San Francisco Opera Opening Night

Lianna Haroutounian as Amelia

Un ballo in maschera

Cory Weaver / Courtesy of San Francisco Opera

I'm going to lead here with email that the San Francisco Opera Orchestra is sending out in its newsletter (copied from Janos Gereben's Facebook feed):

Last night, the San Francisco Opera season opened with our performance of Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera. In the moments leading up to the performance, the Orchestra reached an agreement with management for a short-term contract extension through the month of September.

While this is not the longer-term contract that our members deserve, the extension agreement contains the mutual aspiration of musicians and management to negotiate a multiyear contract, which they had previously refused to consider.

This is a positive step forward, but there is still much work to be done to ensure that we can reach a multi-year agreement that provides stability and a path forward both for orchestra musicians and the organization as a whole.

We are grateful to everyone who came out to the performance last night – and to celebrate the San Francisco Opera.

We hope to be able to play for you throughout the upcoming season with a new, fair contract!

The San Francisco Opera Orchestra

I call your attention to "in the moments leading up to the performance" and suggest that you contemplate what would have happened if there hadn't been an agreement. And here's the whole story, just published in SFCV.

The performance that followed was first-class; top-notch singing, a staging I liked (although a friend was...dubious about the set for Ulrica's scene, which was not a hut outside Stockholm but something more like a basement, only with good lighting), and good conducting. I thought the conducting did not catch fire, and so noted in my review with hope that it might be more on fire later in the run.

Reviews:

• Lisa Hirsch, SF Chronicle
• Lisa Hirsch, SF Chronicle. My first review for the Chronicle was the previous production of Ballo, a decade ago, in Joshua Kosman's absence.
• Steven Winn, SFCV
• Joshua Kosman, his newsletter
• Opera Tattler. Adding to the tattling: Right before the curtain went up for Act 2, someone shouted "Give them a raise!", referring to the orchestra. At the beginning of Act 3, someone in my row but across the aisle in the center section of the orchestra hadn't turned off their phone and was viewing a video on it or something.
• Michael Anthonio, Parterre Box
• Michael Strickland, SF Civic Center
• Patrick Vaz, The Reverberate Hills
• Harvey Steiman, Seen & Heard International
• Thomas May, Bachtrack

Related: the

• Michael Strickland, SF Civic Center
• Tony Bravo goes backstage and attends the dinner; from this article, we also learn that Judit Kutasi (Ulrica) is married to tenor Sunnyboy Dladla, who has a beautiful voice and is a handsome fellow as well. They have a two-year-old son who will undoubtedly have voice lessons at some point. I hope that Greg Henkel and Matthew Shilvock have heard him sing.
• Linda Liu, Chronicle, covers the Opera Ball
• Linda Liu, Chronicle, covers Opera in the Park. Note that the Beethoven 9th performance is already sold out.