Los Angeles Opera, 2026-27

Satyagraha, by Philip Glass

Curtain Call Photo

Los Angeles Opera

November, 2018

I don't have a photo of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion handy - there's a more photogenic building just across the street from it - so the above curtain call photo, one of the first I ever took, will have to do. It was a great performance, conducted by James Conlon and with an awesome assumption of the role of Gandhi by tenor Sean Panikkar.

Anyway, it's season announcement season, and LA Opera was one of three that announced this past Tuesday, along with Seattle and San Francisco. About all I can say about the main-stage season is "Oy vey." I don't know how much input Domingo Hindoyan had into the season, because when a music director is hired and when the announcement is made aren't necessarily the same thing. Season planning in the U.S. generally starts five years in advance, with casting done by three years before, so....

The Off-Grand series looks good and those are attractive concert. Highlights for me would be Carla Lucero's opera and Sidney Mancasola's Susannah in The Marriage of Figaro. She was terrific as Mélisande in Pelleas in 2023.

I'm going to post the cast, conductor, dates, and director, copy/pasted from email.

Domingo Hindoyan conducts a new production of Carmen

October 17, 25m, 29; November 1m, 4, 7, 2026 (m = matinee)

Composer: Georges Bizet

Librettists: Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy

World premiere: March 3, 1875 (Opéra-Comique, Paris)

 

Carmen: Rihab Chaieb

Don José: Joshua Guerrero ° ‡

Micaëla: Kathleen O'Mara ‡

Escamillo: Liam James Karai *

 

Conductor: Domingo Hindoyan

Director and Scenic Designer: Thaddeus Strassberger

Bernstein's around-the-world romp, Candide

November 21, 29m; December 2, 5, 10, 13m, 2026

Composer: Leonard Bernstein

Book: Hugh Wheeler, in a new version by John Caird

Lyrics: Richard Wilbur; additional lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, John La Touche, Lillian Hellman, Dorothy Parker and Leonard Bernstein

World premiere: December 1, 1956 (Martin Beck Theatre, New York City)

 

Candide: Duke Kim

Cunegonde: Deanna Breiwick

Old Lady: Patti LuPone

 

Conductor: Lina González-Granados °

Director: Francesca Zambello

Nabucco, the opera that made Verdi famous

February 27; March 7m, 10, 13, 18, 21m, 2027

Composer: Giuseppe Verdi

Librettist: Temistocle Solera

World premiere: March 9, 1842 (Teatro alla Scala, Milan)

 

Nabucco: Ariunbaatar Ganbaatar *

Abigaille: Angela Meade

Zaccaria: Stephano Park *

Fenena: Meridian Prall

Ismaele: Nathan Bowles ‡

 

Conductor: Domingo Hindoyan

Director and Scenery Designer: Thaddeus Strassberger

Back by popular demand: Turandot

April 17, 24, 29; May 2m, 5, 9m, 2027

Composer: Giacomo Puccini

Librettists: Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni

World premiere: April 25, 1926 (Teatro alla Scala, Milan, Italy)

 

Turandot: Ewa Płonka *

Calaf: Arsen Soghomonyan *

Liù: Juliana Grigoryan *

Timur: Peixin Chen

 

Conductor: Diego Matheuz *

Director: Garnett Bruce

Scenic Designer: David Hockney

James Conlon conducts The Marriage of Figaro

May 29; June 6m, 9, 12, 14m, 17, 20m, 2027

Composer: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Librettist: Lorenzo Da Ponte

World premiere: May 1, 1786 (Burgtheater, Vienna)

 

Figaro: Michael Sumuel

Susanna: Sydney Mancasola

Count: Lucas Meachem (May 29 - June 14) / Jarrett Ott * (June 17-20)

Countess: Erica Petrocelli ° ‡

Cherubino: Kayleigh Decker *

Dr. Bartolo: Maurizio Muraro *

Marcellina: Hyona Kim

 

Conductor: James Conlon

Director: James Gray

Scenic Designer: Santo Loquasto

Campy, vampy Halloween fun—Hercules vs. Vampires

October 30, 31, 2026

Composer: Patrick Morganelli

Film Director: Mario Bava

Film premiere: November 16, 1961

Premiere of Morganelli's score: May 14, 2010 (Opera Theater Oregon, Hollywood Theatre, Portland)

 

Our smash hit from 2015 storms back just in time for Halloween. Muscle-bound heroics, supernatural mayhem, and cinematic excess abound as Reg Park’s Hercules faces off against the iconic Christopher Lee in Mario Bava’s cult fantasy Hercules in the Haunted World. While the deliriously stylish film blazes across the big screen, the LA Opera Orchestra and a fearless cast of singers unleash Patrick Morganelli’s operatic score live, synced to the action. Think sword-and-sandal spectacle, gothic fantasy, and Halloween chaos—all rolled into one gloriously unhinged night at the opera.

Presented at the United Theater on Broadway (929 S. Broadway, Los Angeles, CA 90015)

 

Les Talens Lyriques: Two Venetians in Naples

March 2, 2027

Conductor/harpsichord/organ: Christophe Rousset

Soprano soloist: Apolline Raï-Westphal *

Soprano soloist: Thaïs Raï-Westphal *

 

 

Jamie Barton in Recital

November 15, 2026

 

Erin Morley and Lawrence Brownlee in Recital

April 22, 2027

 

Sondra Radvanovsky in Recital

May 8, 2027

The Old Man and the Sea

May 20, 21, 22, 23m, 2027

Composer: Paola Prestini

Librettist: Royce Vavrek

Conductor: Mila Henry *

Director: Karmina Šilec *

World premiere: November 4, 2023 (ASU Gammage, Tempe, Arizona)

Breathtakingly staged with eight pools of water enhanced with dynamic lighting, costumes and sound, our latest collaboration with the groundbreaking Beth Morrison Projects transforms Ernest Hemingway's Pulitzer-winning novella into a rumination on age, loss, nature, and what it means to be beautifully, stubbornly human.

* LA Opera debut

Presented at The Wallis (9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd., Beverly Hills, CA 90210)

Community Opera at the Cathedral:

The Three Women of Jerusalem (Las tres mujeres de Jerusalén)

May 1, 2027 (two performances that day)

Composer and Librettist: Carla Lucero

Conductor: Lina González-Granados

Director: Eli Villanueva

World premiere: March 19, 2022 (Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, Los Angeles)

Livermore Valley Così fan tutte

Poster graphic courtesy of Livermore Valley Opera

I never got around to noting that this season presented opportunities to see Verdi's La traviata and Mozart's Così fan tutte twice each, because Livermore Valley Opera and Opera San José are staging them both. I reviewed both the LVO Traviata (with a vocally and dramatically splendid performance by Avery  Boettcher as Violetta) and the OSJ Così, and enjoyed them both a lot. (I will here note that Ricardo José Rivera, whom I loved as Papageno and Guglielmo at recent OSJ performances, stepped into the Met HD broadcast of I Puritani and performed magnificently. I suspect we might not be seeing him in the regional companies again.)

The LVO Così that's opening on Feb. 28 looks strongly cast; I've liked everyone I know who is in it. Meryl Dominguez was a good Donna Anna in LVO's Don Giovanni; Courtney Miller was excellent in the strongly-cast Pocket Tartuffe; Samuel Kidd was terrific in several SFO appearances during his Adler years; Eugene Brancoveanu is a wonderful singer who has been a mainstay of Bay Area companies for many years now.

I've seen most of LVO's productions in the last few years, and they've been reliably good to excellent, with a number of memorable individual performances, good production values, and vigorous conducting by Alexander Katsman. Consider, also, that the 500-seat Bankhead Theater has no bad seats and is a great place to see opera.

So consider this a vigorous plug for Così and the company. 

Seattle Opera 2026-27

Seattle

I haven't got a handy photo of McCaw Hall, home of the Seattle Opera, so the photo above, which certainly signals Seattle, will have to do.

Seattle Opera just announced its season on Tuesday, a couple of hours before SFO announced. It is a very short season; nonetheless, I'd buy tickets to most of these.

I see that Huang Ruo's The Wedding Banquet, which I believe is a co-commission with the Met, is moved to a future season. Based on how good The Monkey King was, I am looking forward to this.

• Salome, Richard Strauss. October 17-31. Brenda Rae (!) in the title role; she is a pretty light soprano, so we'll see how this goes. Chad Shelton as Herod, mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano as Herodias, baritone Michael Kupfer-Radecky as Jochanaan, and tenor Joseph Tancredi as Narraboth. Benjamin Manis conducts.
• Jamie Barton in recital, Nov. 21. She is a great singer and a ton of fun.
• Anita Spritzer's gay Apparel, Dec. 11, 13, 19.
• El último sueño de Frida y Diego, Frank. January 16-30. Daniela Mack, Alfredo Daza, Mei Gui Zhang, Jake Ingbar. Production seen at SFO, conducted by Carolyn Kuan. I loved this opera in SF, where I saw a cast that included Mack, Daza, and Ingbar. Zhang will be good as La Catrina.
• Lakmé, Delibes, in concert, March 5 and 7. Aigul Khismatullina, David Portillo, Christian Purcell, Nicholas Newton, Hongni Wu. Daniela Candillari conducts. Not a fan of Portillo, like Purcell and Wu a lot, don't know the others.
• La Bohème, Puccini. May 8 to 23,  I didn't much care for this production, by Seattle's general director James Robinson, at Santa Fe last year, but of course it's a great opera. Double cast; not going to list all of the singers. Roberto Kalb, whom I've liked in a couple of operas, conducts.

 

California Sympnony 2026-27 Season

Music Director Donato Cabrera

conducting the California Symphony

Photo: Kristen Loken courtesy of California Symphony

California Symphony announced its 2026-27 season this morning, and it is an attractive and interesting season with a good balance of new, unusual, and classic works. Kudos to music director Donato Cabrera for continuing with this excellent programming.

SIBELIUS, HIGDON, AND BARTÓK – American Connections

Saturday, September 26, 2026 at 7:30pm
Sunday, September 27, 2026 at 4pm

Jean Sibelius: The Oceanides (1914)
Jennifer Higdon: Cello Concerto,  Julian Schwarz, cello
Béla Bartók: Concerto for Orchestra (1943)

FROM TCHAIKOVSKY TO COPLAND – Classical Contemporaries

Saturday, November 7, 2026 at 7:30pm

Sunday, November 8, 2026 at 4pm

Anton Arensky: Variations on a Theme by Tchaikovsky (1894)

Aaron Copland: Clarinet Concerto (1948)

     Cory Tiffin, clarinet

Samuel Barber: Adagio for Strings (1936)

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Serenade for Strings (1880)

(Cory Tiffin was a frequent substitute clarinetist in SFS between David Neuman's retirement and the hiring of Yuhsin Galaxy Su, the current holder of that chair. Good to see him here as a soloist and as the new principal clarinet of the orchestra.)

HOLIDAY TRADITIONS

Friday, December 18, 2026 at 7:30pm

Saturday, December 19, 2026 at 2pm

Performances at the Walnut Creek Presbyterian Church

MOZART AND HAYDN IN PARIS – Music of the Enlightenment

Saturday, January 23, 2027 at 7:30pm
Sunday, January 24, 2027 at 4pm

François Joseph Gossec: Symphony No. 2 in G Major (published 1769)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Symphony. No. 31 in D Major (1778)
Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges: Symphony No. 1 in G Major (published 1779)
Franz Joseph Haydn: Symphony No. 85 in B-flat Major (1785)

BEETHOVEN’S SECOND – Cowell, Adams, & Beethoven: Masterful Mavericks

Saturday, March 13, 2027 at 7:30pm
Sunday, March 14, 2027 at 4pm

Henry Cowell: Hymn and Fuguing Tune No. 10 (1955)
John Adams: Violin Concerto (1993)
    Helen Kim, violin
Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 2 in D Major (1802)

(Helen Kim was the associate principal second violin in SFS before she won the associate concertmaster position in the Seattle Symphony. I heard her playing music by Samuel Carl Adams last year at the Berkeley Symphony and Other Minds, and wow, she is a great player.)

PINES OF ROME – Orchestral Landscapes

Saturday, May 8, 2027 at 7:30pm

Sunday, May 9, 2027 at 4pm

Paul Novak: World Premiere

Composer-in-Residence

Manuel de Falla: Nights in the Gardens of Spain (1909-15)

    Tanya Gabrielian, piano

Manuel Ponce: Chapultepec (1929, rev. 1934)

Ottorino Respighi: Pines of Rome (1924)

(I've heard Pines of Rome three times in the last four years at SFS, and that was at least twice too many. It's good, noisy, fascist fun once a decade. But the rest of the program is definitely worth hearing!)

San Francisco Opera, 2026-27

Postcard from my personal collection

San Francisco Opera announced its 2026-27 season yesterday. One of the operas in the season, Wagner's Das Rheingold, was announced for the season in November, when preliminary Ring casting was announced. Last year's season announcement mentioned Thea Musgrave's Mary, Queen of Scots, for a future season, which has now arrived. I have some personal thoughts that weren't appropriate for my S.F. Chronicle article on the season. Let's go opera by opera.

• Simon Boccanegra, Verdi, opens the season, with Eun Sun Kim conducting and what looks like a terrific cast. Kim conducted Rigoletto, which opened the current season, with nuance and oh so much color; it was just great. Amartuvshin Enkhbat has the ideal voice for the title role and I hope that he'll be strongly directed. I checked out some videos of Eleanora Buratta, making her SFO debut as Maria/Amelia (you know that there are two characters who are known under two names in this opera, right? Be prepared to be confused.), and wow, what a voice. Christian Van Horn is Jacopo Fiesco. I love this opera beyond reason and I'm greatly looking forward to seeing it again, after a fifteen-year gap since I saw it at the Met with Abuser 1 in the title role and Abuser 2 conducting, with King of the Gods James Morris as Fiesco, a performance that leaves me slightly queasy in retrospect.
• Mary, Queen of Scots, Musgrave, opens next, and I'm excited to hear the work and the performers. Heidi Stober has already gotten raves for her assumption of the title role last year at ENO, and you may have spotted me raving about her Seattle Daphne. Thomas Kinch, third-year Adler and Heldentenor, plays the Earl of Bothwell; debuting baritone Thomas Mole is Mary's brother James Stewart. Clelia Cafiero conducts.
• Manon, Massenet. I liked this production a lot when it premiered with Ellie Dehn and Michael Fabiano, and I'm a fan of the new Manon/Chevalier pairing, Amina Edris and Pene Pati. It'll be different and I'm sure good. James Creswell, whom I admire a lot, returns as the Comte Des Grieux; Eun Sun Kim conducts.
• The Marriage of Figaro, Mozart. Sebastian Weigle, whom I've never heard, conducts a cast of singers I haven't heard in these roles before except for Catherine Cook and Maurizio Muraro. Peter Kellner is new to the company; I expect Olivia Smith, Slávka Zamečníková, and Simone McIntosh to be excellent. I didn't love the production in its first bring-up, but we'll see what revival director Shawna Lucey does with it.
• Das Rheingold, Wagner. Eun Sun Kim starts the company's revival of Francesca Zambello's production in the summer of 2027, with, so far, a complete cast turnover. We will get our first local taste of Brian Mulligan's Wotan (though you can see his Walküre Wotan on Medici TV, in concert, conducted by Yannick Nezeh-Seguin, with Tamara Wilson as Brünnhilde), which I expect to be beautifully sung and thoughtful. Kim's three Wagner productions at SFO have all been tremendously conducted, from the first downbeat of Lohengrin to the closing measures of Parsifal. We were lucky to have Donald Runnicles for 17 years and we are incredibly fortunate to have Kim now.
• Tosca, Puccini. Shawna Lucey's production is back, with Clelia Cafiero back, conducting Rachel Willis-Søorensen in her role debut as the Roman diva, Riccardo Massi as Cavaradossi, and Quinn Kelsey as the evil Scarpia.

Elsewhere:

• Janos Gereben, SFCV
• Parterre Box
• Gabe Meline, KQED
• James Ambroff-Tahan, Examiner
• Opera Tattler

Daphne at Seattle Opera

Heidi Stober as Daphne

Photo: Sunny Martini / Courtesy of Seattle Opera

No photos available of her in the outfit she changed into for

 the transformation scene: yes, it was green.

I reviewed Seattle Opera's concert performances of Richard Strauss's Daphne for Parterre Box. I've got a couple of things to add, mostly about Heidi Stober.

I first saw her in 2008, at Santa Fe Opera, where she sang Tigrane in Handel's Radamisto. My vague recollection is that she was a last-minute substitute, but it's been many years, so take that with a grain of salt.

She wasn't a newcomer at that point; her professional opera debut was in 2001. She is now 48, and lemme say, in Daphne she sounded about 25, by which I mean her voice is completely fresh, vibrant, glowingly beautiful, utterly mobile. I don't know what combination of nature, training, and ongoing care it takes to sound that good when you've been singing professionally for 25 years, but she has it.

Back in 2022, San Francisco Opera produced Poulenc's great opera Dialogues of the Carmelites as part of its centenary season, the work's first staging at SFO in forty years. Dialogues had its U.S. premiere at SF in 1957, one of many prescient U.S. premieres under Kurt Herbert Adler. Of Stober's performance in Dialogues, Joshua Kosman wrote: 

Soprano Heidi Stober’s appearances with the company have been reliable sources of joy ever since her 2010 debut in Massenet’s “Werther.” But her performance as Blanche added a new and even deeper level of psychological specificity to her expected vocal brilliance.

I felt much the same in 2022, and her vocal splendor in Daphne just reinforced my sense that Stober has entered a new phase of musical and vocal magnificence. There are interviews in the program with her and David Butt Philip (the astonishingly good Apollo) and she mentions hoping to sing the Marschallin. Fine by me and SFO hasn't performed it since the 2006-07 season. Regardless, I'm looking forward so much to hearing her in the future, in Strauss or anything else.

I could not squeeze into my review a couple of points that weren't even visible to most of the audience for Daphne. I attended both performances, first on a cheap seat in the second tier, second on press tickets in the orchestra.

From the second tier, I could see the alphorn that plays a role in the opening of the opera very clearly. It must have been about eight feet long and was very impressive indeed. And from up there I could see that Miles Mykkanen, playing Leukippos, had some green dye in his hair.

Thomas May was there too, on the 16th, and reviewed for Bachtrack.

 

John Storgårds at SF Symphony

John Storgåards

Photo by Marco Borggreve / courtesy of San Francisco Symphony

John Storgårds conducted SFS last week for the first time, and his work was a wow. If the orchestra hadn't already engaged Jaap van Zweden to lead an unnecessary full cycle of the Beethoven symphonies over this and the next two seasons, I'd suggest they hire this guy.

• Lisa Hirsch, SFCV/SF Chronicle
• Joshua Kosman, On a Pacific Aisle
• Harvey Steiman, Seen & Heard International
• Charlise Tiee, Opera Tattler
• Stephen Smoliar, The Rehearsal Studio

During the Beethoven, I kept thinking "Gosh, the last time I heard this the conducting wasn't nearly as good. Who was it?" The answer turned out to be....Jaap van Zweden. Joshua Kosman liked that performance more than I did.

 

Museum Mondays

Cora Lee Hall Brown (piecer, 1981)

Willia Etta Graham (quilter, 1985)

Untitled (One Patch)

Routed West, BAMPFA 

Berkeley, CA

November, 2025

Click to enlarge

 

Amplification

Shotgun Players

Illustration for Sunday in the Park with George

I saw two shows by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine recently, Sunday in the Park with George at Shotgun Players and Into the Woods at the San Francisco Playhouse, and had rather different reactions to them.

I had never seen Sunday in the Park — I managed to miss several local productions over the years — and hadn't heard the score. It's true that I have the two Hat books and I could have, should have, taken the time to read the lyrics, even though the books are awkward to read from. I don't have a recording of the songs.

I did not particularly connect with the story or the score. No shade on the performers, who sang and acted well, but the music made little impression on me and unfortunately, the amplification didn't balance the tiny orchestra and the singers correctly. The instruments were simply too loud, and I could only make out about half the words. That is a big problem with any English-language score, and, well, it's Stephen Sondheim and you really want and need to be able to discern what the heck everyone is singing about. 

I'd like to see it again, under different conditions: better musical balances and also...I don't feel that the tiny stage at Shotgun's theater serves this work well. The painting - A Sunday on La Grande Jatte — is quite large and the musical built around it needs some room to spread out. Shotgun's run of the show has been extended to February 15 (!), so if you'd like to see it, there are very likely tickets available.

Into the Woods landed rather differently. I had a slight familiarity with the show and the songs, because long ago I'd seen the film version of it. Regardless, a wonderful cast, Susi Damilano's superb direction, a charming unit set, and, well, everything, made it a thoroughly delightful evening. I particularly loved the stabby Little Red Riding Hood.

In this production, the amplification works much, much better than that for Sunday in the Park. The balances are correct: the tiny pit band is audible, but they never, ever, drown out the singers, whose enunciation is excellent. I probably caught 90-95% of the words. (The production runs through January 17.)

A few weeks ago, when Joshua Kosman discussed Sondheim, the recently-deceased Tom Stoppard, and Into the Woods on his Substack, composer Gabriel Kahane, whose work I like a whole lot and have reviewed very positively, chimed in to say he was not much of a fan of Sondheim's music, that he'd read the Hat books and gotten a lot out of that, but then he'd gone to see Into the Woods and found the songs musically undistinguished.

After seeing the show, I sort of get where he is coming from: I think that he is hearing a certain homogeneity across the songs in the show that can certainly be heard as melodic and rhythmic tics. But here's the thing: the other Sondheim shows I know at all well, A Little Night Music and Sweeney Todd, are musically nothing like Into the Woods. I know Night Music very well, because long ago I played flute in the pit band for a local theater production in Bergen County, NJ. Its special trick is, as Joshua Kosman points out, a profusion of what sounds like to the casual ear like waltz time. The melodies aren't at all alike. From this, I'm sure that whatever Sondheim is doing in Into the Woods, it's all deliberate and thought out carefully.

Getting back to the matter of amplification and sound design, I inevitably find myself asking "But why are you amplifying your singers?" After all, the stage bands are tiny and so are the theaters. Wikipedia says that the Ashby Stage seats 119 people, while the San Francisco Playhouse seats 199.

People, those are tiny theaters and the actors cast in these shows know how to sing! What, exactly, is gained through amplification?

Years ago, when Sweeney Todd toured to San Francisco and played in a substantially larger theater — this was the production where the actors also played the instruments —I actually asked about it. I was told, I believe, that they wanted all audience members to have the same auditory experience, regardless of the venue. 

I think that my reaction to this was something like: But this is live theater. Where you sit does make a difference. That's a feature, not a bug. I guess that with amplification and its flattening effects everywhere, producers and audiences have come to expect that everything will sound the same, like you're listening to a recording.

And this brings me to something I read in the New York Times a few days ago, a profile by Joshua Barone of Beth Morrison, who has, over the last 20 years, become an extremely important producer/impressario of new operas, through her Beth Morrison Projects. She can put together a composer and librettist, help cast an opera, find venues. She has become indispensable to producing new opera outside operas commissioned directly by opera houses. 

Morrison says that she has “very strong opinions on the kind of art [she wants] to make,” then she's quoted later in the piece saying this:

Critics have also taken issue with Morrison’s insistence on amplification, especially in black box theaters. But, Morrison said, Wagner probably would have done the same thing. He wanted to use every tool at his disposal, and she aims, with each show, for “a theatrical sound installation.”

“Many companies will not do this, and that’s fine,” she added. “But that’s not the world that I want to live in. I profoundly believe that putting a microphone on an opera singer completely changes their ability to act.”

Let me say that if composers choose to amplify their works, sure, fine, it's their decision to make use of, as Morrison says, that particular tool. They know what they want in the way of vocal style in their works, for whatever reason: they prefer the sound of an amplified voice, they're concerned about how to orchestrate to allow an unamplified voice to be heard, they don't like the sound of the unamplified operatic voice, they're worried about whether the singers can put across the words. Amplification can be done well (for John Adams's operas, sound design by Mark Grey) or badly (San Francisco Opera's Sweeney Todd, speaking of Sondheim, and Show Boat).

These are complicated problems and composers have chosen a range of solutions in traditionally-sung opera. Singers are affected not only by orchestration, but by the size and acoustics of a venue, the language in which a libretto is written, the composer's musical style, the singability of the libretto, and how the composer sets the words. 

However, I'd really like to hear a lot more about Morrison's contention that "putting a microphone on an opera singer completely changes their ability to act." For one thing, my understanding is that microphone singing requires a wholly different technique from traditional operatic singing; I remember a singer I know commenting about this, when they started working with an ensemble that used amplification. 

For another, I've seen many opera performances, some amplified, most not, of works written between 1607 and now, with a wide range of performers. A lot of them were great actors, and it's really hard for me to accept that their acting abilities would be "completely changed" (implied: improved) if they were amplified. Their acting depends at least as much on what the composer and librettist give the singers and, ah, how good the director is as on whether they're amplified, and, well, I would say a lot more.

Not that it's very possible to even run an experiment. Could you get the same cast to perform La Traviata with and without amplification? Can you get the same cast to perform Nixon in China with and (clandestinely) without amplification? It certainly would be interesting.

Let's move on to Morrison's contention that Wagner probably would have done the same thing, that is, used amplification.

I consider it intellectually risky to try to ascribe theoretical actions to long-dead people. You know, Bach would surely have written for the piano if it had existed in his time; Chopin and Beethoven surely would have loved the modern 9-foot concert grand, etc. Composers will use the tools of their time, and I'm going to say that my guess is that the music they wrote would have been different if they'd had different instruments available! Beethoven and Chopin both wrote peddling effects and articulations that are easier to achieve on a lightweight fortepiano than on a modern concert grand. We might guess, but we cannot know, what they would have composed if suddenly a 1930 Steinway had appeared in their studios.

There is one exception that a friend mentioned to me when I quoted Morrison to him: that passage in Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, first movement, where the bassoons play a phrase that is elsewhere given to the horns. That's because the natural horn of his day couldn't play that phrase in every key Beethoven needed for the movement. These days, we have valve horns, and that passage, which sounds faintly absurd in the bassoons, is generally assigned to the horns. 

But we do know something about what Wagner might have done about issues of singer audibility, because he actually did it: he built the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, which is laid out like an amphitheater, rather than in tiers like most opera houses, and in which he put the orchestra on descending risers under the stage. The Bayreuth sound is unique and magnificent, and singers don't have to force or press or have enormous voices (as opposed to normally large operatic voices) to be heard. This is one thing we do not have to guess or make hard-to-support conjectures about.

Prediction Market

Elim Chan

Photo courtesy of San Francisco Symphony

San Francisco Symphony has, very unusually, added a program to a blank spot in June, between James Gaffigan's one-night-only special event and Tianyi Lu making her orchestra series debut. I wonder what it could mean.

Elim Chan, who has been excellent in her previous appearances, leads this juicy, if solidly 19th-early 20th c., program:

Friday, June 5, 2026, at 7:30pm

Saturday, June 6, 2026, at 7:30pm 

Sasha Cooke, mezzo-soprano

FELIX MENDELSSOHN Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream 

HECTOR BERLIOZ Les nuits d’été 

RICHARD WAGNER Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde 

CLAUDE DEBUSSY La mer 

Tickets: $29–89  

 

Museum Mondays

Alice Neal (1916-1985)

Mary Bright Commemorative Quilt
Routed West, BAMPFA
Berkeley, CA
November, 2025

Click to enlarge

 

Organs in the News

Organ at St. John's Presbyterian, Berkeley

Not in the news, but it's the organ photo I had.

Photo by me

Some recent stories to do with mighty organs. Okay, Peter Hartlaub's is from 2023, but read it anyway.

• Alex Ross, The New Yorker, "The Organists Improvising Soundtracks to Silent Films."
• Lucy Hodgman, San Francisco Chronicle, "A massive pipe organ is dividing a small California town. Can it be saved?" (gift link)
• Peter Hartlaub, San Francisco Chronicle, "A 40-ton organ sits under City Hall. San Francisco is trying to give it away." (gift link)

Very locally, the Castro Theater is re-opening soon and apparently will have a new organ. I know nothing of the fate of the much-disputed-over old organ.

 

A Different Look Back at 2025

Sea lions

Elkhorn Slough

October, 2025

Personally, 2025 was a pretty good year for me, even though it was an

absolute dumpster fire politically and socially. If anything, it's even worse

than I had thought a second Trump administration would be. The hatred 

toward brown and black people, immigrants, and trans people is 

unbelievable, as are the various assaults on the rule of law. This is the most

corrupt administration ever, with the Trump family hauling

in hundreds of millions from various schemes. I'm glad that there's so 

much resistance and that  Democratic candidates are overperforming. 

May that trend continue.

I've been writing more and more over the last few years. In 2025, 

retired from full-time work, I published 57 pieces, broken down as follows. 

• 36 reviews, of which three were CD reviews. The rest were reviews of live performances.
• 21 artist spotlights, interviews, news articles, features, and previews.

I published in the S.F. Chronicle, San Francisco Classical Voice (SFCV), 

Opera Magazine, Opera Now, Parterre Box, and the journal of the

Wagner Society of Northern California. I had never published in Opera Now

or Parterre Box before, and the piece in Opera Magazine was big, 2000 words

on Opera San José. I still haven’t pitched an article I’ve been thinking about for

the last year, but I will pitch it soon.

Friday Photo

Church Detail

Munich, August, 2015

 

Stationery Store Blues

Moleskine journalist's notebook

Hardcover, 8" x 5.5"

Over at The Rest is Noise, Alex Ross has a plaintive post about changes to the Paper Mate Sharpwriter #2, a vital tool in his life.  The post includes a funny/sad video by Adam Savage, which I urge you to watch in full. Savage does not comment on one change, a new, blunter font used on the pencil itself, but I noticed.

I don't use this particular pencil, but of course I have a personal stationery tragedy. Sometime during the pandemic, Moleskine discontinued the classic journalist's notebook, which had a flip-over hard cover. I didn't go to j-school and never worked at a newspaper, so when I started reviewing, I found a notebook I liked to write in rather than using cheap reporter's notepads. I have not yet been in a situation where such a notepad would be useful, such as pursuing some unwilling public figure while trying to get them to comment on an unpopular subject. In such a circumstance, I'd probably be trying to get my phone in front of their face anyway.

I don't care about reviews telling me that there are notebooks with better paper than the Moleskine. I miss that notebook and learned it had been discontinued too late to try to buy up available supplies. 

It's true that Moleskine makes a miniature version of the flip notebook, but it is seriously too small to be useful to me either for concert notes or interview notes or reading notes. I have used the lined classic Moleskin as well, but my handwriting is not good and even though I am right-handed, I worry about smudging notes of already dubious readability during a concert. There's much less risk of that with a flip notebook. 

Moleskine also makes, or made, a soft-cover full-sized reporter's notebook, and one year I accidentally bought one of them. I took a look at it yesterday and saw that its first use for music-related notes was a season-announcement press conference at SFO. The first note reads:

- Pat, Pat, Pat, and Pat

Clearly, this was the press conference for the 2013-14 season; as announced, Patricia Racette had four roles in three operas. After Dolora Zajick dropped out of Dolores Claiborne, that became five roles in four operas.

After some investigation into alternatives to the journalist's notebook, I wound up using a soft-cover notebook that is sturdier than a reporter's notepad but smaller and much less stiff than a hardcover. It is intended to be used as a landscape-orientation sketch notebook, but I use it in portrait orientation. Nonethless, I miss the Moleskine notebook and wish they'd bring it back.

San Francisco Symphony Auditions

Davies Symphony Hall

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

San Francisco Symphony has a number of auditions coming up.

• Associate principal horn and assistant principal / utility horn. Two positions. This reflects the impact of hiring Diego Incertis Sánchez as principal horn: the principal should have input into hiring to fill the vacancies, because the principal will have a concept of how the horn section should sound and thus helps choose players who will create that sound.
• Associate principal bassoon. This position has been filled for the last year by former principal bassoon Stephen Paulson, so it appears he will be retiring from the orchestra after 48 years in that position.
• Section cello (multiple positions), perhaps reflecting retirements that haven't been announced yet.
• Section viola

 

The Best of 2025

Kang Wang as the title character

The Monkey King

San Francisco Opera

Photo: Cory Weaver, courtesy of SFO

 

SFCV published the writers' collective opinions of the best performances of the year. The Bay Area list is here. My five choices were these:

• Esa-Pekka Salonen's Mahler 2
• Poiesis Quartet at Noe Music
• The Monkey King at San Francisco Opera
• Pivot Festival, Carla Kiehlstedt's 26 Little Deaths
• Tartuffe, Pocket Opera

It was a tough call. Here's the rest of my long list:

• La bohème at SFO; a seriously great run, beautifully directed, with two terrific casts.
• MTT 80, a deeply touching celebration of the man.
  
• Parsifal at SFO
• Rigoletto at SFO
• Bluebeard's Castle at Opera San José
• Turn of the Screw at SFCM, better staged and conducted than what I saw at Santa Fe over the summer.
• John Adams third piano concerto, After the Fall, at SFS. I couldn't include the concert on my short list because the second half was (&)%$)_@_ Carmina Burana.
• Dalia Stasevska at SFS, in the Thorvaldsdottir cello concerto and RWV's Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis.
• Cabrillo Festival, Becoming
• Hello, Star at OP. Just a perfect 45 minutes of opera begging for a larger orchestra. A wonderful libretto, beautiful music, great direction on a tiny stage.
• Donald Runnicles and Irene Roberts at SFS

As you can see, I named four of the last six operas at SFO as among the best things I saw; Dead Man Walking was also superb. SFO had a stupendous year and in fact has been on a roll since the centennial season. Hats off to Matthew Shilvock and his team for this long string of artistic successes, which has also included a fair number of sellouts.

As for the flip side, I am going to pass on flagging concerts I found disappointing or wrong-headed. There's not much doubt that the worst event of the year was Esa-Pekka Salonen's departure from San Francisco Symphony after just five years as music director. He reinvigorated the orchestra's programming, led many great concerts, hired many terrific musicians, and thanks to the short-sightedness of the board and management, which couldn't figure out how to fund his ambitions for the future, he is gone.

• Joshua Kosman's picks
• SFCV Los Angeles writers' picks
• Michael Strickland, SF Civic Center