WTF Just Happened Today....at San Francisco Opera?

War Memorial Opera House

Photo by me

UPDATED: 10:50 PM 2/16/20 owing to oops, my error

If you're following the various news streams coming out of San Francisco Opera, you might be forgiven for being the tiniest bit puzzled and, if you're a subscriber, even a little bit pissed off.

Today, the company announced the return of live opera, with a good deal of fanfare. Later in the day, there was a Town Hall with a very enthused Matthew Shilvock and guests including director Matthew Ozawa.

As a subscriber and a member of the press, I received both the press release and a glossy email telling me the details. Briefly:

• There will be eleven (11) drive-in performances of a 90-minute, one-act version of The Barber of Seville. It will be performed on the set that the company has built for the upcoming Fidelio (!) and it will be done as a backstage comedy - in other words, Barber meets Noises Off. I have to say, a good-parts version of Barber is a lot more personally appealing than the full-length version, although, uh, not at these prices: $250/car if you're on site at the Marin Civic Center, where you can, I guess, hear the singers on your radio. Alternatively, you can pay $50/car to view a simulcast at another location....or you can pay $25 to watch the video in the comfort of your home at a later date. Lastly, those 11 performances take place from April 23 to May 15, 2021. Matthew Ozawa directs, Roderick Cox conducts, a good cast all composed of former Adler Fellows.
• The Adlers: Live at the Drive-in. There will be three presentations of this concert, on April 29, May 6, and May 14. Again, Marin Civic Center is involved.
• There will be some concerts presented digitally (that is, streaming on the web site).
• Ring Festival: the Company will stream the 2018 presentation of the Zambello Ring on consecutive weekends - good scheduling, there - and also present a large number of interesting-looking panel discussions, webinars, etc. with all sorts of people.

I'll get to what I am personally pissed off about, but first, here's the real news that isn't in the press release or email to patrons:

The planned spring season of Barber, Der Zwerg, and the Verdi-Wagner concerts with Lianna Haroutounian and Iréne Theorin has quietly disappeared from the SFO web site. The season had been announced as taking place from April 25 to May 15, 2021.

It seems reasonable to guess that everything announced today is in lieu of the planned season. It has has been not yet been announced as canceled (and I did check for such a press release before posting this), but c'mon, the drive-in Barber effectively precludes the opera-house Barber. And tickets were still on sale for the spring season during the fall of 2020.

Update starts:

My apologies to SFO and the communications department; I am leaving the above to show what I was wrong about. Sometimes I need to read my own blog, because in December, SFO announced, and I reported, the following:

Due to the ongoing pandemic, San Francisco Opera is re-envisioning our upcoming 2021 schedule. The originally announced 2021 Spring Season running April 25–May 16 at the War Memorial Opera House—Rossini’s The Barber of Seville (Il Barbiere di Siviglia), Zemlinsky’s Der Zwerg, and concerts featuring sopranos Lianna Haroutounian and Iréne Theorin—will not take place as planned.

I remember that there would be an update, but not the announcement that the season would not take place as planned. 

Update ends.

I'm going to note that I made a specific inquiry to SFO's communications department about the concerts, which are the kind of thing that could be done as livestreams, even if Theorin and Haroutounian are accompanied by pianos in different countries. This was around 4:30 p.m. and I haven't received a reply. If I'm wrong about the effective season cancellation - and who knows? Maybe I am! - I'll be issuing an update and an apology. [See the above, though I wish that a single communication today had included "....as we announced in December, the spring season will not go forward as planned.." but this is totally my bad.]

Here's what I'm, uh, pissed about: there's really not much in the announcement for current subscribers. By this I mean the people who subscribed to 2020-21, made a donation when they subscribed in the spring of 2020, and donated their tickets back to the opera as the summer 2020 and fall 2021 seasons vanished into the maw of the pandemic. My partner and I would be among these people. 

Subscribers typically get order priority over non-subscribers, and in fact we're getting maybe 10 days of priority in order Barber tickets. We also get a discount over single-ticket buyers, at least those who haven't found a discount somewhere. We are getting a $30 discount, from $99 to $69, for a full set of the Ring Festival events.

I think this is an unfortunate failure to materially recognize people who've given the company their unfailing support during this difficult period, so I'm hoping that the company will figure out something to do with pricing to thank us. I mean, absent official cancellation of the season, I still hold tickets for the spring season, right? I bet that there will not be a way for my household to swap our six collective tickets for one ticket to the drive-in Barber....if we wanted to go.

UPDATE: 11:20 pm Subscribers can apply past ticket payments to upcoming events. (I might have already donated back my spring tickets, can't remember.)

UPDATE: later on 2/16/20: Clay Hilley, Sarah Cambidge, and Heidi Stober, the case of Der Zwerg, still have the show on their web sites, so maybe it is happening later this year. But when a company isn't selling tickets to a show....is that show happening?