Stephen Sondheim

Georges Seurat

A Sunday on La Grande Jatte

Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago

Stephen Sondheim, the greatest composer/lyricist in American musical theater in my lifetime, and surely several lifetimes, died last week at age 91. The NY Times interviewed him a few days before, and other than a limping around on a sprained ankle, he seemed fine to the reporter. He went to Thanksgiving dinner at the home of friends, and died unexpected, early the next morning. He was not known to be in ill health. It's as good a way to go as any, save that he was working on a show and presumably we won't get to see that. If any of the songs are finished, whether we hear them will depend on his musical/literary executor and the terms of his will.

I learned one thing about him that I didn't know: he answered fan mail, whether you were a theater pro or a 12-year-old, and he was kind and respectful to everyone. He thanked people for sending him DVDs of their local production of one of his shows, he encouraged aspiring singers, songwriters, and playwrights, he was enthusiastic, he was appreciative of people's compliments.

I never sent him fan mail and I never met him, but I did love those shows of his that I have seen, and I can reasonably expect to love a bunch of the shows I barely know and haven't yet seen. I really cannot believe that I have missed two local productions of Sunday in the Park with George.

If you know my sense of humor, you can imagine how much I love Sweeney Todd and Assassins. The latter is a show that seems have come into its own, and rightfully so, many years after its creation. If you're in, near, or heading for NYC, you can see a production of it right now, in fact. Here's "A Little Priest" from Sweeney:

Many years ago, I played flute in the orchestra of a regional theater production of A Little Night Music, which has a wonderful score all around, beyond Sondheim's single greatest hit. Much of it is in some kind of triple or compound meter, a sly trick pulling the score together. Here's "A Weekend in the Country," which comes at the end of the first act. It is very funny even if you don't know all of the backstory, of which there's a lot, and of course it has Sondheim's amazing lyrics and a fabulous musical drive:

I have some qualms about the plot of Night Music, which revolves around a middle-aged man with a young adult son whose second marriage, after being widowed, is to an 18-year-old. There's a lot more plot than that and things work out reasonably well for all involved. It's a real shame that the film isn't that good and (sigh) the role of Desiree Armfeldt went to Elizabeth Taylor rather than Glynis Johns, who created the character. Oh, well.

He had a great life in the theater and a long life. If you're considering his accomplishments, keep in mind that while he had a lousy family life (his mother sounds like a real monster), his family seems to have been comfortably off, and he spent a lot of time with the Hammersteins, yes, those Hammersteins. That would provide some advantages to a budding lyricist/composer, advantages that most don't have. Knowing that, it's good to know about his kindness toward others and that he was a decent man.

Obits:

• Tim Page, Washington Post
• Bruce Weber, NY Times (This obit was updated on 12/2/21 to state that the cause of death was "cardiovascular disease," which I take to mean "heart attack.")
• Tom Sutcliffe, The Guardian
• Many more tributes and obits can be found with a web search. On Twitter, dozens of people posted photos of letters they'd received from him, and they are a delight to read.

Ticket Fees, Again

Davies Symphony Hall

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

Unbelievable: I am a subscriber to San Francisco Symphony (full orchestral sub for 2021-22). I donated during the cancelled pandemic season and this season. I called to swap my ticket to tonight's program for tomorrow....and was told that there would be a $12 fee to swap over the phone for my $40 subscription ticket. That's...more than 25%. I mentioned this and the patron services rep dropped the fee.

SFS, STOP DOING THIS. We can't all stroll to Davies for a free exchange at the box office. STOP PENALIZING TICKET BUYERS FOR WANTING OR NEEDING SOME FLEXIBILITY. The three minutes the exchange took - I looked for a desirable seat before I called - does not cost you $12. Remember that people with chronic illness or who are being treated for a serious acute illness could be among the most affected.

SFS's ticket exchanges policies are buried on an FAQ page, rather than posted on a separate page called, for example, "Ticket Purchase and Exchange Policies," which would be more helpful. Here are the (outrageous) policies:

Exchange Fees: 

• Exchanges are free for subscribers who exchange in person or by mail.
• Subscribers - $12 for each phone or fax exchange 
• Non-subscribers - $20 for each exchange
• Exchange requests for a higher-priced performance or section will be charged the difference.
• Exchange requests for a lower-priced performance or section will be considered a donation or can be applied to additional ticket purchases in the same transaction. 
• All other exchanges of discounted tickets require upgrading to a full-price ticket and paying the difference in price.

This is a great, great way, to DISCOURAGE exchanges, which might be the purpose! It's crap customer service, regardless. Unless you're going on a planned business trip or vacation, exchanging by mail is impractical. Exchanging in person is impractical unless you live or work close enough to Davies that it's convenient. (I don't; even taking Muni from my workplace would cost an hour in time plus two Muni fares, versus three minutes on the phone.)

By the way, I was not amused with the patron services rep telling me they'd had this policy for at least 15 years. SO WHAT? That doesn't make it a good policy.

Alvin Lucier

The composer died this week at 91. He was a student at Brandeis long before me; nonetheless, we both studied with Arthur Berger and Harold Shapero - theory for me, composition for him.

Obituaries:

• Allan Kozin, NY Times
• Tim Page, Washington Post

Claire Chase Resumes Performances of the Density 2036 Project

Received from the amazing flutist / SFS collaborative partner Claire Chase:

I can’t quite believe it, but after nearly two years of cancellations and postponements I am finally gearing up to play my first live solo show in New York! I would be so delighted if you could join me for this passage.

 

The eighth annual installation of the Density 2036 project is underway at The Kitchen, with world premieres of new works for flute and electronics by Ann Cleare, Wang Lu, and Matana Roberts. Each piece will be paired with a gorgeous new video work by Ailbhe Ní Bhriain, Polly Apfelbaum, and Matana Roberts. I’ll play a tiny reprise from last year’s Density by Liza Lim at the opening of the program, and close with the old 1936 warhorse herself.

 

I’m honored to be joined onstage by some superstar collaborators: my longtime partner-in-crime Levy Lorenzo, Wizard of All Things Sound; the percussion magician Susie Ibarra; Senem Pirler, an intermedia sound artist of astonishing range and sensitivity; and Nate Wooley,  the protean trumpet virtuoso. 

 

My dear and brilliant friend Ara Guzelimian will host the pre-concert talk with the composers before the opening night show. And I am grateful to be working with the literal dream-team of collaborators behind the scenes: Nick Houfek, production and lighting designer; Monica Duncan, projection designer; and Kelly Levy, stage manager extraordinaire.

 

We’ll do three performances: Thursday, Dec 9 at 8pm; Friday, Dec 10 at 8pm; Saturday, Dec 11 at 2pm. The Kitchen is selling tickets at 50% capacity to be COVID-safe, so they’ll go fast. Here’s the link.

Coming to San Francisco Symphony?

Esa-Pekka Salonen

Photo by Minna Hartinen, courtesy of San Francisco Symphony

When your music director is also a prominent composer, you keep an eye on his guest conducting engagements because he's been known to conduct his own music and works by other interesting prominent composers. I've been scouring Esa-Pekka Salonen's conducting schedule, and I found him conducting, at other orchestras, various works that I'd love to hear in San Francisco. Here's a little list of what he'll be conducting in the near future that isn't on this year's SFS schedule:

• Salonen: Clarinet Concertino (World Premiere, Yle Commission)
• Salonen: Fog (US premiere of orchestral version)
• Muhly: Shrink (concerto for violin and strings); Pekka Kuusisto, violin, co-curator
• Bjarnarson: Piano Concerto (world premiere, LA Phil commission)
• Salonen: Karawane
• Shaw: Entr’acte
• Salonen: Gemini
• Hillborg: Peacock Tales. Millennium version for saxophone and orchestra

We have an extraordinary principal clarinetist at SFS and I think that half of his solo appearances have been the Mozart clarinet concerto (the others were a Debussy work and the fabulous Nielsen concerto). So we can hope that Salonen's Concertino comes around on a future schedule.

Pekka Kuusisto is one of the Collaborative Partners, so, perhaps the Muhly is on its way as well. As might be any of these works! Think of this post as a parallel to my page on San Francisco Opera future seasons.

 

Personnel Changes at San Francisco Symphony

 

Davies Symphony Hall

Wow; a couple more big changes coming to San Francisco Symphony, with principal harpist Douglas Rioth and associate concertmaster Nadya Tichman stepping down, differently, from their respective posts. Here's the press release:

THE SAN FRANCISCO SYMPHONY ANNOUNCES TWO CHANGES TO ORCHESTRA ROSTER 



Principal Harp Douglas Rioth retires at end of 2021 calendar year

Associate Concertmaster Nadya Tichman continues her tenure with the San Francisco Symphony as revolving member of the 1st Violin section beginning in 2022–23 season

SAN FRANCISCO, CA—The San Francisco Symphony announces two upcoming changes to its orchestra roster. After forty years as Principal Harp of the San Francisco Symphony, Douglas Rioth will retire effective December 31, 2021. After thirty-one seasons as Associate Concertmaster, Nadya Tichman has decided to continue her tenure with San Francisco Symphony as a revolving member of the 1st Violin section beginning with the 2022–23 season.

Douglas Rioth joined the San Francisco Symphony as Principal Harp in 1981. Born in Missouri, he studied with Alice Chalifoux and Elisa Smith Dickon, attended the Interlochen Arts Academy and Cleveland Institute of Music, and studied at the Berkshire Music Center. Previously principal harp of the Indianapolis Symphony, Rioth was also a regular participant in the Salzedo Summer Harp Colony. Harp instructor at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, he also serves on the coaching team for the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra. Learn more about Douglas Rioth.

Nadya Tichman, Associate Concertmaster of the San Francisco Symphony, occupying the San Francisco Symphony Foundation Chair, joined the Orchestra in 1980. She served as acting Concertmaster from 1998 to 2001. Born in New York, she studied at the Juilliard School and the Curtis Institute of Music. Tichman has played Chamber Music at the Grand Teton and Olympic Music Festivals and with the Gualala Arts Festival and Music in the Vineyards. A champion of contemporary music, she has had pieces dedicated to her by composers Peter Schickele, Jim Lahti, and Allen Shearer. Tichman has appeared as soloist with the San Francisco Symphony on many occasions. Learn more about Nadya Tichman.

I don't really remember a time when these two weren't in their respective jobs and I have greatly enjoyed, admired, and respected their playing. I certainly understand deciding that it is time to stop, for many reasons, or to say that you'd like less responsibility. And it's part of the natural evolution of an orchestra for there to be personnel changes.

So, thanks to Rioth and Tichman for their many many contributions to SFS over the years, and best wishes for the future.

Philadelphia Orchestra Cast Change

About five minutes after I received the Met press release with the Nozze cast and conductor updates, I got a very similar press release from Philly. I can imagine the phone call / chat / Zoom call on which one person from the Met's communications department said to a person at Philly's communication department something like "Oh, yes, thanks, I've sent out my press release and now you can send out yours." And also whatever discussions there were deciding on the exact wording from their joint music director, etc.

Philadelphia, November 29, 2021)—Following a busy fall that marked The Philadelphia Orchestra’s highly anticipated return to live concerts with audiences, Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin has withdrawn from the Orchestra’s December 31, 2021, and January 2, 2022, concerts. Conductor Xian Zhang has graciously agreed to lead both concerts. The program will include the world premiere of Composer-in-Residence Gabriela Lena Frank’s Pachamama Meets an Ode, a Philadelphia Orchestra commission, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 (“Choral”), as previously scheduled. (Nézet-Séguin will lead the Carnegie Hall performance of these works on January 11, 2022.)

 

“We look forward to welcoming Xian Zhang to Verizon Hall for these special concerts and to her subscription debut with the Orchestra in May 2022,” said Matías Tarnopolsky, president and CEO of The Philadelphia Orchestra and Kimmel Center, Inc. “We are deeply grateful to Yannick for his leadership, artistry, and perseverance during the last 20 months—during which he and the Orchestra kept music front and center at a time when it was needed most—and for his extraordinary role in reuniting the Orchestra with audiences this fall.”

 

“I am grateful for the collaborations that led to deeply moving and memorable openings in Philadelphia, at the Met, at Carnegie Hall, and in Montreal, bringing us together again with audiences,” said Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin. “This has been a difficult time for so many and I have been, and remain, fully committed to providing much-needed hope and inspiration as we heal from the past year and a half. This short break will allow time for me to reenergize as we return in the new year with more inspiring art.” 

Xian Zhang is currently in her sixth season as music director of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra. She also holds the positions of principal guest conductor of Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, and conductor emeritus of Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi following a successful period from 2009–2016 as their music director.  

Cast Change Announcements: Met Nozze

Lincoln Center Fountain

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

Some changes in the Met's upcoming performances of Le nozze di Figaro:

Conductors Daniele Rustioni and James Gaffigan will lead this season’s performances of Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro, replacing Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin.

Isabel Leonard will sing Cherubino in the January performances of Le Nozze di Figaro, replacing Anna Stéphany.

Nézet-Séguin, who is taking a brief four-week sabbatical from all conducting duties commencing at the end of December, said, “I am grateful for the collaborations that led to deeply moving and memorable fall openings at the Met, in Philadelphia, at Carnegie Hall, and in Montreal, bringing us together with audiences once again. This has been a difficult time for so many, and I have been, and remain, fully committed to providing much-needed hope and artistic inspiration as we heal from the past year-and-a-half. This short break will allow time for me to reenergize as we return in the new year. I look forward to returning to the Met in February for our new production of Verdi’s Don Carlos.”

Italian maestro Daniele Rustioni, the music director at Lyon Opera and principal conductor at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, made his Met debut conducting Aida in 2017. He has conducted at many international opera houses, including La Scala, Teatro La Fenice, Zurich Opera, and the Royal Opera Covent Garden, where he is currently leading performances of Verdi’s Macbeth. This season at the Met, Maestro Rustioni will also lead the first run of performances of the Met’s new production of Verdi’s Rigoletto, which opens on New Year’s Eve.

American mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard has previously sung the role of Cherubino at the Met numerous times, most recently in the 2017–18 season. Also in the 2021–22 season, she will make role debuts as the title character of Massenet’s Cinderella, in a new abridged English-language version, and as the Composer in Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos.

Performances are January 8, 12, 15, 20, 23, and 28; Gareth Morrell will conduct the January 28 performance.

American conductor James Gaffigan, who made his Met debut conducting Puccini’s La Bohème in 2018, is currently the Music Director of Valencia's Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia and also holds positions as Principal Guest Conductor of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, Principal Guest Conductor of the Trondheim Symphony Orchestra, and Music Director of the Verbier Festival Junior Orchestra. He has conducted with many other companies, including Lyric Opera of Chicago, Washington National Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Vienna State Opera, Bavarian State Opera, and Hamburg State Opera. This season he will lead the Netherlands Radio in Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre, Deutsche Oper Berlin in Don Carlos, Opéra national de Paris in Manon, Valencia's Les Arts in Wozzeck, and Santa Fe Opera in Tristan und Isolde. Later this season at the Met, he will conduct Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, which opens on March 25. 

The spring run of Le Nozze di Figaro opens on April 2, 2022, with Federica Lombardi as the Countess, Aida Garifullina as Susanna, Sasha Cooke as Cherubino, Gerald Finley as the Count, and Christian Van Horn as Figaro.

SF Symphony Black Friday Sale

Davies Symphony Hall, home of the San Francisco Symphony

You might have gotten an email from SFS about their Black Friday sale, which gives 50% off a bunch of upcoming concerts, from December out to February or March. Here's a tip: as of right now, if you're logged in to the orchestra's web site as a subscriber, you won't see the discount prices. You'll only see subscriber prices, which give you a discount, but not 50%.

Oh, yes, I have reported this directly to the Box Office and Patron Services. Is the IT Department available to fix this? I don't know.

My suggestion if you're buying seats: 

1. Make sure that you are logged out, whether or not you're a subscriber.

2. Find the concerts you want to buy tickets for on the SFS Calendar, or click the links in the email.

3. Select your seats and add them to the cart.

4. Pay without logging in OR log in only after the discounted tickets are in your cart.

5. If you do log in, make sure that the discount sticks.

Yep, somebody didn't adequately test this before the email went out.

 

Friday Photo

 

A possibly recognizable orchestra

October, 2021

A possibly recognizable orchestra

October, 2019

NY Times Book Review, WHY WHY WHY.

The NY Times Book Review, celebrating its 125th birthday, decided it would be fun to try to choose the best book of the last 125 years. Now, this kind of thing is a total fool's errand, as readers of this blog surely know, especially if you saw Anthony Tommasini's quixotic effort to choose the top 25 (or something) Western classical composers. He excluded every composer before a certain period for reasons that amounted to "I know these composers and my fellow reviewers know these composers and so do musicologists but the average classical music lover has never heard of Dufay, Machaut, or Josquin so fuck everyone born before Bach except maybe Monteverdi."

Okay, I'll take a deep breath and get off that particular hobby horse, especially with Tommasini stepping down from the position of chief classical music critic of the Times. He did get a book out of it, so bully for him. Or something.

ANYWAY. The Times's methodology oh my god had readers nominating books back in October. Today they've got a list of 25 out for people to vote on. And it is just awful, in about 27 different ways. Okay, fewer than that, but bad enough.

Let's start with some statistics. Twenty-five books, of which 7 are by women. Twenty-five books, of which 6 were published before 1950 and the earliest were published in the 1920s. Twenty-five books, of which 7 were published in the last 25 years. Twenty-five books, of which 17 were written by U.S. writers. (I have omitted Nabokov from those 17 because, you know. He is a man of unclassifiable nationality.) Twenty-five books, of which 3 were written by non-white people. (I'm counting Garcia Marquez as white here.) Twenty-five books, and I think only One Hundred Years of Solitude was written in a language other than English.

Let's include a few books that just. don't. belong. on. this. list. Top of the heap, the hideously racist Gone with the Wind. Second, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, which isn't a particularly good book! Third, The Catcher in the Rye. DOES ANYONE REALLY LIKE THIS BOOK? 

Let's go into a few of the missing. First, practically everyone who published in a language other than English! So, no Kawabata, no Mishima, no Tanizaki, no Mann, no Proust, Camus, Grass, Singer,....well, list out your favorites here. No Kristen Lavransdottir, which is so very much better than Gone with the fucking Wind. 

After that, my gosh, no poets, although the nomination process was open to poets and memoirists. So just put every great poet of the last 125 years on your list. Never mind giants like Yeats, Eliot, Bishop, and on and on.

And there's a serious recency issue here. Way too many of the books were written since 1980. Among the missing: James, Wharton, Cather, Tolstoy, Faulkner, Conrad, Woolfe. 

Leaving aside the recency issue, no Rushdie! No Lessing! Nothing by any number of great writers.

As I said, it's a fool's errand, and the Times shouldn't be doing this. They could have moderated the utter stupidity of the list they wound up with by, say, inserting themselves between the votes of nostalgia-ridden former teenaged boys and the final list. Or, even better, asking a whole bunch of outstanding living writers and critics to name their views of the best books of the last 125 years and publishing those as opinion pieces.

Media Round-Up and Further Commentary on Così fan tutte at San Francisco Opera

John Brancy as Guglielmo, Ferruccio Furlanetto as Don Alfonso,
 and Ben Bliss as Ferrando in the opening scene of Mozart's "Così fan tutte."

Photo: Cory Weaver/San Francisco Opera

Reviews of the San Francisco Così  are coming in, so here's the start of a round-up:

• Joshua Kosman, Chronicle (loves it)
• Christian Ocier, Parterre Box (ambivalent to negative)
• Steven Winn, SFCV (likes or loves it)
• Opera Tattler (likes it very much)
• William Burnett, Opera Warhorses (likes it)
• Harvey Steiman, Seen and Heard International (likes it)
• Lisa Hirsch, Opera News (loves it; review not yet posted)

It's interesting to see how the reviewers shake out over the liveliness of the production. For me and Joshua, it's an energetic delight, for Christian Ocier, it's "cartoonish farce", "oafish antics", "slapstick", and "cheap laughs."

Steven Winn also likes the production. I tried unsuccessfully to work something into my review about the production skating as close as possible to edge of farce without crossing the line, so I was aware of the risks Cavanagh took. Unlike Ocier, I felt he negotiated this fine line extremely well.

Ocier also points out Cabell's low-register weakness, and that's fair; I would have liked more punch in the low end of "Come scoglio," but otherwise I thought she did fine in the aria.

Ferruccio Furlanetto as Don Alfonso and Nicole Heaston as Despina in Mozart's "Così fan tutte."

Photo: Cory Weaver/San Francisco Opera

My review tries to convey the intelligence of the direction, the virtues of which include the lack of stand-and-sing and ample helpings of well-motivated detail. The above photo puts some of this across: Despina is in the forefront, about to fake-shock Guglielmo and Ferrando back to consciousness after their fake suicides. Instead of standing and watching her, Don Alfonso is examining the magnets. This seems entirely in character for him. 

Nicole Heaston as Despina in Mozart's "Così fan tutte."

Photo: Cory Weaver/San Francisco opera

More evidence of the attention to detail that is typical of the production: you know those two books that Despina pulls out of a piano bench (I think) and hands to the sisters, who are reading magazines? I couldn't make out the titles even with binoculars, so I asked about them. They are Anais Nin's Winter of Artifice (published 1939) and Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer (published 1934). They just might bear on the subject matter of the opera, and they date the production precisely.

John Brancy as Guglielmo and Ben Bliss as Ferrando in Mozart's "Così fan tutte."

Photo: Cory Weaver/San Francisco Opera

The fur coats made me wonder whether this is a subtle nod to Mandryka in Arabella, but that's probably wrong. Another line I didn't manage to work in is "these people live in a world where a fake mustache and mussed hair are somehow a convincing disguise...only maybe they're not."

Nicole Cabell as Fiordiligi and Irene Roberts as Dorabella in Mozart's "Così fan tutte."

Photo: Cory Weaver/San Francisco Opera

Aren't the sisters adorable??

Blasts from the past:

• Lisa Hirsch, writing about the summer, 2013 revival of the John Cox production
• Joshua Kosman on the spring run
• Joshua Kosman on the fall, 2012 run
• Joshua Kosman on the debut of the John Cox production
• Martin Bernheimer eviscerates the 1991 Harry Kupfer production

UPDATED: November 27, 2021

Così fan tutte at San Francisco Opera

I'll be filing my Opera News review later tonight or early tomorrow, but just in case you're wondering, go buy tickets right now, because it's one of the best things you will ever see. Cast and conductor superb, direction endlessly inventive and brilliant, adorable costuming, great sets and lighting. I mean, I am bursting out laughing just looking at the gallery of Cory Weaver's photos.

[I'll have more to say, with press photos, tomorrow, now that I have filed.]

Vagueblogging

Just saying, if you're an organization that someone donates to and you want to show your appreciation with a special offer, be as flexible with it as possible.

Museum Mondays

Glass vessel

Last Dinner at Pompeii

Palace of the Legion of Honor

San Francisco, CA

August, 2021

 

Friday Photo

San Francisco City Hall

October 29, 2021

 

Coming to San Francisco Opera

The Spoleto Festival has exciting plans for 2022, including two world premiers and a staging of La Boheme by Yuval Sharon. Here is a chunk of their press release, about Rhiannon Giddens (!!!) and Michael Abels' new opera Omar. Make sure that you read as far as the boldfaced text:

Omar

World premiere

Music by Rhiannon Giddens and Michael Abels

Libretto by Rhiannon Giddens

Directed by Kaneza Schaal

Conducted by John Kennedy

Principal cast: 

Jamez McCorkle, Omar

Cheryse McLeod Lewis, Omar’s mother

Laquita Mitchell, Julie

By 1808, Charleston’s ports alone recorded more than 100,000 West Africans who had been stolen from their homelands, whose brutal vanishings left families and generations to come wondering of their whereabouts and existences. Omar, a new opera based on the life and 1831 autobiography of Omar Ibn Said, tells one such story.

Opening in Senegal, the opera’s narrative traces Omar Ibn Said’s spiritual journey from his life in West Africa to his enslavement in the Carolinas. A Muslim African scholar, Said was 37 years old when he was captured in Futa Toro and brought to Charleston. His story is one of strength, resistance, and religious conviction, a story of truth and of faith.

Upon arrival in the United States, Said was sold to a Charlestonian, but escaped and fled to North Carolina, where he was recaptured, sent to jail, and then resold to James Owen, the brother of one of the state’s governors. Said penned his autobiography in Arabic in 1831. It is considered the only surviving autobiography of an enslaved person in the United States written in Arabic and therefore unedited. According to many scholars, as many as 30 percent of the enslaved Africans who arrived in the colonies, and subsequently the United States, were Muslim, a largely unexplored truth in modern American discussions of slavery.

Rhiannon Giddens, a Grammy Award winner and MacArthur Fellow known for exploring the legacy of African American folk traditions, has created the libretto. Giddens spoke about the opera: “To have the opportunity to craft an opera around Omar Ibn Said is a dream come true that I didn’t even know I had until I was deep in the thick of it. I realized I am a mere shepherd of this work—what is coming through me is truer than anything I could think up on purpose. This is my way, of the possible many, many ways, through the story that Omar represents. He was a remarkable man whose words speak to us beyond generations. Bringing this music to life with the supremely talented and collaborative composer Michael Abels has been nothing short of fantastic. I’ve learned much from Michael and from Omar, and I can only be honored that I have had a hand in bringing this version of his life to the operatic stage.” 

Giddens has co-composed the score with Michael Abels, an American composer perhaps best known for his work in award-winning films including Get Out and Us. Musically, the work incorporates West-African traditions with conventional Western opera instrumentation. It is written for a cast of 8 soloists with a full choir and orchestra. “Omar’s story demonstrates the power religious belief has to nurture and uplift the spirit under the direst circumstances,” says Abels. “The unavoidable postponement of the premiere due to the pandemic provided the opportunity for Rhiannon and me to enhance the storytelling and music even more. I’m excited beyond words to finally be able to share Omar’s journey with Spoleto audiences.”

Acclaimed opera and theater artist Kaneza Schaal leads the work’s direction. “The West has a fantasy of its singularity; it imagines itself as constant and fixed. Opera lost itself to that lie,” says Schaal, a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow. “This new work, about Omar Ibn Said, brings the opera back to its true self—a form built on hundreds of years of cultural exchange, and one that has always been deeply hybrid. It’s a place big enough for the contradiction, violence, and holiness of Said’s journey.”

Omar is co-produced by Spoleto Festival USA and Carolina Performing Arts at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. Following its world premiere in Charleston, Omar will be presented in future seasons by opera companies including LA Opera, Boston Lyric Opera, San Francisco Opera, and Lyric Opera of Chicago. The opera is inspired by Dr. Ala Alryyes’s translation of Omar Ibn Said’s autobiography in his book, A Muslim American Slave: The Life of Omar Ibn Said. Reprinted by permission of the University of Wisconsin Press. © 2011 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System. All rights reserved.  

A Few Articles to Read Together

Regular readers know that I have been rolling my eyes at Music@Menlo's programming for the last ten years or so. The festival directors, Wu Han and David Finckel, work pretty much in the dead-white-European-male canon, even when there are obvious opportunities to break out of that particular line of programming.

The pair are also directors of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Weirdly, the one time I saw them in SF, they played a new song cycle and Amy Beach's piano quintet, the sort of thing various people wish they'd do more of.

CMS's season opener led to the following:

• Review: Chamber Music Society Returns, Unchanged, by Zachary Woolfe. Subhead: The organization opened its season with a program encapsulating a persistently conservative vision of the repertory.
• Chamber Music Society's Leaders on Balancing Old and New, by Javier Hernández. An interview that contains a ton of gobbledegook, including the ridiculous claim by Finckel: "I mean, there is more variety and diversity in a single string quartet of Haydn than you can find in about a hundred works of other composers." W the actual F. This is a willful dodge around what "diversity" means.
• Diversify the world of classical music? Some key players are digging in their heels, by Joshua Kosman, wielding a very sharp pencil.
  
• Catalyst Quartet shines a spotlight on the chamber music of Black composers, also by Joshua Kosman. Lack of diverse programming means omitting a lot of terrific music from our concert halls.
  
• The Programmatic Lightness Of Being, by Drew McManus at Adaptistration.
  
• There's plenty of mockery of the CMS/LC on Twitter, as well.

Museum Mondays

Fresco: Siren and Sea Monsters

Last Dinner at Pompeii

Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco

August, 2021

 

The Oncoming Concert Pile-Up

Next weekend, there's just too much to choose from:

• SFS with MTT/Ludovic Merlot
• Oakland Symphony
• Ars Minerva's Messalina
• Cosi fan tutte at San Francisco Opera

I'm teaching Thursday night, so I can't swap my SFS ticket for that night so that I be out at concerts four days in a row. I'm having to settle for SFS, Messalina, and Cosi.

One Does Not Quite Know What to Say.

MICHAEL TILSON THOMAS

Photo by Brandon Patoc, courtesy of San Francisco Symphony

A San Francisco Symphony press release that gives some cause for concern: Ludovic Merlot to conduct the first half of Michael Tilson Thomas's program next week, with Ma Mere l'Oye replacing William Grant Still's Patterns. As always, wishing the best for MTT.

LUDOVIC MORLOT JOINS MICHAEL TILSON THOMAS TO CONDUCT THE SAN FRANCISCO SYMPHONY NOVEMBER 18–20

 

Morlot conducts Tim Higgins’ Trombone Concerto and Maurice Ravel’sMa Mère l’Oye (Mother Goose) Suite (replacing William Grant Still’s Patterns); Tilson Thomas conducts Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring

SAN FRANCISCO, CA—Ludovic Morlot joins Music Director Laureate Michael Tilson Thomas (MTT) to conduct part of the November 18–21 San Francisco Symphony concerts at Davies Symphony Hall. Morlot will conduct the first half of the program, including Maurice Ravel’s Ma Mère l’Oye (Mother Goose) Suite, which replaces William Grant Still’s Patterns, and the world premiere of San Francisco Symphony Principal Trombone Timothy Higgins’ Trombone Concerto, commissioned by the SF Symphony and performed by Higgins. Music Director Laureate Michael Tilson Thomas will lead the orchestra in Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring as planned.

Michael Tilson Thomas says: “I’m happy to be in San Francisco, making music with my Symphony colleagues once again. I am feeling well, having returned to the stage in New York last week for the first time since my surgery. I now see that I have to conserve my energy as I continue to recover and have made the decision to focus next week on conducting Copland’s Appalachian Spring. I am so happy that Ludovic Morlot can be here to premiere the Higgins Trombone Concerto, which I was hoping to perform with the remarkable Tim Higgins. I look forward to conducting William Grant Still’s Patterns with the San Francisco Symphony at a later date, and to seeing you at Davies Symphony Hall this coming week.”

Music Director Laureate Michael Tilson Thomas also conducts the San Francisco Symphony this week in three performances November 12–14 featuring music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Robert Schumann, and his own composition, Notturnofeaturing flutist Demarre McGill.

Road Trip!

Christine Goerke as Elektra

San Francisco Opera, 2017

Photo by Corey Weaver, courtesy of SFO

When Houston Grand Opera announced their 2021-22 season, this was the principal cast for Dialogues of the Carmelites:

• Blanche: Natalya Romaniw 
• Madame Lidoine: Christine Goerke 
• Madame Croissy: Anna Caterina Antonacci 
• Mother Marie: Jennifer Johnson Cano 
• Sister Constance: Lauren Snouffer 
• Marquis: Rod Gilfry 
• Chevalier: Eric Taylor

That...is a terrific cast, and Anna Caterina Antonacci is rarely seen on these shores. (I've been lucky to see her four times.)

As it happens, it seems that she won't be appearing in this opera. The current cast is:

• Blanche: Natalya Romaniw 
• Madame Lidoine: Christine Goerke 
• Madame Croissy: Patricia Racette 
• Mother Marie: Jennifer Johnson Cano 
• Sister Constance: Lauren Snouffer 
• Marquis: Rod Gilfry 
• Chevalier: Eric Taylor

Making her role debut as the Old Prioress, one of my favorite singers, Patricia Racette. The chance to see her and another of my favorite singers - that would be Christine Goerke - as the New Prioress, well.

Patricia Racette as Cio-Cio-San

Marty Sohl / Metropolitan Opera

Friday Photo

Samuel Lewis Trust Dwellings

Ixworth Place, Chelsea

London, November, 2019

The Samuel Lewis Charitable Trust was established to provide good-quality house to poor people in London.

 

Bychkov Withdraws from NY Phil Program

Dima Slobodeniouk

Photo: Marco Borggreve, courtesy of the NY Philharmonic

Press release this morning:

Dima Slobodeniouk To Make His New York Philharmonic Debut Replacing Semyon Bychkov

November 17–19, 2021, at Alice Tully Hall

Semyon Bychkov will be unavailable to conduct the New York Philharmonic’s performances at Alice Tully Hall, November 17–19. He will be replaced by Dima Slobodeniouk in his New York Philharmonic debut. The program — featuring Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 1 with soloist Karen Gomyo in her Philharmonic subscription debut and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 1, Winter Dreams— remains unchanged.

I saw Dima Slobodeniouk at the BSO two years ago conducting Elgar and Nielsen and thought he was excellent, so don't turn in your tickets!

Museum Mondays

Mosaic of skeleton with two wine jugs

Last Dinner at Pompeii

Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco

August, 2021