Stephenson Memorial
(Memorial to the Grand Army of the Republic)
Washington, DC
April, 2025
The Grand Army of the Republic was a fraternal organization of Civil War veterans from the different Union military branches.
Friday, October 31, 2025
Wednesday, October 29, 2025
Pure Foolishness
Parsifal, Act 2
Photo: Cory Weaver / courtesy of San Francisco Opera
I've got many thoughts that aren't in my review, but I also have a cold. Watch for updates to this post.
- Joshua Kosman, SF Chronicle
- Joshua Kosman, On a Pacific Aisle: Hard to parse
- Lisa Hirsch, SFCV (Review updated on 10/30)
- Lisa Hirsch, SFCV: Eun Sun Kim Profile
- Thomas May, Opera Now
- Michael Anthonio, Parterre Box
- Charlise Tiee, Opera Tattler; Charlies Tiee 2nd Parsifal
- Michael Strickland, S.F Civic Center
- Patrick Vaz, The Reverberate Hills
- Richard Ginelle, Classical Voice North America
- Harvey Steiman, Seen & Heard International
- Caroline Crawford, Bay City News
- Gary Kamiya, Substack: "Parsifal": When Christian-pagan acid trips go wrong
- James Ambroff-Tahan, Examiner (preview)
- Matthew Travisano, Parterre Box, interview with Matthew Ozawa
- Parterre Box, "Change My Mind About Parsifal"
- Tony Bravo, SF Chronicle, feature about Matthew Shilvock
Monday, October 27, 2025
Friday, October 24, 2025
Wednesday, October 22, 2025
Several Items Make a Post
Some not-random notes:
- SFS Chorus Director Jenny Wong has extended her contract with the orchestra through the 2028-29 season.
- San Francisco Girls Chorus has appointed Nicolás Lell Benavides as their 2025-26 composer in residence. (He is the composer of Dolores, which was a big hit at West Edge Opera this past summer.)
- Genevieve Graves is the new executive director of Volti (as of August; yes, I'm a little behind!). The press release noted that "She holds a Ph.D. from Santa Cruz University and a B.A. from Harvard University in Astrophysics, and brings over a decade of leadership experience across tech startups and data science consulting. She is an alumna of the Piedmont East Bay Children's Choir and played a significant role as that organization rose to a level of national and international prominence. She went on to found a chamber choir at Harvard and to sing with additional choirs in Boston, the Bay Area and Santa Cruz."
- Are you a French horn fan? Jesse Clevenger, who played with SFS for two seasons, is playing a couple of pieces of interest with the Vallejo Symphony this Sunday: the world premiere of John Williams's Serenade for Horn and Strings and Benjamin Britten's Serenade for Tenor, Horn, and Strings, the latter with Salvatore Atti. The Britten is a great masterwork. Also on the program are works by C.P.E. Bach and Stravinsky. October 26 at 3 p.m. and I'd go if I didn't have a conflict.
Emerging Black Composers
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Kyle Rivera
Photo courtesy of San Francisco Symphony
No photographer credited.
San Francisco Symphony has announced that Kyle Rivera, currently a master's student in music composition at Yale, has won the fifth Emerging Black Composers Project prize. Congratulations to Mr. Rivera!
Before I post the press release, let me note the previous winners:
- Jens Ibsen
- Xavier Muzik
- Tyler Taylor
- Trevor Weston
"Additional prizes" have been awarded to the following:
- Jonathan Bingham
- Shawn Okpebholo
- Sumi Tonooka
Of the eight composers who've won or been awarded prizes, seven are men. And this is an anonymous competition. Is this a "pipeline problem"? Not enough women applying? Maybe there should be some recruitment. I'm certainly curious about the percentage of composers who are Black women.
The press release is below the jump. There are some typos - missing spaces - in the original.
Monday, October 20, 2025
Snapshot, 2026, at West Edge Opera
Snapshot is West Edge Opera's presentation of excerpts from new operas or operas under development. Here's the schedule for 2026; be there or be square!
The 2026 Snapshot program will be presented at the First Congregational Church in Berkeley on February 28, 2026, in San Francisco at the Taube Atrium Theater on March 1, 202 and will feature Cry, Wolf, Threshold of Brightness, The Joining, and Case Closed—four daring works by composers and librettists exploring extremism, memory, power, identity, and the consequences of truth and deception.
Cry, Wolf
Composer: JL Marlor
Librettist: Clare Fuyuko Bierman
It's a gorgeous Friday night at UCLA but instead of going out, Austin and Zach are inside, online, comparing their jawlines to pictures of strangers and trying to become "wolves". Cry, Wolf explores the ways that young men use love, friendship, and genuine care for one another to push themselves down darker and deeper ideological rabbit holes.
Threshold of Brightness
Composer: Niloufar Nourbakhsh
Librettist: Lisa Flanagan
Iranian poet Forugh Farrokhzad defied convention to write about life, culture & sexuality as freely as a man would, becoming a pariah and cut-off from friends and family. On February 13, 1967, after a violent incident, she finds herself in her childhood home at the start of a Solstice feast.
The Joining
Composer: Isaac Io Schankler
Librettist: Aiden K. Feltkamp
In the world of The Joining, golems are commonplace artificial companions for the citizens of the Underground. When disaster strikes and traditions must break, can the Undergrounders rely on the prosperous Overland to use the golems for good?
Case Closed
Composer: Martin Rokeach
Librettist: Steven Blum
Michelle Ahearn is a local TV news reporter who is about to be aged out of a job. In one horrible moment she causes an accident that kills local football legend Case Stahl and then flees the scene; a story that she’s assigned to cover making her a star while the lie she’s chosen to live causes her to lose everyone she loves.
Why Can't I Be In Six Places at Once?
Things I could be doing from November 12 to 16:
- San Francisco Silent Film Festival
- Parsifal at San Francisco Opera (last performance)
- The Monkey King at San Francisco Opera (first performance, which I am reviewing, so I will be there)
- Modigliani Quartet plays Kurtage, Haydn, Beethoven at SFP
- Esmé Quartet plays Schubert String Quartet No. 15 in G Major, D. 887 at SFP
- Ercole Amante at Ars Minerva
- Berkeley Symphony, conducted by Ming Luke
- Oakland Symphony (Verdi Requiem)
- California Symphony
- San Francisco Contemporary Music Players
- Gautier Capuçon's amazing recital called Gaia
Noting that Joshua Kosman found seventeen musical events that weekend.
Friday, October 17, 2025
Monday, October 13, 2025
Museum Mondays
Acid Rain, side view
Chakaia Booker, 2021
National Gallery of Art
Washington, DC
April, 2025
Acid Rain
Chakaia Booker, 2021
National Gallery of Art
Washington, DC
April, 2025
Friday, October 10, 2025
Wednesday, October 08, 2025
Berkeley Symphony: Lancaster, Adams, Haydn
Berkeley Symphony
Helen Kim plays Samuel Adams's Chamber Concerto; Edwin Outwater conducts
Photo: Louis Bryant III
ANYWAY. I made it to this past Sunday's Berkeley Symphony concert, which was held at First Congregational Church, oops, First Church, known to those who perform there as First Congo. It's a slightly difficult venue for larger ensembles, because it is very, very resonant. That makes it a joy for choruses, because we can really hear ourselves, but can muddy the music with an orchestra. This is kinda the opposite of Zellerbach Hall, where Berkeley Symphony used to perform; it is extremely dry because it's made of concrete. It's equipped with a Meyer Constellation system but that doesn't fix all of the sonic issues.
Edwin Outwater conducted Sunday's concert. He has major conducting responsibilities at the SF Conservatory of Music and is a pretty regular guest at SFS. I was certain the first half of the program (Yaz Lancaster's Gender Envy and Samuel Adams's Chamber Concerto) would be fine and dandy because I've heard him in new music before.
And indeed they were! Gender Envy was a sparkly curtain-raiser, moved there from its original place at the top of the second half of the concert. It ran through a surprising number of styles in its eight minutes, sounding folkish at times and kinda techno at others. It used some alternative playing techniques; I noted a few string players using their instruments for percussion, for example. Part way through, there was a canonical section, with the first violins, second violins, flute, and other instruments chiming in.
Samuel Adams's Chamber Concerto, for violin and orchestra in five movements, was on a completely different scale. The program said it was 31 minutes long; while I didn't time it, I'm certain that it was longer than than, by up to ten minutes.
I have no complaints about the playing, on the part of violin soloist Helen Kim or the orchestra. (If Kim's name seems familiar, she was associate principal second violin in SFS for some years; a year ago, she became the associate concertmaster of the Seattle Symphony.) Kim is a most excellent violinist, very committed to new music. She plays with a penetrating tone that cut nicely through or rode on top of the orchestra, as required.
Maybe it was the construction of the piece that made me think it was that much longer than the stated time. Adams has an exceptionally inventive voice, with a great ear for interesting sonorities; the orchestration of the Chamber Concerto is really beautiful. He sets up the work so that the orchestra and soloists are cooperative, rather than using the standard romantic model of the soloists and orchestra at loggerheads with each other.
But there are some real structural issues with the piece. More than once, I found myself writing "this movement is just too long." The composer's sonic fecundity gets away from him, and he just can't stop inventing new things. On top of that, whether as a performance choice by Outwater or because of how it's notated, the movements somewhat blended into each other. I can't swear that my notes are accurate as to what's in what movement. I do know that there was a pause that I thought was a moment between movements, but then I realized that most likely what followed was a continuation, not a new movement. That....was a little disconcerting.
Still, there were certainly many extraordinarily beautiful moments in the Chamber Concerto. It's quite dramatic, even cinematic, sometimes oceanic. There is at least one theme from the first movement, Prelude: One by One, that recurs in the last, Postlude: All Together Now. I'm sure that there's more connection between those two movements, but...there's so much interesting detail that it was hard to grasp the overall structure.
No, I hadn't looked at the score beforehand, though...I spent a couple of hours before the concert in the UC Music Library and maybe I should have. I also didn't read the program notes, which had more than a few clues about what's going on the Chamber Concerto, which included quotations from a big work by another composer, some guy named John Adams, who might be a relation. Anyway, I'd love to hear this again sometime.
Then there was the second half of the concert, Haydn's Symphony No. 100 in G Major, nicknamed "Military" for its orchestration. I had never heard Outwater conduct anything composed earlier than Gershwin, so I was quite curious what his Haydn would be like.
Reader, it was terrific. His tempos were just right; there was plenty of wit; the orchestra played crisply and sounded like they were having fun. I'm always in favor of more Haydn and this was a pleasure to hear.
Elsewhere:
- Joshua Kosman, On a Pacific Aisle. I heard that nod to the Berg violin concerto too.
Tuesday, October 07, 2025
Friday, October 03, 2025
Kavalier & Clay at the Met
Cover, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
I read Michael Chabon's novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay back around 2000 or 2001; my paperback copy of the book looks exactly like the graphic above, so I bought the book after it won the Pulitzer Prize for literature. I loved the book's immense sweep and its colorful characters.
I raised an eyebrow when Mason Bates and Gene Scheer's Metropolitan Opera commission was announced, because, really, it didn't seem like a great candidate for an operatic adaptation, given the scope and complexity of the novel. I was surprised that the opera wasn't listed for an HD broadcast this season, and I decided against a quick NY trip, given various writing responsibilities I have.
Now the reviews are coming in and it seems reasonable to start a media round-up.
- Joshua Barone, NY Times
- Justin Davidson, Vulture/New York, who incorporates a critique of Peter Gelb
- Heidi Waleson, WSJ (paywall)
- Sylvia Korman, Parterre Box
- Alex Ross, The Rest is Noise (a glancing blow only)
- Alex Ross, The New Yorker (a body blow)
- George Grella, NY Classical Review
- David Gordon, TheaterMania
- Financial Times (so paywalled I have no idea who wrote it)
Wednesday, October 01, 2025
Family Matters
Rigoletto
Act 1, Scene 1
San Francisco Opera
Photo: Cory Weaver
I spent a lot of time over the last week with Giuseppe Verdi, in the form of two of his middle period masterpieces, Rigoletto and La traviata. What these operas have in common is the intense parent-child relationships, a major theme in the composer's Simon Boccanegra and Don Carlo(s) as well.
San Francisco Opera just ended a top-notch run of Rigoletto, seen once more in the great Michael Yeargan production, the design of which is based on the works of Giorgio de Chirico. I've seen several of the bring-ups and it never fails to impress me. It is both shadowy and beautiful, its colors a little artificial, its architecture askew. Its lurid colors embody the decadence of the Duke of Mantua's court and the haunted spirit of the opera, where an assassin has the closest thing to a clearly-defined moral code. José Maria Condemi directed and did a terrific job with it.
My recollection is that the production has gotten a bit less decadent over the years; I have vague memories of women in breast-baring body suits and sexual behavior in the first half of Act 1 that ah went way beyond flirtation. I can understand why the Opera might have wanted to tone it down, but the atmosphere at court does justify that degree of decadence. Regardless, I love this production and as far as I'm concerned SFO can use it until I'm dead and gone.
In any event, this was a bring-up for the ages. I don't think of Rigoletto as being a conductor's opera, because the work is so great that it will be effective with a merely competent conductor, yet Eun Sun Kim made it a conductor's opera. I could hardly believe the range of colors she got out of the orchestra, the perfect rubato, the drama, the way the silences rang with tension. To me, her conducting sounded deeply informed by her Wagner conducting, which has been awesome in the last two seasons. This was just spectacular Verdi.
On to the singing. The originally-scheduled Duke, Giovanni Sala, dropped out in early August for the usual "personal reasons." I was not very impressed with Yongzhau Yu, who stepped in. He went sharp a lot; his voice is on the tight, thin, side; he didn't project the kind of allure that the Duke should have for both Gilda and Maddalena to become so attached to him. I realize that with Sala dropping out so close to the start of rehearsals, it would have been difficult to find a first-class replacement because all the best tenors are booked solid at the start of a season.
I liked Amartuvshin Enkhbat's Rigoletto well enough. He has a tremendous voice of the right type, both powerful and beautiful. He is a little emotionally stiff and not a great physical actor, but his singing was first class.
Adela Zaharia, last heard as Donna Anna in the last SFO Don Giovanni, was the vocal star of the show, singing a really spectacular Gilda and presenting her as a more stubborn and self-assured character than you usually get. I will say that I do not expect to hear the role more beautifully sung than Ruth Ann Swenson back in the late 1990s –– Swenson had possibly the most beautiful lyric soprano voice I've ever heard –– but Zaharia has a much better dramatic sense and made a lot out of Gilda.
In the smaller roles, Peixin Chen was a fantastic, threatening Sparafucile, and Adler Fellow Olivier Zerouali made a huge impression on me as Marullo.
And then there was J'Nai Bridges as a sexy Maddalena, with tons more character than the usual Maddalena in that role, largely because, face it, she is a big star who has sung Carmen and a major role in Girls of the Golden West with SFO. You're not alone in wondering what she was doing in Rigoletto, so let's just chalk it up to luxury casting.
All in all, it was a very satisfying Rigoletto.
- Steven Winn, SFCV and SF Chronicle
- Joshua Kosman, On a Pacific Aisle
- Charlise Tiee, Opera Tattler
- Patrick Vaz, The Reverberate Hills. Patrick's analysis of the role of honor in the opera is important to understanding how everyone behaves here, and I love his description of the sets. However, I've been privately arm-wrestling with him about Gilda for roughly as long as we've known each other. I think it's a misnomer to say that she "has sex with the Duke;" given her overprotected upbringing, what do we think she even knows about sex? Does she understand it well enough to give consent? She is extremely upset, and I don't think it's just shame, when she comes out of the room where she was locked up with the Duke. It's also worth keeping in mind that while she talks about going up to Heaven while she's dying, that's partly in relation to her dead mother, who she thinks is watching over her and whom she will join in Heaven. Being perverse and self-defeating is one thing; letting yourself be killed (SPOILER SORRY) in place of the awful man you're in love with is quite another.
Avery Boettcher (Violetta) and Brad Bickhardt (Alfred)
La traviata, Livermore Valley Opera
Act 2, last scene
Photo: Barbara Mallon
Then there was La traviata at Livermore Valley Opera where, once again, you get those very intense and overwhelming family relationships. In this case, Giorgio Germont shows up in Act 2 to do whatever he can to separate his son Alfredo from the woman he loves, because she is a former courtesan and Alfredo's involvement with her, which is very public, is about to wreck Alfredo's sister's engagement and the family's reputation. The Germonts are bourgeoisie, as far as I can tell; after all, if they were noble, Alfredo would get a little talking-to about being less public, but nobody would try to separate him from his lover. (See Baron Duophol, Violetta's once and future patron, for example.)
We've got more singing about life in Heaven here, when Violetta asks Germont to remember her to Alfredo's sister ("Dite alla giovine"), because Violetta, who is dying of tuberculosis, will watch over the sister from Heaven.
The big star of La traviata was, beyond a doubt, the spectacular Avery Boettcher, who gave a fabulous, three-dimensional, beautifully sung performance as Violetta. The character is on stage for about 90% of the opera, the exception being the scene in Act 2 where Germont tells Alfredo why he's better off without Violetta, so it's possible for the Violetta to pretty much carry the whole opera. That is more or less what happens here. I'd say that Boettcher is worth the price of admission for her tour-de-force performance, and you know, it's great to see opera at the Bankhead Theater, because it is tiny and small details of a performance register strongly.
What I got from seeing these two operas in close proximity was a renewed respect for and love of middle-period Verdi. Yes, these operas are done too often; yes, the casts are not always first class; yes, yes, yes, but they are as popular as they are because of how brilliantly put together they are, how well Verdi creates drama, how well he sets the text, how vivid his characterizations are, the emotions they bring up for the audience.
- Lisa Hirsch, SFCV
- Joshua Kosman, On a Pacific Aisle. "Most mesmerizing was her commanding traversal of Act 3, from a wrenching “Addio del passato” through Violetta’s quavering death throes."
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