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. 

West Edge Opera 2026

West Edge Opera's 2026 Festival will include the following:

• Britten, The Turn of the Screw. Mark Streshinsky, dir; Jonathan Khuner, cond.
• Handel, Rinaldo. Emily Senturia, cond.
• Geter, American Apollo. Nataki Garrett, dir., Kedrick Armstrong, cond.

There will also be an orchestra preview of Claude & Marcel, by Alyssa Weinberg and Stephanie Fleischmann. This opera will premiere in 2027.

West Edge Opera Festival Schedule Change

Oakland Scottish Rite Center

July, 2022

West Edge Opera has announced that they're delaying their production of Charpentier's David and Jonathan to 2025, swapping in Luna Pearl Woolf and Royce Vavrek's Jacqueline in 2024. The latter will star soprano Marnie Breckenridge and cellist Matt Haimovitz. From the press release:

Jacqueline dives into the real-life struggle between celebrity virtuosic cellist Jacqueline du Pré and the multiple sclerosis that ravaged her body, mind, and talent, robbing her of her identity, her breathtaking musical gift, and her life. This intimate piece for soprano and cello brings two contemporary virtuosi to the stage: celebrated soprano Marnie Breckenridge as Jacqueline, and renowned cellist (and former du Pré protégé) Matt Haimovitz as du Pré’s only constant companion, her cello.
 
Inspired by the structure and emotional landscape of Edward Elgar’s Cello Concerto, composer Luna Pearl Woolf and Pulitzer Prize winning librettist Royce Vavrek chart the development of great prodigy and ultimately, great tragedy. Jacqueline references Haimovitz’s personal recollections of du Pré herself, from when he was a young prodigy under her wing. Colorful and at times fractured, the form of the work echoes du Pré’s iconic interpretation of the Elgar, using the concerto’s four-movement structure to navigate a prismatic and passionate, if all too short, life in music.

I've liked everything of Woolf's that I have heard, so I expect that this will be good. 

Also in the press release is the cast for Legend of the Ring, which looks very good:

Tracy Cox (Brunnhilde), Philip Skinner (Wotan), Alex Boyer (Sigmund/Siegfried), Mary Evelyn Hangley (Freia/Sieglinde), Stephanie Sanchez (Fricka), Kyle Bielfield (Loge/Mime), Peter Morgan (Alberich/Fasolt), Matt Lovell (Fafner/Hundig). Conducted by Jonathan Khuner, Directed by Sam Helfrich.

 

West Edge Opera 2023

Scottish Rite Temple

Rear of auditorium

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

Summer, 2022

Gosh, I am surprised to see that I never posted anything about West Edge Opera's 2022 operas and the performances. They were all good! Giulio Cesare, Coraline, and, best of all, Dukas's extremely rare Ariane et Barbe-Bleu, with truly powerhouse performances by Renée Rapier as Ariane and Sara Couden as her nurse. I loved Turnage's Coraline, too; a quirky opera based on a quirky book and film.

The 2023 festival was originally announced as the new (commissioned by WEO) opera  Bulrusher, but that has been postponed to 2024. Instead:

• Monteverdi, The Coronation of Poppea (aka L'incoronazione di Poppea)
• Schoenberg, Erwartung and Stravinsky, Le Rossignol
• Martinez, Cruzar la Cara de la Luna

Casts haven't been announced yet. WEO has performed Poppea before, ten or so years back when they were performing in El Cerrito. 

Next year's festival will presumably again be at the Oakland Scottish Rite Temple's cavernous theater, which seats 1200 and where you need to be careful on the stairs.

San Francisco Opera Medal

Dale Travis, Philip Skinner, and Catherine Cook

October 30, 2022

Photo by Kristen Loken, courtesy of San Francisco Opera

Here's the kind of event that warms the heart of even a cynic like me: San Francisco Opera has awarded its Opera Medal to Dale Travis (bass baritone), Philip Skinner (bass baritone), and Catherine Cook (mezzo-soprano), three singers who, over the last 30-plus years, have between them appeared in scores of roles in hundreds of performances. They have sung big roles and small; they are all terrific singers and consummate professionals. They have brought honor to the stage (and themselves!) and great joy to everyone who has heard them.

They received the medal after the last performance of Dialogues of the Carmelites, in which Cook had appeared as Mother Jeanne and Travis had appeared as the Marquis de la Force. The three had written a speech that they each read part of it. It was a lovely occasion and the medals well earned.

I've seen them in many many roles over the years. Travis is a perennial in certain roles, such as the Sacristan in Tosca; he was terrific in Dialogues and I remember him fondly in The Makropulos Case (Dr. Kolenaty). I am sorry to have missed Cook's turn in the title role of Dolores Claiborne; she often sings comic roles, and has been a fabulous La Frugola in Il Tabarro and Mother Goose in The Rake's Progress. I have seen Skinner in a wide range of roles at SFO - most recently in Antony and Cleopatra, and farther back as possibly the best Escamillo of my experience. He was an incredibly chilling Edgar Lee Killen in Appomattox, with a big monologue right at the close of the opera, which I remember vividly some 15 years later. He has also been a star of many many productions at Opera Parallele and West Edge Opera.

Wishing these three long life and much more great singing!

 

West Edge Opera 2021

I've been to two of this year's three operas at West Edge Opera. I can't report on the third because I'm attending its last performance and my report will be worthless to you. But here's what I thought of the first two:

Elizabeth Cree, by Kevin Puts to a libretto by Mark Campbell. 

This was fantastic in every way. I mean, I can't believe every company in the country isn't performing it. It's got a tightly-constructed and often funny libretto and excellent music; it's in English; it seems very singable; it lends itself to a range of stagings. 

Set in Victorian London, it's about....murder. And yes, it's very funny despite, or because, of that. The entire cast is terrific, with Katherine Pracht as the title character (she is on trial for killing her husband as the opera opens), Keith Phares as John Cree, Samuel Faustine as real-world character Dan Leno, a music-hall performer, Simon Barrad as Inspector Kildare, Leslie Katter as Aveline Mortimer, Christopher Job as Uncle, Ashley Dixon as Doris, J. Raymond Meyers as Victor Farrell, Glenn Healy, Linda Baird, Solas Burke-Lalgee, and Andrew Green as the Ensemble (they had various smallish roles, as a judge, Karl Marx, and George Gissing). 

Everyone was great! The direction is great! (By Sam Helfrich; I hope he'll be back!) Honestly, you want to see this, especially if you're a fan of Sweeney Todd or Kind Hearts and Coronets.

Katya Kabanova, by Leoš Janáček. 

Do I need to do anything beyond naming the composer? Because we should all attend every Janáček opera we can, among other things to persuade opera companies to program his works as much as they program the popular Verdi and Puccini operas. 

That said, I have only seen Katya once before, in a weird SFO production in the 2002-3 season, starring Karita Mattila, and something that didn't stick was what a beautiful score it is.* WEO's physical production is a little clunky, involving a lot of moving scenery around the stage and carrying potted plants on and off stage, but musically about all it lacks is a big orchestra. That's likely not logistically possible, given the venue, and the 29-piece orchestra is likely a financial stretch. 

The music and dramatic values are fine, the singing really superb. Carrie Hennessey was a truly gripping and expressive Katya, Alex Boyer a sweet-voiced Tichon (Katya's weak-willed husband), Kristin Clayton chewing the scenery, in a good way, as his impossible mother Kabanicha, Christopher Oglesby as Katya's lover Boris, the always-great Philip Skinner as Bori's awful uncle Dikoj, Sarah Coit as a gorgeous Varvara, Tichon's sister, and Chad Somers a delightful Kudrjas. Jonathan Khuner conducted, Indre Viskontas directed.

So yeah, I haven't seen Cavalli's Eliogabalo yet, but you know, when are you going to have the opportunity to see anything by Cavalli again? Get a ticket, don't worry about what the published reviews say, and have fun at it.

* Let me note that SFO has only produced this opera three times, and the conductors were Rafael Kubelik, Christoph von Dohnanyi, and Donald Runnicles. Opera doesn't get better than that.

News from West Edge Opera

 Various. news from West Edge Opera that I am way behind in reporting!

Snapshot

The annual Snapshot program will be held outdoors with social distancing this year:

May 15, 4 p.m. (And maybe also May 16?)

Bruns Amphitheater

100 Cal Shakespeare Way

Orinda, CA

Watch this web page for more details.

Aperture

The new Aperture program is for the development of new operas. You can read about what's going on at the Aperture web site. There are now eight operas in what they're calling the Sprint phase.

2021 Summer Festival

This year's festival -- which will present the three operas that were planned for 2020 - will also be held at the Bruns Amphitheater. Here's the press release, followed by dates:

BERKELEY, CA, February 2nd, 2021 - This summer, West Edge Opera is thrilled to be a part of Cal Shakes 'Season of Shared Light', presenting a three-week-long opera festival - an outdoor celebration of live music and performance - at The Bruns Amphitheater, 100 California Shakespeare Theater Way, nestled in the hills overlooking Orinda, CA. This partnership with Cal Shakes presents the opportunity for safety, collaboration, and most importantly: the opportunity to celebrate live arts again.

On Saturday July 24th, West Edge will open its festival with Katya Kabanova by Leoš Janáček, first performed in 1921. Jonathan Khuner will conduct this haunting tale of a woman's passion breaking free from the constraints of a conservative society with tragic consequences. Indra Viskontas directs. Soprano Carrie Hennessey will play the title role. Adler Fellow and Merola alum Christopher Oglesby will play her lover Boris. Kabanicha, Katya's tyrannical mother-in-law, will be played by soprano Kristin Clayton. Mezzo-soprano Sarah Coit is another veteran of West Edge's 2019 festival, earning raves as Jenny Diver in The Threepenny Opera, and will play Katya's young confidant, Varvara. Rounding out the cast will be tenor Alex Boyer, as well as Philip Skinner and Chad Somors. The opera will be sung in Czech with English surtitles. Performances run through Thursday, August 5th.

The next night, Sunday July 25th, West Edge will present Elizabeth Cree by Kevin Puts and Mark Campbell. Premiered in 2017 by Opera Philadelphia, the piece follows a series of murders set against the backdrop of a Victorian Music Hall performance troupe with a series of cameo appearances from the luminaries of the era. Sam Helfrich will direct, making his West Edge debut. Robert Mollicone, who conducted The Chastity Tree in West Edge's 2017 festival, will conduct. Mezzo-soprano Katherine Pracht will reprise the role of Elizabeth Cree, having last performed it with Chicago Opera Theater in 2018. Keith Phares plays her husband, John Cree. Also in the Music Hall troupe are Samuel Faustine, Ashley Dixon, Kenneth Overton, Phiip Harris, Simon Barrad, Leslie Katter and J Raymond Meyers. Elizabeth Cree will be sung in English with English surtitles. Performances run through Saturday August 7th. 

On Saturday July 31st, West Edge presents Eliogabalo by Francesco Cavalli. The subject of a debauched and corrupt Roman Emperor preying upon his hapless subjects was deemed too scandalous for even the Venetian Carnivale in 1667. General Director Mark Streshinsky will direct with Adam Pearl conducting from the harpsichord. Countertenor Randall Scotting will make his West Edge debut as the scheming Eliogabalo. Tenor Derek Chester will return to West Edge to play Eliogabalo's cousin and foil Alessandro, following his 2019 debut as Macheath in The Threepenny Opera. Soprano Nikki Einfeld will play Gemmira, the target of Eliogabalo's lustful gaze. Rounding out the cast are Shawnette Sulker, Jean-Paul Jones, Matheus Coura, Aura Veruni and Jonathan Smucker. Performances will run through Sunday August 8th.

Says General Director Mark Streshinsky: "We’ve had a connection to Cal Shakes for a long time and I have often dreamed about performing in their beautiful theater. When the opportunity presented itself, I jumped! We don't know what life will be like in July, but the chance to perform outside where we can socially distance greatly increases our odds of getting to gather and experience opera sooner than later. Our entire company is thrilled by the prospect."

These three operas were to be West Edge Opera's 2020 summer festival but were postponed due to COVID. West Edge Opera is thrilled to be presenting nearly all of the originally engaged singers, musicians, designers and directors from 2020 for the 2021 performances.

"Our West Edge players are thrilled with the prospect of returning to in-person performance," says West Edge Music Director Jonathan Khuner. "The healthy outdoor atmosphere and naturally fine acoustics at the Bruns will provide a very satisfying environment. As the seasons and vaccinations roll forward, we’re eager for the air of California summer and the warmth of our live audience."

A new website from West Edge Opera, with more information about the summer festival, will go live mid- March. Series tickets at the Platinum, Gold, Silver and Bronze level will be available May 1st, and individual tickets will be available June 1st.

Katya Kabanova 

by Leoš Janáček
Jonathan Khuner Conductor 
Indra Viskontas Stage Director
Starring Carrie Hennessey and Chris Oglesby.

Saturday, July 24th
Sunday August 1st
Thursday August 5th.

Elizabeth Cree 

by Kevin Puts and Mark Campbell
Bob Hollicone Conductor 
 Sam Hilfriche Stage Director
Starring Katie Pracht, and Keith Phares.

 Sunday, July 25th
Friday, July 30th
Saturday August 7th

Eliogabalo 

by Francesco Cavalli 
Adam Pearl Conductor 
Mark Streshinsky Stage Director
Starring Randall Scotting

Saturday, July 31st
 Friday, August 6th
Sunday, August 8th

West Edge Postpones

West Edge Opera did a lot to prepare to perform this summer, even if it had to be in some unusual form, but now, like other companies in the US, they've postponed performing, with the planned 2020 festival moved to next year:

Facing Covid-19 Concerns, West Edge Opera Postpones West Edge Festival Until 2021

"The safety of our artists, our staff, and our audiences must come first and it’s now clear that the risks outweigh the potential for reward." - General Director Mark Streshinsky

OAKLAND, CA, May 21, 2020 - General Director Mark Streshinsky and Music Director Jonathan Khuner have announced that West Edge Opera will postpone its annual summer festival until the 2021 season. Their productions of Katya Kabanova, Eliogabalo, and Elizabeth Cree, originally scheduled for July 25th through August 9th, 2020, will instead be presented starting July 24th of 2021.

"We are disappointed, but not devastated" reports Streshinsky. "New research has shown that it is nearly impossible to rehearse an opera with the level of safety and confidence we would need to feel comfortable. We had been holding out hope for a sharp reduction in cases or a medical breakthrough, but none of that seems to be happening in time."

"We're thrilled that almost the entire cast of our shows are available next year and are looking forward to creating the productions that we intended, without the uncertainty and other challenges that 2020 introduced."

According to Streshinsky, ticket holders for this summer will be asked to choose between a refund and donating the cost of the ticket towards the artists. "When we first realized that postponement was a possibility, making sure that our artists were paid was our top priority. It is unlikely we will be able to realize their full fees, but 100% of the ticket revenue donated will go straight to the artists and crew. We hope that our patrons back us in our mission to make certain this amazing team of talent is recognized and supported."

For more information and a full statement issued to the public, visit the West Edge Website at:

http://www.westedgeopera.org/articles/2020/5/20/statement2020

West Edge Opera Festival Will Proceed

In the midst of the bad news, I'm pleasantly surprised to have received email yesterday saying that West Edge Opera is, to date, planning to have their usual summer festival. It's not scheduled to start until July 25, so it's possible that we'll be through the worst of this and it will be legal to have 500 people in one place again.

Their mail included this year's venue (same as last year's, The Bridge Yard) and the full casts for this year's operas:

Katya Kabanova (1921)
Music by Leoš Janáček
Libretto by Vincenc Červinka
In Czech with English surtitles
Conducted by Jonathan Khuner
Directed by Fenlon Lamb
A co-production with Papermoon Opera Productions
Featuring Carrie Hennessey as Katya
Kristin Claton as Kabanicha
Christopher Oglesby as Boris
Alex Boyer as Ticho
Chad Somers as Kudrjaš
Sarah Coit as Varvara
Philip Skinner a Dikój

Saturday, July 25th at 8 pm
Sunday, August 2nd at 5 pm
Thursday, August 6th at 8 pm

Elizabeth Cree (2017)
Music by Kevin Puts
Libretto by Mark Campbell
In English with English surtitles
Conducted by Robert Mollicone
Directed by Sam Helfrich
Featuring Katherine Pracht as Elizabeth Cree
Eugene Villanueva as John Cree
Samuel Faustine as Dan Leno
Simon Barrad as Inspector Kildare
Leslie Katter as Aveline Mortimer
Matt Boehler as Uncle
Ashley Dixon as Doris
J. Raymond Meyers as Victor Farrell

Sunday, July 26th at 5 pm
Friday, July 31st at 8 pm
Saturday, August 8th at 8pm

Eliogabalo (1667)
Music by Francesco Cavalli
In Italian with English surtitles
Conducted from the harpsichord by Adam Pearl
Directed by Mark Streshinsky
Featuring Randall Scotting as Eliogabalo
Derek Chester as Alessandro
Nikki Einfeld as Gemmira
Matheus Coura as Guiliano
Aura Veruni as Eritea
Jean-Paul Jones as Lenia
Malte Roesner as Nerbulone
Jonathan Smucker as Zotico

Saturday, August 1st at 8 pm
Friday, August 7th at 8 pm
Sunday, August 9th at 5 pm

Opera 2019

Stage of the The Coliseum, home of the English National Opera

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

November, 2019

(ENO encourages you to photograph the house and curtain calls and circulate those photos on social media. Other houses could follow suit, ahem, Festspielhaus and WDCH.)

Mark Berry has done his opera count for the year, so here is mine. I saw two different productions of two operas and will count each as a 2 rather than a 1. My out-of-town locations were Santa Fe, London, Paris, and Los Angeles.

Glass (Ahkenaten, Orphée), Handel (Orlando, Saul), Gluck (Orpheus), Dvorak (Rusalka) - 2

Berlioz (Les Troyens), Birtwistle (The Mask of Orpheus), Bizet (Carmen), Britten (Billy Budd), Davis (The Central Park Five), Floyd (Susannah), Gounod (Romeo), Freschi (Ermelinda), Humperdink (H&G), Janacek (Jenufa), Mazzoli (Breaking the Waves), Monk (Atlas), Mozart (Nozze), Offenbach (Orpheus in the Underworld), Poulenc (Dialogs of the Carmelites), Puccini (Manon Lescaut), Ravel (L'enfant et les sortileges), Rouders, (The Thirteenth Child), Scarlatti (Il primo omicidio), Shearer (Howards End America), Weil (Threepenny Opera) - 1

No Wagner, no Verdi, really? Really. I go out of my way to see rarities, new operas, and works I've never seen before. This year I saw several great rarities: I do not expect to see The Mask of Orpheus or Atlas again, though in both cases I wish I could.

The operatic surprises of the year for me were the beauty of Glass's Orphée and how extremely funny Orpheus in the Underworld was. (You have to love an opera with a character called Public Opinion, after all.) I have to note as well that I loathed Dialogs the first time I saw it, 20 years back at the ENO. The Met HD broadcast changed my mind right around, and now I love it. No idea what I missed the first time; it may be that I have more sympathy for and understanding of Poulenc's style now.

If I were naming the best productions I saw: John Dexter's Dialogs, Phelim McDermott's Ahknaten (Met HD), Robert Carsen's Rusalka (Paris Opera), Yuval Sharon's Atlas, David Alden's Jenufa, Tcherniakov's Troyens. Yeah, there's some controversy about the Tcherniakov, but I would say 95% of it worked for me, and the cast was tremendous all around.

Atlas was just wonderful, so beautiful and with such a great production and performers. (No photo as I don't have access to the press photos, but look around the web. It was gorgeous.)

Special mention to West Edge opera for Breaking the Waves and to Ars Minerva for Ermelinda, for great work on a small budget.

I think that the cast of SF Opera's Rusalka overall worked much better than Paris's, as an ensemble and because Rachel Willis-Sorensen and Brandon Jovanovich were better in every way than their counterparts in Paris. That said, Paris's Michelle De Young was an utterly terrifying Jezibaba and Karita Matilla dominated the stage as the Foreign Princess; both were unforgettable in their respective roles. I liked David McVicar's production, seen in SF, fine, but the Carsen production is a stunner and worth seeking out on video. I understand that its physical size and staging mean that it can only be done at the Opéra Bastille, which has special stage mechanisms.

My personal rising stars:

• Will Liverman, outstanding as the Foreman in Santa Fe's Jenufa and as Horemhab in the Met's Akhenaten. Gorgeous voice, excellent musicianship, superb stage presence, handsome man.
• Sarah LeMesh, for her heartbreaking Bess in Breaking the Waves and those songs at The World of Grazyna Bacewicz.
• Pene Pati, for stealing the show in Gounod's weirdly boring Romeo and Juliette and for the huge positive change since Rigoletto a few years ago.
• Sara Couden, who was hilarious in Ermelinda and sang fabulously. The last time I saw her, as Penelope in WEO's 2015 Il Ritorno d'Uilisse in Patria, she looked mighty uncomfortable on stage. No more!! She was a real wow in every way.

Special mention to Brandon Jovanovich, for a terrific Enée, a role that has truly become his since his first performances in Chicago, and a beautifully sung and acted, cast-against-type Prince in SFO's Rusalka; and to Karita Mattila, stunning as the Old Prioress in Dialogs and the Foreign Prince in Paris's Rusalka.

Finally, I'm sad about whatever the hell is going on with Bryan Hymel, who dropped out of three productions I saw in roughly the last year (Les Huguenots and Les Troyens in Paris, Romeo in San Francisco).

Public Service Announcement: West Edge Opera Mata Hari

If you've got tickets to or you're planning to see West Edge Opera's Mata Hari, bring earplugs. It is very loudly - too loudly - amplified. Further, there's quite a bit of distortion.

I liked the ten minutes of the score that I heard before I left the performance area. From conversations after the curtain, I know I'm not the only person who found it too loud.

If you were there and you found it too loud, let West Edge Opera know. Email to info@westedgeopera.org, printed letters to West Edge Opera, 1700 Shattuck Ave, Box #312, Berkeley, CA 94709.

West Edge Opera: Snapshot

Received this week:

BERKELEY, CA, January 8, 2018:  WEST EDGE OPERA'S SNAPSHOT presents excerpts from new, previously unproduced operas by West Coast composers and librettists February 24 and 25, 2018. Inaugurated in 2017, the program is the first of its kind in the Bay Area and is a collaboration with Earplay, New Chamber Music Ensemble.

Performances will take place:
Saturday February 24, 2018  
8:00PM 
Independent Order of Odd Fellows Hall, 
2288 Fulton St, 
Berkeley, CA 94704  

Sunday February 25, 2018 
3:00PM  
Taube Atrium Theater, 
401 Van Ness Ave, 
San Francisco, CA 94102. 


Both venues are ideally suited to the intimate yet expansive demands of Snapshot and are conveniently close to BART. General admission tickets go on sale January 5 and will be available online at westedgeopera.org or by phone at 510-841-1903. Tickets are $40 each.

This year's Snapshot promises to showcase a diverse group of local and national artists in new works by West Coast composers, Cyril Deaconoff, Larry London, Brian Rosen, Katherine Saxon, and Erling Wold.
The Last Tycoon, music by Cyril Deaconoff and libretto adapted by David Yezzi, is based on F. Scott Fitzgerald's unfinished novel of the same name. The Russian born American composer, conductor, pianist, and organist Deaconoff (born Kirill Dyachkov), attended Gnesine State Music College and is a graduate of the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory (Composition and Choral Conducting). His recent work String Quartet No. 1 was selected by the San Jose Chamber Orchestra for their concert of contemporary music entitled Valley Voices. He has received commissions from the Vallejo Choral Society and the Arts Council Silicon Valley. In November 2011, West Bay opera in Palo Alto presented a workshop of The Last Tycoon.

Dynamo, music by Larry London and libretto by William Smock, features brief, crucial scenes from the professional and family life of Thomas A. Edison. London did his undergraduate work at Harvard and earned a Master's degree in composition at Mills College. He studied with Darius Milhaud, Terry Riley, and Lou Harrison. His compositions have been performed at the Aspen and Cabrillo Music Festivals, by the Oakland Symphony and the San Francisco Symphony chamber series. London has contributed as a composer, arranger, or performer to over fifty films. He composed the music for Isamu Noguchi: Stones and Paper, an American Masters documentary film, recognized as Best Portrait at the Montreal International Festival of Films in 1998. He wrote music for Joann Sfar Draws from Memory, a documentary film for KQED Public Television in 2012.

Death of a Playboy, music and libretto by Brian Rosen, revolves around a heated private discussion that threatens to disrupt Hugh Hefner's funeral. Rosen is a San Francisco based composer/performer specializing in works that marry music and theater. Brian studied music composition at Interlochen Arts Academy and computer science at Princeton University. He moved to the Bay Area in 1993 to join Pixar Animation Studios for their first full length film, Toy Story and remains on staff as a software engineer, technical director, and occasional voice talent. Brian has written and arranged for the a cappella ensemble The Richter Scales, completed a commissioned operatic adaptation of Alice in Wonderland for Cinnabar Opera Theater, and composed a string quarted premiered and recorded in 2010. He recently received a grant from the American Comnposer's Forum for the premiere of his song cycle A Brief History of Love and Poetry.

In 452 Jamestown Place, music and libretto by Katherine Saxon, a young woman terrifies her boyfriend with outbursts from multiple personalities. Saxon has writen a wide variety of music that ranges from large-scale choral works to intricate chamber music. Her music has been performed at the Atlantic Music Festival, NACUSA events (regional and national), the Bowdoin International Music Festival, and the UCSB Primavera Festival. Her work Speed and Perfection received the first prize in the San Francisco Choral Artists' 2012 New Voices Competition.

She Who is Alive, music by Erling Wold and libretto by Robert Harris, features the warlord of a futuristic empire as he gives a dissident female scientist prisoner the third degree. Wold is an eclectic composer who has been called, "the Eric Satie of Berkeley surrealists/minimalist electro-art rock," by the Village Voice. His chamber works have been presented in San Francisco and Santa Cruz by New Music Works and by the San Francisco Conservatory New Music Ensemble. He was a resident artist at ODC Theater, who presented his opera Sub Pontio Pilato, an historical fantasy on the death and remembrance of Pontius Pilate, a chamber opera based on William Borroughs' early autobiographical novel Queer, and his critically acclaimed work A Little Girl Dreams of Taking the Veil, based on the Max Ernst collage novel.

Performers featured in Snapshot include sopranos Heidi Moss and Julia Hathaway; mezzo-soprano Molly Mahoney; tenors J. Raymond Meyers, Jacob Thompson, and Darron Flagg; and baritone Jason Sarten.
Snapshot will utilize the unique spaces at the Independent Order of Odd Fellows Hall and the Taube Atrium Theater at the Wilsey Center for Opera. Odd Fellows Hall is a high-ceilinged neoclassical space designed by James W. Plachek in 1925. The hall is a ceremonial space with iconic stained-glass details and a skylight that was painted black during WWII and never restored. The Taube Atrium Theater in the historic Veteran's Building at the heart of San Francisco's Civic Center reflects the soaring classicism of the Odd Fellows Hall, but with a renewed contemporary sensibility. Restored for San Francisco opera's new Wilsey Center for Opera, the space is electronically optimized for acoustic music with a Meyer Sound Constellation system.

And the Harder to Evaluate (2017 in Review)

I inadvertently omitted a couple of items about last year: West Edge Opera's overall season and San Francisco Opera's summer offerings.

For the last few years, West Edge Opera has generally had snappily performed, entertainingly directed operas during its summer season. This past year was an odd one: Thomas's Hamlet, Martin y Soler's The Chastity Tree, and Larsen's Frankenstein.

I've already commented that Frankenstein was a well-performed train wreck; in general, composers should not write their own librettos, unless they happen to be named Wagner, Berlioz, Berg, and sometimes Adamo. Larsen's literary abilities are not in that class. She is a fine composer, as I know because I have heard some of her other music. But usually it's a good idea to hire a pro to write your libretto. (ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME JOHN ADAMS????)

As for Hamlet, it has some good music and some good opportunities for scenery chewing. The staging was pretty good. The singing was outstanding: Edward Nelson as Hamlet, Emma McNairy as Ophelia, Susanne Mentzer as Gertrude, and Philip Skinner as Claudius. But unlike other reviewers, I just could not get to the mental point of regarding the opera as anything other than a crappy version of the Shakespeare play.

The Chastity Tree is a great rarity and a work of a type that really should be heard more: a good opera by a barely-known, but successful, contemporary of Mozart's. You need context to tell why the greats are great! The performance was great fun, the music sparkling, the performers lovely (and weirdly dressed).

Summer at SFO was...not what I'd hoped for. Rigoletto, with the fabulous Michael Yeargen sets making yet another appearance, was supposedly revised in some way from previous bring ups, but darned if I could see how. Nicola Luisotti was in good form; Quinn Kelsey was a terrific jester, Pene Pati, with a lovely voice, has not quite got his own style yet, and Nino Machaidze, making her debut at SFO, was weak. She's not a bad singer by any means, but largely because of her vocal character - dark, mature, perhaps a little too vibrant - she was not remotely convincing as Rigoletto's innocent young daughter.

I've already written about La Boheme; nothing to add, though i will restate that it was an undistinguished bring-up.

And oh, that Don Giovanni: where on earth did the production come from? It was just ghastly looking; a nearly blank stage with mirrors going up and down behind the singers, and the occasional property showing up to sort-of-define the space as something particular. And because the "international version" was used, everybody got every last one of their arias, and the effect was of a badly-staged opera seria, with singers coming on, singing for ten minutes, and wandering off. There was little sign of direction.

The singing was pretty good, though....I thought Ana Maria Martinez miscast and Stanislas de Barbeyrac okay, not great. There were complaints about Erin Wall's audibility, but I could hear her just fine in Balcony Circle. Best of all was really Marc Minkowski's sharply brisk conducting. I hope he'll be back.

Change of Venue, West Edge Opera Edition

West Edge Opera, which has used the abandoned Wood Street train station for part or all of its summer festival for the last couple of years, will not be able to do so this year after all. Short version: the City of Oakland withdrew permission to hold public events there.

Negotiations are in progress for a new venue, the location of which isn't disclosed in WEO's press release. There will still be a shuttle to the site and it will have amenities similar to those of the train station.

Press release is below the cut.

Answer: Economics

Buffy Baggott (Countess Geschwitz) and Emma McNairy (Lulu)

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

Question, for Jeopardy fans: Why can't San Francisco Opera put on seasons as adventurous as West Edge Opera's??

I heard that one a few times last summer from audience members and friends whose jaws were dropping at the audacity and beauty of West Edge Opera's season of Powder Her Face, Agrippina, and The Cunning Little Vixen, not to mention the 2015 season of Lulu, As One, and Il Ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria.

And the answer is a simple one: money money money, which is directly related to the scale of the two operations.

Take a look at the 990 forms for San Francisco Opera and West Edge Opera.

The West Edge Opera 990 covers the year when the summer productions were at the Ed Roberts Campus in Berkeley. It shows total revenue of about $303,600 and expenses of about $272,000.

The SFO 990 covers the same year. It shows total revenue of around $75 million ($75,800,000) and expenses of almost $74 million ($73,900,000). The company also has assets of $197 million. I believe most of that is funds in the endowment.

Let's try another few measures. West Edge Opera is now firmly housed in the abandoned train station for its summer season. You probably don't know how many audience members the station can seat. I certainly didn't, and I nearly fell over when I found out that it seats around 500. WEO put on three performances each of Vixen and Agrippina this year, and four of Powder Her Face, so they had to sell a total of 5,000 tickets to sell out.

The War Memorial Opera House seats around 3200 and the company puts on 65 to 70 performances a year. San Francisco Opera is trying to sell more than 200,000 tickets each season.

West Edge Opera hires freelance singers, orchestra members, lighting people, directors, stagehands, etc.

SF Opera has a permanent, unionized orchestra and a unionized chorus. The stagehands and other professionals working behind the scenes are unionized. They get paid salaries and have health and other benefits. The stars who sing solo roles get paid up to $17,000 per performance. (I do not know what the low range for soloists is or how it changes by size of the part, etc.)

David Gockley and Nicola Luisotti both got paid higher annual salaries than the entire West Edge Opera annual budget.

We're talking about very different levels of financial risk for a big opera company and an immense difference in the number of tickets that must be sold and funds that must be raised to keep an institution such as SF Opera financially stable. With the decreasing number of subscriptions purchased and the need to sell many more single tickets, it's easy to understand why SF Opera is more conservative in its programming than West Edge Opera.

West Edge Opera Snapshot

West Edge Opera has a new program called Snapshot. Its mission is to "introduce work by both emerging and established Northern California composers."

Here's a good chunk of the press release announcing this:

Conceived and curated by composer Brian M. Rosen, Snapshot presents excerpts from eight previously unproduced operas over two programs performed in intimate concert settings in venues in Berkeley and San Francisco: the Goldman Theater at the David Brower Center at 2150 Allston Way in Berkeley and the historic and newly renovated Bayview Opera House at 4705 3^rd Street in San Francisco. ConductorsMary Chun and Jonathan Khuner lead an instrumental chamber group featuring members of San Francisco-based new music ensemble Earplay. 

On January 21^st at 8:00 p.m. at the David Brower Center and January 22^nd at 3:00 p.m. at the Bayview Opera House, Snapshot presents the work of David Conte, Stephen Eddins, William David Cooper and Alden Jenks: 

      ·      David Conte, Composition Chair at San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and librettist John Stirling Walker’s Famous opens the first     Snapshot program. Famous is an exploration of the life of Ultra               Violet (Isabelle Collin Dufresne), one of Andy Warhol’s “superstars.”        ·      Stephen Eddins’s big band, gospel and jazz-inspired music and Michael O’Brien’s libretto bring 20^th-century Southern novelist Eudora Welty’s story to life in Why I Live at the P.O.        ·      William David Cooper, a recent graduate of the PhD program at UC Davis, has received awards from ASCAP and the Academy of Arts and Letters. Snapshot presents a sample of Cooper and librettist Will Dunlap’s grand opera Hagar and Ishmael.        ·      Alden Jenks helped found and served as Director of the Electronic Music Studio at San Francisco Conservatory. Jenks wrote both the music and libretto for Afterworld, a “serious comedy” loosely inspired by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

Works by Carla Lucero, Allen Shearer, Linda Bouchard and Liam Wade comprise the second program of Snapshot, presented on February 25^th at 8:00 p.m. at the David Brower Center and February 26^th at 3:00 p.m. at the Bayview Opera House: 

         ·      Carla Lucero’s One O’Clock, an excerpt from her opera in  progress about Helen Keller, opens the second Snapshot program. Lucero has received awards for her previous operas from Creative Work Fund, San Francisco Arts Commission, Meet the Composer and OUT Magazine, among other organizations.          ·      Longtime collaborators Allen Shearer and librettist Claudia Stevens, whose Middlemarch in Spring was produced last year in the Bay Area to critical acclaim, present an excerpt from Howards End Again, based on the eponymous novel by E. M. Forster.          ·      Linda Bouchard’s The House of Words was composed in 2003. Snapshot presents excerpts from the opera which includes a libretto constructed of excerpts from The Book of Embraces by celebrated Uruguayan journalist, writer and novelist Eduardo Galeano.          ·      Liam Wade and librettist Vynnie Meli’s The Stranger the Better closes the second Snapshotprogram. A farcical riff on A Streetcar Named Desire, the opera is Wade and Meli’s 2016 prize-winning submission to The Atlanta Opera’s 24-Hour Opera Project, where an entire opera is composed, designed and staged within twenty-four hours. 

Interesting range of works and composers; wish more than 2 of the 8 composers were women! I am sure it's all worth hearing.

Missed Opportunity

It occurred to me a couple of weeks back that the little Janacek festival we've had recently represented an opportunity for San Francisco Opera and West Edge Opera to piggyback on each other's successes. In the US, it's just not often that you can see Jenufa, Cunning Little Vixen, and Vec Makropulos in close geographical and temporal proximity.

Believe it or not, this would be most to the advantage of SFO: they simply have a lot more tickets to sell than WEO does. For comparison's sake, the Oakland train station seats about 500. The War Memorial Opera House approaches 3200. Selling 1500 tickets to three performances represents a huge success for WEO, but for SFO to sell out three performances, they've got to move nearly 10,000 tickets.

SFO may also assume that everyone who goes to WEO knows what's up across the bay and that no additional outreach is necessary. It wouldn't be hard to test; they would have just had to place an ad in the WEO program with a special discount code for Makropulos.

Too late now, but maybe another year.

Non-Renewal

Just sent email to the SFO subscription department:

Dear Ms. [representative], 

Thank you again. I have decided not to renew my subscription in any way, shape, or form. That is the best way I know to tell SF Opera how unhappy I am with the upcoming season, which has uninteresting repertory choices and (mostly) disappointing casting. 

I will buy single seats or go standing room to those operas I want to see.

The money don't spend at SFO is going to Philharmonia Baroque and West Edge Opera. I will re-up at SFO when there's a season of interest.

West Edge Opera 2016 Festival

Hoo boy, great news from West Edge Opera about their 2016 summer festival. They'll be performing three operas, all in the old Oakland Wood St. train station, which was a wonderfully atmospheric location for this past summer's magnificent Lulu:

• Handel, Agrippina
• Adès, Powder Her Face
• Janáček, The Cunning Little Vixen

Wow. Exact casting and dates to be announced later, and don't forget the 2016 Opera Medium Rare operas (Paisiello's Barber of Seville and Leoncavallo's La Bohème).

West Edge Opera's 2016 Opera Medium Rare Series

West Edge Opera hits the jackpot once again with its two-opera Opera Medium Rare series, staging The Barber of Seville and La Boheme.

Wait, you say those are not exactly rare? They're not the Barber and Boheme that you expect. Instead, it's their Doppelgangers:

Paisiello’s Barber of Seville

Sunday, February 7, 3 pm

Lisser Theater at Mills College

Tuesday, February 9. 8 pm

Freight and Salvage 2020 Addison Street, Berkeley

Sara Duchovnay, soprano

Jonathan Smucker, tenor

Nikolas Nackley, baritone

Carl King, bass 

Jonathan Khuner, conductor

Leoncavallo's La bohème

Sunday, March 20, 3 pm 

Lisser Theater at Mills College

Tuesday, March 22, 8 pm

Freight and Salvage 2020 Addison Street, Berkeley

Carrie Hennessey, soprano

Buffy Baggott, mezzo-soprano

Alex Boyer, tenor

Anders Froehlich, baritone

Ryan Bradford, bass

Jonathan Khuner, conductor

Lisser Theater, a 250-seat proscenium theater, is on the Mills College campus in Oakland and Freight and Salvage is at 2020 Addison Street in downtown Berkeley’s arts district. Tickets are $22 for general seating with a $20 senior discount price. Premium seats are $40.00. Tickets for all performances are available online at www.westedgeopera.org. Lisser Theater tickets can be purchased by phone on the West Edge Ticketline, 510-841-1903, and Freight and Salvage tickets by phone are purchased by calling 510-644-2020 extension120. For more information, go to West Edge Opera’s website at www.westedgeopera.org.

(If they do a second round of these, let me get in line to suggest Manon Lescaut by Daniel Auber and Turandot by Ferrucio Busoni.)