Bicket, Schultz, and Mozart at San Francisco Symphony

Golda Schultz and Harry Bicket

Photo by Michael Strickland

Used with permission

I'm sorry that I didn't take a curtain call photo or to at Davies last Thursday, when I saw Harry Bicket's all-Mozart program at San Francisco Symphony, featuring two symphonies, a serenade, and soprano Golda Schultz in Mozart arias. SFS evidently didn't have a photographer in house for the concert, hence, Davies rather than a concert photo. (BUT my friend Michael Strickland to the rescue! And I've added him to the round-up below. Thank you so much!)

It wouldn't have been appropriate in my Chronicle / SFCV review to say that I've now seen Bicket in concert with SFS and conducting two full Mozart operas with Santa Fe Opera, his home theater in the United States. I think that he is a good, not great, Mozart conductor; solid, with good instincts, but without bringing out that last bit of rhythmic brilliance that mades Mozart performances great. 

(The best Mozart opera conducting I've heard? Cornelius Meister in the last SFO Abduction, Donald Runnicles in the McVicar Don Giovanni, and Henrik Nanasi in the most recent Così. The worst? Nicola Luisotti in the 2013 Così, which had the additional problem of being poorly cast, with a voiceless Don Alfonso and miscast Ellie Dehn, who was excellent in other appearances.)

I've also seen Bicket lead Orfeo (outstanding), Pélleas (eh), Alcina, and Radamisto, all at Santa Fe. No strong impressions remain of his conducting in the two Handel operas.

• Lisa Hirsch, S.F. Chronicle / SFCV
• Joshua Kosman, On a Pacific Aisle (link to follow)
• Harvey Steinman, Seen and Heard International
• Matthew Travisano, Parterre Box
• Michael Strickland, SF Civic Center

 

Suzannah Lessard

The Architect of Desire: Beauty and Danger in the Stanford White Family

by Suzannah Lessard

Book cover

I don't have a personal photo of the distinguished author Suzannah Lessard, who died on January 29, and the photos of her on the web are very likely copyrighted, so I am going for the cover of one of her books as the header.

I didn't know Lessard, though I am reasonably sure I was aware of the existence of The Architect of Desire; probably I read a review of it in the NY Times when it was published in the 1990s. But reading the Times obituary (gift link) for her, I was rather unnerved. Here's what got me, all quotations from the obit:

Ms. Lessard, her five sisters and their parents lived in a 19th-century farmhouse known as the Red Cottage. It had sloping floors, patched plaster walls and a fraught atmosphere, largely created by her father, who required quiet for his work as a composer, as well as other, more brutal concessions from his daughters. 

...

Ms. Lessard’s memoir was decades in the making. It was the book she could not write, and yet felt compelled to write, and the writer’s block she suffered often compromised her other work; for much of the time she was struggling with it, she was a staff writer at The New Yorker.

...

 Ms. Lessard had never previously spoken about how her father had visited her in her bedroom when she was a child. Yet on New Year’s Day in 1989, one of her sisters called a meeting of the siblings and, one by one, each sister confided that she, too, had experienced sexual encounters with their father.

Over the years, each had tried to convince herself that the encounters weren’t abuse — that their childhoods had been safe and that their father’s behavior was somehow normal. Their memories, finally voiced, gave Ms. Lessard “a sense of something like the sound barrier breaking,” she wrote, “a psychic reverberation.”

She added: “With it, the world cracked open, and inside was the world.” 

...

 After the sisters’ revelations, the family entered therapy, but their father claimed not to remember the encounters they described. (The Lessards had divorced decades earlier.) Ms. Lessard said that exposing her father in her book was not an act of revenge but of survival.

Right. He could not remember sexually abusing his six daughters over goodness knows how many years.

When I looked him up, I realized I was slightly acquainted with her father. Suzannah Lessard's composer father John Lessard was on the faculty of SUNY/Stony Brook when I was a student there from 1980 to 1982. Once I knew that, I had no trouble conjuring up an accurate picture of him.

He was by then married to his second wife, Sarah Fuller, a musicologist who was also on the faculty. He was retired from the faculty by the time The Architect of Desire was published, and died seven years later, but you bet I am now wondering about whether and what kind of discussions he might have had about the book and his past with Prof. Fuller, and how she reacted to what he said. They remained married until his death in 2003.

Los Angeles Opera, 2026-27

Satyagraha, by Philip Glass

Curtain Call Photo

Los Angeles Opera

November, 2018

I don't have a photo of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion handy - there's a more photogenic building just across the street from it - so the above curtain call photo, one of the first I ever took, will have to do. It was a great performance, conducted by James Conlon and with an awesome assumption of the role of Gandhi by tenor Sean Panikkar.

Anyway, it's season announcement season, and LA Opera was one of three that announced this past Tuesday, along with Seattle and San Francisco. About all I can say about the main-stage season is "Oy vey." I don't know how much input Domingo Hindoyan had into the season, because when a music director is hired and when the announcement is made aren't necessarily the same thing. Season planning in the U.S. generally starts five years in advance, with casting done by three years before, so....

The Off-Grand series looks good and those are attractive concert. Highlights for me would be Carla Lucero's opera and Sidney Mancasola's Susannah in The Marriage of Figaro. She was terrific as Mélisande in Pelleas in 2023.

I'm going to post the cast, conductor, dates, and director, copy/pasted from email.

Domingo Hindoyan conducts a new production of Carmen

October 17, 25m, 29; November 1m, 4, 7, 2026 (m = matinee)

Composer: Georges Bizet

Librettists: Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy

World premiere: March 3, 1875 (Opéra-Comique, Paris)

 

Carmen: Rihab Chaieb

Don José: Joshua Guerrero ° ‡

Micaëla: Kathleen O'Mara ‡

Escamillo: Liam James Karai *

 

Conductor: Domingo Hindoyan

Director and Scenic Designer: Thaddeus Strassberger

Bernstein's around-the-world romp, Candide

November 21, 29m; December 2, 5, 10, 13m, 2026

Composer: Leonard Bernstein

Book: Hugh Wheeler, in a new version by John Caird

Lyrics: Richard Wilbur; additional lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, John La Touche, Lillian Hellman, Dorothy Parker and Leonard Bernstein

World premiere: December 1, 1956 (Martin Beck Theatre, New York City)

 

Candide: Duke Kim

Cunegonde: Deanna Breiwick

Old Lady: Patti LuPone

 

Conductor: Lina González-Granados °

Director: Francesca Zambello

Nabucco, the opera that made Verdi famous

February 27; March 7m, 10, 13, 18, 21m, 2027

Composer: Giuseppe Verdi

Librettist: Temistocle Solera

World premiere: March 9, 1842 (Teatro alla Scala, Milan)

 

Nabucco: Ariunbaatar Ganbaatar *

Abigaille: Angela Meade

Zaccaria: Stephano Park *

Fenena: Meridian Prall

Ismaele: Nathan Bowles ‡

 

Conductor: Domingo Hindoyan

Director and Scenery Designer: Thaddeus Strassberger

Back by popular demand: Turandot

April 17, 24, 29; May 2m, 5, 9m, 2027

Composer: Giacomo Puccini

Librettists: Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni

World premiere: April 25, 1926 (Teatro alla Scala, Milan, Italy)

 

Turandot: Ewa Płonka *

Calaf: Arsen Soghomonyan *

Liù: Juliana Grigoryan *

Timur: Peixin Chen

 

Conductor: Diego Matheuz *

Director: Garnett Bruce

Scenic Designer: David Hockney

James Conlon conducts The Marriage of Figaro

May 29; June 6m, 9, 12, 14m, 17, 20m, 2027

Composer: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Librettist: Lorenzo Da Ponte

World premiere: May 1, 1786 (Burgtheater, Vienna)

 

Figaro: Michael Sumuel

Susanna: Sydney Mancasola

Count: Lucas Meachem (May 29 - June 14) / Jarrett Ott * (June 17-20)

Countess: Erica Petrocelli ° ‡

Cherubino: Kayleigh Decker *

Dr. Bartolo: Maurizio Muraro *

Marcellina: Hyona Kim

 

Conductor: James Conlon

Director: James Gray

Scenic Designer: Santo Loquasto

Campy, vampy Halloween fun—Hercules vs. Vampires

October 30, 31, 2026

Composer: Patrick Morganelli

Film Director: Mario Bava

Film premiere: November 16, 1961

Premiere of Morganelli's score: May 14, 2010 (Opera Theater Oregon, Hollywood Theatre, Portland)

 

Our smash hit from 2015 storms back just in time for Halloween. Muscle-bound heroics, supernatural mayhem, and cinematic excess abound as Reg Park’s Hercules faces off against the iconic Christopher Lee in Mario Bava’s cult fantasy Hercules in the Haunted World. While the deliriously stylish film blazes across the big screen, the LA Opera Orchestra and a fearless cast of singers unleash Patrick Morganelli’s operatic score live, synced to the action. Think sword-and-sandal spectacle, gothic fantasy, and Halloween chaos—all rolled into one gloriously unhinged night at the opera.

Presented at the United Theater on Broadway (929 S. Broadway, Los Angeles, CA 90015)

 

Les Talens Lyriques: Two Venetians in Naples

March 2, 2027

Conductor/harpsichord/organ: Christophe Rousset

Soprano soloist: Apolline Raï-Westphal *

Soprano soloist: Thaïs Raï-Westphal *

 

 

Jamie Barton in Recital

November 15, 2026

 

Erin Morley and Lawrence Brownlee in Recital

April 22, 2027

 

Sondra Radvanovsky in Recital

May 8, 2027

The Old Man and the Sea

May 20, 21, 22, 23m, 2027

Composer: Paola Prestini

Librettist: Royce Vavrek

Conductor: Mila Henry *

Director: Karmina Šilec *

World premiere: November 4, 2023 (ASU Gammage, Tempe, Arizona)

Breathtakingly staged with eight pools of water enhanced with dynamic lighting, costumes and sound, our latest collaboration with the groundbreaking Beth Morrison Projects transforms Ernest Hemingway's Pulitzer-winning novella into a rumination on age, loss, nature, and what it means to be beautifully, stubbornly human.

* LA Opera debut

Presented at The Wallis (9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd., Beverly Hills, CA 90210)

Community Opera at the Cathedral:

The Three Women of Jerusalem (Las tres mujeres de Jerusalén)

May 1, 2027 (two performances that day)

Composer and Librettist: Carla Lucero

Conductor: Lina González-Granados

Director: Eli Villanueva

World premiere: March 19, 2022 (Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, Los Angeles)

Livermore Valley Così fan tutte

Poster graphic courtesy of Livermore Valley Opera

I never got around to noting that this season presented opportunities to see Verdi's La traviata and Mozart's Così fan tutte twice each, because Livermore Valley Opera and Opera San José are staging them both. I reviewed both the LVO Traviata (with a vocally and dramatically splendid performance by Avery  Boettcher as Violetta) and the OSJ Così, and enjoyed them both a lot. (I will here note that Ricardo José Rivera, whom I loved as Papageno and Guglielmo at recent OSJ performances, stepped into the Met HD broadcast of I Puritani and performed magnificently. I suspect we might not be seeing him in the regional companies again.)

The LVO Così that's opening on Feb. 28 looks strongly cast; I've liked everyone I know who is in it. Meryl Dominguez was a good Donna Anna in LVO's Don Giovanni; Courtney Miller was excellent in the strongly-cast Pocket Tartuffe; Samuel Kidd was terrific in several SFO appearances during his Adler years; Eugene Brancoveanu is a wonderful singer who has been a mainstay of Bay Area companies for many years now.

I've seen most of LVO's productions in the last few years, and they've been reliably good to excellent, with a number of memorable individual performances, good production values, and vigorous conducting by Alexander Katsman. Consider, also, that the 500-seat Bankhead Theater has no bad seats and is a great place to see opera.

So consider this a vigorous plug for Così and the company. 

Seattle Opera 2026-27

Seattle

I haven't got a handy photo of McCaw Hall, home of the Seattle Opera, so the photo above, which certainly signals Seattle, will have to do.

Seattle Opera just announced its season on Tuesday, a couple of hours before SFO announced. It is a very short season; nonetheless, I'd buy tickets to most of these.

I see that Huang Ruo's The Wedding Banquet, which I believe is a co-commission with the Met, is moved to a future season. Based on how good The Monkey King was, I am looking forward to this.

• Salome, Richard Strauss. October 17-31. Brenda Rae (!) in the title role; she is a pretty light soprano, so we'll see how this goes. Chad Shelton as Herod, mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano as Herodias, baritone Michael Kupfer-Radecky as Jochanaan, and tenor Joseph Tancredi as Narraboth. Benjamin Manis conducts.
• Jamie Barton in recital, Nov. 21. She is a great singer and a ton of fun.
• Anita Spritzer's gay Apparel, Dec. 11, 13, 19.
• El último sueño de Frida y Diego, Frank. January 16-30. Daniela Mack, Alfredo Daza, Mei Gui Zhang, Jake Ingbar. Production seen at SFO, conducted by Carolyn Kuan. I loved this opera in SF, where I saw a cast that included Mack, Daza, and Ingbar. Zhang will be good as La Catrina.
• Lakmé, Delibes, in concert, March 5 and 7. Aigul Khismatullina, David Portillo, Christian Purcell, Nicholas Newton, Hongni Wu. Daniela Candillari conducts. Not a fan of Portillo, like Purcell and Wu a lot, don't know the others.
• La Bohème, Puccini. May 8 to 23,  I didn't much care for this production, by Seattle's general director James Robinson, at Santa Fe last year, but of course it's a great opera. Double cast; not going to list all of the singers. Roberto Kalb, whom I've liked in a couple of operas, conducts.

 

California Sympnony 2026-27 Season

Music Director Donato Cabrera

conducting the California Symphony

Photo: Kristen Loken courtesy of California Symphony

California Symphony announced its 2026-27 season this morning, and it is an attractive and interesting season with a good balance of new, unusual, and classic works. Kudos to music director Donato Cabrera for continuing with this excellent programming.

SIBELIUS, HIGDON, AND BARTÓK – American Connections

Saturday, September 26, 2026 at 7:30pm
Sunday, September 27, 2026 at 4pm

Jean Sibelius: The Oceanides (1914)
Jennifer Higdon: Cello Concerto,  Julian Schwarz, cello
Béla Bartók: Concerto for Orchestra (1943)

FROM TCHAIKOVSKY TO COPLAND – Classical Contemporaries

Saturday, November 7, 2026 at 7:30pm

Sunday, November 8, 2026 at 4pm

Anton Arensky: Variations on a Theme by Tchaikovsky (1894)

Aaron Copland: Clarinet Concerto (1948)

     Cory Tiffin, clarinet

Samuel Barber: Adagio for Strings (1936)

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Serenade for Strings (1880)

(Cory Tiffin was a frequent substitute clarinetist in SFS between David Neuman's retirement and the hiring of Yuhsin Galaxy Su, the current holder of that chair. Good to see him here as a soloist and as the new principal clarinet of the orchestra.)

HOLIDAY TRADITIONS

Friday, December 18, 2026 at 7:30pm

Saturday, December 19, 2026 at 2pm

Performances at the Walnut Creek Presbyterian Church

MOZART AND HAYDN IN PARIS – Music of the Enlightenment

Saturday, January 23, 2027 at 7:30pm
Sunday, January 24, 2027 at 4pm

François Joseph Gossec: Symphony No. 2 in G Major (published 1769)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Symphony. No. 31 in D Major (1778)
Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges: Symphony No. 1 in G Major (published 1779)
Franz Joseph Haydn: Symphony No. 85 in B-flat Major (1785)

BEETHOVEN’S SECOND – Cowell, Adams, & Beethoven: Masterful Mavericks

Saturday, March 13, 2027 at 7:30pm
Sunday, March 14, 2027 at 4pm

Henry Cowell: Hymn and Fuguing Tune No. 10 (1955)
John Adams: Violin Concerto (1993)
    Helen Kim, violin
Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 2 in D Major (1802)

(Helen Kim was the associate principal second violin in SFS before she won the associate concertmaster position in the Seattle Symphony. I heard her playing music by Samuel Carl Adams last year at the Berkeley Symphony and Other Minds, and wow, she is a great player.)

PINES OF ROME – Orchestral Landscapes

Saturday, May 8, 2027 at 7:30pm

Sunday, May 9, 2027 at 4pm

Paul Novak: World Premiere

Composer-in-Residence

Manuel de Falla: Nights in the Gardens of Spain (1909-15)

    Tanya Gabrielian, piano

Manuel Ponce: Chapultepec (1929, rev. 1934)

Ottorino Respighi: Pines of Rome (1924)

(I've heard Pines of Rome three times in the last four years at SFS, and that was at least twice too many. It's good, noisy, fascist fun once a decade. But the rest of the program is definitely worth hearing!)

San Francisco Opera, 2026-27

Postcard from my personal collection

San Francisco Opera announced its 2026-27 season yesterday. One of the operas in the season, Wagner's Das Rheingold, was announced for the season in November, when preliminary Ring casting was announced. Last year's season announcement mentioned Thea Musgrave's Mary, Queen of Scots, for a future season, which has now arrived. I have some personal thoughts that weren't appropriate for my S.F. Chronicle article on the season. Let's go opera by opera.

• Simon Boccanegra, Verdi, opens the season, with Eun Sun Kim conducting and what looks like a terrific cast. Kim conducted Rigoletto, which opened the current season, with nuance and oh so much color; it was just great. Amartuvshin Enkhbat has the ideal voice for the title role and I hope that he'll be strongly directed. I checked out some videos of Eleanora Buratta, making her SFO debut as Maria/Amelia (you know that there are two characters who are known under two names in this opera, right? Be prepared to be confused.), and wow, what a voice. Christian Van Horn is Jacopo Fiesco. I love this opera beyond reason and I'm greatly looking forward to seeing it again, after a fifteen-year gap since I saw it at the Met with Abuser 1 in the title role and Abuser 2 conducting, with King of the Gods James Morris as Fiesco, a performance that leaves me slightly queasy in retrospect.
• Mary, Queen of Scots, Musgrave, opens next, and I'm excited to hear the work and the performers. Heidi Stober has already gotten raves for her assumption of the title role last year at ENO, and you may have spotted me raving about her Seattle Daphne. Thomas Kinch, third-year Adler and Heldentenor, plays the Earl of Bothwell; debuting baritone Thomas Mole is Mary's brother James Stewart. Clelia Cafiero conducts.
• Manon, Massenet. I liked this production a lot when it premiered with Ellie Dehn and Michael Fabiano, and I'm a fan of the new Manon/Chevalier pairing, Amina Edris and Pene Pati. It'll be different and I'm sure good. James Creswell, whom I admire a lot, returns as the Comte Des Grieux; Eun Sun Kim conducts.
• The Marriage of Figaro, Mozart. Sebastian Weigle, whom I've never heard, conducts a cast of singers I haven't heard in these roles before except for Catherine Cook and Maurizio Muraro. Peter Kellner is new to the company; I expect Olivia Smith, Slávka Zamečníková, and Simone McIntosh to be excellent. I didn't love the production in its first bring-up, but we'll see what revival director Shawna Lucey does with it.
• Das Rheingold, Wagner. Eun Sun Kim starts the company's revival of Francesca Zambello's production in the summer of 2027, with, so far, a complete cast turnover. We will get our first local taste of Brian Mulligan's Wotan (though you can see his Walküre Wotan on Medici TV, in concert, conducted by Yannick Nezeh-Seguin, with Tamara Wilson as Brünnhilde), which I expect to be beautifully sung and thoughtful. Kim's three Wagner productions at SFO have all been tremendously conducted, from the first downbeat of Lohengrin to the closing measures of Parsifal. We were lucky to have Donald Runnicles for 17 years and we are incredibly fortunate to have Kim now.
• Tosca, Puccini. Shawna Lucey's production is back, with Clelia Cafiero back, conducting Rachel Willis-Søorensen in her role debut as the Roman diva, Riccardo Massi as Cavaradossi, and Quinn Kelsey as the evil Scarpia.

Elsewhere:

• Janos Gereben, SFCV
• Parterre Box
• Gabe Meline, KQED
• James Ambroff-Tahan, Examiner
• Opera Tattler