Birds & Balls at Opera Parallèle

The ever-adventurous Opera Parallèle is presenting a delightful-looking double bill called Birds & Balls in a few weeks.  The Birds are finches, in David T. Little and Royce Vavrek's Vinkensport, or The Finch Opera. The press release describes Vinkensport this way:

[It's about] the obscure 400-year-old Flemish folk sport of professional Finch-sitting, where the contestants battle it out to see who has the most melodious bird. As they compete for the greatest number of “susk-e-wiets” over the course of an hour, the motivations and secrets of the finches’ trainers are revealed, as is their complex relationship to their birds, the sport, and themselves. 

The Balls are..um...tennis balls, as in the famous tennis match in which Billy Jean King soundly defeated Bobby Riggs:

Balls is a multimedia opera dramatizing the famed 1973 tennis game between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs, a live television event which was viewed by 90-million people worldwide and which last year commemorated its 50-year anniversary. The famous match, in which Billie Jean King triumphed over Bobby Riggs, changed not only the perception and treatment of women in sports, but significantly advanced the women’s rights movement. 

Vinkensport was commissioned by soprano Dawn Upshaw for the Graduate Vocal Arts Program at Bard College. Balls was workshopped in 2017 at The Industry in LA, but in an incomplete form.

The production stars an array of terrific singers, including (but not limited to) Tiffany Austin, Daniel Cilli, Nathan Granner, Nikola Printz, Chad Somers, Chung-Wai Soong, and Shawnette Sulker. Nicole Paiement conducts, Brian Staufenbiel directs.

Dates:

• Friday, April 5, 2024 7.30 PM
• Saturday, April 6, 2 PM & 7.30 PM
• Sunday, April 7, 2 PM

Ticket prices: $40 – $185 for April 5 & 7 performances; $50 – $205 for April 6 performance.
Buy tickets at the SFJAZZ web site.

Venue: SFJAZZ Center’s Miner Auditorium, San Francisco 201 Franklin St., between Fell and Linden.