Thea Musgrave at Left Coast Chamber Ensemble

Thea Musgrave

Photo courtesy of San Francisco Opera

Left Coast Chamber Ensemble just announced their 2026-27 season the other day, and whaddya know, in the season that San Francisco Opera presents the 98-year-old composer's Mary, Queen of Scots, LCCE is performing four of her chamber works during their season. Good for them, I say, though I was a little surprised that their announcement didn't highlight this great programming.

Here are the works:

• In the Still of the Night, on Sept. 19 & 20, 2026
• Narcissus, on Nov. 21 & 22, 2026
• Light at the End of the Tunnel,  Jan. 17, 2027
• The Egrets Have Landed, May 22 & 23, 2027

As always, all of LCCE's concerts are thoughtfully programmed and well worth attending!

 

Friday Photo

Salvation Army Building

W. 14th St., NY, NY

April, 2026

 

The Greeks Knew about Catharsis: Elektra at the San Francisco Opera

Kyle Ketelsen (Orest) and Elena Pankratova (Elektra)

Photo: Cory Weaver, courtesy of San Francisco Opera

Richard Strauss's Elektra is back at San Francisco Opera, in Keith Warner's idiosyncratic, yet fascinating and insightful, production that sets the opera in a museum and explores family trauma. Okay, yes, that's built into the story, but he takes it a few steps further, relating a modern woman's family trauma to what happened in the House of Atreus. Let me note that composer Anne Hege, whose first laptopera, The Furies, is based on the Elektra story, is giving the pre-performance talks; I attended and I was glad that I did.

This Elektra is among my favorite productions ever, and also one of the greatest and most interesting productions I've ever seen. It was first done at the company in 2017; I think that the blocking has changed very little since then, but note that I didn't visit the SF Opera Archive to take a look at video from the first bring-up. I will admit to missing Christine Goerke, a favorite singer, in the title role.

Elektra is a truly cathartic work, and so well done that I was holding back tears at both the final dress rehearsal and the first performance. 

Eun Sun Kim's conducting is utterly masterful from beginning to end. About my one complaint about 2017 was that I felt Henrik Nánási, excellent in everything else, was kind of slack in the first half-hour, only catching fire around Klytemnestra's entrance. Kim is incendiary and the orchestra magnificent from the first downbeat. It is amazing to hear what she can do with an orchestra.

At various times in the last year the thought "Wow, Eun Sun Kim was such a great hire" has run through my head, and this is more evidence that she was the right conductor for SFO. Somehow they found a music director who turns out to be outstanding in the Runnicles lane of gigantic German works. I can't wait for Der Ring des Nibelungen, coming in two years.

• Lisa Hirsch, SFCV / Chronicle
• Joshua Kosman, On a Pacific Aisle.100% agreement with his comments on Christine Goerke.
• Gabe Meline, KQED. He's not wrong about the orchestra's starring role!
• Michael Anthonio, Parterre Box
• Harvey Steiman, Seen & Heard International
• Charlise Tiee, Opera Tattler
• Patrick Vaz, The Reverberate Hills
• Michael Strickland, SF Civic Center

 

Elim Chan Arrives

Elim Chan and Sasha Cooke

Photo: Stefan Cohen, courtesy of San Francisco Symphony

June, 2026

Back in January, 2026, when Elim Chan's June concerts with San Francisco Symphony were announced, I jumped to the conclusion that this meant Chan would be the next music director of the orchestra. I was right, as it turned out, but in an article in the South China Morning Post, Chan herself says that SFS only approached her in February. She is a good source – obviously – so in January and before, maybe they were trying to figure out how and when to approach her and the concerts were to give the conductor an opportunity to appear with the orchestra as music director designate if they reached an agreement with her.

Anyway, I was at the second of the two concerts, on Saturday, June 6. 

The concert was an occasion, and a heartening one after the last two years. Chan received standing ovations at the start and end. She likes to talk to the audience and she's genuinely funny and charming, which MTT was and Salonen wasn't, though he had a wry sense of humor. I think she will connect well with the audience and the city, again, an area where MTT was great and Salonen (a great conductor) wasn't.

 

As a concert, it was all solid and well played, with nothing revelatory about Chan as a conductor or about the music.

 

San Francisco has two first-class orchestras performing across the street from each other, and one plays a lot more Wagner than the other.* The SF Opera Orchestra has his music in their bones and ears a lot more than SFS. So the Prelude & Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde was correct, but not idiomatic, though the last phrase before the pizzicato of death at the end of the Prelude stood out for its gorgeous phrasing. Overall, it had insufficient rubato and portamento and just did not flow the way it would have in the hands of the SFOO. 

(I have fond memories of Salonen's bleeding chunks as a guest conductor during the centennial season, on a program where the real highlight was his violin concerto. I can't recall whether I have 

heard Wagner at SFS since. I had hoped Salonen would do Tristan in concert, but...)

 

I don't have strong opinions about Debussy's La Mer; I haven't studied the score and somehow it doesn't stick when I hear it in concert or on record. I do not have strong opinions about the range of possibilities in the piece. I would have given Mark Inouye a solo bow for knifelike playing in the third movement and was surprised that Chan didn't. Well, she waded right into the orchestra to shake hands and give solo bows, and the trumpet section is pretty far from the podium!

 

Berlioz's song cycle Les Nuits d'été was the concert's highlight for me. Sasha Cooke is so good! She sang absolutely immaculately, though she didn't move me the way she did in Mahler 2 last year. I felt there were points where she could have raised the emotional temperature for greater impact. Chan had the orchestra sounding particularly great in the Berlioz, a composer she adores.

Various people, myself included, noticed that the originally-announced Mendelssohn Overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream had disappeared from the program; in the event, it was to make way for an encore, one of Michael Tilson Thomas's Rilke songs. Cooke sang it beautifully – of course – and it was a lovely connection to the orchestra's past and to the man who did so much to make it what it is today.

Elsewhere:

• Steven Winn, SFCV and SF Chronicle
• Gabe Meline, KQED
• Michael Strickland, SF Civic Center

* Robert Ward, retired principal horn of SFS, told me that he regretted that he hadn't played more opera, "especially Wagner." I can report that Jonathan Ring and Bruce Roberts did play one Ring with SFO, presumably either 2011 or 2018, under Donald Runnicles.

 

Museum Mondays

Annunciation drawing, by Raphael 

Preparatory for Annunciation

Raphael: Sublime Poetry

Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC

April, 2026

(Click to enlarge)

 

Limmie Pulliam

Tenor Limmie Pulliam, who had just turned 50, died on May 19 (gift link to NY Times obituary).

I heard him just once, singing Otello at Livermore Valley Opera about four years ago. He was an exciting, committed singer with a great voice, a real dramatic tenor. Of the several tenors I've seen in that role, he and the late Johan Botha were the best vocally. Pulliam was more involved and interesting than Botha.

Both Pulliam and. Botha were big guys, but their career trajectories were very different. Pulliam was body-shamed by people in the opera world and was basically driven from the field for a number of years. He worked in other professions, then found the heart and encouragement to go back to singing.

I don't think he was hired for a lot of stage performances – he sang at the Met once, clearly as a cover; there was a run of Il Trovatore at LA Opera around 2021 or 2022. From various obituaries and memories I've read, I think he was doing mostly concert work. I'm glad he had that work – he sang at the Dallas Symphony just two days before he died – but he should have had more stage work. I mean...I saw Die Walküre at Bayreuth and Act I was obviously staged so that Johan Botha could sing a chunk of it sitting down, so. (Do I think the fact that Botha was white and Pulliam Black might have something to do with this disparity? You bet.)

There was an enormous outpouring of online love for Pulliam, and everyone remembered him as a wonderful person, kind-hearted and hard working. I'm sorry that I never got to see him again. Deepest condolences to his family and friends and all who loved him.

Friday Photo

Brooklyn, NY

Main Library

April, 2026

An Art Deco beauty from the outside; I wish I'd had time to go inside.

 

Whitney George's The Curious Case of Doctor Jekyll & Mr. Hyde

Composer Whitney George has what she calls a Gothic chamber thriller, The Curious Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, playing in New York City from June 10 - 13. It sounds like a lot of fun, if you like that kind of thing, which I do, and I wish I could go!

It's at the Shiner Theater of the Sheen Center for Thought & Culture; the four performances include a matinee.

Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday performances at 7:30 p.m.

Saturday performance at 1:30 p.m.

Tickets start at $40.

18 Bleecker Street  New York, New York, 10012

Buy tickets

 

Exciting Times at Davies

Davies Symphony Hall, S.F.

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

Exciting, yes, in good and not so good ways. Perhaps most importantly, I interviewed San Francisco Symphony music director designate Elim Chan for SFCV the day the announcement of her appointment went out. Yes, you could say that I'm happy about this! She is an excellent conductor and I think will be a good fit with the orchestra and the city. She was also a lot of fun to talk to. (I never interviewed Michael Tilson Thomas or Esa-Pekka Salonen, her immediate predecessors, which I greatly regret.)

The day after, Cristian Mǎcelaru led the orchestra in an incendiary performance, including Embers, by Tyler Taylor, winner of the Emerging Black Composers Project award, Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 1, with Simon Trpčeski, and Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9, "From the New World." Trpčeski is not only a terrific pianist, he is a classy guy: he dedication one encore to Elim Chan – who was in Loge A with SFS CEO Matthew Spivey – and the other, which included associate concertmaster Wyatt Underhill, to MTT.

I also reviewed conductor laureate Herbert Blomstedt's program, which consisted only of Mahler's Symphony No. 9, and which turned out to be an unfortunate occasion. Blomstedt arrived in S.f. in a sufficiently exhausted state that he spent several days in the hospital, with David Robertson taking over rehearsals. By the day of this concert, he had recovered enough that, it seems, he insisted on leading the last rehearsal and conducting the concert.

It did not go well. He was escorted in a wheelchair to the podium, where several people helped him onto the podium and the piano bench from which he was conducting. During the third movement, he started listing to the right and it appeared he might fall off. The music stopped; the helpers came out; they swapped the bench for an armchair. The music went on, but it was scary for the audience (and I'm sure the musicians) and not entirely clear how in charge of the performance Blomstedt was. 

He withdrew from the remaining two performances, which Robertson conducted, and has subsequently withdrawn from scheduled performances in Sweden, which Alan Gilbert led.

There was a lot of discussion about Blomstedt on Facebook, both before and after the concert, by members of the public and members of the orchestra. This kind of situation – reviewing a concert where a performer is very old, or ill, or merely getting to the end of their career – needs to be handled carefully. If the performer is a Herbert Blomsted, who is nearly 99 years old, or a Michael Tilson Thomas, who performed after surgery for a brain tumor, their performances are occasions, not just concerts, and should be reviewed with that in mind.

I attended most of MTT's post-diagnosis performances, and, well, were they the best performances I heard from him? Mostly not – but it didn't matter, because they were as much about who he was and what he meant to the audience as about the quality of the performances. Similarly with any performances by Herbert Blomstedt, an honored and much-loved past music director of the orchestra.

 

A Tale of Two Opera Houses

War Memorial Opera House

View from the Stage

Photo courtesy of the War Memorial

If you read this blog, you know that my home opera house is San Francisco's War Memorial Opera House. The WMOH opened in 1932 – yes, there's a significant birthday coming up; watch for a nice funding raising campaign* – and seats roughly 3200 people in sections called Orchestra, Box, Grand tier, Dress Circle, Balcony Circle and Balcony.

In the photo above, you can see that the orchestra is fairly deep and there's a significant overhang of the box level over the back of the orchestra. In the level above the boxes, the Grand Tier is in front, then, across an aisle, the Dress Circle rises above it.

Above that, there's the Balcony Circle, and behind it, the Balcony. 

For marketing and sales purposes, each of the levels is subdivided in various ways, to provide different price points depending on the desirability of the seats.

Metropolitan Opera House

View from the Stage

Allegedly Opening Night, 1966

The photo above is New York's Metropolitan Opera House, which opened in 1966. The Met seats 3800 people across six similarly named levels, but each named level gets its own separate physical tier. The Orchestra is extremely deep, with the back of Orchestra level a lot farther from the stage than the back of the WMOH orchestra level is from the stage. 

At the Met, the Parterre level houses the main box level, though, interestingly, every level up to the Balcony has boxes along the sides of the house. So, the Met levels are Parterre, Grand Tier above that, Dress Circle above that, Balcony above that, and waaaaay up there, the Family Circle. I do not have height measurements for the interior of the two houses, but the Met's Family Circle, and probably the Balcony would be above the roof of the WMOH.

Basically, any time you're in one of the tiers, even the $$$$ boxes, you're farther from the stage at the Met than at the WMOH.

I recently took in the Met's productions of Tristan und Isolde and Innocence, sitting in the Family Circle for my first Tristan and the Dress Circle for my second, in the Dress Circle for Innocence. I bought my own tickets, because, without a paid review, it was not clear when I asked for them that I would be able to get press tickets. 

Hoo boy, the sheer size of the house created quite the distance, physical and emotional, from what was happening on stage.

For Innocence, the Met used Simon Stone's production, which was created for the 2021 Aix-en-Provence world premiere, and which has been used by the commissioning opera companies. The Met was a "sponsor" of the production, and I admit, I don't know exactly what that means.

It's the production we saw in San Francisco, the one with the giant rotating set; I attended the dress rehearsal and opening night (I can't recall what I did with my subscription ticket), then watched a performance from backstage and wrote about it for SFCV. 

Everyone sang well, but I was shocked at how little impact the singing actually had. I've seen the Danish bass Stephen Milling several times and he's always been magnificent, pulling off such feats as stealing the show while singing Hagen in Götterdämmerung. But here? It could have been any good bass on stage; there was nothing like the dramatic or vocal impact Milling brings to everything he does. I was far more moved by Kristinn Sigmundsson in SF.

So, this was the last time I'll be up in the tiers at the Met; in the future, no matter the cost (if I can't get press tickets), I'll be in the orchestra somewhere, where I'll be able to actually connect with the music and singers.

More about Tristan, eventually.

 

Museum Mondays

Puff Quilt with Tobacco Sacks

Annie Crawford

Routed West, BAMPFA 

Berkeley, CA

November, 2025

Click to enlarge