2022

I haven't looked back in any systematic way at performances I saw in 2022, so this will be a little on the random side. Note that these lists aren't in any particular order.

On the good side....

• John Adams returned to excellent operatic form with Antony and Cleopatra, thanks to his use of Shakespeare, Virgil, and the like for texts, and the involvement of the opera's dramaturg and director in creating the libretto. I also loved his most recent piano concert, Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes?, superbly performed at SFS by Esa-Pekka Salonen and Vikingur Olafsson.
• Le Nozze di Figaro at Opera San José, set in 19th c. colonial India, superbly staged, beautifully sung, and mostly well conducted.
• Otello at Livermore Valley Opera: this was the single most convincing performance of the work that I have seen, owing to outstanding singers and rip-roaring conducting.
• Ariane and Bluebeard and Coraline at West Edge Opera. I loved both these operas, and saw Ariane, a very great rarity, twice.
• Dialogues of the Carmelites at SFO. Superbly sung all around, in a beautiful, and beautifully directed, production by Olivier Py. Media round-up.
• Orpheus and Eurydice (Gluck) at SFO. A remarkably beautiful production with excellent singing and conducting. It looked and sounded better in the opera house than in the livestream.
• La Belle et la Bête (Glass) at Opéra Parallèle.
• Julia Bullock's recital, History's Persistent Voice, all new and recent works by Black women. Superb singing, gorgeous music.
• Nikola Printz's recital, which traversed an enormous musical and emotional range. Looking forward to hearing Printz as an Adler Fellow!
• Mirga G-T and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, which I never wrote up. A superb orchestra superbly conducted.
• Almost everything conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen at SFS.
• Nathalie Stutzmann at SFS.
• Simone Young at SFS (I think she was in 2022...)
• No Love Allowed (more widely, Das Lebesverbot) at Pocket Opera.
• Reiner Eudakis, the new principal cello at SFS.

On the not-so-good side....

• Danny Elfman's new cello concerto at SFS (but there were boffo performances of Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky on the same program, thanks to MTT). If you want to hear Elfman at his considerable best, the Netflix series Wednesday has a fantastic soundtrack.
• Don Giovanni at SFO. The singing was first-class, the staging idea had promise that wasn't realized.
• Eugene Onegin at SFO, marred by poor casting of the title role and Tatyana.
• Mason Bates's piano concerto at San Francisco Symphony, which I did not like.
• Lahav Shani and the Israel Philharmonic. Too loud and overbearing in general; Mahler's first symphony was incoherent and generally sounded the way people who don't get Mahler think he always sounds. I thought that Paul Ben-Haim's first was too loud and incoherent, then realized that the problem might have been the performance, not the work. Oh, well!
• The number of open seats at SFS. They've now held their second round of auditions for principal flute, so watch who's playing with Salonen is in town.
• The number of open seats in the SFO Orchestra.