Major Openings

Walt Disney Concert Hall

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

I'm months overdue on a big music director update, but last week's bombshell at the Boston Symphony reminded me that four of the big-budget U.S. orchestras now have music director openings:

• Boston Symphony, where there has been drama.
• Cleveland Orchestra, where there has not been drama. The orchestra announced in January, 2024, that Franz Welser-Möst would leave at the end of the 2026-27 season. Three years' notice, similar to MTT's three at SFS.
• SFS, where there has been drama, with Esa-Pekka Salonen deciding to part ways over differences with the board.
• LA Philharmonic, where there has not been drama. Gustavo Dudamel decided to move to the NY Philharmonic in February, 2023, and commences the new position with the 2026-27 season. Well, the return of Esa-Pekka Salonen in a non-music director position could be considered dramatic and could cause some conductors to rule out the appointment, because being music director when one of the best conductors in the world – who is also one of the best composers in the world – is in the office next door could be discouraging.

San Francisco Opera 2027-28

Postcard of the War Memorial Opera House in the 1930s or 1940s

Personal collection of Lisa Hirsch

Matthew Shilvock mentioned to me when I spoke with him last month that with the announcement of the 2026-27 season and the 2028 Ring at SF Opera, we know what the 2027-28 season looks like....mostly.

Fall, 2027:

• Die Walküre, Wagner; part of the Ring bring-up
• The Galloping Cure, Missy Mazzonli; SFO co-commission and U.S. premiere
• ???
• ???

Spring/Summer, 2028:

• Siegfried, Wagner, single performance as part of the Ring bring-up
• Götterdämmerung, Wagner, single performance as part of the Ring bring-up
• Der Ring des Nibelungen, Wagner, three performances of the four operas

So, there are two open slots in the fall season. Possible composers for those slots include Verdi, Janacek, Mozart, and Rossini. With fairly recent Tosca, Bohème, and Butterfly performances, I wouldn't expect Puccini. Given the weighty topics of the Ring operas and The Galloping Cure, which is about addiction, I hope that there will be a comedy. Or maybe something heavy that the company hasn't done in a long time: Lulu or Wozzeck? Pélleas et Mélisande? William Tell? Satyagraha? 

Or maybe composers they rarely or never do: something by Auber or Meyerbeer? Birtwistle? Ades or Benjamin? Something Russian? Nicolai's Merry Wives of Windsor? Offenbach that isn't Tales of Hoffman? Nielsen's Maskerade? 

 

I (Sort of) Called This One

Symphony Hall, Boston

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

April, 2025

Me to a friend, January, 2026:

I will say that when Chad Smith got that job [CEO of the Boston Symphony] and Salonen decided to leave SFS, I wondered whether Smith would try to recruit Salonen for the BSO. If he did, it didn't work, but I did notice that Nelsons is now on an annually-renewable contract. Smith can cut him loose any time he has someone in mind as a replacement.

And to a different friend in July, 2024:

I have been wondering whether Boston would make a play for Salonen. They can say good-bye to Nelsons easily, and Smith presumably has a good relationship with Salonen.

Earlier today, in the NY Times (gift link):

Boston Symphony Abruptly Ends Its Music Director’s Contract

The orchestra’s leadership announced on Friday that it and the conductor Andris Nelsons “were not aligned on future vision.”

The Boston Symphony Orchestra abruptly dismissed its music director, Andris Nelsons, on Friday, in a harsh public split between one of the nation’s leading orchestras and the man who has led it for 12 years. The orchestra said that it and Nelsons were “not aligned on future vision.”

His tenure with the Boston Symphony will end in summer 2027, at the end of its Tanglewood season. The announcement — in tone and timing — was startling in a world in which such personnel shifts are typically done delicately and over the course of a few years.

“The decision to not renew his contract was made by the B.S.O.’s board of trustees because, beyond our shared desire to ensure our orchestra continues to perform at the highest levels, the B.S.O. and Andris Nelsons were not aligned on future vision,” the board and Chad Smith, the orchestra’s president and chief executive, said in a letter to patrons. A similar note was sent to members of the orchestra.

"Not aligned on a future vision," hmm, where have I heard this before? Oh, right, Esa-Pekka Salonen about the relationship between him and the SFS Board of Directors.

We won't know for a while whether Smith has someone in mind. It's not likely to be Salonen, although, hmm, Salonen was just appointed to a position at Tanglewood, as director of the Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music in 2026."

Okay, even Salonen can't manage positions at three orchestras at once, so probably someone else will get the BSO job. 

Related:

• The Boston Musical Intelligencer reports on the story and includes Nelsons' letter to the BSO musicians.

Livermore Valley Opera's Così fan tutte

Samuel Kidd (Guglielmo), Courtney Miller (Despina), Megan Potter (Dorabella), Meryl Dominguez (Fiordiligi), Eugene Brancoveanu (Don Alfonso, on floor), Sid Chand (Ferrando)

Photo: Barbara Mallon, courtesy of Livermore Valley Opera

A mixed-bag of a Così fan tutte at Livermore Valley Opera, with lots of laughs but somehow missing on the more serious and heartbreaking emotions in the work.

• Lisa Hirsch, Parterre Box
• Charlise Tiee, Opera Tattler

Previously, the Opera San José Così:

• Lisa Hirsch, SFCV

Back in 2025....

I published some articles last year that I never wrote about on the blog. It's never too late!

• Three Opera Singers on How They Built Their Careers, SFCV, May, 2025. If you've been attending the opera in the Bay Area for any length of time, you know Alex Boyer, Chung-Wai Soong, and Leandra Ramm, even if you're not sure you do. They've all sung roles of varying sizes with local companies; Soong and Ramm are both active in pro choruses here, including working as extra chorus at SF Opera. Boyer went on a couple of times last year as Brandon Jovanovich's cover at the Met in Jake Heggie's Moby-Dick. 
• Walking with Sister Helen, Opera Now, October, 2025. I spoke with Susan Graham, Joyce Di Donato, Jamie Barton, and Patricia Racette, who've all sung Sister Helen Prejean in Jake Heggie's Dead Man Walking, and with Frederica von Stade, who created Mrs. Patrick De Rocher, the mother of the condemned man. It was a great honor to speak with these magnificent singers, all of whom I've admired over a long period.
• Second Acts: Musicians Leaving the Spotlight to Find Something New, SFCV, October, 2025. An article about three classical musicians who are no longer performing, for different reasons. Nicole Cash, former associate principal horn the San Francisco Symphony, became an audiobook narrator after focal dystonia meant she couldn't continue as a horn player. Tenor David Lomelí became a consultant to opera companies around the world after digestive issues affected his singing. Elizabeth Rowe, former principal flute of the Boston Symphony and a magnificent player, became a leadership and executive coach (the circumstances are too complicated to describe briefly). 

Musicians leave classical music at different times in their careers and for a wide variety of reasons. It is a very tough and competitive business and it is difficult to get a career going in such a competitive field. If you're curious about this subject, web search will turn up podcasts, personal testimonies, and articles about individuals musicians. Elizabeth Rowe's case is unusual in that she had the kind of position you can stay in for decades (the legendary Doriot Anthony Dwyer held the BSO principal flute chair for 38 years), but various circumstances led her to a career change.

Better Late Than Never

Mozart Requiem

Manfred Honeck, cond.

Photo: Kristen Loken, courtesy of San Francisco Symphony

A couple of years ago, I saw Manfred Honeck, music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony, guest conduct at San Francisco Symphony. I am surprised to see that I never posted about it, because it was Not Good. Joshua Kosman reviewed the concert (gift link) and was not happy; as the headline says, Honeck was a speed demon and the speed served the music poorly.

When the 2025-26 SFS season was announced, I was skeptical about Honeck's program, a re-envisioning of Mozart's Requiem, a problem child of a work if ever there was one. Mozart died before finishing it; his friend and student Franz Xaver Süssmayr completed it and, well, to say the least he was no Mozart.

I sang the Requiem long ago and didn't particularly like it then; recordings I've heard along the way mostly didn't work for me. Too many conductors go at it like it's the Brahms, written in the 1860s, and no, that's not appropriate. I liked Christopher Hogwood's period instrument recording, which sounds like Mozart, but I haven't heard it in 20 years.

I probably would have gone to the final dress rehearsal of Honeck's program if I hadn't had a conflicting appointment, and wasn't really planning to go (demand pricing in action and I was not comfortable asking for a press ticket), but then a friend said it had been phenomenal, and, well, okay, a chance to hear the wonderful Ying Fang and Sasha Cooke, okay.

Well, it turns out that I will have to rethink both Manfred Honeck and the Mozart Requiem.

The Requiem wasn't the only thing on the program; the first half of the program was Beethoven's Coriolan Overture and Haydn's Symphony No. 93 in D major. The Beethoven got a sharp and appropriately dramatic reading in which I was particularly impressed by the energy of the conducting and how Honeck and the orchestra controlled the dynamics within each phrase. By energy, I do not mean speed. Honeck's tempo was just right, neither too fast nor too slow, but underlying every note was tremendous momentum and energy.

The same was true in the Haydn, which has a character quite different from the Beethoven. The cheery first movement was a lively delight. Kudos to the quartet of string players in the opening of the slow movement. (They included concertmaster Alexander Barantschik and principal viola Jonathan Vinocour; I couldn't quite see who was in the cello first seat. I think Chen Zhao was playing principal second violin.) I laughed out loud at the musical joke late in the movement, which was beautifully timed.

Honeck took a broad tempo for the minuet and it worked fabulously well in this bumptious music; the trio was appropriately more sober and delicate. The last movement bustled along nicely.

On to the Requiem.

During intermission, audience members were able to get an electric (I think) candle and place it on the edge of the stage in front of the orchestra, in memory of those no longer with us. The candles remained there until after the concert was over and created a beautiful look and mood for the Mozart.

Honeck contributed a program note, in which he says that we can't know how Mozart would have finished the Requiem, so "I have chosen to perform only the parts that he composed himself." A wise decision and I admire his integrity in making this choice. 

Honeck's conception of the Requiem places the work in the context of "elements that reflect Mozart's time and personal thoughts on death," creating a funeral liturgy around the Requiem. The performance included plainchant (sung by the St. Dominic’s Schola Cantorum), readings from the Book of Revelation, two poems by Nelly Sachs, an excerpt from a letter the composer wrote to his father, the "Masonic Funeral Music," K. 477, the "Laudate Dominum" from the Vespers, K. 399, and the motet "Ave Verum Corpus."

The performance opened and closed with three bell strokes, played by principal timpani Edward Stephan – the only time I've seen him play anything other than timpani. They were a solemn introduction and solemn close to a performance of gravity and majesty.

Honeck led the program with all the virtues of the first half – judicious tempos, crisp phrasing, superb dynamic control – and added a real sense of drama and style. The structure created some of the drama, and Honeck conducted with operatic grandeur and pacing.

Did I mention disliking Brahmsian performances of the Requiem? This performance looked back to the Baroque, emphasizing the counterpoint and antique elements of the work. Honeck used a reduced orchestra throughout the program; the players had more than enough power for the work. Even with the big chorus, the balances were excellent. The Symphony Chorus was a marvel throughout, wonderfully responsive and singing with a most beautiful sound.

Honeck gave special weight to the "Masonic Funeral Music" and the Confutatis of the Requiem.  I loved Adrian Roberts's eloquent readings. Soprano Ying Fang was glorious in the "Laudate Dominum" from the Vespers and so was bass Stephano Park in the "Tuba mirum" of the Requiem. Mezzo Sasha Cooke was, as always, a warmly beautiful presence. Tenor David Portillo was much as he was at Santa Fe Opera in 2024.

All in all, it was a a magnificent performance of a great work. 

These performances were dedicated to the memory Joshua Robison, Michael Tilson Thomas's husband and creative partner, who died earlier this week. Principal oboe Eugene Izotov read a moving personal memory of Robison and his place in the lives of MTT and SFS.

Elsewhere:

• Rebecca Wishnia, SF Chronicle and SFCV
• Joshua Kosman, On a Pacific Aisle (link to follow)
• DB at Kalimac's Corner

A note after reading Rebecca Wishnia and DB's reviews: I had no problems hearing the soloists from Upper Orchestra S-19. Their sound reflected off the wall at the back of the orchestra seating.

Canto Ostinato at Cal Performances

Canto Ostinato

Sandbox Percussion and AMOC* members Matthew Aucoin and Conor Hanick

Lincoln Center, NYC

June 25, 2025

Photo: Lawrence Sumulong, courtesy of Cal Performances

A great work and a glorious performance: Simeon ten Holt's Canto Ostinato at Cal Performances. Billed as a production of Sandbox Percussion and AMOC* (American Modern Opera Company), it was the four Sandbox percussionists, Matthew Aucoin, and Conor Hanick. They were magnificent.

If you want to hear this work, there are performances on YouTube with various instrumental combos. On April 3, there will be an LP release of the work that includes Sandbox Percussion. This might persuade me to finally set up my turntable.

• Lisa Hirsch, SFCV and SF Chronicle
• Joshua Kosman, On a Pacific Aisle. He's got more analysis of what's going on technically in Canto Ostinato. I meant to say something about how very Spanish the work sounded at various points, but, well, intentions.

Sandbox Percussion

Photo: Tom Emerson, courtesy of Cal Performances

(This photo is from a performance of Andy Akiho's Seven Pillars, which Sandbox performed last year at PIVOT.)

Cav 'n Pag, Opera San José

Maria Natale (Santuzza), Delaney Ewert, and Jacob Hohn as villagers

Cavalleria Rusticana, Opera San José

Photo: David Allen, courtesy of Opera San José

Three enthusiastic reviews of Opera San José's verismo double bill:

• Lisa Hirsch, SFCV
• Joshua Kosman, On a Pacific Aisle
• Eddie Reynolds, Theater Eddys

I'm the only one of the three who commented on how loud Cavalleria was, and so I am wondering whether it was an artifact of the set. There isn't a photo showing the entire stage and set, which was much more built out on the audience left stage, so it would have reflected the sound more. I was audience right, Joshua Kosman was audience left. But the orchestra – which was very loud – would not have been affected by that to the extend that the singers were.

The last time I saw this double bill was before the pandemic at San Francisco Opera, and my conclusion at the time was much like Joshua Kosman's: Cav is trash, Pag is a masterpiece. Curiously, I liked Cav better this time around than the last, though Pag is a much better work.

Happy birthday to Alma Deutscher, who turned 21 yesterday and thus shares a birthday with the great Hungarian composer György Kurtág, who turned 100.

Friday Photo

Snacks

Tokyo Fish Market, Berkeley

January, 2026

 

Museum Mondays

Square in a Square

Pieced by Kitty Gladys Jones

Quilted by Atleaver Jones

Routed West, BAMPFA 

Berkeley, CA

November, 2025

Click to enlarge

 

Davóne Tines and Ruckus: "What is Your Hand in This?"

Davóne Tines, Ruckus, Members of the Ruth Asawa School of the Arts Concert Choir

Photo by Michael Strickland

This recital was scheduled opposite Joyce DiDonato in Kevin Puts's new song cycle to poems of Emily Dickinson. One throws up one's hands at having had to make such a choice. I probably should have gone to JDD, whom I interviewed last fall for an article about portraying Sister Helen Prejean in Jake Heggie's Dead Man Walking, but this was a wonderful concert.

• Michael Zwiebach, SFCV
• Lisa Hirsch, Parterre Box
• Michael Strickland, SF Civic Center
• Patrick Vaz, The Reverberate Hills

Bicket, Schultz, and Mozart at San Francisco Symphony

Golda Schultz and Harry Bicket

Photo by Michael Strickland

Used with permission

I'm sorry that I didn't take a curtain call photo or to at Davies last Thursday, when I saw Harry Bicket's all-Mozart program at San Francisco Symphony, featuring two symphonies, a serenade, and soprano Golda Schultz in Mozart arias. SFS evidently didn't have a photographer in house for the concert, hence, Davies rather than a concert photo. (BUT my friend Michael Strickland to the rescue! And I've added him to the round-up below. Thank you so much!)

It wouldn't have been appropriate in my Chronicle / SFCV review to say that I've now seen Bicket in concert with SFS and conducting two full Mozart operas with Santa Fe Opera, his home theater in the United States. I think that he is a good, not great, Mozart conductor; solid, with good instincts, but without bringing out that last bit of rhythmic brilliance that mades Mozart performances great. 

(The best Mozart opera conducting I've heard? Cornelius Meister in the last SFO Abduction, Donald Runnicles in the McVicar Don Giovanni, and Henrik Nanasi in the most recent Così. The worst? Nicola Luisotti in the 2013 Così, which had the additional problem of being poorly cast, with a voiceless Don Alfonso and miscast Ellie Dehn, who was excellent in other appearances.)

I've also seen Bicket lead Orfeo (outstanding), Pélleas (eh), Alcina, and Radamisto, all at Santa Fe. No strong impressions remain of his conducting in the two Handel operas.

• Lisa Hirsch, S.F. Chronicle / SFCV
• Joshua Kosman, On a Pacific Aisle (link to follow)
• Harvey Steinman, Seen and Heard International
• Matthew Travisano, Parterre Box
• Michael Strickland, SF Civic Center

 

Suzannah Lessard

The Architect of Desire: Beauty and Danger in the Stanford White Family

by Suzannah Lessard

Book cover

I don't have a personal photo of the distinguished author Suzannah Lessard, who died on January 29, and the photos of her on the web are very likely copyrighted, so I am going for the cover of one of her books as the header.

I didn't know Lessard, though I am reasonably sure I was aware of the existence of The Architect of Desire; probably I read a review of it in the NY Times when it was published in the 1990s. But reading the Times obituary (gift link) for her, I was rather unnerved. Here's what got me, all quotations from the obit:

Ms. Lessard, her five sisters and their parents lived in a 19th-century farmhouse known as the Red Cottage. It had sloping floors, patched plaster walls and a fraught atmosphere, largely created by her father, who required quiet for his work as a composer, as well as other, more brutal concessions from his daughters. 

...

Ms. Lessard’s memoir was decades in the making. It was the book she could not write, and yet felt compelled to write, and the writer’s block she suffered often compromised her other work; for much of the time she was struggling with it, she was a staff writer at The New Yorker.

...

 Ms. Lessard had never previously spoken about how her father had visited her in her bedroom when she was a child. Yet on New Year’s Day in 1989, one of her sisters called a meeting of the siblings and, one by one, each sister confided that she, too, had experienced sexual encounters with their father.

Over the years, each had tried to convince herself that the encounters weren’t abuse — that their childhoods had been safe and that their father’s behavior was somehow normal. Their memories, finally voiced, gave Ms. Lessard “a sense of something like the sound barrier breaking,” she wrote, “a psychic reverberation.”

She added: “With it, the world cracked open, and inside was the world.” 

...

 After the sisters’ revelations, the family entered therapy, but their father claimed not to remember the encounters they described. (The Lessards had divorced decades earlier.) Ms. Lessard said that exposing her father in her book was not an act of revenge but of survival.

Right. He could not remember sexually abusing his six daughters over goodness knows how many years.

When I looked him up, I realized I was slightly acquainted with her father. Suzannah Lessard's composer father John Lessard was on the faculty of SUNY/Stony Brook when I was a student there from 1980 to 1982. Once I knew that, I had no trouble conjuring up an accurate picture of him.

He was by then married to his second wife, Sarah Fuller, a musicologist who was also on the faculty. He was retired from the faculty by the time The Architect of Desire was published, and died seven years later, but you bet I am now wondering about whether and what kind of discussions he might have had about the book and his past with Prof. Fuller, and how she reacted to what he said. They remained married until his death in 2003.

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.