Otello at Livermore Valley Opera

My SFCV review of Livermore Valley Opera's Otello is now posted. Briefly, it is a rave. Joshua Kosman also raved, more eloquently than I did. Our vocabulary overlaps a bit; you'll find "electrifying" in both reviews. I didn't discuss one regular problem with productions of the opera, on the grounds that the production photos would speak to the issue.

This definitely falls under the rubric of "the little opera company that could." LVO has an annual budget of under $500,000, according to the 990 forms that I glanced at this weekend, and yet they've managed to stage a production of Verdi's Otello - a problem opera if ever there was one - that I found more dramatically cogent and just plain exciting than the last two bring-ups at San Francisco Opera, a company that spends roughly $1 million per performance.

I mean, those productions had issues. The 2002 production was announced with Ben Heppner singing the title role. He withdrew and was replaced by four tenors, each singing from one to four and a fraction performances. Yes, really: Jon Fredric West dropped out of the performance of October 26 after one act, with Antonio Barasorda singing acts 2, 3, and 4. I caught Vladimir Galouzine and remember him sounding vocally clumsy. Sergei Leiferkus, a wonderful singer in the right repertory, was badly miscast as Jago; he had the trill (YES THERE'S A TRILL THERE) but sounded nothing like an Italian baritone. Patricia Racette sang beautifully. I vaguely recall that Donald Runnicles wasn't at his best. I should check; I probably have notes someplace.

Okay, my comments about 2002:

 Galouzine was okay, which is much better than anyone has said West was;   it's the right kind of voice except that he sounds like a baritone. I don't just mean baritonal, I mean _baritone_, as in more of a baritone than Leiferkus. (I get impressions of nausea from everyone who has mentioned West.) Racette was terrific; Leiferkus sounds very dry and verging on wobble - at least he can trill and sound nasty at will. 

The performance didn't really gel very well. The orch. was surprisingly sloppy and Runnicles seemed to be beating time at various points. The scene with the Venetian ambassador lost all momentum, for example.

The most recent production, in November, 2009, had completely different problems. I heard the last performance, and Nicola Luisotti's conducting sounded so disengaged that I figured he was already mentally checked out and on his way to guest conduct elsewhere. Marco Vratogna shouted most of Jago. Zvetelina Vassileva was forgettable, and had so little chemistry with Johan Botha that she never looked at him during the love duet! Botha...what can one say? He sang like an angel; I know that I'll never hear a more beautiful sound in the love duet. But he could not act, was facially inexpressive, and not very mobile on stage. It was a really dispiriting performance.

So it's a real thrill to see an Otello production that's firing on more cylinders than you would think possible: terrific singing from the three principals, real drama, good direction, and fiery conducting.

There are two more performances, on Saturday, March 12 at 7:30 p.m. and on Sunday, March 13 at 2 p.m. Really, you should go!

• Joshua Kosman, SF Chron
  
• Lisa Hirsch, SFCV

Museum Mondays

Fresco of Bacchus and Mount Vesuvius

Last Supper at Pompeii

Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco

August, 2021

 

Belated Friday Photo

Dodge Rambler

Grove St., San Francisco

March, 2022

 

Classical Music and the Invasion of Ukraine

Mark Rothko

Untitled ("Blue and Yellow", 1954)

It appears that the international career of Putin-loving conductor Valery Gergiev is over. Here are links to a few articles.

• Critic's Notebook: Putin’s Maestro, and the Limits of Cultural Exchange in Wartime. Zachary Woolfe, NY Times
• For musical artists aligned with Putin, the Ukraine invasion brings a reckoning. Joshua Kosman, SF Chronicle
  
• Valery Gergiev and the Nightmare of Music Under Putin. Alex Ross, The New Yorker
  
• Reporting in The NY Times, all by Javier C. Hernández
• Munich Philharmonic fires Gergiev (3/1)
• Gergiev faces removal from podiums (2/25)
  
• Gergiev won't conduct the Vienna Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall (2/24)

Related: Anna Netrebko won't be singing at the Met this season or next, and Peter Gelb says it's hard to imagine a scenario where she returns. The soprano and her husband withdrew this week from some European engagements as well. It's a big deal for the Met; Netrebko is one of the very few singers who reliably sell out the giant theater. Another is no longer appearing with the company for heinous personal behavior.

At the Teatro Real in Madrid, this happened at the last performance of Robert Carsen's Götterdämmerung:

I imagine there was a collective gasp from the audience. The performance, under Pedro Heras-Casado, sounds crackling. Gutrune is Amanda Majeski; Hagen is the great Stephen Milling. Adreas Schager is presumably under the shroud.

All over the world, performers are dedicating performances to Ukraine and Ukrainians; the Ukrainian national anthem is being sung before performances (Metropolitan Opera before Don Carlos; Czech Philharmonic, where Semyon Bychkov denounced the invasion), and so on.

Update on MTT

Michael Tilson Thomas

Photo by Brandon Patoc (c), 2019

Courtesy of San Francisco Symphony

Well, damn. MTT, who was diagnosed last year with a brain tumor, is stepping down as the artistic director of the New World Symphony. He has released a moving letter with some details of his diagnosis and treatment:

Dear Friends,

My return to performing these last months has been very special. The 20 concerts with the New York Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the San Francisco Symphony were heartwarming. Making music with these great artists and for so many friends in the audience felt like coming home, like coming back to life. I couldn’t have been happier.

It takes strength to meet the demands of the music and to collaborate on the highest level with the remarkable musicians who so generously welcomed me. I now see that it is time for me to consider what level of work and responsibilities I can sustain in the future.

I have not publicly discussed my medical diagnosis. I have Glioblastoma Multiforme, a type of aggressive brain cancer. I had an operation to remove what was visible and had radiation and chemotherapy. Currently the cancer is in check. But the future is uncertain as Glioblastoma is a stealthy adversary. Its recurrence is, unfortunately, the rule rather than the exception.

I’m taking stock of my life and will be reducing my administrative responsibilities. I have decided that, after 34 years, I will be stepping down as the Artistic Director of the New World Symphony. This organization, which I co-founded with Lin and Ted Arison, has been and will continue to be a vital and ever-growing resource for musicians. I’m proud of what we have accomplished and very proud of our 1,200 alumni. I will soon assume the role of Artistic Director Laureate and will dedicate myself to working with the NWS Fellows and Alumni on adventurous projects that have long been close to my heart.

I look forward to my work the remainder of this season with orchestras in the United States and Europe and to the many musical collaborations planned for next season. I intend to stick around for a bit. Creating and collaborating to make great music is what it’s all about for me. Every moment on stage with my colleagues is memorable. I want to thank all who have been supportive during this time, especially my husband Joshua Robison. He has always been by my side and is, as ever, my hero.

I will continue to compose, to write, and to mull over your thoughts and mine. I’m planning more time to wonder, wander, cook, and spend time with loved ones – two legged and four. Life is precious.

I send affection and gratitude.

Michael TT

Affection and profound gratitude back at you, Michael TT. Wishing you the best.

• Joshua Kosman, SF Chron
• Javier C. Hernandez, NY Times
• Emmalyse Brownstein, Miami New Times
• Neda Ulaby, NPR

Museum Mondays

 

Architectural frieze? of religious figures

Metropolitan Museum of Art

February, 2018 

From the museum's web site:

Six Apostles from Retable

late 14th century

French

This fragment was part of a retable, a frieze installed behind an altar. Depicting Christ and the twelve apostles, it presented the figures in a rhythmic pairing united by an ornately cusped and pinnacled arcade. Represented from left to right are an unidentified apostle and Saint Bartholomew, Saints Andrew and James the Lesser, and Saints John and Peter, who both turn to face the now-missing Christ. The relief is contemporary with the construction of the collegiate church of Saint-Jean-Baptiste, begun in 1326. A portion of the retable’s right section is now in the Musée du Louvre.

Friday Photo

Our CSA sent two bags of mesclun instead of one and maybe overboard with the greens in general.

 

Museum Mondays

Statue of a Satyr with a Panther

Last Supper at Pompeii

Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco

August, 2021

 

Now Streaming: Paris Opera Les Troyens

This is the production I saw three years ago in Paris, during the 350th anniversary season of the Paris Opera. It was a season of big operas, including Tristan und Isolde (the Peter Sellars "Tristan Experience," with videos by Bill Viola), Les Huguenots, and Rusalka. The cast for Troyens was something: Brandon Jovanovich, Ekaterina Semenchuk, Stéphanie d'Oustrac, Stéphan Degout, Christian Van Horn, and others, with a production by Dmitri Tcherniakov that I liked and found thought-provoking, though I did not like the cuts.

You can now stream this on the web site of the Opera National de Paris for $7.99. (I hope that it doesn't turn out that I need a VPN because they're in Europe.) You can read a review of the production at Mark Berry's blog Boulezian. I interviewed Jovanovich and Van Horn during the Troyens run.

Friday Photo

 

Items in a storefront window

Spitalfields, London

May, 2014

Museum Mondays

 

Midcentury interior

Geffrye Museum of the Home, London

May, 2014

Hans Neuenfels

The German director, of spoken theater and opera, died earlier this week of COVID-19. He was 80.

I haven't seen anything indicating that Neuenfels ever worked in the United States. I've seen only one of his productions, the famous "rat" Lohengrin, staged at the Bayreuth Festival from 2010 until 2015. I saw the very last performance, at the end of which there was a 20-minute ovation for the performers. I reviewed Lohengrin (and all of the 2015 productions) for SFCV. I am not sure that I succeeded in conveying the strange beauty and charm of the production. There's a video; it's a good one and you should try to see it, but seeing the production live was something else. I'm deeply sorry that it's the only one of his productions that I have seen.

• David Allen, NY Times
• Mark Berry, Boulezian

Friday Photo

Front hallway from living room.

Before plaster repair, floor refinishing, and painting.

Front hallway from living room.

After plaster repair, floor refinishing, and painting.

Green Umbrella (LA Phil) and SoundBox (SFS) Cancellations

News comes of cancellations in LA and SF that are not because of the coronavirus. Violinist Pekka Kuusisto has withdrawn owing to the serious illness of a family member. 

• The Green Umbrella concert in LA that was scheduled for February 15 will instead be on April 19, 2022.
• The SFSoundBox concerts of February 25-26 are cancelled.

The Shape of Things to Come, 2021-22 Edition

The coronavirus cancellations and postponements are starting again.

• I've suspended my jujitsu classes indefinitely because of how contagious Omicron is.
• Music@Menlo has postponed its planned benefit to March 13. Their email didn't include the original date.
• Tulsa Opera has postponed Tobias Picker’s opera Emmeline from Friday, February 25 and Sunday, February 27 to their 2022-23 season.
• The Presidio Theater and and The Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics have cancelled the February 16-27 performances of Remember This: The Lesson of Jan Karski, which would have starred David Strathairn.
• San Francisco Performances cancelled the Saturday, February 12 Dublin Guitar Quartet performance at Herbst Theatre.
• Music at Kohl Mansion cancelled the Sunday, February 13 performance by Ida Kavafian and cellist Peter Wiley with members of Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music.  
• Playful People Production moved their performances of The Pirates of Penzance to February 18—20 and 25—27.
• Boston's Odyssey Opera has postponed to the fall its planned March 19, 2022 performance of TROIKA, a trio of one-act operas by Rachmaninoff.

Received at 4:20 p.m. on January 11, from Green Music Center:

Yesterday, amid a local and regional surge in COVID-19 cases due to the Omicron variant, Sonoma County Public Health Officer, Dr. Sundari Mase, issued a health order restricting gatherings of large groups of more than 50 people in indoor settings and groups of more than 100 people in outdoor settings.

In accordance with the recent health order, the Green Music Center is canceling the following events through February 11th:

January 21: New Century Chamber Orchestra

February 5: Family Day with Alphabet Rockers 

How long before other counties catch up?

Updated: February 9, 2022 

* The American Masters are defined here as Gershwin, Copland, Bernstein, and Ellington. I mean.

** NCCO and Symphony San Jose's programs both included Appalachian Spring, which MTT conducted in November with SFS.

Older Cancellations and Postponements 

• American Bach Soloists postponed their NYE program.
• S.F. Chamber Orchestra has cancelled its NYE programs; h/t Tod Brody for this news.
• Wild Up postponed its Darkness Sounding festival from January to sometime in the spring.
• PROTOTYPE postponed its 10th anniversary festival from January, 2022, to January, 2023.
• Left Coast Chamber Ensemble has postponed its planned January program, "Living in Color", to May 22 and 23.
• Wagner concert, billed as "The Greatest Wagner Concert Ever!", postponed from January 15 to a date to be determined. This concert was to have featured soprano Othalie Graham and the Vallejeo Festival Orchestra under Thomas Conlin.
• Cutting Ball Theater postpones their upcoming show, Honestly, I’ve Never Wanted to Bash Someone in the Head with a Baseball Bat More Than I Do Right Now. 
• Berkeley Symphony has postponed its January 16 chamber music concert to June 26.
• Shotgun Players, Berkeley, has cancelled their upcoming production, Babes in Ho-lland, which was to have run from January 20 to February 6, 2022.
• Itzhak Perlman's upcoming West Coast performances have been postponed. I am aware of Seattle, SF, LA and Escondido postponements.
• SF Performances has cancelled Steven Isserlis and Connie Shih's January 29 recital, because of visa issues related to the pandemic.
• Lyric Opera of Chicago postpones Missy Mazzoli's Proving Up, which was to have opened on January 22, to a future season.
• Stanford University has cancelled all indoor events through January 28.
• American Bach Soloists has cancelled its January 21-24, 2022 program, "Sweet Harmony."
• Symphony San Jose has postponed their planned "American Masters"* program from January 22 and 23 to April 2 and 3; in addition, the program will be performed at the San Jose Center for the Performing Arts rather than the California Theatre.
• New Century Chamber Orchestra has cancelled its Green Music Center concert; see the note from January 11 about Green.**
• NCCO has now cancelled all of its January concerts. If you're a ticket holder, you can exchange for a future program, donate the value of your ticket, or get a refund.
• Earplay is postponing its planned January 31 program to Fall, 2022.

Details about SFO Concert

War Memorial Opera House

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

A press release from San Francisco Opera provides an update on the the June, 2022 Verdi concert to be conducted by music director Eun Sun Kim. To summarize, these are the singers:

• Nicole Car, soprano
• Arturo Chacón-Cruz, tenor
• Etienne Dupuis, baritone
• Soloman Howard, bass

The concert will include bleeding chunks excerpts from Luisa Miller, Il Trovatore, and Don Carlo. The press release notes that the Don Carlo selections will include the auto-da-fe scene and the ballet music. 

George Crumb

Linda Lukas, SF Symphony

Vox Balaenae at SFSoundBox

January, 2016

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

Composer George Crumb has died at age 92. He composed beautiful and individual music and was beyond a doubt political. Vox Balaenae is inextricably linked to the environmental disasters we face; other works are linked to the Vietnam War and political protest. He was an experimental composer, using extended instrumental and vocal techniques in his works. His scores themselves are extremely beautiful and individual. You can see some examples at The Spectacular Music Scores of George Crumb and elsewhere on the web.

Those who knew him say that he was a gentle and good-humored man, and a fine teacher. Condolences to all who knew and loved him.

• Vivienne Schweitzer, NY Times
• Anastasia Tsioulcas, NPR
  
• Emily Langer, Washington Post
• Thomas May, Musical America

 

Museum Mondays

Bacchus

Last Supper at Pompeii

Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco

August, 2021

 

More on Dausgaard and the Seattle Symphony

Douglas McLennan (of ArtsJournal) has published a couple of articles at Post Alley about the debacle at the Seattle Symphony. After the second was published, the orchestra finally responded and there are some corrections appended to that article, but honestly it does not look good for the current administration. The extreme turnover in the administration and on the Board of Directors are very bad.

• McLennan's first article 
• McLennan's update

One takeaway: the current executive director, Krishna Thiagarajan, apparently didn't have a particularly good record at his previous posts. The Board hired him for this job anyway - men get to fail upward a lot - and then failed to take action despite issues with him. 

Another takeaway: Simon Woods, the previous executive director, put together an excellent team of administrator and did a good job at the orchestra, where he was clearly a good fit. The LA Phil then hired him; he didn't work out there and within two years was replaced by Chad Smith, who, with Gail Samuel, was one of two  highly capable and strong internal candidates. (Samuel is now the president and CEO of the Boston Symphony.) 

I really feel for Woods, who hired Dausgaard and, I think, Ludovic Morlot, and who went from a job where he was successful to one that didn't work out.

Updated 2/11/2022: Woods didn't hire Morlot; see the comments.

Belated Friday Photo

 

Sunny the Japanese Bobtail enjoying the view

February, 2022

Oakland, CA

We recently finished remodeling our kitchen and laundry room; also, repainting the interior and refinishing the floors. You can see the new colors in the living room here. The entryway is painted the accent color we used in the bookcase. All of the trim and the picture rail to ceiling areas throughout the house (except the kitchen) are now painted the same bright white, also.

Belated Museum Monday

 

DeYoung Museum Exterior

San Francisco

October, 2006

Friday Photo

Old Royal Naval College, Greenwich

Seen from the Thames

May, 2014

 

Museum Mondays

Roman Byzantine Mosaic

Metropolitan Museum of Art

November, 2013

 

Friday Photo

Street Lights and Traffic Lights

Southwark Bridge, London

May, 2014

 

SFO 100

War Memorial Opera House

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

It's finally here: the San Francisco Opera centennial season announcement. It's kind of a wow! And that's even though it's a shorter season than I would like; I'm somewhat surprised that with all of the hoopla and fundraising attendant on such an occasion, the company couldn't get donors to pony up enough money for 10 operas. 

To my surprise, the announcement includes part of the 2023-24 season, and that looks like it'll be a good one as well, because it's got three new operas on it.

Here are the answers to the quiz that Matthew Shilvock set up, with as much detail as I can reasonably fit in a bullet list:

• Two new operas by Bay Area composers
• John Adams, Antony and Cleopatra, libretto put together by the composer largely from the Shakespeare play, but with additional texts from other sources. Julia Bullock and Gerard Finley as the title characters; also starring Paul Appleby, Alfred Walker, Elizabeth DeShong; directed by Elkhanah Pulitzer. This will be the opening night performance, which I have some doubts about, because having an offbeat work didn't work so well back in the Rosenberg era when one of her seasons opened with The Mother of Us All. Music Director Eun Sun Kim conducts. (Right now I'm thinking that I should try to find a commercial recording or bootleg of the Barber Antony that opened the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center.)
• Gabriela Lena Frank, El úlitmo sueño de Frida y Diego, libretto by Nilo Cruz. Co-commission; first performances are at San Diego Opera in October, 2022. Starring Daniela Mack (Frida), Alfredo Daza (Diego), Yaritza Vélez, and Jacob Ingbar star. Roberto Kalb conducts, Lorena Maza directs. SFO has made a great effort here to cast this with native Spanish speakers from the Americas! I think that this is the first main-stage work composed by a woman and the first work in Spanish to be presented by SFO. She is also Jewish, but there's Meyerbeer in the company's past, so she's definitely not the first Jewish composer to have a work in the repertory here.(Whatever happened to those rumors about Florencia en el Amazonas?) 

• Two new productions from the core repertory
• Madama Butterfly, co-production with The Tokyo Nikikai Opera Foundation, the Semperoper Dresden and The Royal Danish Opera. There is a concept, which is seeing the opera through the eyes of Dolor, Cio-Cio-San and Pinkerton's son. Directed by Amon Miyamoto  and starring Karah Son and Michael Fabiano. Hyona Kim is Suzuki and Lucas Meachem is Sharpless. Eun Sun Kim conducts. There's an effort here not to engage in yellow face, which is good. There's also a statement about this opera and Asian Opera Alliance. Note the work being done at Boston Lyric Opera's Butterfly Project discussion series, which seems like the kind of thing SFO could do.
• La Traviata (finally, the 35-year-old Copley production is being replaced). Pretty Yende (Violetta), Jonathan Tetelman (Alfredo), Simone Piazzola (Germont). Shawna Lucey directs, Eun Sun Kim conducts.
• Two operas that had their US premieres here. YES, these are what I'd hoped for!
• Die Frau ohne Schatten, R. Strauss, in the David Hockney production. Conducted by Sir Donald Runnicles, of course; with Nina Stemme (Dyer's Wife), Camilla Nylund (Empress), Linda Watson (the Nurse), Johan Reuter (Barak), and David Butt Philip as the Emperor. Nothing about the casting of the Spirit Messenger, Voice of the Falcon, Guardian of the Threshold of the Temple, the brothers, or any of the other gazillion roles in this gigantic work; presumably many of them will be drawn from the ranks of the 2023 Adler fellows because this is during the summer of 2023. Roy Rallo directs. 
• Dialogs of the Carmelites, Poulenc, production by Olivier Py, from the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées. Heidi Stober as Blanche de la Force,  Michelle Bradley as Madame Lidoine, the new Prioress; Michaela Schuster (Madame de Croissy, the Old Prioress), Melody Moore as Mere Marie, Deanna Breiwick as Sister Constance. Ben Bliss returns as the Chevalier de la Force. Eun Sun Kim conducts. A great opera that hasn't been done here since 1982.
• Two operas in styles not heard in a number of years 
• Eugene Onegin, Tchaikovsky, Robert Carsen's production, which is supposed to be very beautiful. Evgenia Muraveva as Tatyana, Gordon Bintner as Onegin, Evan LeRoy Johnson (Lensky), Aigul Akhmetshina (Olga), Ferruccio Furlanetto (Prince Gremin). Vassilis Christopoulos conducts. in his American debut.
• Orpheus and Eurydice, Gluck, new SFO production. This will be the third production of this opera that I've seen in the last several years.  Matthew Ozawa directs; his Fidelio was superb, so I have high hopes. Jakub Józef Orliński as Orpheus, Christina Gansch as Eurydice, Nicole Heaston as Amor. Peter Whelan from the Irish Baroque Orchestra and Ensemble Marsyas conducts.

The above are all productions new to San Francisco Opera.

For me, the biggest surprise in the above is that there's no production for Nicola Luisotti; I've assumed that there would be one for the former music director in this important season. Oh, well, maybe in 2023-24. But I do wonder whether either Traviata or Butterfly was originally intended for him.

Additionally, there's all of this happening:

• Opening night concert and Opera Ball, September 9, 2022. Concert with Nadine Sierra, Michael Fabiano, Pene Pati, and Lucas Meachem. Eun Sun Kim conducts.
• 100th Anniversary Concert, Friday, June 16, 2023. "A historic evening of music and memories." Eun Sun Kim conducts, details to follow.
• Opera in the Park, Sunday, September 11, 2022 at 1:30 pm, Robin Williams Meadow, Golden Gate Park. Free.
• Open House, Sunday, October 23, 2022. Tours and lots of family-friendly activities and demonstrations. Free.
• Boheme Out of the Box, which will take a condensed La Boheme to SF communities.
• Exhibitions of costumes and photos from the company's history.

Coming in 2023-24: three new operas, all SFO co-commissions, which is amazing for a company with an eight-opera season:

• Mason Bates, The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs
• Kaija Saariaho, Innocence
• Rhiannon Giddens and Michael Abels' Omar

Other items of interest:

• Statement and links from Diversity, Equity, and Community

Do I have a regret or two about this season? Sure: there's no sign of Karita Mattila or Patricia Racette, both of whom have been stalwarts of the company for many years. (Or Ruth Ann Swenson, who is retired.) Philip Skinner, one of my favorite singers, has only a small role. I'd hoped that if SFO did Frau that it would cast Christine Goerke as the Dyer's Wife; she was wonderful at the Met in 2013. But it's a short season; there are many exciting debuts, and the company is definitely looking very much to the future in its casting.