Museum Mondays

St. Bartholomew Altarpiece detail

Master of the St. Bartholomew Altarpiece

Alte Pinakothek, Munich

July, 2026

 

Received from San Francisco Opera

Postcard, c. 1930s, of the War Memorial Opera House and Veterans Building, SF

From my personal collection

A statement from the San Francisco Opera:

August 27, 2026

San Francisco Opera is in negotiations with our Orchestra for a successor collective bargaining agreement. The agreement expired on July 31, 2026. We have incredible respect for the Musicians of the San Francisco Opera Orchestra and deeply value the talents they bring to the Company and the community. We share the Orchestra’s desire to reach a mutually agreeable resolution as soon as possible. A mediator was welcomed into the process last week, and we are actively working together with the Orchestra to reach a resolution.

As with many arts organizations, San Francisco Opera faces a difficult economic situation, and we appreciate that this is making for a challenging labor negotiation. While the Opera is seeing incredibly positive trends in audience and donor growth, the fundamental economics underlying the organization have been straining for over 60 years as expense growth has, over decades, outpaced revenue growth. This has led to the gradual reduction of our seasons and volume of work, a reality faced by many arts organizations.

Even with very positive revenue trends, the growing economic strain has put an unsustainable drain on the Opera’s endowment to balance the budget, and a need to resolve a structural deficit of $15M each year. Even with well-sold houses and increasing subscriptions, ticket sales only cover 15% of the Company’s budget, leading to an ever-increasing reliance on the Company’s extraordinarily generous donors and an imperative to maintain, not erode, the Company’s endowment. The income from our endowment is a critical source of our revenue, now larger than ticket sales.

The current structure of the Orchestra’s contract was designed for a volume of work that has not been economically feasible for many years. As we have already been doing with all of our employees, artists and labor organizations, we must find a way through this with the Orchestra to find a contract that respects their extraordinary talents and better aligns with the economic realities of the Company.

The Opera has shared a possible five-year framework with the Orchestra that would realize gradual changes to the structure of the Orchestra’s compensation while keeping their earnings constant to current levels each year over the coming five years. We look forward to exploring this and other options with the Orchestra and continuing our negotiations together as we work towards a mutually agreeable new contract.

One could have some...questions...about this. 

Let's take "straining for 60 years," which gets us back to 1966. Using the handy SFO performance archive, I found that in 1966, between Spring Opera and the fall season, the company staged (gasp) nineteen (19) operas. HOWEVER. Six of those were in the Spring Opera season, which ran from May 24 to June 28. Each of the productions – which included Mignon and Turn of the Screw – got two (2) performances.

The fall season ran from September 20 to November 27 and brought and additional 13 operas, which mostly received 3 or 4 performances, totaling 55 in all. Butterfly got 5, because, well, it's Butterfly and it sells. I Puritani got 6, and I'm willing to bet that the presence of Joan Sutherland in the cast was the reason, also Alfred Kraus and Nicolai Ghiarov, who were no slouches themselves.

Let me note that the fall season included Don Carlo, Elektra, Le Nozze de Figaro, Boris Godunov, Falstaff, Tannhäuser, Vec Makropulos, and, in a good-parts version designed to show off the great Regine Crespin, Les Troyens.

I ask you to imagine the quality of these performances. Thirteen operas in the fall, 1966, season, many of them very complex to stage, wedged into two months of performance. Seriously, comparing this to, say, a 10- or 12-opera, 75-performance season is not really right. More recent SFO seasons have more rehearsal time and each opera gets more performances; the orchestra has fewer scores to get through, etc.

We also should take a look at ticket prices and the ratio of ticket sales to donations. I can guess that prices were lower and that ticket sales brought in a much higher percentage of total income than current ticket sales do. I have no idea of whether the Opera Orchestra was permanent and salaried, or whether freelance musicians were hired. Again: look at what you're getting for your money.

Friday Photo

Free air for your bicycle

Le Marais, Paris, France

July, 2026

 

Contract Negotiations

Postcard of the War Memorial Opera House and Veterans Building, SF

From my personal collection

Some of you will remember that San Francisco Opera's 2024 opening night performance of Un ballo in maschera was delayed by maybe half an hour. My assumption at the time was that, well, people were inebriated and just taking their time settling down.

We learned within a few days that the SF Opera Orchestra refused to go on until they got some labor concessions from management. There were various negotiations and eventually management and the orchestra signed a contract covering the period from August 1, 2024 to July 31, 2026.

Well....negotiations started in May and they have not been going well. Today, the Opera Orchestra announced that they would on strike as of opening night, September 12, unless there's a contract in place by then.

Here's email sent earlier today by the orchestra:

Dear Friends,

We are writing to let you know that the musicians of the San Francisco Opera Orchestra will not be able to perform on Opening Night, September 12, unless management has reached a fair contract with us before then. We are letting you know this weeks in advance rather than having you be surprised at the door.

Our contract expired on July 31, and the season is about to open without a new one. We came into these negotiations months ago, expecting to build on the modest agreement we reached two years ago. Management instead proposed a 26% pay cut, which would have returned us to 2015 wages. They have since "improved" that offer to a 20% cut, which would put us back at our 2018 pay. We cannot begin a season under proposals like these.

The San Francisco Opera is not a company in trouble. By management's own account, and by the financial information they have shared with us:

● Six productions have sold out in the past three years.

● Ticket sales and subscriptions are rising. Donations have increased by $8 million compared to last year, exceeding the Opera’s stated goals by $2.2 million.

● The Opera has recently received several high-profile gifts, and the number of “Producers Circle” donors–those who contribute over $100,000 per year–has more than doubled since the pandemic.

And yet despite the recent momentum, our seasons continue to shrink—we are now down to only six productions this year, compared to twelve productions in 2008. Every round of programming cuts has been presented as the cure for the organization’s deficit. But what their own financial reports have shown is that the diminished schedule has only exacerbated the issue.

Fewer performances mean less ticket revenue and fewer production sponsorships, while the fixed costs of mounting an opera remain the same. Twice in the past two decades, the deficit was larger after the cuts than before them. And while management claims that production costs are only going to continue to increase, they refuse to explore less expensive offerings such as semi-staged productions or concert operas.

We are not walking away from the table, and we want two things. First, a contract that gives the musicians of this orchestra stability and pay that keeps pace with the cost of living in this city. Second, a working partnership with management to reverse the pattern of cuts: more performances, longer runs of the productions that sell out, and a plan to grow the company's audience and offerings rather than further reduce its ambitions.

This is not a decision we take lightly and we hope that it can be avoided by management agreeing to a fair contract. There is nowhere we would rather be on September 12 than in the pit. We ask for your support so that we can make that happen.

If you want to help, write to San Francisco Opera at PatronServices@sfopera.com, tell them what opening night is worth to you, and ask them to settle this before the curtain.

Sincerely,

The Musicians of the San Francisco Opera Orchestra

Here are some older background articles, by Janos Gereben and myself:

• SF Opera Orchestra Reaches Contract Agreement Through End of This Season, November, 2024, SFCV, by Janos
• S.F. Artists Keep Up the Fight for Better Labor Contracts, December 2024, SFCV, by Janos
• SF Opera Orchestra Signs New Labor Contract, July, 2025, SFCV, by Janos
• SFO Season Announcement, February, 2026, SF Chronicle, by Lisa

A few thoughts -

I've heard Matthew Shilvock discussing the current financial situation a couple of times in talks to donors and I've also chatted with him about it. SFO is unquestionably in a pretty good financial situation: the endowment is in good shape and they're not having to dip into it; as the musicians say, subscriptions and major donations are up; the audience is expanding.

It is also true that costs are going up. You can tell this from looking at the various financial documents that SFO is required to production. There are the 990 federal tax forms filed by all nonprofit organizations and the audited financial statements that they also produce. 

For many years, you could take the number of performances at the Opera and the budget for the year and what you'd find was that it cost, in aggregate, about $1 million per performance to put on opera at the international level. As of the 990 filed last year, though, costs were roughly $90 to $93 million to put on around 45 performances and several one-off concerts, meaning costs were up to about $2 million per performance.

We are all aware of the amount of inflation we have seen in this country, with food, fuel, and many other costs going up. For opera companies, costs like getting costumes made and sets built have gone up, because of both labor and material costs. I have heard this from SFO and from another opera company I talk with.

It is absolutely true that the cost of living in the Bay Area has gone up a lot, in the cost of staples like food, cars, and so on, but also in the absolutely wild cost of buying or renting your home. 

Fewer performances means the musicians are providing fewer services (the length of time that rehearsals and performances are measured in, bearing in mind that opera performances can run up to five or six hours) than when they were playing 75 performances per season. I have absolutely no idea what you have to do to raise their pay for playing fewer rehearsals and performances and no idea what I think is fair. I assume that management's thinking along these lines is behind the attempt to cut the musicians' pay, which I find extremely distasteful. (See the example set by a famous union member who made sure to have union contracts in place and pay a fair wage throughout her long career. That would be the late Dolly Parton.)

 

Apply to Luna Composition Labs

Luna Composition Lab T-shirt

The letters LUNA within thumbnail, half, 3/4, and full moons

Not credited on their web site but I will try to find out who designed this.

Might be by Square Candy Design

The application period for Luna Composition Lab for the 2026-27 Fellowships and Adventures in Sound classes opened about ten days ago and closes on September 15.

If you know any budding musicians, ages 13-18, who are female, nonbinary, or gender nonconforming, they're eligible to apply to either of the programs.

• The Fellowships provide eight months of one-on-one mentoring with a female, nonbinary, or gender nonconforming composer; the chance to create an original worked that is workshopped, premiered, and recording by professional musicians; many professional opportunities, including networking with current and past fellows and a weeklong festival in NYC at the end of the fellowship year. The Fellowship is free.
• Adventures in Sound is a ten-week online group composition class for female, nonbinary, or gender nonconforming musicians, ages 13-18, using a wonderful curriculum developed by composer Whitney George. Adventures in Sound costs $240; there are scholarships available for those who can demonstrate financial need.

I wrote about Luna Lab and its founders, composers Ellen Reid and Missy Mazzoli, for the NY Times this past spring. It's a wonderful project, and I have such respect and admiration for Ellen and Missy and the work they've done and are doing.

Please spread the word about Luna Lab to any and all young composers and musicians that you know who are female, nonbinary, or gender nonconforming!

News from the BSO

Boston Symphony Hall

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

April, 2025

This dropped into my in-box a few hours ago:

A Joint Statement from the BSO and Our Musicians:

The Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Boston Musicians’ Association, and the Musicians of the Boston Symphony Orchestra Reach New Collective Bargaining Agreement and Release the Following Joint Statement:

"Today, the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) musicians, the Boston Musicians’ Association, the BSO trustees and management approved a new collective bargaining agreement effective through August 26, 2029. 

This agreement marks an important step toward a more collaborative future for the BSO. It creates a precedent-setting partnership between musicians and management in artistic planning and centers excellence across all the work we do on our stages and in our communities. It also establishes a truly collaborative process in the search for our next music director. 

We are one institution of musicians, staff, and boards, committed to working together in partnership to advance our artistic mission, inspire audiences, and serve Boston, the Berkshires, and beyond. We want to thank our audiences, donors, and partners for your continued support of the BSO."

For more details, read the complete press release here.

Note that the press release has quotations from Chad Smith, President and CEO, and Barbara Hostetter, Chair of the BSO Board of Trustees, but nothing from the players' committee. I would have liked to see something from them.

Recitative and Aria

In his review of West Edge Opera's production of American Apollo, Joshua Kosman wrote this, right at the top:

Open the score of a standard operatic work — literally any piece by Mozart, Verdi, Wagner, or Britten — and you’ll encounter something increasingly rare on the contemporary stage: fast music. Those old-timers understood, in a way that too many living composers don’t, the virtue of having some parts of a score that move. Fast music provides a sense of excitement; it reinforces the rhythmic elements of both the score and the libretto; it provides contrast with slower passages to create a tapestry of varied tempos. It also militates against the jagged, talky text-setting that dominates too much contemporary opera, because those disjunct melodies and shapeless vocal lines are practically impossible to sing at speed.

I agree 100%; this is a problem in too much contemporary opera. But I want to take what he says a step or two further.

One issue is that librettists aren't providing obvious arias – you know, a character singing about what they're feeling, or singing to another character – and duets, and ensembles to their composers. And...composers aren't demanding those things. 

I don't know if there's a fundamental misunderstanding of how opera works, or if everyone is so intent on being collaborative that composers (and librettists) just aren't saying "Look, we need something different here," or what. Composers like Puccini, Verdi, and Mozart understood drama and pacing and didn't hesitate to ask their librettists for something different. These composers left behind correspondence about these things. 

But there's something else that English-language contemporary opera does not have that Mozart and Verdi (and Handel!) had – recitative. You know, that pitched speech that comes between arias? In Mozart, it's usually accompanied by a harpsichord or fortepiano (though sometimes orchestra), in Verdi, the orchestra. 

Here are Rachel Willis-Sørensen and Pavol Breslik in Don Giovanni, in the discussion leading up to Donna Anna's aria "Or sai chi l'onore."

Here's Javier Camarena singing the opening of Act 2 of Verdi's La Traviata. Everything up to the aria "De' miei bollenti spiriti" is Verdian recitative. After the aria (cavatina, I guess, and the orchestra is not sufficiently audible), he sings the cabaletta, "O mio rimorso."

Living composers and librettists need to figure out not just how to have slow and fast numbers in their operas, but how to set conversational material in a way that is different from their arias, duets, and larger ensembles. There's no common language for that the way there was from early opera into the Romantic era, so it's largely up to everyone to figure it out for themselves.

Update, 8/25/26: And of course, there's an alternative to recitative: spoken dialogue. This is the solution used in German Singspiel, like The Magic Flute, and French opéra-comique, like Carmen. (Yeah, you hear sung recitative that Bizet didn't write in too many Carmen productions, sigh.)

Museum Mondays

Peter Paul Rubens and Jan Breughel

"Madonna in a Garland of Flowers," 1616/1618, detail

Alte Pinakothek, Munich

July, 2026

 

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)