Received from San Francisco Opera

Postcard, c. 1930s, of the War Memorial Opera House and Veterans Building, SF

From my personal collection

A statement from the San Francisco Opera:

August 27, 2026

San Francisco Opera is in negotiations with our Orchestra for a successor collective bargaining agreement. The agreement expired on July 31, 2026. We have incredible respect for the Musicians of the San Francisco Opera Orchestra and deeply value the talents they bring to the Company and the community. We share the Orchestra’s desire to reach a mutually agreeable resolution as soon as possible. A mediator was welcomed into the process last week, and we are actively working together with the Orchestra to reach a resolution.

As with many arts organizations, San Francisco Opera faces a difficult economic situation, and we appreciate that this is making for a challenging labor negotiation. While the Opera is seeing incredibly positive trends in audience and donor growth, the fundamental economics underlying the organization have been straining for over 60 years as expense growth has, over decades, outpaced revenue growth. This has led to the gradual reduction of our seasons and volume of work, a reality faced by many arts organizations.

Even with very positive revenue trends, the growing economic strain has put an unsustainable drain on the Opera’s endowment to balance the budget, and a need to resolve a structural deficit of $15M each year. Even with well-sold houses and increasing subscriptions, ticket sales only cover 15% of the Company’s budget, leading to an ever-increasing reliance on the Company’s extraordinarily generous donors and an imperative to maintain, not erode, the Company’s endowment. The income from our endowment is a critical source of our revenue, now larger than ticket sales.

The current structure of the Orchestra’s contract was designed for a volume of work that has not been economically feasible for many years. As we have already been doing with all of our employees, artists and labor organizations, we must find a way through this with the Orchestra to find a contract that respects their extraordinary talents and better aligns with the economic realities of the Company.

The Opera has shared a possible five-year framework with the Orchestra that would realize gradual changes to the structure of the Orchestra’s compensation while keeping their earnings constant to current levels each year over the coming five years. We look forward to exploring this and other options with the Orchestra and continuing our negotiations together as we work towards a mutually agreeable new contract.

One could have some...questions...about this. 

Let's take "straining for 60 years," which gets us back to 1966. Using the handy SFO performance archive, I found that in 1966, between Spring Opera and the fall season, the company staged (gasp) nineteen (19) operas. HOWEVER. Six of those were in the Spring Opera season, which ran from May 24 to June 28. Each of the productions – which included Mignon and Turn of the Screw – got two (2) performances.

The fall season ran from September 20 to November 27 and brought and additional 13 operas, which mostly received 3 or 4 performances, totaling 55 in all. Butterfly got 5, because, well, it's Butterfly and it sells. I Puritani got 6, and I'm willing to bet that the presence of Joan Sutherland in the cast was the reason, also Alfred Kraus and Nicolai Ghiarov, who were no slouches themselves.

Let me note that the fall season included Don Carlo, Elektra, Le Nozze de Figaro, Boris Godunov, Falstaff, Tannhäuser, Vec Makropulos, and, in a good-parts version designed to show off the great Regine Crespin, Les Troyens.

I ask you to imagine the quality of these performances. Thirteen operas in the fall, 1966, season, many of them very complex to stage, wedged into two months of performance. Seriously, comparing this to, say, a 10- or 12-opera, 75-performance season is not really right. More recent SFO seasons have more rehearsal time and each opera gets more performances; the orchestra has fewer scores to get through, etc.

We also should take a look at ticket prices and the ratio of ticket sales to donations. I can guess that prices were lower and that ticket sales brought in a much higher percentage of total income than current ticket sales do. I have no idea of whether the Opera Orchestra was permanent and salaried, or whether freelance musicians were hired. Again: look at what you're getting for your money.

Friday Photo

Free air for your bicycle

Le Marais, Paris, France

July, 2026

 

Contract Negotiations

Postcard of the War Memorial Opera House and Veterans Building, SF

From my personal collection

Some of you will remember that San Francisco Opera's 2024 opening night performance of Un ballo in maschera was delayed by maybe half an hour. My assumption at the time was that, well, people were inebriated and just taking their time settling down.

We learned within a few days that the SF Opera Orchestra refused to go on until they got some labor concessions from management. There were various negotiations and eventually management and the orchestra signed a contract covering the period from August 1, 2024 to July 31, 2026.

Well....negotiations started in May and they have not been going well. Today, the Opera Orchestra announced that they would on strike as of opening night, September 12, unless there's a contract in place by then.

Here's email sent earlier today by the orchestra:

Dear Friends,

We are writing to let you know that the musicians of the San Francisco Opera Orchestra will not be able to perform on Opening Night, September 12, unless management has reached a fair contract with us before then. We are letting you know this weeks in advance rather than having you be surprised at the door.

Our contract expired on July 31, and the season is about to open without a new one. We came into these negotiations months ago, expecting to build on the modest agreement we reached two years ago. Management instead proposed a 26% pay cut, which would have returned us to 2015 wages. They have since "improved" that offer to a 20% cut, which would put us back at our 2018 pay. We cannot begin a season under proposals like these.

The San Francisco Opera is not a company in trouble. By management's own account, and by the financial information they have shared with us:

● Six productions have sold out in the past three years.

● Ticket sales and subscriptions are rising. Donations have increased by $8 million compared to last year, exceeding the Opera’s stated goals by $2.2 million.

● The Opera has recently received several high-profile gifts, and the number of “Producers Circle” donors–those who contribute over $100,000 per year–has more than doubled since the pandemic.

And yet despite the recent momentum, our seasons continue to shrink—we are now down to only six productions this year, compared to twelve productions in 2008. Every round of programming cuts has been presented as the cure for the organization’s deficit. But what their own financial reports have shown is that the diminished schedule has only exacerbated the issue.

Fewer performances mean less ticket revenue and fewer production sponsorships, while the fixed costs of mounting an opera remain the same. Twice in the past two decades, the deficit was larger after the cuts than before them. And while management claims that production costs are only going to continue to increase, they refuse to explore less expensive offerings such as semi-staged productions or concert operas.

We are not walking away from the table, and we want two things. First, a contract that gives the musicians of this orchestra stability and pay that keeps pace with the cost of living in this city. Second, a working partnership with management to reverse the pattern of cuts: more performances, longer runs of the productions that sell out, and a plan to grow the company's audience and offerings rather than further reduce its ambitions.

This is not a decision we take lightly and we hope that it can be avoided by management agreeing to a fair contract. There is nowhere we would rather be on September 12 than in the pit. We ask for your support so that we can make that happen.

If you want to help, write to San Francisco Opera at PatronServices@sfopera.com, tell them what opening night is worth to you, and ask them to settle this before the curtain.

Sincerely,

The Musicians of the San Francisco Opera Orchestra

Here are some older background articles, by Janos Gereben and myself:

• SF Opera Orchestra Reaches Contract Agreement Through End of This Season, November, 2024, SFCV, by Janos
• S.F. Artists Keep Up the Fight for Better Labor Contracts, December 2024, SFCV, by Janos
• SF Opera Orchestra Signs New Labor Contract, July, 2025, SFCV, by Janos
• SFO Season Announcement, February, 2026, SF Chronicle, by Lisa

A few thoughts -

I've heard Matthew Shilvock discussing the current financial situation a couple of times in talks to donors and I've also chatted with him about it. SFO is unquestionably in a pretty good financial situation: the endowment is in good shape and they're not having to dip into it; as the musicians say, subscriptions and major donations are up; the audience is expanding.

It is also true that costs are going up. You can tell this from looking at the various financial documents that SFO is required to production. There are the 990 federal tax forms filed by all nonprofit organizations and the audited financial statements that they also produce. 

For many years, you could take the number of performances at the Opera and the budget for the year and what you'd find was that it cost, in aggregate, about $1 million per performance to put on opera at the international level. As of the 990 filed last year, though, costs were roughly $90 to $93 million to put on around 45 performances and several one-off concerts, meaning costs were up to about $2 million per performance.

We are all aware of the amount of inflation we have seen in this country, with food, fuel, and many other costs going up. For opera companies, costs like getting costumes made and sets built have gone up, because of both labor and material costs. I have heard this from SFO and from another opera company I talk with.

It is absolutely true that the cost of living in the Bay Area has gone up a lot, in the cost of staples like food, cars, and so on, but also in the absolutely wild cost of buying or renting your home. 

Fewer performances means the musicians are providing fewer services (the length of time that rehearsals and performances are measured in, bearing in mind that opera performances can run up to five or six hours) than when they were playing 75 performances per season. I have absolutely no idea what you have to do to raise their pay for playing fewer rehearsals and performances and no idea what I think is fair. I assume that management's thinking along these lines is behind the attempt to cut the musicians' pay, which I find extremely distasteful. (See the example set by a famous union member who made sure to have union contracts in place and pay a fair wage throughout her long career. That would be the late Dolly Parton.)

 

Apply to Luna Composition Labs

Luna Composition Lab T-shirt

The letters LUNA within thumbnail, half, 3/4, and full moons

Not credited on their web site but I will try to find out who designed this.

Might be by Square Candy Design

The application period for Luna Composition Lab for the 2026-27 Fellowships and Adventures in Sound classes opened about ten days ago and closes on September 15.

If you know any budding musicians, ages 13-18, who are female, nonbinary, or gender nonconforming, they're eligible to apply to either of the programs.

• The Fellowships provide eight months of one-on-one mentoring with a female, nonbinary, or gender nonconforming composer; the chance to create an original worked that is workshopped, premiered, and recording by professional musicians; many professional opportunities, including networking with current and past fellows and a weeklong festival in NYC at the end of the fellowship year. The Fellowship is free.
• Adventures in Sound is a ten-week online group composition class for female, nonbinary, or gender nonconforming musicians, ages 13-18, using a wonderful curriculum developed by composer Whitney George. Adventures in Sound costs $240; there are scholarships available for those who can demonstrate financial need.

I wrote about Luna Lab and its founders, composers Ellen Reid and Missy Mazzoli, for the NY Times this past spring. It's a wonderful project, and I have such respect and admiration for Ellen and Missy and the work they've done and are doing.

Please spread the word about Luna Lab to any and all young composers and musicians that you know who are female, nonbinary, or gender nonconforming!

News from the BSO

Boston Symphony Hall

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

April, 2025

This dropped into my in-box a few hours ago:

A Joint Statement from the BSO and Our Musicians:

The Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Boston Musicians’ Association, and the Musicians of the Boston Symphony Orchestra Reach New Collective Bargaining Agreement and Release the Following Joint Statement:

"Today, the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) musicians, the Boston Musicians’ Association, the BSO trustees and management approved a new collective bargaining agreement effective through August 26, 2029. 

This agreement marks an important step toward a more collaborative future for the BSO. It creates a precedent-setting partnership between musicians and management in artistic planning and centers excellence across all the work we do on our stages and in our communities. It also establishes a truly collaborative process in the search for our next music director. 

We are one institution of musicians, staff, and boards, committed to working together in partnership to advance our artistic mission, inspire audiences, and serve Boston, the Berkshires, and beyond. We want to thank our audiences, donors, and partners for your continued support of the BSO."

For more details, read the complete press release here.

Note that the press release has quotations from Chad Smith, President and CEO, and Barbara Hostetter, Chair of the BSO Board of Trustees, but nothing from the players' committee. I would have liked to see something from them.

Recitative and Aria

In his review of West Edge Opera's production of American Apollo, Joshua Kosman wrote this, right at the top:

Open the score of a standard operatic work — literally any piece by Mozart, Verdi, Wagner, or Britten — and you’ll encounter something increasingly rare on the contemporary stage: fast music. Those old-timers understood, in a way that too many living composers don’t, the virtue of having some parts of a score that move. Fast music provides a sense of excitement; it reinforces the rhythmic elements of both the score and the libretto; it provides contrast with slower passages to create a tapestry of varied tempos. It also militates against the jagged, talky text-setting that dominates too much contemporary opera, because those disjunct melodies and shapeless vocal lines are practically impossible to sing at speed.

I agree 100%; this is a problem in too much contemporary opera. But I want to take what he says a step or two further.

One issue is that librettists aren't providing obvious arias – you know, a character singing about what they're feeling, or singing to another character – and duets, and ensembles to their composers. And...composers aren't demanding those things. 

I don't know if there's a fundamental misunderstanding of how opera works, or if everyone is so intent on being collaborative that composers (and librettists) just aren't saying "Look, we need something different here," or what. Composers like Puccini, Verdi, and Mozart understood drama and pacing and didn't hesitate to ask their librettists for something different. These composers left behind correspondence about these things. 

But there's something else that English-language contemporary opera does not have that Mozart and Verdi (and Handel!) had – recitative. You know, that pitched speech that comes between arias? In Mozart, it's usually accompanied by a harpsichord or fortepiano (though sometimes orchestra), in Verdi, the orchestra. 

Here are Rachel Willis-Sørensen and Pavol Breslik in Don Giovanni, in the discussion leading up to Donna Anna's aria "Or sai chi l'onore."

Here's Javier Camarena singing the opening of Act 2 of Verdi's La Traviata. Everything up to the aria "De' miei bollenti spiriti" is Verdian recitative. After the aria (cavatina, I guess, and the orchestra is not sufficiently audible), he sings the cabaletta, "O mio rimorso."

Living composers and librettists need to figure out not just how to have slow and fast numbers in their operas, but how to set conversational material in a way that is different from their arias, duets, and larger ensembles. There's no common language for that the way there was from early opera into the Romantic era, so it's largely up to everyone to figure it out for themselves.

Update, 8/25/26: And of course, there's an alternative to recitative: spoken dialogue. This is the solution used in German Singspiel, like The Magic Flute, and French opéra-comique, like Carmen. (Yeah, you hear sung recitative that Bizet didn't write in too many Carmen productions, sigh.)

Museum Mondays

Peter Paul Rubens and Jan Breughel

"Madonna in a Garland of Flowers," 1616/1618, detail

Alte Pinakothek, Munich

July, 2026

 

Friday Photo

The wine-dark sea (the Mediterranean)

The Calanques, near Cassis, France

July, 2026

 

Merola Finale

Merola Finale; all participants

Photo by Kristen Loken

Last Saturday, August 15, was the Merola Finale, a concert with orchestra given by this year's young singers of the Merola Opera, who've spent ten weeks working very hard at their art and craft. They've given concerts and an opera and they're a talented bunch.

That said, I was less happy this year than I was last year, and I'm going to chalk it up to conducting that I felt did not adequately support these singers. Numbers that should have sparkled didn't; numbers that needed lilt or charm didn't have it. The duet "Parigi, o cara" from La Traviata was taken at a tempo I found bizarre, though my notes don't indicate whether it was too fast or too slow (probably too fast). 

I own that this is a difficult assignment – there were many numbers on the program and a lot of gear-switching – and also that the second half seemed better than the first, but I've heard it done better and I thought the singers deserved better. 

I can't say how many of the numbers that fell flat for me would have been better with a different conductor; I do not know whether some singers needed more coaching. I do know that in June's concert by Kyle Ketelsen, with Carrie-Ann Matheson and and a Merola participant as collaborative pianists, the young singers on that program all sounded good.

I do think that there was some miscasting: with several excellent lyric tenors in the mix, somehow the Duke of Mantua, in the Rigoletto quartet, was sung by a budding spinto tenor. In that, he felt miscast; as Dick Johnson in a duet from La Fanciulla del West, he shone.

So let me name this fine young tenor: Chester Seungyup Han, who sounded terrific in the Fanciulla duet with soprano Charlotte Kelso. She has a voice that is both beautiful and characterful, a big, dark-toned, vibrant instrument, which she wielded with great skill: great control of dynamics and color. 

Han was also the tenor in the Faust finale, with the excellent soprano Anna Thompson and bass John Mburu. The latter made a big impression in Kaspar's aria "Schweig! Damit sich niemand warnt," which I will bet he got to coach with Ketelsen, whom I heard in that very role in Munich last month. Mburu has a good, solid sound and good interpretive instincts.

There's been some excellent Berlioz at both Merola and Adler concerts over the last five or ten years, and this program had another installment: a beautiful traversal of "Nuit d'ivresse," the love duet from Les Troyens, by mezzo Theo Claveles and tenor Matthew Sink. These two have very distinctive voices that blended well, and yet you could hear the play of the lines against each other.  You bet that I'm sorry to have missed them in Ariadne auf Naxos, as the Composer and The Tenor/Bacchus, respectively.

Baritone Enes Pektaş stood out for his crisp delivery of "Şeyh Bedriddin Destani," by the Turkish composer Murat Cem Orhan, and Paul Jang showed off a beautiful bass voice in "Yearning," a setting by DongHwan Kim of a poem by KiChul Lee. I enjoyed tenor Logan Wagner's suave "On the street where you live," from Lerner and Lowe's My Fair Lady.

Perhaps the most dramatic number of the evening was tenor Ryan Bryce Johnson's electrifying delivery of the "Aria of the Worm" from John Corigliano's The Ghosts of Versailles, which really made me sit up and take notice.

Claire Choquette’s direction worked well both in terms of interactions among the singers and how it took advantage of the two-level Manon set.

As always, a skilled and talented group of singers, all hoping to join the Adler program. Best of luck to them all; I look forward to hearing these young singers again, whether as Adlers or elsewhere.

Elsewhere:

• Joshua Kosman, On a Pacific Aisle
• Steven Winn, SFCV (and SF Chronicle)
• Charlise Tiee, Opera Tattler
• Michael Strickland, SF Civic Center
• Matthew Travisano, Parterre Box

Broadcasts This Week

Die Frau ohne Schatten

Courtesy of Festival d'Aix-en-Provence

Photo by Monika Rittershaus, copyright 2026

Vida Miknevičiūtė (Empress), Ambur Braid (Dyer's Wife), Michael Spyres (Emperor), Brian Mulligan (Barak)

There are radio broadcasts and streaming available for some of the productions I saw in July and August.

The Salzburg Festival has an extensive program of radio and TV broadcasts on various stations. Radio broadcasts are available until about a month after the performances. 

medici.tv, which is available in the United States, will stream video of Ariadne auf Naxos on Thursday, August 20 at 11 a.m. and Il Viaggio a Reims on Friday, August 21 at 11:00 a.m.

For complete information on broadcasts, see the Salzburg Festival Broadcast web page.

 Arte has re-posted the Aix Frau video, which is well worth seeing. Frau and Viaggio were both directed by Barrie Kosky, and wow, they were both great.

I do not yet know whether the Ariadne and Viaggio broadcasts will stay on Medici.tv for a while or are one-shot deals. I am going to try to watch them both. Ariadne got booed (the director made a major plot intervention in the Opera!) and Viaggio was one of the funniest things I've ever seen. I hope you get to see them.

Luminous Refractions: SF Contemporary Music Players 2026-27 Season

The SF Contemporary Music Players have an outstanding season of new / recent / important modern music coming up. Here it is, in brief:

LUMINOUS REFRACTIONS

 

·       “Bay Bridges” (Saturday, October 3, 2026 at 7:30 PM - Brava Theater) - Music by Matthew Evan Taylor*, Shuying Li*, Inés Thiebaut*, Michael Gilbertson*, and Darius Milhaud.

 

·       “Glassworks” (Sunday, February 7, 2027 at 4:00 PM – Taube Atrium Theater) – Music by Philp Glass, Cassandra Miller, Mason Bates*, and David Lang.

 

·       “Foundry” (Saturday, April 10, 2027 at 7:30 PM - Taube Atrium Theater) - Music by Mark Gustavson, Laurie San Martin*, Sofia Ouyang, and Pamela Z* (commission/world premiere).

 

·       “Alchemy” (Sunday, May 2, 2027 at 4:00 PM - Brava Theater) – Music by Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez, Juri Seo, Aaron Jay Kernis, and Asha Srinivasan.

Each concert is preceded by a talk by Artistic Director / Conductor Eric Dudley.

The organization will also have a bit of....rebranding going on; while the formal name will remain San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, they'll use sfCONTEMPORARY as their identity.

Well, I'm Back.

What I did on my summer vacation.

The spine without print under Carmen is Werther.

(Click to enlarge.)

I've been back, actually, since August 8; it's just that it took me until the last couple of days to feel thoroughly re-oriented to my usual life. It's as though my five weeks in Europe happened in another realm, and maybe they did, although there are various witnesses to attest that I was really there, friends from different parts of my life, mostly musical connections of one kind or another.

I saw 16 performances in the five weeks I was away. Not readily visible in the photo above, because the programs were small rather than being the size of paperback novella, four performances in Aix: Les vêpres siciliennes, Bluebeard's Castle, Michael Spyres in recital, and Sonya Yoncheva in recital with Cappella Mediterranea.

Amazingly, of these 16, only Bluebeard was a bust, a big surprise considering how good Klaus Mäkelä was conducting Die Frau ohne Schatten. Well, I am sure that Frau got a lot more rehearsal time and took up a lot more of his attention than Bluebeard, but it was a shock anyway. Whatever; it was really a great run of operas and recitals. 

Here are the reviews that've been published so far, as well as some links to others' reviews (more to come). Comments on Mr. Brouček and reviews of the Salzburg operas will be published this week at SFCV.

• The Brilliant Opera Season at Aix-en-Provence, SFCV, August, 2026 (Accabadora, Die Frau Ohne Schatten, Les vêpres siciliennes, Bluebeard's Castle, El Cimarron, recitals by Michael Spyres and Sonya Yoncheva)
• Hugh Canning reviews Frau, Operalogue
• Joshua Barone, NY Times, reviews Frau (gift link)
• David Karlin reviews Frau, Bachtrack
• Alessandro Zummo reviews Frau, Plays to See
• Mark Pullinger reviews Frau, Opera Now
• Kevin Ng inverviews Barrie Kosky about Frau, Parterre Box
• Heidi Waleson reviews Aix, WSJ (paywall)
• A.J. Goldman reviews several Aix productions, Parterre Box
• Shirley Apthorp reviews Accabadora, Financial Times
• General Aix conversation at Parterre Box
• Don't Go in the Basement: Rusalka at the Bayerische Staatsoper, Parterre Box, August, 2026
• Hit Me With Your Best Shot: Der Freischütz at the Bayerische Staatsoper, Parterre Box, August, 2026

Museum Mondays

Paul Klee, Archangel

Lehnbachhaus, Munich

July, 2026