.....and Another Resignation

Earlier this week, it was David Daniels, whose autograph I have in the program of a long-ago, fondly remembered Poppea. Now it's the organist James David Christie, with whom I exchanged a friendly round of email when I tried to find out just what he'd played at the funeral of the late Senator Ted Kennedy.

Christie resigned from positions at Holy Cross and Oberlin, following reports from several of his former students about sexual abuse of different kinds that took place over a long period of Time. From the Globe's report, it sounds as though this was one of those situations where "everybody knew." Le sigh.

Friday Photo

Dragon, New Town Hall, Munich

August, 2015

Every town hall should have a dragon.

Future Cast Change Announcement, San Francisco Opera

Countertenor David Daniels has been accused of rape. The NY Daily News has the details, and they are damning, because they include the victim contemporaneously telling a friend and a psychotherapist about what had happened.

Daniels is scheduled to appear in next summer's Orlando. I have a theory about who his replacement might be, assuming SFO consults its contract with Daniels and finds a morals clause or other reason to release him from the production.

Update, 4:30, 8/22/2018: Daniels has taken a leave of absence from the University of Michigan, where he teaches, according to the NY Times.

Update, 8/23/2018: San Francisco Opera investigating the situation, committed to a safe environment for all, according to statements to the Daily News.

Going, Going, Gone

Nicola Luisotti

San Francisco Opera web site, July 31, 2018:

San Francisco Opera web site, August 1, 2018:

That's right: Nicola Luisotti's term as Music Director of San Francisco Opera ended on July 31. It's just over two years since he announced his departure, and there is no replacement in sight. As Matthew Shilvock has said on more than one occasion, he's being very careful to get the right person.

As he's not saying, this is also probably one way for the company to save a few bucks, or hundreds of thousands of bucks, at a time of belt-tightening. (Note the eight-production season coming up.) But I also appreciate his care, because Luisotti turned out to be a something of a disappointment as a conductor.

His first appearance in SF, 2005's La Forza del Destino, led everybody to have high hopes; it was a spectacular debut, at least if you were at the first performance, which I believe I was. Since then...he could be inspired, or he could be off form, all in the same run. His talents proved to be largely in Italian opera, but because of his inconsistency, you couldn't count on him from performance to performance or opera to opera. His Otello, seen at the last performance in the run, was mediocre and the principal singers barely engaged with each other, which must have been at least partly his fault.

His Cost fan tutte, of which I also saw the last in the run, was the worst-conducted Mozart at an international company that I've seen. His Lohengrin was competent, but cautious. I remember the Salome as oddly paced, but others liked it and at the time (2009) I wasn't a fan, so maybe you shouldn't trust me.

His Italian opera certainly could be very good, and he was an excellent advocate for La Ciociara, a mediocre work that got a good performance from him. (Maybe he should have conducted more new music at SFO.) He made a couple of excellent hires in principal oboe Mingjia Liu and principal clarinet José González Granero, both of whom joined the orchestra in 2010 and both of whom are great players.

He put his foot in his mouth pretty badly following La Ciociara, when both he and David Gockley spoke ill of 20th and 21st century music, while running the company as though Italian opera were an endangered species ("returning the company to its Italian roots"). That...was not a good look for the ranking leadership of a major opera company. He waved it away in an interview with Joshua Kosman last fall, around when he conducted his last performance as music director, but I wasn't completely convinced. I mean, he could have made the case for staging Lulu or reviving St. Francois, but did he? I suppose we'll never know; it's not as if SFO is releasing the minutes of any talks he had with Gockley.

In the meantime, absent a music director, what happens if there's an opening in the orchestra, through retirement or the decision by a player to join a different performing organization, say, the one across the street? (Who among us has not had nightmares of Kay Stern deciding that Mark Volkert's assistant concertmaster spot looks like a good position to play for the next 15 years?) Last year, as the months went by with no new music director, I actually asked SFO how this would be handled, but I didn't get an answer. 

I will now speculate about how it would be handled: with the contract hire of a temporary player to fill whatever seat opened up, whether a principal or section position, and when a music director is appointed, that person gets to hold auditions for a permanent hire for the job. This is sort of what happened at SFS during their long search for a new principal oboe to replace the late William Bennett, and then for a new associate principal oboe to replace Jonathan Fisher: Christopher Gaudi played each of those positions during the search, and eventually MTT hired a pair of oboists. 

SFO Cast Change: Roberto Devereux

First cast change of the SF Opera 2018-19 season: baritone Artur Rucinski is out of Donizetti's Roberto Devereux, in which he was to sing the Duke of  Nottingham. He "has withdrawn due to lung injuries sustained in a serious  bicycling accident involving a car in his native Poland. He is expected to  make a full recovery. Rucinski deeply regrets having to withdraw but looks forward to returning to San Francisco Opera in the future," to quote the press release. Rucinski made his SFO debut during the 2017-18 season as Giorgio Germont in La Traviata.

Replacing him is Adler Fellow Andrew G. Manea. I assume he was the cover for Rucinski. 

Best wishes to Mr. Rucinski as he recovers, and toi toi toi to Andrew Manea.

Museum Mondays

Madonna of the Carnation, Leonardo da Vinci

Alte Pinakothek, Munich

August, 2015

I rounded a corner and there it was. I did not need a label to know who the artist was.

Friday Photo

Frauenkirche, Munich, Germany

August, 2015

Museum Mondays

Woman Photographing da Vinci's Madonna of the Carnation

Alte Pinakothek, Munich

August, 2015

Friday Photo

Cenotaph of Emperor Louis IV

Frauenkirche, Munich, Germany

August, 2015

Museum Mondays

Still-Life Detail

Cardoons, Cauliflower, Squash, Poatoes, Cabbages, etc.

Alte Pinakothek, Munich

August, 2015

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.

No Plans for Saturday, Aug. 4? Go see Bal Anat in El Cerrito!

Bal Anat Troupe
Photo: Alex Bertrand

Saturday, August 4, 2018 @ 8pm

El Cerrito High School Performing Arts Theater, El Cerrito

Info: www.balanat50year.com

Tickets ($18-$30): www.brownpapertickets.com/event/3386434

Facebook event page:  www.facebook.com/events/1587513507946875

NOTE: Sold out, so check for returns!

From the press release:

The world’s longest-running belly dance troupe, Bal Anat,  celebrates its 50th anniversary this year with a tour of Stockholm, London, Brussels, Fort Lauderdale, Atlanta, Chicago, and El Cerrito. The Bay Area-based troupe’s hometown performance, which will take place on Saturday August 4 at El Cerrito High School Performing Arts Theater, includes a dance tableaux from the Middle East, North Africa, the Anatolian Peninsula, and Persia, and feature 60 dancers from throughout the United States, Canada, East Asia, and Europe.

Friday Photo

Corner of a Building

Munich, Germany

August, 2015

An Email Error You Don't Want to Make

I've gotten emails recently from two organizations that left me dismayed at the lack of thought that went into the email.

One is from an extremely famous contemporary music ensemble. Their name does not appear anywhere in the email. Oh, wait - actually, it's in 4 point type in the email footer,  next to their street address and below the email preferences and unsubscribe links. And if you're familiar with the group, you can probably guess from a couple of links in the body of the email which group it comes from.

The other came from an equally famous presenting organization. You have to open the email to see who it's from; nothing in the subject line or sender makes it clear.

Organizations, don't do this. The people you send email to should be able to tell from their inbox who the mail is from! You can't count on their knowing the name of the artistic director or director of marketing. PUT YOUR ORGANIZATION'S NAME IN THE FROM FIELD OR ON THE SUBJECT LINE. It's really not that hard.

Coming to San Francisco Opera

Apparently Erhard Rom's biography in the Glimmerglass Opera program this year says that he's designing a new Nozze di Figaro for San Francisco Opera. Rom has previously designed productions of Nixon in China, Susannah, and Lucia di Lammermoor that were seen here.

Me, I'll be so very happy to say goodbye to the ugly Zack Brown sets, which are about on par with his Don Carlo sets.

Museum Mondays

Still-Life Detail

Alte Pinakothek, Munich

August, 2015

Friday Photo

Window and Foliage

Munich, Germany

August, 2015

Harassment in the (Classical) News

Anne Midgette and Peggy McGlone of the Washington Post have done some great reporting about sexual harassment in the classic world. They have surfaced, nationally, reports about Cleveland Orchestra concertmaster William Preucil (these go back pretty far) and conductor Daniele Gatti. Take a look, and note that there's a pretty good chance that there is a problem person in your local orchestra or opera company in addition to those Midgette and McGlone write about.

Jonathan Gold

Jonathan Gold, food / restaurant critic of the LA Times and formerly a prominent music critic, died yesterday at 57, just a couple of weeks after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

I'm so sad about this. I became acquainted with Gold last year through the wonderful documentary City of Gold, about his writing and his relationship with food and the city of Los Angeles. He was a marvelous writer and utterly omnivorous in his culinary taste. He won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 2007, the first (and still only) restaurant reviewer to win the prize.

Here are various obituaries and other writing about Gold:

• NY Times obit, by Pete Wells, who does right by Gold
• LA Times obit
• LA Times lifts the paywall for coverage of Jonathan Gold
• New Yorker profile of Gold, by Dana Goodyear (2009)
• Dana Goodyear's follow-up article in TNY (2018)
• Molly Lambert on how Gold showed that local journalism matters (TNY, 2018)
• Web site for City of Gold

From Dana Goodyear's postscript:

Gold was the kind of father who woke at dawn to make his daughter snacks from a recipe by Apicius, in Latin, to take on a field trip to an exhibit about Pompeii, and was always home well before sundown during the week of Hanukkah to assuage his son.

From Pete Wells's obit:

In more than a thousand reviews published since the 1980s, Mr. Gold chronicled his city’s pupuserias, bistros, diners, nomadic taco trucks, soot-caked outdoor rib and brisket smokers, sweaty indoor xiao long bao steamers, postmodern pizzerias, vintage delicatessens, strictly omakase sushi-yas, Roman gelaterias, Korean porridge parlors, Lanzhou hand-pulled noodle vendors, Iranian tongue-sandwich shops, vegan hot dog griddles, cloistered French-leaning hyper-seasonal tasting counters and wood-paneled Hollywood grills with chicken potpie and martinis on every other table.

Updated 7/24, with links to Lambert and second Goodyear article and quotations from Goodyear and Wells.

Tristan und Isolde at Herbst Theater

Yes, you read that right: there will be a concert performance of Wagner's delirious Tristan und Isolde in tiny Herbst Theater, San Francisco, under the aegis of the Claude Heater Foundation. Here are the details:

Sunday, August 26, 2018, 2:00 PM

Herbst Theatre at the San Francisco War Memorial & Performing Arts Center, Van Ness Ave, San Francisco, CA 94102

Ticket price: $25-80 (discounts for students & seniors)

Tickets at:   http://www.cityboxoffice.com/TRISTANandISOLDE

Details:   http://www.claudeheaterfoundation.org

Cast:

Tristan: Roy Cornelius Smith 

Isolde: Juyeon Song 

Brangäne: Tamara Gallo

Kurwenal: Geoffrey Di Giorgio

King Marke: Philip Skinner 

Melot: Alex Boyer 

Conductor: Jonathan Khuner 

Video artist: Naomie Kremer

Supertitles: Dmitry Murashev

Why not?

Museum Mondays

Assyrian Lion

Metropolitan Museum, NYC

February, 2018

Friday Bonus Photo

Artichokes, Oakland

Summer and Spring, 2018

In response to Patrick's artichoke

Friday Photo

German Fashion, Through a Window

Munich, Germany

August, 2015

Museum Mondays

Detail of an Assyrian Figure

Met Museum, New York City

February, 2018

Don't Be This Small Non-Profit

[July 14: Pushing this to the top of the blog because of follow-ups.}

Stuff that happened to me when I tried to renew my membership in a small non-profit organization (SNP, hereafter); an object lesson in how not to treat your members.

1. I received a renewal notice by email on February 2, 2018. I sent a check to SNP on or around February 8, because I had canceled my credit card owing to a fraudulent charge and I hadn’t received the new card yet. The check went to the post office box listed on SNP's web site and in the email I received.

2. February 16 - I received another emailed renewal notice. I replied to the email, which came from info@SNP. I did not receive an answer.

3. March 4 - I received another emailed renewal notice. This time, I forward that email and a reply to membership@SNP. I did not receive an answer.

4. March 7 - I received another emailed renewal noticed. This time, I forwarded that email and a reply to treasurer@SNP. I did not receive an answer.

5. March 23 - I sent a printed letter to the president of SNP at an address where I thought the president would receive it. I was confused about something and sent it to the wrong address, but it got to the president anyway. (Small world effect, here.)

6. April 3 - I hadn't heard anything, so I sent email to membership@SNP, president@SNP, vicepresident@SNP, and treasurer@SNP just saying I had a question and could anyone answer it.

7. April 9 - I heard from the president by email, who had gotten my printed letter. The president was very apologetic and promised to contact the treasurer on my behalf.

8. April 25. - The president checked back with me to see whether I had heard from the treasurer. I had not yet heard from the treasurer, who could not find 2 minutes before heading out of town a couple of weeks ago to send an email saying "I'm on this."

Apparently my case will be discussed at the Board meeting on April 29, nearly three months after I got the first renewal notice. My check hasn't cleared my bank yet, nor has the envelope containing the check come back to me.

Update: May 3 - The Board meeting was on April 29, and several days later, nobody has gotten back to me about the status of my membership renewal.

Things that went wrong:

• Organization says it's okay to send a check to a physical mail box that nobody monitors.
• Organization has multiple email addresses listed on its web site that nobody checks.
• Officer of the organization is asked to get in touch with a member, doesn't do it in a timely fashion.
• Renewal process, which should be simple, stretches out over three months even though member attempted to pay on a timely basis.
• Update: Board meets, is supposed to talk about this, nobody gets back to member with status report even after she sends an email the day after the meeting.

As I said, don't be this organization. No, I'm not going to tell you which organization this is.

Update: July 14, 2018

• On April 30, I followed up.
• On May 3, having heard nothing, I sent another follow-up.
• On May 8, the president of SNP asked me to tell her again where I had sent my check. Note: she had this in writing and I had sent it to the address on the org's web site.
• I told her I'd just pay my dues on line.
• On May 10, SNP finally told me they couldn't find my check and also that they were changing the PO Box address because the person who checks it does check regularly but doesn't communicate regularly with SNP. What. The. Fuck.
• Today, I got an email transmitting links to the quarterly newsletter of SNP, and it starts "Normally, the newsletter is only delivered to members whose dues are current, but we want to make sure that everyone is included in the excitement leading up to [event]. Enjoy this issue and plan for [event, which conflicts with an event that it's more important for me to go to]." I honestly can't tell what the problem here is: their database still thinks I haven't paid, or their cover email is totally guilt-trippy and ham-handed. I'm still trying to decide whether to send outraged email, curious email, ignore, or what.
• SNP did indeed switch the contact address, which is now in a different city and state.

While I'm not going to disclose the name of SNP, it has 137 members in it because it does nothing to increase membership....and there are a few obvious things it could do.