.000-08:00

A while back, I came into a copy of Wilhelm Fürtwangler's RAI Ring, passed along to me by a friend who'd gotten a better transfer. It sat for a couple of years, because of the usual reason - time - and fear of Martha Mödl. Eventually, with the approach of the 2011 San Francisco Ring, I got over my terror and made the time.

The prelude was as expected, but I sat bolt upright and dove for the cast list when I heard the Rheinmaidens, because clearly one of them was a cut, no, two or three cuts, above the standard for Rheinmaidens. The booklet told all: In a remarkable stroke of luxury casting, the recording rejoices in Sena Jurinac as Woglinde. She returns in Götterdämmerung as the Third Norn, Woglinde, and Gutrune, giving an especially memorable performance in the latter ungrateful role.

The great soprano died yesterday at her home in Germany, age 90. She was an enormous star at the Vienna State Opera from 1945 until her retirement in the early 1980s; a commenter on Parterre Box notes that she sang a staggering 1198 performances there. She still made time to sing in San Francisco, Glyndbourne, and other leading theaters, though somehow she never appeared at the Met.

She sang a wide range of music during her long career, from Cherubino, Octavian, and the Composer (roles taken now primarily by mezzos) to the Countess and Donna Anna to a select few Verdi and Puccini roles, among them Butterfly and Elisabetta di Valois, to Jenufa and Marie in Wozzeck to Wagner's Eva. Every recording of hers that I've heard is immaculately sung, with beautiful tone, a secure line, perfect intonation, and dramatic canniness. Even as Elisabetta, with a voice not at all Italianate, her feel for the line and her sense of drama carry the day:

Here she is as a different Elisabeth, this one Wagner's, at La Scala in 1967. And as Mozart's Susanna:

Montserrat Figueras

2011-11-23T09:13:00.000-08:00

Via Alex Ross comes the sad news that Montserrat Figueras has died at the young age of 69. The soul of Hesperion XXI and other groups led by her husband, viol pioneer Jordi Savall, she sang with a darkly beautiful soprano both passionate and playful. I never saw Hesperion in concert, which I deeply regret.

You can hear her on some 60 CDs recorded by the Savall Cabal, which include the couple's daughter and son. If you do not know their work, start with Villacicos y Danzas Criollas and Tonos Humanos, then, well, anything from their vast and rich catalog. You can buy directly from Alia Vox, Hesperion's own record label, or elsewhere on the web. I see that there's a set of Monteverdi secular works with Figueras, Andrew Lawrence-King, and Rolf Lislevand; I do not have this, and I will be remedying that shortly.

Here's "Un sarao de la chacona," as infectiously joyful a performance as I've ever heard of anything:

Occupying UC

2011-11-22T07:10:00.000-08:00

An article in the Huffington Post gets at the root cause:

....what is at issue is the dismantling of public education in California. Just six years ago, tuition at the University of California was $5357. Tuition is currently $12,192. According to current proposals, it will be $22,068 by 2015-2016.

In the 1970s, friends of mine attended UC Berkeley for the giant sum of $75/quarter; an acquaintance reports $200/quarter at UCLA. They could rent a room in a shared house for $100 or so a month. This is why Prop. 13 was so hugely destructive: instead of a public university that anyone could afford to attend, we have a public university that is out of reach for most without taking on a crushing level debt before entering the workforce.

Monday Miscellany

2011-11-21T10:19:00.000-08:00

I have four performances to write up; of course, the programs are all elsewhere. To mark the day:

Dan Wakin reports on the NYPO's search for a replacement for retiring president & CEO Zarin Mehta; the local angle is that Brent Assink of the San Francisco Symphony was approached and decided to stay in SF....The Berkeley Hillside Club has a couple of enticing concerts coming up with members of the SFS: Symphony Players (includes Peter Wyrick, Jonathan Vinocour, and others) in Mozart & Mendelssohn string quintets on Sunday, Nov. 27 at 7 p.m.; Sarn Oliver, Mariko Smiley, and Robert Pollock play a wide range of trios and duets, by Oliver, Pollock, Edward T. Cone, Milhaud, and Takemitsu on Thursday, Dec. 1 at 8 p.m...In London, the New Queen's Hall Orchestra starts a Brahms cycle on Nov. 23, celebrating their 20th anniversary....The Princeton Symphony Orchestra, which has consistently interesting and thoughtful programming, has a newly redesigned web site....So does the mighty Boston Symphony Orchestra; you should have seen me tweeting bug reports to them last week....Seventh Avenue Performances has a good-looking season with lots of early music...

A Few Suggestions

2011-11-20T10:06:00.000-08:00

For San Francisco Symphony: how helpful it would be if you posted concert running times on your web site.
For San Francisco Symphony: it's good that each concert on the front-page calendar has a Buy Tickets button. Unfortunately, the button doesn't link to the ticket-buying system. It links to the concert landing page, where you click another Buy Tickets button, which really does take you to the ticket-buying system. Why the lying Buy Tickets button??
For San Francisco Opera: when the stage is as brightly lit as it was for Xerxes, the supertitles are washed out and difficult to read. More contrast, please.
For San Francisco Opera: it's always a good idea to check how the whole show looks from the back of the balcony. For instance, did you know that the stagehand tossing bits of greenery over the set curtain was visible from row L?

Lehman Out, JHM In: Met Goetterdaemmerung

2011-11-18T09:59:00.001-08:00

I am not surprised. From the Met press office:

Jay Hunter Morris will sing the role of Siegfried in Siegfried on April 21 matinee and April 30, 2012, and in Götterdämmerung on May 3, 2012. He replaces Gary Lehman who has withdrawn due to illness.

The BSO Answers

2011-11-18T09:49:00.000-08:00

A couple of postings back, I wondered out loud, very loudly, about the Tanglewood website design. I now have a tweet from the BSO in response my tweet last night about the hidden information there:

This is part of the cleaner design of the site

Oh, dear.

"Clean design" should not be the goal of a web site. An arts organization's web site needs to do two things as well as it possibly can:

1. Provide information.
2. Make it easy to buy tickets.

A "cleaner design" that hides information defeats both those purposes. There's less information readily visible, which means people have to work a little harder to get the information they need for decision-making purposes. I mean, I always want to know who's playing and conducting a concert before I buy the tickets.

Salzburg Festival Commissions

2011-11-18T07:14:00.001-08:00

Four new operas are coming at future Salzburg Festivals, by Gyorgy Kurtag, Marc-Andrew Dalbavie, Thomas Ades, and Jorg Widmann. I wonder how hard it will be to get tickets....

Why, Oh, Why?

2011-11-18T06:33:00.000-08:00

The BSO has a spiffy-looking web site for Tanglewood, but I just don't understand one design decision: When you scroll down the performance listing and click the More Details link for a specific concert, the performer names are not visible. You have to mouse over a photograph to see who is conducting or playing.

Take the opening concert.See the gray-haired gent? Because it's an all-Beethoven program of the Leonore No. 3 and the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, I can guess that he is not a soloist. I happen to recognize him, in fact. But if I didn't, I'd have to mouse over the photo to discover that he's Christoph von Dohnanyi.

However, I don't recognize the guy conducting the Stravinsky & Brahms program or the pianist playing the Brahms series. I have to click through and then mouse over their photos.

And seriously? You have to click on a tiny, light green, More Details link to see the details. You can't click on the date or the photo accompanying each listing.

Is there some reason to hide performers' names in mouse-over text?? Not a good one, I'll tell you that.

Hoisted from the comments, so the maximum number of people see it; reader Unknown says:

You're absolutely spot-on with these comments, except you didn't ask what to me was the most obvious question: why can't I just download or look at a simple text file with all of the season information? Why do I have to keep scrolling down the page and click on "More Details" boxes to learn just the basic information (e.g., what's being played and who is playing it) about each concert?

Unknown is right! Why not?

Your Brochures

2011-11-17T20:55:00.000-08:00

Dear Concert Presenters:

For crying out loud, DO NOT print your brochure in 7 point, light red, light-stroke-weight print on bright white paper and expect anyone to be able to read it!

Yours,

Tossed My Copy in the Recycling

Exchange Policies at SF Symphony and Opera

2011-11-17T15:39:00.000-08:00

I am being charged $10 (or so I was told) by San Francisco Symphony to exchange a ticket for Nov. 18 for a concert in the same series on Nov. 20. Herein, let us review the exchange policies for SF Symphony and SF Opera.

San Francisco Symphony exchange policy:

Please note that all exchanges must be received by Patron Services 24 hours in advance of the performance date printed on the tickets that you are exchanging. We’ll do our best to accommodate your request.

Ticket exchanges in person and by mail are free for subscribers, while faxed requests will result in an $9 charge. Non-subscribers will be charged a $10 exchange fee for each in-person or mailed transaction and $19 for each fax request. Phone requests are $12 subscribers and $22 for non-subscribers. Exchange requests into a higher-priced performance or section will be charged the difference. The difference for exchange requests into a lower-priced performance or section will not be refunded, but will be considered as a donation.

[$22 for a phone exchange if you're not a subscriber. Jeez. I mean, I think they shouldn't charge subscribers anything, and a much lower fee for non-subscribers. These fees are the kind of nickle-and-diming that piss people off even more than high ticket prices.]

San Francisco Opera exchange policy:

Subscriber Exchanges:

There is no fee for exchanges to another performance of the same opera.
Full and Half Series subscribers may exchange to a different opera with no fee.
All other series subscribers may exchange to a different opera for $10 per ticket (compared to $25 per ticket for non-subscribers).
Subscribers may exchange tickets over the phone (you must have your tickets in hand; please see below).
Note that there are no exchanges from a different opera into Lucrezia Borgia.
Note that there are no exchanges for Ring cycle tickets.
If there are no alternative performance dates that work for you, consider returning your tickets as a donation. You may donate your tickets by calling the Box Office; an acknowledgment will be mailed to you for a tax deduction.

Here’s How to Exchange:

Exchange tickets at least 24 hours prior to the performance; there is a $10 per ticket fee for day-of exchanges up to two hours prior to the performance* for all subscribers; all exchanges are subject to availability.

Call (415) 864-3330 (please have the tickets you’d like to exchange in hand).
Visit the Box Office in person, and bring the tickets you’d like to exchange.
Mail your tickets and exchange request:
[SF Opera doesn't charge different fees depending on how you make your exchange. Good policy: it's really hard to say why SFS charges you based on whether you phone, mail, fax, or walk up to the ticket office. The latter is an option only for people who live or work nearby or who can arrange to visit. But getting to the box office, for me, means a major time commitment to save the money. Not. Worth. It.]

Erzsébet: The Opera

2011-11-15T14:10:00.000-08:00

Dennis Bathory-Kitsz's new opera Erzsébet premiered a couple of weeks ago, with three performances in Vermont. Now it's ready to travel.

Erzsébet tells the story of Countess Erzsébet Bathory, the notorious blood countess. Dennis has been researching the subject and working on this opera for quite a few years. I've heard a recording of one of the performances and it sounds terrific: colorful, mysterious, and very operatic. It's scored for a small ensemble and has what looks like a difficult but rewarding soprano part. The only unusual scoring is for cimbolom.

Are you interested in performing Erzsébet? Read Bring Her to Your Town! and use the link there to contact Dennis about the options. If you're in the Bay Area and want to see the score, contact me: I have a copy.

One Can Hope

2011-11-15T13:56:00.000-08:00

Alex Ross discusses some tantalizing sketches that might be the remains of the Sibelius Eighth. Be sure to read the story he links to and of course listen to the run-through of just a minute or two of the sketches.

Beethoven Piano Sonata Marathon

2011-11-15T10:04:00.000-08:00

So, yeah, I rolled my eyes at the thought of Beethoven Awareness Month. But WQXR is putting on one event that I'd go to if I were in NYC: a Beethoven piano sonata marathon. A tag team of pianists will perform all 32 - not, alas, in order - from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. this Sunday, November 20. A nice launch to the holiday week, I would say. It'll be at the Greene Performance Space, NYC.

Here's the lineup:

WQXR Beethoven 32 Piano Sonata Marathon

The Jerome L. Greene Performance Space, NYC

Sunday, November 20

All-day passes are available here; for tickets to each of the two-hour parts, see links below.

Part I: 11am – 1pm

Marina Radiushina: Sonata No. 1 in F minor, Op. 2, No. 1

Hyung Min Suh: Sonata No. 4 in E-flat, Op. 7, “Grand Sonata”

Alessio Bax: Sonata No. 8 in C minor, Op. 13, “Pathétique”

Philip Edward Fisher: Sonata No. 10 in G, Op. 14, No. 2

Evan Shinners: Sonata No. 11 in B-flat, Op. 22

Tickets for Part I are available here.

Part II: 1pm – 3pm

Daria Rabotkina: Sonata No. 2 in A, Op. 2, No. 2

Michael Brown: Sonata No. 22 in F, Op. 54

Michael Brown: Sonata No. 15 in D, Op. 28, “Pastoral”

Qi Xu: Sonata No. 25 in G, Op. 79

Inon Barnatan: Sonata No. 27 in E minor, Op. 90

Alessio Bax: Sonata No. 31 in A-flat, Op. 110

Tickets for Part II are available here.

Part III: 3pm – 5pm

Ching-Yun Hu: Sonata No. 3 in C, Op. 2, No. 3

Yuchiong Wu: Sonata No. 19 in G minor, Op. 49, No. 1

Yuchiong Wu: Sonata No. 20 in G, Op. 49, No. 2

Inon Barnatan: Sonata No. 6 in F, Op. 10, No. 2

Benjamin Hochman: Sonata No. 23 in F minor, Op. 57, “Appassionata”

Ching-Yun Hu: Sonata No. 28 in A, Op. 101

Tickets for Part III are available here.

Part IV: 5pm – 7pm

Valentina Lisitsa: Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor, Op. 27, No. 2, “Moonlight”

Benjamin Hochman: Sonata No. 7 in D, Op. 10, No. 3

Drew Peterson: Sonata No. 16 in G, Op. 31, No. 1

Timothy Andres: Sonata No. 21 in C, Op. 53, “Waldstein”

Steven Beck: Sonata No. 30 in E, Op. 109

Tickets for Part IV are available here.

Part V: 7pm – 9pm

Louis Schwizgebel: Sonata No. 9 in E, Op. 14, No. 1

Jonathan Biss: Sonata No. 12 in A-flat, Op. 26, “Funeral March”

Joyce Yang: Sonata No. 18 in E-flat, Op. 31, No. 3, “The Hunt”

Timothy Andres: Sonata No. 24 in F-sharp, Op. 78, “A Thérèse”

Jeremy Denk: Sonata No. 29 in B-flat, Op. 106, “Hammerklavier”

Tickets for Part V are available here.

Part VI: 9pm – 11pm

Jonathan Biss: Sonata No. 5 in C minor, Op. 10, No. 1

David Kaplan: Sonata No. 13 in E-flat, Op. 27, No. 1, “Quasi una fantasia”

Natasha Paremski: Sonata No. 17 in D minor, Op. 31, No. 2, “Tempest”

Louis Schwizgebel: Sonata No. 26 in E-flat, Op. 81a, “Les adieux”

Jeremy Denk: Sonata No. 32 in C minor, Op. 111

Tickets for Part VI are available here.

Note Jeremy Denk's finger-busting assignment of the Hammerklavier and Op. 111.

Massenet Reconsidered

2011-11-13T20:40:00.000-08:00

Until a couple of years ago, I would have agreed with a comment Joshua Kosman made about 19th c. French music:

I have no particular use for any 19th-century French music that isn't by Berlioz (remember, "Gounod" is an anagram of "ungood")

Well, mostly agreed: unlike Joshua, I'm fond of Saint-Saens. (Yes, I've got tickets to see both the Organ Symphony and Piano Concerto No. 5 ("Egyptian") at SFS this year - how could I possibly miss them?) Perhaps this particular perversion is balanced by the fact that I have developed something of an aversion to Carmen.

In any event, a few years back I gave a listen to Massenet's Esclarmonde, via Parterre Box's Unnatural Acts of Opera archive. You could say that I was both surprised and positively impressed: the piece has sweep and power, an advanced harmonic language, and an absolutely killer soprano part. I began to suspect that perhaps the problem was not Massenet, but his most-heard opera, Manon, which I feel is best presented as a concert of excerpts.

Then San Francisco Opera put on the composer's Werther, and again I was positively impressed and had a perfectly good time. Charming domestic interludes, adorable children's chorus, some truly remarkable harmonic language. The work got a fine performance, too, with Ramon Vargas in the title role and Alice Coote an extremely strong Charlotte. (Vocally, at least; from the balcony, I found her acting chilly.)

This afternoon, I got to hear a serious rarity, Sapho, performed by OperaLab, a group of singers who put on concert versions - okay, public read-throughs, with very minimal rehearsal time - of unusual repertory that interests them.

You already know the plot: young man from the provinces - literally; like Alfredo Germont, he's from Provence - moves to the big city, meets and falls in love with an attractive woman, moves in with her, discovers she has a Scandalous Past, leaves her, goes back to her, she leaves him, realizing he'll always be suspicious of her and jealous of her Past. Yes, it's La Traviata, or, more precisely, La Rondine, on a rather different scale. Nobody dies, however much unhappiness there is.

Well, it's a lovely opera! Five acts of consistently interesting and beautiful music; I'm pretty sure that it's perfectly stageworthy, as well. Much charm in the domestic music (the tenor's parents and adorable cousin make appearances); considerable beauty to the arias given to the tenor and the leading soprano, several good character roles.

Everyone sounded great and sang gorgeously: Tania Solomon as Fanny (Sapho); tenor Ray Chavez as Jean; Elizabeth Wells as Jean's mother; Roger McCracken double-cast as Jean's father and a good friend; Cass Panuska as his cousin Irene; Wayne Wong in several small roles. Robert Ashens played piano quite marvelously. Big kudos to all; I'm so glad to have heard this rarity done with such style and grace.

Masses by Mozart

2011-11-13T19:46:00.000-08:00

I'm not singing with Chora Nova this year, but I am sure many would find their first program a tasty one!

Chora Nova's sixth season launches with two beautiful, powerful, and popular Masses by Mozart: his Requiem, left unfinished as he raced to complete it on his deathbed, and the lovely Mass in C ("Coronation"). Dr. Paul Flight directs the chorus, orchestra, and four excellent soloists: Michele Byrd, Ruthann Lovetang, Brian Thorsett, and Paul Murray. This year, we also initiate a series of pre-concert talks, free to all who attend the concert.

Tickets are $20 general, $18 senior, and $10 student with ID. Tickets are available through the Chora Nova website,www.choranova.org, at the door or from any chorister.

Date: Saturday, November 19, 2011
Location: First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley, Dana St. between Haste and Channing
Time: Pre-concert talk 7:30 p.m.
Concert 8:00 p.m.
Program: Mozart: Requiem, K. 626; Mass in C, K. 317, "Coronation"
Tickets: www.choranova.org, at the door
$20 general, $18 senior, $10 student with ID

If You're Wondering...

2011-11-12T16:06:00.000-08:00

...why I haven't had a lot more to say about the S.F. Opera fall schedule, here's the scorecard:

Turandot: attended the dress rehearsal. Though it just fine, with the exceptions of terrible stand-and-deliver direction, blocky chorus movement, and Luisotti's decision to go for huge grandeur at the expense of some momentum. Like Irene Theorin; found Marco Berti about four times better than as Manrico (who knew??); though Leah Crocetto lovely. Still love the opera and the lurid Hockney production.
Heart of a Soldier: couldn't stomach the thought.
Don Giovanni: Not for a few more years, thanks; the 2007 production was great, don't need to see for a while.
Lucrezia Borgia: see previous posting.
Xerxes: seeing it this coming week as I woke up the day of the primo with a sore back.
Carmen: Only if it's Conchita Supervia back from the grave. Maybe in another five or ten years.

So, right, I am only seeing two of the fall operas during their run. And I'm only planning to see Attila and Nixon in China in June, unless Magic Flute turns out to be the best thing since sliced bread. Hoping for better luck next season, but I have less and less interesting in spending money to see operas for the third, fourth, fifth time unless they're works I particularly love. The SF Symphony Bluebeard will be my fourth over 19 years and I'm not tired of it yet.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

2011-11-12T15:56:00.000-08:00

To the surprise of many, including myself, my opera subscription this year included a ticket to see Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia, starring soprano Renee Fleming, who hadn't sung in San Francisco in a decade. Surprise because, of course, I am a fan of neither Donizetti nor Fleming. I've even walked out on two Donizetti operas (La Favorite and Elisir) and one performance with Fleming (but it wasn't her fault).

I'm surprised to report that I enjoyed the opera itself greatly. If I'd heard large chunks of it blind, I would have said it was some early Verdi opera or another. Shades of Rigoletto, which wouldn't be actually be written for another 18 years; you could certainly hear where much of Verdi's musical and gestural language came from.

Not that the opera comes close to matching Rigoletto's emotional impact or its formal perfection. How could it? The title character is a cross between Lady Macbeth and Rigoletto, and Donizetti simply did not have the musical vocabulary to portray those extremes of emotion and personality. Still, there's plenty of lovely music, even when it falls short of matching the drama.

And, of course, the plot is preposterous: the title character somehow misplaced her son as an infant, apparently handing him over to a lower-class person for caretaking, then lost track of him completely. At a ball, about to fall in love with him, and with him definitely falling for her, she realizes he's her long-lost offspring. Her jealous husband thinks the son is her lover, and tries to kill him. She has the antidote to the poison - look, she is a notorious poisoner - and saves him.

Then, attempting to kill off a large group of political enemies, who quite rightly hate her because she mudered some of their relatives, she accidentally poisons him too. Because he and his buddy Maffio Orsini have sworn to live and die together - we've heard this before, or, rather, we'll hear it again, in Forza and Don Carlo - he refuses to take the last bit of antidote.

By and large, the opera got an excellent performance. Debuting conductor Riccardo Frizza moved the music along well and in shapely fashion; the proportions were good, tempos appropriate and varied, nothing sagged, nothing was out of place. Tenor Michael Fabiano, making his SF Opera debut, was a terrific Gennaro, displaying a lovely voice with good size and projection, lots of ping, and plenty of stage presence. As his brother in arms, Maffio Orsini, mezzo Elizabeth DeShong sang with swagger, and handled the decorations in the last-act drinking song with aplomb. (If you know anything from this opera, it's the drinking song, quite possibly in a famous recording made about a century ago by the great contralto Ernestine Schumann-Heink). Vitalij Kowaljow made a menacing Duke of Ferrara, overcoming a slightly wobbly start. A sprinkling of Adler Fellows took the minor roles and sang them well.

Now for the bad ...

The set is a rather dark unit set, with various parts moved around to create a ballroom, the Ferraras' basement, a street, etc., etc. Inoffensively uninteresting, in other words. The costumes are a mixture of more-or-less accurate 15th c. dress and leather steampunkish fantasy Renaissance outfits. Now, I like steampunkish fantasy Renaissance as much as the next opera goer, but we've seen this before, done better, in the wonderful Lamos/Yeargan DiChirico-influenced Rigoletto, with its stylized outfits, lurid colors, and sickly lighting. Next to that production, this looks mighty tame.

Worse, the direction is limp and, well, directionless. Too much stand-and-sing, not much interaction among the characters. And it shies away from showing the possibilities in the Gennaro/Maffio relationship, too.

....and the ugly.

Lucrezia Borgia has never been perfomed before at San Francisco Opera, and given the weakness of the libretto and the failure of the music to rise above the enjoyable and energetic, it's easy to see why. The piece is a novelty that will not, and should not, earn a place in the standard repertory, regardless of how many Sutherlands and Caballes and Gencers perform the title role.

SF Opera staged it solely as a vehicle for yet another diva; crucially, one utterly lacking the chops brought to it by those earlier singers. I would have to say that it was the worst performance I have ever seen live by a major singer: dramatically vapid and uninvolved, vocally wayward. Fleming's voice has no core to speak of; it's lovely and round and smoothly-produced without having much projecting power or edge or character. She trills nicely (and did, a few times) and can sustain a floated high note that soars over an ensemble (and she did, in the one place the score calls for this particular effect).

But the role calls for so much more: passion and theatricality; dramatic range and easy coloratura that sounds tossed off rather than labored over. Of this, Fleming had nothing. Her coloratura had no dramatic feel, no sense of outburst or passion; rather, she sounded careful, the kiss.of death in virtuoso music. She lost the line utterly in trying to get through the little notes. Dramatically, she was simply absent, smiling vacantly when passion or tenderness were called for, and certainly never seeming like a murderous poisoner. Joshua Kosman had a few things to say about her, you bet. (I agree with him straight down the line.)

And however much the press releases about her and this opera call Lucrezia a "signature role," she has sung it in perhaps two productions before this. For me, "signature roles" are the roles that immediately come to mind when you think of a singer: Nilsson and Isolde, Bruennhilde, Elektra, Turandot; Sutherland and the bel canto repertory; Zajick and Amneris, Azucena, and other big-gun mezzo roles.

When I think of Fleming, I think of the Marschallin, Countess Almaviva, Donna Anna, the Cappriccio Countess. This is Kiri te Kanawa territory, the roles that can be brought off with a beautiful voice and a generalized vacant nobility. (Well, maybe not Donna Anna; it's not possible to sing "Or sai chi l'onore" without some degree of brilliance.)

I know I've written before about the gala performance at the War Memorial where I heard Ruth Ann Swenson and Fleming in close proximity. The differences were surprising: Swenson had by far the larger, better-projected, more brilliant, and more beautiful voice than Fleming. Believe me, I know that Swenson was not the deepest actor to be found on the operatic stage, but only once did I come out of a performance of hers feeling seriously let down, a Manon where she, her co-star, and half the rest of the cast was announced as indisposed. We used to hear Swenson nearly annually at San Francisco, though she seems largely, and prematurely, vanished from the major houses. You bet that I spent about half the opera thinking how much better a Lucrezia Swenson would have been in her prime than Fleming was; she would have sung with more sweep and assurance and very likely considerably more drama and passion.

Nadine Sierra, Here and There

2011-11-12T14:50:00.000-08:00

Young soprano Nadine Sierra, one of the winners of a recent Metropolitan Opera auditions, is variously in the news.

Nicholas Romeo's new book Driven: Six Incredible Musical Journies follows several young musicians who've appeared on NPR's radio show From the Top. It has a chapter about Sierra; you can read it here.The book is available through your local bookseller or on line.
The soprano sang locally in San Francisco Performance's Salons at the Rex series. John Marcher has the story. She's now an Adler Fellow at SF Opera.

Ojai Music Festival, 2012

2011-11-09T09:36:00.000-08:00

This might trump the ticket I have to see Charles Dutoit and the Philadelphia Orchestra on June 9:

66^th OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL, June 7-10, 2012

Thomas W. Morris, Artistic Director

Leif Ove Andsnes, Music Director

Concerts at the new Libbey Bowl unless otherwise noted

Thursday June, 2012

location TBA

Festival Symposium

3:00pm-4:30pm

Ara Guzelimian, symposium director

Topics and guests to be announced

Thursday, June 7, 2012

SPECIAL FREE BEYOND THE BOWL EVENT

5:00pm

Libbey Park

John Luther Adams: Inuksuit (for 48 percussionists)

Steven Schick, director

Thursday, June 7, 2012

8:00pm

Program to include:

Shostakovich: Six Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva, Op. 143a

Christianne Stotijn, mezzo soprano

Leif Ove Andsnes, piano

Ives: Concord Sonata

Marc-André Hamelin, piano

Friday 9, 2012

Ojai Community Church

Festival Symposium

1:00pm-4:30pm

Ara Guzelimian, symposium director

Topics and guests to be announced

Friday, June 8, 2012

8:00pm

Janáček: String Quartet No. 2 “Intimate Letters” (arr. for string orchestra)

Norwegian Chamber Orchestra

Reinbert de Leeuw: Im wunderschönen Monat Mai (“In the Merry Month of May”): A Cycle of 21 Songs on Schumann and Schubert”

Reinbert de Leeuw, piano

Barbara Sukowa, actress

Norwegian Chamber Orchestra

Saturday, June 9, 2012

11:00am

Eivind Buene: Langsam und Schmachtend

Norwegian Chamber Orchestra

Wagner (arr. Mottl): Wesendonck Lieder

Christianne Stotijn, mezzo soprano

Norwegian Chamber Orchestra

interspersed with

Berg: Four Pieces Op. 5

Martin Fröst, clarinet

Leif Ove Andsnes, piano

Berg: Four Songs, Op. 2

Christianne Stotijn, mezzo soprano

Marc-André Hamelin, piano

Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 21 n C Major, Op. 53 “Waldstein”

Leif Ove Andsnes, piano

Saturday June 9, 2012

8:00pm

Haflidi Hallgrímsson: Poemi, Op. 7

Norwegian Chamber Orchestra

Terje Tønneson, violin

Bent Sørensen: Piano Concerto No. 2 “La Mattina” American premiere

Leif Ove Andsnes, piano

Norwegian Chamber Orchestra

Anders Hillborg: Peacock Tales (version for clarinet and tape)

Martin Fröst, clarinet

Mozart: Trio in E flat “Kegelstatt” K. 498

Martin Fröst, clarinet

Leif Ove Andsnes, piano

Antoine Tamestit, viola

György Kurtág: Hommage à Robert Schumann

Martin Fröst, clarinet and bass drum

Leif Ove Andsnes, piano

Antoine Tamestit, viola

Sunday, June 10, 2012

11:00am

Bartók: Contrasts

Marc-André Hamelin, piano

Martin Fröst, clarinet

Øyvind Bjorå, violin

Grieg: Holberg Suite (arr. for string orchestra)

Norwegian Chamber Orchestra

William Bolcom: Cabaret Songs (selection)

Marc-André Hamelin, piano

Christianne Stotijn, mezzo soprano

Copland: Clarinet Concerto

Martin Fröst, clarinet

Norwegian Chamber Orchestra

Sunday June 10, 2012

5:30pm

Debussy: Danses sacrée et profane

Norwegian Chamber Orchestra

John Adams: Shaker Loops

Reinbert de Leeuw, conductor

Norwegian Chamber Orchestra

John Luther Adams: Dark Waves (version for two pianos and tape)

Leif Ove Andsnes, piano

Marc-André Hamelin, piano
Stravinsky: Sacre du printemps

Leif Ove Andsnes, piano

Marc-André Hamelin, piano

Camerata Pacifica

2011-11-07T14:42:00.000-08:00

If you're in the greater Los Angeles or Santa Barbara area, you'll want to check out Camerata Pacifica, a chamber music group that performs on a monthly basis in the southland, giving each of their programs four times. Their programming is an attractive mix of the well-known with the new and the offbeat. Rossini wrote string quartets? Apparently so, and you can hear his String Sonata No. 3 later this month, along with Schubert's Trout Quintet and works by Luytens and Wiegold.

Kate Aldrich Withdraws from San Francisco Carmen

2011-11-07T14:08:00.000-08:00

Kate Aldrich has withdrawn entirely from the SF Opera Carmn. Kendall Gladen will sing the performances of November 9, 26, 29 and December 2, 4.

A Martinelli / Lauri-Volpi Moment

2011-11-06T08:03:00.000-08:00

Alex Ross has a posting up about Giacomo Lauri-Volpi's 1934 recording of the Improvviso from Andrea Chenier. Here's Giovanni Martinelli's, from 1926; one of the great tenor's best. Note the breadth of the phrasing and the impassioned delivery.

And here's my favorite Lauri-Volpi recording. He had a heftier voice than one generally hears in this aria and it's an absolutely gorgeous recording, with marvelous rubato:

Looking around YouTube, I see that there's also an acoustic recording, from 1922, and a concert film from 1933.

These tenors both had unusually long careers. Lauri-Volpi, born in 1892, was still singing when Callas was in her heyday in the 1950s, and made some records into the 1970s. By the mid-40s, his voice had hardened and he usually sang forte. Martinelli sang opera until 1950, but I've never listened to any of the bootlegs after about 1941. However, there are some lovely or interesting concert records from the 1950s and even 1960s, including a genuinely beautiful "Winterstuerme," al'Italiano, from a radio concerto in 1957 and "Or son sei mesi," from Fanciulla del West, made with piano around 1962. He was an old man by then, and sounds it, but still.