Friday Photo

The wine-dark sea (the Mediterranean)

The Calanques, near Cassis, France

July, 2026

 

Merola Finale

Merola Finale; all participants

Photo by Kristen Loken

Last Saturday, August 15, was the Merola Finale, a concert with orchestra given by this year's young singers of the Merola Opera, who've spent ten weeks working very hard at their art and craft. They've given concerts and an opera and they're a talented bunch.

That said, I was less happy this year than I was last year, and I'm going to chalk it up to conducting that I felt did not adequately support these singers. Numbers that should have sparkled didn't; numbers that needed lilt or charm didn't have it. The duet "Parigi, o cara" from La Traviata was taken at a tempo I found bizarre, though my notes don't indicate whether it was too fast or too slow (probably too fast). 

I own that this is a difficult assignment – there were many numbers on the program and a lot of gear-switching – and also that the second half seemed better than the first, but I've heard it done better and I thought the singers deserved better. 

I can't say how many of the numbers that fell flat for me would have been better with a different conductor; I do not know whether some singers needed more coaching. I do know that in June's concert by Kyle Ketelsen, with Carrie-Ann Matheson and and a Merola participant as collaborative pianists, the young singers on that program all sounded good.

I do think that there was some miscasting: with several excellent lyric tenors in the mix, somehow the Duke of Mantua, in the Rigoletto quartet, was sung by a budding spinto tenor. In that, he felt miscast; as Dick Johnson in a duet from La Fanciulla del West, he shone.

So let me name this fine young tenor: Chester Seungyup Han, who sounded terrific in the Fanciulla duet with soprano Charlotte Kelso. She has a voice that is both beautiful and characterful, a big, dark-toned, vibrant instrument, which she wielded with great skill: great control of dynamics and color. 

Han was also the tenor in the Faust finale, with the excellent soprano Anna Thompson and bass John Mburu. The latter made a big impression in Kaspar's aria "Schweig! Damit sich niemand warnt," which I will bet he got to coach with Ketelsen, whom I heard in that very role in Munich last month. Mburu has a good, solid sound and good interpretive instincts.

There's been some excellent Berlioz at both Merola and Adler concerts over the last five or ten years, and this program had another installment: a beautiful traversal of "Nuit d'ivresse," the love duet from Les Troyens, by mezzo Theo Claveles and tenor Matthew Sink. These two have very distinctive voices that blended well, and yet you could hear the play of the lines against each other.  You bet that I'm sorry to have missed them in Ariadne auf Naxos, as the Composer and The Tenor/Bacchus, respectively.

Baritone Enes Pektaş stood out for his crisp delivery of "Şeyh Bedriddin Destani," by the Turkish composer Murat Cem Orhan, and Paul Jang showed off a beautiful bass voice in "Yearning," a setting by DongHwan Kim of a poem by KiChul Lee. I enjoyed tenor Logan Wagner's suave "On the street where you live," from Lerner and Lowe's My Fair Lady.

Perhaps the most dramatic number of the evening was tenor Ryan Bryce Johnson's electrifying delivery of the "Aria of the Worm" from John Corigliano's The Ghosts of Versailles, which really made me sit up and take notice.

Claire Choquette’s direction worked well both in terms of interactions among the singers and how it took advantage of the two-level Manon set.

As always, a skilled and talented group of singers, all hoping to join the Adler program. Best of luck to them all; I look forward to hearing these young singers again, whether as Adlers or elsewhere.

Elsewhere:

• Joshua Kosman, On a Pacific Aisle
• Steven Winn, SFCV (and SF Chronicle)
• Charlise Tiee, Opera Tattler
• Michael Strickland, SF Civic Center
• Matthew Travisano, Parterre Box

Broadcasts This Week

Die Frau ohne Schatten

Courtesy of Festival d'Aix-en-Provence

Photo by Monika Rittershaus, copyright 2026

Vida Miknevičiūtė (Empress), Ambur Braid (Dyer's Wife), Michael Spyres (Emperor), Brian Mulligan (Barak)

There are radio broadcasts and streaming available for some of the productions I saw in July and August.

The Salzburg Festival has an extensive program of radio and TV broadcasts on various stations. Radio broadcasts are available until about a month after the performances. 

medici.tv, which is available in the United States, will stream video of Ariadne auf Naxos on Thursday, August 20 at 11 a.m. and Il Viaggio a Reims on Friday, August 21 at 11:00 a.m.

For complete information on broadcasts, see the Salzburg Festival Broadcast web page.

 Arte has re-posted the Aix Frau video, which is well worth seeing. Frau and Viaggio were both directed by Barrie Kosky, and wow, they were both great.

I do not yet know whether the Ariadne and Viaggio broadcasts will stay on Medici.tv for a while or are one-shot deals. I am going to try to watch them both. Ariadne got booed (the director made a major plot intervention in the Opera!) and Viaggio was one of the funniest things I've ever seen. I hope you get to see them.

Luminous Refractions: SF Contemporary Music Players 2026-27 Season

The SF Contemporary Music Players have an outstanding season of new / recent / important modern music coming up. Here it is, in brief:

LUMINOUS REFRACTIONS

 

·       “Bay Bridges” (Saturday, October 3, 2026 at 7:30 PM - Brava Theater) - Music by Matthew Evan Taylor*, Shuying Li*, Inés Thiebaut*, Michael Gilbertson*, and Darius Milhaud.

 

·       “Glassworks” (Sunday, February 7, 2027 at 4:00 PM – Taube Atrium Theater) – Music by Philp Glass, Cassandra Miller, Mason Bates*, and David Lang.

 

·       “Foundry” (Saturday, April 10, 2027 at 7:30 PM - Taube Atrium Theater) - Music by Mark Gustavson, Laurie San Martin*, Sofia Ouyang, and Pamela Z* (commission/world premiere).

 

·       “Alchemy” (Sunday, May 2, 2027 at 4:00 PM - Brava Theater) – Music by Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez, Juri Seo, Aaron Jay Kernis, and Asha Srinivasan.

Each concert is preceded by a talk by Artistic Director / Conductor Eric Dudley.

The organization will also have a bit of....rebranding going on; while the formal name will remain San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, they'll use sfCONTEMPORARY as their identity.

Well, I'm Back.

What I did on my summer vacation.

The spine without print under Carmen is Werther.

(Click to enlarge.)

I've been back, actually, since August 8; it's just that it took me until the last couple of days to feel thoroughly re-oriented to my usual life. It's as though my five weeks in Europe happened in another realm, and maybe they did, although there are various witnesses to attest that I was really there, friends from different parts of my life, mostly musical connections of one kind or another.

I saw 16 performances in the five weeks I was away. Not readily visible in the photo above, because the programs were small rather than being the size of paperback novella, four performances in Aix: Les vêpres siciliennes, Bluebeard's Castle, Michael Spyres in recital, and Sonya Yoncheva in recital with Cappella Mediterranea.

Amazingly, of these 16, only Bluebeard was a bust, a big surprise considering how good Klaus Mäkelä was conducting Die Frau ohne Schatten. Well, I am sure that Frau got a lot more rehearsal time and took up a lot more of his attention than Bluebeard, but it was a shock anyway. Whatever; it was really a great run of operas and recitals. 

Here are the reviews that've been published so far, as well as some links to others' reviews (more to come). Comments on Mr. Brouček and reviews of the Salzburg operas will be published this week at SFCV.

• The Brilliant Opera Season at Aix-en-Provence, SFCV, August, 2026 (Accabadora, Die Frau Ohne Schatten, Les vêpres siciliennes, Bluebeard's Castle, El Cimarron, recitals by Michael Spyres and Sonya Yoncheva)
• Hugh Canning reviews Frau, Operalogue
• Joshua Barone, NY Times, reviews Frau (gift link)
• David Karlin reviews Frau, Bachtrack
• Alessandro Zummo reviews Frau, Plays to See
• Mark Pullinger reviews Frau, Opera Now
• Kevin Ng inverviews Barrie Kosky about Frau, Parterre Box
• Heidi Waleson reviews Aix, WSJ (paywall)
• A.J. Goldman reviews several Aix productions, Parterre Box
• Shirley Apthorp reviews Accabadora, Financial Times
• General Aix conversation at Parterre Box
• Don't Go in the Basement: Rusalka at the Bayerische Staatsoper, Parterre Box, August, 2026
• Hit Me With Your Best Shot: Der Freischütz at the Bayerische Staatsoper, Parterre Box, August, 2026

Museum Mondays

Paul Klee, Archangel

Lehnbachhaus, Munich

July, 2026

 

Anniversaries

I was reminded recently of some anniversaries in my life that are clustered around June and July.

• June 30, 1991: I passed my shodan (first degree black belt) exam in Danzan Ryu jujitsu.
• June 30, 1996: I took a golden, well, bronze, parachute and left Kaiser Permanente with six months of salary and, even better, two years of free health care. This was the end of boring jobs that I did to support my jujitsu habit. I had already taken a technical writing class at UC Extension, and this gave me the breathing room to do some freelance work and apply for jobs, moving me into the world of interesting jobs to support my jujitsu habit.
• June 30, 2001: I passed my nidan (second degree black belt) exam.
• July 26, 2006: I sent my resume to a friend who had recently left Documentum for Google. It took a while, but they hired me. I started at Google in November, 2006.
• July 4, 2024: I left Google (happily, for various reasons).

Blomstedt at 99

Herbert Blomstedt

Photo by J.M. Pietsch / Courtesy of San Francisco Symphony

Herbert Blomstedt, Conductor Laureate of the San Francisco Symphony, turned 99 yesterday, and Medici.tv has a nice article about him on their website (I think it is not paywalled). I wanted to note that since his unfortunate Mahler 9 in San Francisco, he has withdrawn from a couple of engagements. There was one in Sweden where Alan Gilbert stepped in.

Blomstedt has subsequently withdrawn from three October concerts in Japan, with the NHKSO. The conductor noted the following:

To my dear audience in Japan

I am so sorry that I cannot come to play with my dear orchestra in Tokyo in October, when conducting in May in San Francisco I was struck by a serious infection that will take several months to overcome. But – be of good courage – the great music of Beethoven, Brahms and Bruckner will always remain for our enjoyment. I will be with you in spirit, and will never forget you. Thank you for all you have been to me.

Herbert Blomstedt

Wishing him a happy 99th birthday, and of course hoping his health recovers as swiftly and completely as possible. 

Itinerary

Place de la Bastille, Paris

July, 2026

So I am out of town, on a European trip I'm thinking of as the follies of summer 2026, because of the length of the trip (five weeks) and what I am seeing. I'm currently baking in Aix-en-Provence, where temperatures have been in the 90s. Maybe it will actually rain today and cool things off a bit? That would be nice. Also, I should check out the public pool that is less than four blocks from where I'm staying.

Here's where I am, roughly, and what I am seeing or have seen. I'm at the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence right now.

• Francesco Filidei, Accabadora, 7 July (world premiere run and very beautiful)

• R. Strauss, Die Frau ohne Schatten,  9 July

• Béla Bartók, Bluebeard's Castle, 11 July (in concert)

• Michael Spyres (recital) 13 July

• Verdi, Les vêpres siciliennes aka I vespri siciliani 16 July (in concert; I wish it were staged, but this is a one-off and it's the only middle or late Verdi opera that I have never seen.)

• Henze, El Cimmaron, 17 July

Amusingly, when I was on line for the security check for Accabadora, Barrie Kosky, the director of Frau, floated past me and chatted with some folks about a yard away; when I left Frau the other night, I had just cleared the Grand Theatre steps when Francesco Filidei, composer of Accabadora, crossed my path. I didn't recognize him fast enough to buttonhole him and tell him how much I'd love the opera; he'll just have to wait for my review. Or maybe he'll be at Bluebeard tonight.

The Frau run is ending in a couple of performance and was live streamed the other night when I saw it. It's a collaboration with a couple of European opera companies, so it'll be traveling. It is magnificent, I think the most psychologically compelling of the three productions I have seen since 2013. And there was a lot of great singing as well. (I do not remember much except the glorious orchestra and how loud one Gwyneth Jones was in 1989, with the late Christoph von Dohnyani conducting.)

After Aix, I am spending a few days on the coast in a beach town, hoping to go out on a boat where they give you lunch and you swim in interesting places. I've loved doing this in Hawaii, so.

Then it's on to Munich, where I'm spending eight days and seeing only three operas:

• Rusalka, Dvořák
• The Excursions of Mr. Brouček, Janáček (overnight runout to Bregenz, Austria)
• Der Freischuetz, von Weber

My last major stop is Salzburg (I'll be in Munich the night before I head home):

• Bizet, Carmen 30 July

• Massenet, Werther Aug 1

• R. Strauss, Ariadne auf Naxos, Aug

• Messiaen, Saint François d’Assise  4 Aug

• Rossini, Il viaggio a Reims 5 Aug. Also directed by Barrie Kosky, so I have high hopes for this comic rarity. And I will finally see Cecilia Bartoli, who has never sung staged opera in the Bay Area and hasn't given a recital there in decades.

• Mozart, Cosi fan tutte, 6 aug. This will be my fifth Cosi since 2021.

It's a big Strauss year for me, between Daphne (Seattle), Elektra (SFO), Frau (Aix), and Ariadne (Salzburg); also, I'm seeing a few rarities like Brouček and Freischuetz.

How this got started: well, last fall I was thinking back on my many years of opera going and found myself wondering whether I'd ever see the Messiaen again. It left me utterly baffled in 2002, when San Francisco Opera presented the U.S. premiere. (So far it's the only U.S. production of the work.) An idle web search showed me the Salzburg performances; then Aix announced their schedule, and I had to do something in between, right?

Note that there will be radio broadcasts (delayed) of the Aix productions; the schedule is at Parterre Box and note that those times are all Eastern. Add or subtract accordingly. You've missed the livestream of Frau, which was available in Europe unless you have a VPN.

I'm reviewing all of this for SFCV or Parterre Box, so watch for links, eventually.

A Note from Alex Ross

Cover of Alex Ross's first book, The Rest is Noise

Black block type, all caps, with details in red-orange

The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century

I woke up early on Monday and found that Alex Ross had posted a note on his blog with the momentous news that after 30 years as the music critic of The New Yorker, he would be stepping down from that position. His note is characteristically modest in tone, but for this longtime reader of his work, it landed like a quiet thunderbolt.

I know that there was a time when I wasn't reading him; I remember his predecessor Andrew Porter's tenure at TNY, and my outrage when the magazine let him go. There were breaks in my subscription over the years and they might have included 1996, the year Ross joined.

Porter was a prolific writer; a look at The New Yorker's archive suggested that he typically wrote two or three columns a month, almost all reviews, though they were not your typical 600 to 800 word newspaper review by any means. They were longer and brought in all manner of detail and history that an overnight review simply cannot accommodate.

Ross's cadence was different; somewhat slower (in his note, he states that wrote nearly 400 Musical Events columns and another 80 longer pieces) and often scholarly without being academic, owing to his lapidary prose. A recent article, "In Northern Scotland, the Neolithic Age Never Ended," was accompanied by a blog post that included his preparatory reading and many photos, for example.

His interests have been catholic in the best possible way, ranging from early music through to the newest of the new, and they weren't limited to musical interests. He's written about – and will continue, as a New Yorker staff writer, to write about –"literature, philosophy, film, émigré stories, California stories, ancient landscapes, and new regions," to use his own words. He's been eloquent about gay life and his own family. He'll occasionally write on musical topics.

In his own memorial to Andrew Porter, Ross said "Porter was the most formidable classical-music critic of the late twentieth century, and, pace George Bernard Shaw and Virgil Thomson, may have been the finest practitioner of this unsystematic art in the history of the English language." I'm not going to disagree with that, but I am more than comfortable asserting that Ross is the finest music critic of his generation and of the entire post-Porter generation. (I see that Joshua Kosman considers Ross to be greater than Porter and makes a case for this opinion. I wouldn't argue with him.)

There is simply no one writing the kind and quality of criticism he's been writing. To some extent, it's because of the freedom and space that The New Yorker has been able to offer; I can't think of anyone else who has had that kind of space and time. There are always more concerts to review, and Ross has been lucky enough to be able step outside the pressures of daily reviewing to have a magisterial, considered perspective on everything he writes about. Would that more of us might have that opportunity, but it will not happen in this time and place.

Newspapers that used to have two or three classical reviewers now have none. Many have only freelancers providing classical reviews. Last year, the NY Times reassigned its chief classical critic to the obits desk, and while they advertised for a new chief critic, they don't appear to have hired anyone for the position. 

Ross's news is as momentous as it is not only because of the impact of his own withdrawal from the profession, but because of this general collapse of music criticism. His post at The New Yorker is evidently the last full-time classical music criticism job in the country. I hope, and I am sure that others hope, that TNY will not allow the post to remain vacant.

More personally, I started this blog in October, 2004, not long after I discovered that Alex Ross had a blog, which he'd started in April, 2004. I'd started reviewing for SFCV in February that year, and realized there might be some value to having a blog of my own. That turned out to be the case; I have made many friends and gotten some work through this blog (it's useful to have a large, unedited body of work publicly available). So it's not that he's to blame, but yes, he's sort of to blame, which I mean in the most affectionate way. He is among he friends I've made, and I'm grateful for his friendship and for many kindnesses over the years.

Even in 2004, before he'd published three books, Ross was a lodestar in the critical world, writing brilliantly on so many subjects. It's a gift to know when it's time to close out a chapter of your life. I'll miss reading Ross on music on a regular basis, but I'm looking forward to the pieces he mentions are in process and to the eventual publication of his current book project.

Elsewhere:

• Joshua Kosman
• Will Robin

 

Emerging Black Composers: Do Better

Christopher Thompson

Winner of the Sixth Annual Emerging Black Composers Project

Photo Courtesy S.F. Symphony

Christopher Thompson is the winner of the sixth annual Emerging Black Composers Project. He will receive a $15,000 prize, mentoring, and a performance by SFS. Congratulations to him; I'm looking forward to hearing his new work.

Here are the six winners of the prize. all men:

• Christopher Thompson
• Kyle Rivera
• Tyler Taylor
• Xavier Muzik
• Jens Ibsen
• Trevor Weston

Here are the seven winners of the additional prizes, of whom five are men and two are women:

• Jonathan Bingham
• Quenton Xavier Blache
• Jordyn Davis
• Tyson Gholston Davis
• Nathaniel Heyder
• Shawn Okpebholo
• Sumi Tonooka

A total of 13 winners, 11 of whom are men. There is a problem here, whether it's in who is submitting their scores or in the selection process. I've heard a lot of new music in the last 20-plus years and there just is not a quality imbalance like this between men and women.

Opera Parallèle's Doubt

Rhoslyn Jones (Sister Aloysius) and Matthew Worth (Father Flynn), in Doubt at Opera Parallèle 

Photo: Stefan Cohen

 

Opera Parallèle staged Douglas J. Cuomo and John Patrick Shanley's Doubt a few weeks ago. It's based on Shanley's Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning play of the same name. You might have seen it on stage or you might have seen the film, which starred Meryl Streep as sister Aloysius and Philip Seymour Hoffman as Father Flynn, with Amy Adams as Sister James and, in a brilliant ten minutes on screen, Viola Davis as Mrs. Miller. It's Davis I remember most clear; the film, directed by Shanley, was seriously marred by the competitive altar-cloth chewing performances of Streep and Hoffman.

The play, film, and opera all leave you in, um, doubt as to what happened and what it meant. Did Father Flynn abuse young Donald Miller? Well, it is ambiguous. I think it's possible (that business where he might have given Donald wine). I also think it's possible that Father Flynn is gay and recognizes that Donald is going to grow up to be gay, which results in a mentoring relationship. Mrs. Miller certainly recognizes this in her son and is glad for the attention – and role modeling? – he gives to Donald.

I liked the opera a whole lot and said so in SFCV; Matthew Travisano, reviewing for Parterre Box, was less happy with it. I think we actually said somewhat similar things about how the opera works musically; I just liked what it did better than he did.

• Lisa Hirsch, SFCV
• Matthew Travisano, Parterre Box ("Nun the Wiser," fantastic headline)
• Charlise Tiee, Opera Tattler
• Eddie Reynolds, Theater Eddys
• Michael Milenski, Opera Today
• Kellie Hanna, Broke-Ass Stuart (Preview)
• Charles Lewis III, 48 Hills (Preview)
• Timothy Pfaff, BAR (Preview)

Thea Musgrave at Left Coast Chamber Ensemble

Thea Musgrave

Photo courtesy of San Francisco Opera

Left Coast Chamber Ensemble just announced their 2026-27 season the other day, and whaddya know, in the season that San Francisco Opera presents the 98-year-old composer's Mary, Queen of Scots, LCCE is performing four of her chamber works during their season. Good for them, I say, though I was a little surprised that their announcement didn't highlight this great programming.

Here are the works:

• In the Still of the Night, on Sept. 19 & 20, 2026
• Narcissus, on Nov. 21 & 22, 2026
• Light at the End of the Tunnel,  Jan. 17, 2027
• The Egrets Have Landed, May 22 & 23, 2027

As always, all of LCCE's concerts are thoughtfully programmed and well worth attending!

 

Friday Photo

Salvation Army Building

W. 14th St., NY, NY

April, 2026

 

The Greeks Knew about Catharsis: Elektra at the San Francisco Opera

Kyle Ketelsen (Orest) and Elena Pankratova (Elektra)

Photo: Cory Weaver, courtesy of San Francisco Opera

Richard Strauss's Elektra is back at San Francisco Opera, in Keith Warner's idiosyncratic, yet fascinating and insightful, production that sets the opera in a museum and explores family trauma. Okay, yes, that's built into the story, but he takes it a few steps further, relating a modern woman's family trauma to what happened in the House of Atreus. Let me note that composer Anne Hege, whose first laptopera, The Furies, is based on the Elektra story, is giving the pre-performance talks; I attended and I was glad that I did.

This Elektra is among my favorite productions ever, and also one of the greatest and most interesting productions I've ever seen. It was first done at the company in 2017; I think that the blocking has changed very little since then, but note that I didn't visit the SF Opera Archive to take a look at video from the first bring-up. I will admit to missing Christine Goerke, a favorite singer, in the title role.

Elektra is a truly cathartic work, and so well done that I was holding back tears at both the final dress rehearsal and the first performance. 

Eun Sun Kim's conducting is utterly masterful from beginning to end. About my one complaint about 2017 was that I felt Henrik Nánási, excellent in everything else, was kind of slack in the first half-hour, only catching fire around Klytemnestra's entrance. Kim is incendiary and the orchestra magnificent from the first downbeat. It is amazing to hear what she can do with an orchestra.

At various times in the last year the thought "Wow, Eun Sun Kim was such a great hire" has run through my head, and this is more evidence that she was the right conductor for SFO. Somehow they found a music director who turns out to be outstanding in the Runnicles lane of gigantic German works. I can't wait for Der Ring des Nibelungen, coming in two years.

• Lisa Hirsch, SFCV / Chronicle
• Joshua Kosman, On a Pacific Aisle.100% agreement with his comments on Christine Goerke.
• Gabe Meline, KQED. He's not wrong about the orchestra's starring role!
• Michael Anthonio, Parterre Box
• Harvey Steiman, Seen & Heard International
• Charlise Tiee, Opera Tattler
• Patrick Vaz, The Reverberate Hills
• Michael Strickland, SF Civic Center

 

Elim Chan Arrives

Elim Chan and Sasha Cooke

Photo: Stefan Cohen, courtesy of San Francisco Symphony

June, 2026

Back in January, 2026, when Elim Chan's June concerts with San Francisco Symphony were announced, I jumped to the conclusion that this meant Chan would be the next music director of the orchestra. I was right, as it turned out, but in an article in the South China Morning Post, Chan herself says that SFS only approached her in February. She is a good source – obviously – so in January and before, maybe they were trying to figure out how and when to approach her and the concerts were to give the conductor an opportunity to appear with the orchestra as music director designate if they reached an agreement with her.

Anyway, I was at the second of the two concerts, on Saturday, June 6. 

The concert was an occasion, and a heartening one after the last two years. Chan received standing ovations at the start and end. She likes to talk to the audience and she's genuinely funny and charming, which MTT was and Salonen wasn't, though he had a wry sense of humor. I think she will connect well with the audience and the city, again, an area where MTT was great and Salonen (a great conductor) wasn't.

 

As a concert, it was all solid and well played, with nothing revelatory about Chan as a conductor or about the music.

 

San Francisco has two first-class orchestras performing across the street from each other, and one plays a lot more Wagner than the other.* The SF Opera Orchestra has his music in their bones and ears a lot more than SFS. So the Prelude & Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde was correct, but not idiomatic, though the last phrase before the pizzicato of death at the end of the Prelude stood out for its gorgeous phrasing. Overall, it had insufficient rubato and portamento and just did not flow the way it would have in the hands of the SFOO. 

(I have fond memories of Salonen's bleeding chunks as a guest conductor during the centennial season, on a program where the real highlight was his violin concerto. I can't recall whether I have 

heard Wagner at SFS since. I had hoped Salonen would do Tristan in concert, but...)

 

I don't have strong opinions about Debussy's La Mer; I haven't studied the score and somehow it doesn't stick when I hear it in concert or on record. I do not have strong opinions about the range of possibilities in the piece. I would have given Mark Inouye a solo bow for knifelike playing in the third movement and was surprised that Chan didn't. Well, she waded right into the orchestra to shake hands and give solo bows, and the trumpet section is pretty far from the podium!

 

Berlioz's song cycle Les Nuits d'été was the concert's highlight for me. Sasha Cooke is so good! She sang absolutely immaculately, though she didn't move me the way she did in Mahler 2 last year. I felt there were points where she could have raised the emotional temperature for greater impact. Chan had the orchestra sounding particularly great in the Berlioz, a composer she adores.

Various people, myself included, noticed that the originally-announced Mendelssohn Overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream had disappeared from the program; in the event, it was to make way for an encore, one of Michael Tilson Thomas's Rilke songs. Cooke sang it beautifully – of course – and it was a lovely connection to the orchestra's past and to the man who did so much to make it what it is today.

Elsewhere:

• Steven Winn, SFCV and SF Chronicle
• Gabe Meline, KQED
• Michael Strickland, SF Civic Center

* Robert Ward, retired principal horn of SFS, told me that he regretted that he hadn't played more opera, "especially Wagner." I can report that Jonathan Ring and Bruce Roberts did play one Ring with SFO, presumably either 2011 or 2018, under Donald Runnicles.

 

Museum Mondays

Annunciation drawing, by Raphael 

Preparatory for Annunciation

Raphael: Sublime Poetry

Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC

April, 2026

(Click to enlarge)

 

Limmie Pulliam

Tenor Limmie Pulliam, who had just turned 50, died on May 19 (gift link to NY Times obituary).

I heard him just once, singing Otello at Livermore Valley Opera about four years ago. He was an exciting, committed singer with a great voice, a real dramatic tenor. Of the several tenors I've seen in that role, he and the late Johan Botha were the best vocally. Pulliam was more involved and interesting than Botha.

Both Pulliam and. Botha were big guys, but their career trajectories were very different. Pulliam was body-shamed by people in the opera world and was basically driven from the field for a number of years. He worked in other professions, then found the heart and encouragement to go back to singing.

I don't think he was hired for a lot of stage performances – he sang at the Met once, clearly as a cover; there was a run of Il Trovatore at LA Opera around 2021 or 2022. From various obituaries and memories I've read, I think he was doing mostly concert work. I'm glad he had that work – he sang at the Dallas Symphony just two days before he died – but he should have had more stage work. I mean...I saw Die Walküre at Bayreuth and Act I was obviously staged so that Johan Botha could sing a chunk of it sitting down, so. (Do I think the fact that Botha was white and Pulliam Black might have something to do with this disparity? You bet.)

There was an enormous outpouring of online love for Pulliam, and everyone remembered him as a wonderful person, kind-hearted and hard working. I'm sorry that I never got to see him again. Deepest condolences to his family and friends and all who loved him.

Friday Photo

Brooklyn, NY

Main Library

April, 2026

An Art Deco beauty from the outside; I wish I'd had time to go inside.

 

Whitney George's The Curious Case of Doctor Jekyll & Mr. Hyde

Composer Whitney George has what she calls a Gothic chamber thriller, The Curious Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, playing in New York City from June 10 - 13. It sounds like a lot of fun, if you like that kind of thing, which I do, and I wish I could go!

It's at the Shiner Theater of the Sheen Center for Thought & Culture; the four performances include a matinee.

Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday performances at 7:30 p.m.

Saturday performance at 1:30 p.m.

Tickets start at $40.

18 Bleecker Street  New York, New York, 10012

Buy tickets

 

Exciting Times at Davies

Davies Symphony Hall, S.F.

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

Exciting, yes, in good and not so good ways. Perhaps most importantly, I interviewed San Francisco Symphony music director designate Elim Chan for SFCV the day the announcement of her appointment went out. Yes, you could say that I'm happy about this! She is an excellent conductor and I think will be a good fit with the orchestra and the city. She was also a lot of fun to talk to. (I never interviewed Michael Tilson Thomas or Esa-Pekka Salonen, her immediate predecessors, which I greatly regret.)

The day after, Cristian Mǎcelaru led the orchestra in an incendiary performance, including Embers, by Tyler Taylor, winner of the Emerging Black Composers Project award, Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 1, with Simon Trpčeski, and Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9, "From the New World." Trpčeski is not only a terrific pianist, he is a classy guy: he dedication one encore to Elim Chan – who was in Loge A with SFS CEO Matthew Spivey – and the other, which included associate concertmaster Wyatt Underhill, to MTT.

I also reviewed conductor laureate Herbert Blomstedt's program, which consisted only of Mahler's Symphony No. 9, and which turned out to be an unfortunate occasion. Blomstedt arrived in S.f. in a sufficiently exhausted state that he spent several days in the hospital, with David Robertson taking over rehearsals. By the day of this concert, he had recovered enough that, it seems, he insisted on leading the last rehearsal and conducting the concert.

It did not go well. He was escorted in a wheelchair to the podium, where several people helped him onto the podium and the piano bench from which he was conducting. During the third movement, he started listing to the right and it appeared he might fall off. The music stopped; the helpers came out; they swapped the bench for an armchair. The music went on, but it was scary for the audience (and I'm sure the musicians) and not entirely clear how in charge of the performance Blomstedt was. 

He withdrew from the remaining two performances, which Robertson conducted, and has subsequently withdrawn from scheduled performances in Sweden, which Alan Gilbert led.

There was a lot of discussion about Blomstedt on Facebook, both before and after the concert, by members of the public and members of the orchestra. This kind of situation – reviewing a concert where a performer is very old, or ill, or merely getting to the end of their career – needs to be handled carefully. If the performer is a Herbert Blomsted, who is nearly 99 years old, or a Michael Tilson Thomas, who performed after surgery for a brain tumor, their performances are occasions, not just concerts, and should be reviewed with that in mind.

I attended most of MTT's post-diagnosis performances, and, well, were they the best performances I heard from him? Mostly not – but it didn't matter, because they were as much about who he was and what he meant to the audience as about the quality of the performances. Similarly with any performances by Herbert Blomstedt, an honored and much-loved past music director of the orchestra.

 

A Tale of Two Opera Houses

War Memorial Opera House

View from the Stage

Photo courtesy of the War Memorial

If you read this blog, you know that my home opera house is San Francisco's War Memorial Opera House. The WMOH opened in 1932 – yes, there's a significant birthday coming up; watch for a nice funding raising campaign* – and seats roughly 3200 people in sections called Orchestra, Box, Grand tier, Dress Circle, Balcony Circle and Balcony.

In the photo above, you can see that the orchestra is fairly deep and there's a significant overhang of the box level over the back of the orchestra. In the level above the boxes, the Grand Tier is in front, then, across an aisle, the Dress Circle rises above it.

Above that, there's the Balcony Circle, and behind it, the Balcony. 

For marketing and sales purposes, each of the levels is subdivided in various ways, to provide different price points depending on the desirability of the seats.

Metropolitan Opera House

View from the Stage

Allegedly Opening Night, 1966

The photo above is New York's Metropolitan Opera House, which opened in 1966. The Met seats 3800 people across six similarly named levels, but each named level gets its own separate physical tier. The Orchestra is extremely deep, with the back of Orchestra level a lot farther from the stage than the back of the WMOH orchestra level is from the stage. 

At the Met, the Parterre level houses the main box level, though, interestingly, every level up to the Balcony has boxes along the sides of the house. So, the Met levels are Parterre, Grand Tier above that, Dress Circle above that, Balcony above that, and waaaaay up there, the Family Circle. I do not have height measurements for the interior of the two houses, but the Met's Family Circle, and probably the Balcony would be above the roof of the WMOH.

Basically, any time you're in one of the tiers, even the $$$$ boxes, you're farther from the stage at the Met than at the WMOH.

I recently took in the Met's productions of Tristan und Isolde and Innocence, sitting in the Family Circle for my first Tristan and the Dress Circle for my second, in the Dress Circle for Innocence. I bought my own tickets, because, without a paid review, it was not clear when I asked for them that I would be able to get press tickets. 

Hoo boy, the sheer size of the house created quite the distance, physical and emotional, from what was happening on stage.

For Innocence, the Met used Simon Stone's production, which was created for the 2021 Aix-en-Provence world premiere, and which has been used by the commissioning opera companies. The Met was a "sponsor" of the production, and I admit, I don't know exactly what that means.

It's the production we saw in San Francisco, the one with the giant rotating set; I attended the dress rehearsal and opening night (I can't recall what I did with my subscription ticket), then watched a performance from backstage and wrote about it for SFCV. 

Everyone sang well, but I was shocked at how little impact the singing actually had. I've seen the Danish bass Stephen Milling several times and he's always been magnificent, pulling off such feats as stealing the show while singing Hagen in Götterdämmerung. But here? It could have been any good bass on stage; there was nothing like the dramatic or vocal impact Milling brings to everything he does. I was far more moved by Kristinn Sigmundsson in SF.

So, this was the last time I'll be up in the tiers at the Met; in the future, no matter the cost (if I can't get press tickets), I'll be in the orchestra somewhere, where I'll be able to actually connect with the music and singers.

More about Tristan, eventually.