Music News
S.F. Opera: Well-Endowed
“Permanent” or “restricted” — by whatever name — the endowment is an essential component of any opera company’s fiscal health. It is also a matter of constant concern. Endowment donations usually have the stipulation that they are to be invested, with the principal remaining intact. This allows for the donation to have a much greater impact over a long period of time than if it were spent all at once, as it grows by compound interest.
And yet, if you take a look at Classical Voice’s list of local opera companies, you will find a pattern of “no endowment.” On the other hand, ask anyone dealing with performing-arts company budgets, and you will be told of the need to maintain an endowment two, three, or four times the annual budget. The problem: When you struggle to produce a season, the need for long-range financing will always take the backseat. Even the mighty Metropolitan Opera, with its annual budget of over $200 million and endowment around $400 million, is falling short of the ideal “investment strategy.”
In this regard, the San Francisco Opera is looking pretty good these days, with an endowment of approximately $125 million, way up from the $50 million, $68 million, and $79 million figures in recent years. Against the company’s operating budget, which is expected to increase from $60 million to $63 million, the endowment is at the good (but not perfect) figure of twice the budget — a far cry from where matters stood five years ago.
The biggest (if not the only) boost for the endowment came from Jeannik Méquet Littlefield’s unrestricted $35 million gift, of which the Opera voluntarily (and wisely) assigned $25 million to the endowment, and used the other $10 million for annual operating expenses.
Horse Opera
In addition to a great opera, a strong cast, and Wagner specialist Donald Runnicles in the pit, the San Francisco Opera’s Tannhäuser (opening Sept. 18) will feature a real live horse in the landgrave’s procession.
Not just any horse: a real beauty. Take a look.
Ready for my close-up
Through the Grove Street artists’ entrance
MTT’s Hat for Sale, Edinburgh’s Multiple Faux Pas
The San Francisco Symphony’s European tour blog has some interesting reading, interspersed with reader comments such as “I can’t wait to hear Richard Strauss’ Short Ride in a Fast Machine.” There’s also a photo of Michael Tilson Thomas (with Executive Director Brent Assink), wearing an SFS cap — the caption thoughtfully links the reader to the Symphony gift store price list. (MTT’s blue khaki cap has a retail price of $19.95, but he might have received a staff discount.)
Sporty and fashionable, at $19.95
As to the attribution of John Adams’ Short Ride in a Fast Machine to Strauss, it must have been a tongue in cheek reference to the (supposedly serious) Edinburgh Festival’s poster, which lists both Ruth Crawford Seeger’s Andante for Strings and the Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 3 as written by Sibelius, and the Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 1 (”Winter Dreams”) is alleged to have been written by Strauss. Without a photo, this may be difficult to believe, so behold:
Reassigned compositions
The Russians Are Coming, to Sing
From Moscow’s 600-year-old Stretensky Monastery — via New York, Boston, Chicago, and Toronto — comes the Stretensky Chorus to Davies Hall on Sept. 14. It is the choir’s U.S. debut tour.
Grand Prince Vasili I founded the Russian Orthodox monastery in 1397, and from the beginning, vocal music has been part of the monks’ lives. With the arrival of the Soviet regime, however, the monks were exiled and the monastery closed. Only in the 1990s did the monastery and chorus return to regular Divine Services, using ancient Byzantine and Russian chants.
In addition to church services, the choir has an active concert life both home and abroad, performing Russian folk songs and classical works. Tickets, $15 to $45, are being handled by City Box Office.
The choir’s home in Moscow
Big Interest in a Small Company
As San Francisco Lyric Opera was getting ready for its next production — of Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann, Sept. 21-29 at the Legion of Honor — 200 singers turned up to audition for the dozen roles in the opera. “Can you believe the pent-up demand for performance experience?” asks the company’s Simon Palmer.
He laments the fact that there will be only three productions next year — La Bohème, Turn of the Screw, and Aida — in spite of sold-out houses and rave reviews for the Lyric Opera over the last several years. The reality of producing opera, Palmer says, is that “even with our record, in an ‘opera town,’ we had to cut back when it costs us only about $70,000 per production. Part of the problem is that not enough of the ‘right people’ know about us and our predicament.”
The Lyric is moving to Cowell Theater next year because rent at the Florence Gould is doubling. Producing opera is a heroic task.
The Two Pavarottis
Besides the well-deserved funeral raves for Luciano Pavarotti, there have been attempts to present a balanced evaluation of the great tenor, who died last week.
Martin Bernheimer wrote of “the two Pavarottis” in the The Guardian:
There were two Pavarottis: the young singer of enormous talent and natural gifts, and the hyperpublicized, business Pavarotti. I admired the first and deplored the second. The young Pavarotti was never a subtle stylist, but his voice was beautiful and there was something magnetic about the way he performed.
The Three Tenors-era Pavarotti was a creation of the PR industry and his own ego. Somewhere along the line he lost his sense of adventure. He pleased a massive audience, but couldn’t satisfy those connoisseurs who helped initially to create his image. Toward the end, his performances were really bad. He would plant himself center stage, face the audience, and sing, without interacting with his colleagues or paying attention to the composer’s markings. It wasn’t a role: It was a personal appearance by an oversized tenor.
In The Wall Street Journal obituary titled “When He Was Good,” Terry Teachout made a similar distinction:
How will Luciano Pavarotti be remembered? If you saw him onstage in the last decade of his life, you saw a self-parody of a great singer gone to seed. His once-lustrous voice was in sad decline, and his bad knee and increasing weight made it hard for him to get around the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House without discreet assistance. Yet he kept on singing, and each performance was (usually) worse than the last. “I don’t want my last memories of Pavarotti to be embarrassing, and if he keeps on like this for much longer, that’s exactly what’s going to happen,” I wrote after a 1997 recital. So it did, to my sorrow.
The Pavarotti I wanted to remember was the one I heard give a recital in Kansas City, Mo., in the ’70s. Back then and for many years afterward, his pointed tone and crisp diction brought every phrase he sang to glowing life.
Sunday in the Park
A pure guess (from a former Herald-Tribune junior police reporter in charge of crowd estimates, no less) is that some 18,000 attended the San Francisco Opera’s 33rd-annual Opera in the Park on Sunday, imbibing and cheering lustily, in turn or synchronously. The weather couldn’t have been better: mid-60s and cloudy, with occasional gusts knocking over a brass player or two.
General Manager David Gockley officiated, Music Director Donald Runnicles trotted out his straw hat to conduct a windblown Opera Orchestra, and the two-hour program had some genuine gems. Shining the brightest: the young soprano Heidi Melton, singing a tremendous “Voi lo sapete,” from Cavalleria Rusticana. Hers is a full-bodied voice (to go with a Jane Eaglen figure). Bright and brilliant, she moved from note to note and phrase to phrase with complete ease, and with a good measure of blood and guts, too.
Under Kurt Herbert Adler, principal singers in the season-opening productions used to report to (unpaid) duty in the park, but times have changed, and Samson and Delilah stars were no-shows. No matter: There were veterans and young singers aplenty.
Soprano Elza van den Heever sang a clarion “Dich, teure Halle,” from Tannhäuser, and there was a wealth of velvety baritones:
- Dwayne Croft, with “O Carlo, ascolta,” from Don Carlo
- Britain’s James Rutherford, sang both “Non piu andrai” (Marriage of Figaro) and “O du mein holder Abendstern” (Tannhäuser), and brought repeated acknowledgments from Gockley
- Brian Leerhuber, in two Magic Flute duets: one with Ji Young Yang, Melton’s Adler Fellow colleague in 2006-2007, who is an appealingly intelligent and musical singer, and the other with Rhoslyn Jones, also responsible for Doretta’s soaring “Chi il bel sogno” (La Rondine)
- And the less velvety but explosive and hilarious Andrew Shore in Falstaff’s “L’onore!”
Bass Eric Halfvarson was tremendous in “Come dal ciel precipita” (Macbeth), but sounded rather dry in Aleko’s aria from Rachmaninov’s opera. Another bass, Oren Gradus, shone in “Vous qui faites l’endormie,” from Faust.
Petra Lang (Venus in the upcoming SFO Tannhäuser to Petra Maria Schnitzer’s Elisabeth) tossed off the Composer’s Aria from Ariadne auf Naxos effortlessly, using a beautiful, unaffected tone. Her accuracy in the heavily dissonant opening measures was most impressive. There wasn’t a false note either in Chad Shelton’s impassioned “Here I Stand,” from The Rake’s Progress.
Those eagerly awaiting Melton’s return in the second half had a surprise in store. Unlike her amazing performance in the Mascagni, her Verdi (”Ernani, involami”) was merely good, even though this should be a killer aria for her. Gone was the effortless legato, some notes were clipped and not getting their full measure, and Melton also miscalculated breathing for the final measures. The reason? Lack of preparation.
Minutes before she was due to sing the Verdi, Melton was chatting amiably in the park, she made it to the stage just in time for her appearance, joked with the violinists about her skirt billowing in the wind too near their instruments, and then — boom! — she became the desperate Elvira, pleading for rescue. No wonder she couldn’t be at her best.
With a bit more experience and discipline, the soprano will devote a few minutes to getting into the role before facing 18,000 opera fans who, presumably, know what they hear. Fear is an obstacle while performing, but lack of concern in preparation is not a good thing.
Preparation, dedication, and excellence were all present in the traditional program-closing Libiamo, led by Jones, Shelton, and somebody yet unknown to me, called Tutti.
Napa Valley Symphony: Bouncing Back?
When we received an enthusiastic press release about Napa Valley Symphony’s upcoming 75th season, it seemed to beg the question: What has been going on there recently? Clearly, there was an upheaval, a crisis, resignations, and new appointments, even talk about a deficit jeopardizing the very existence of this historic orchestra with rare longevity among small regional organizations.
When in April of last year Executive Director Thomas Illgen was let go and board President Grant Showley quit, salaries and other payments were delayed, and things looked bad. But Music Director Asher Raboy, who has been with the orchestra for 17 years, became interim executive director, and apparently held things together, in face of questions about the viability of the organization with a $2.2 million annual budget and insufficient income.
Richard Aldag, the new executive director, was prompt and candid last week, answering questions from Classical Voice:
During the 2005-2006 season, the Symphony faced fiscal challenges that were threatening to the organization’s future. Overambitious growth in programming and staff, along with unrealistic expectations in ticket revenue and contributions, resulted in deficits that accumulated to over $817,000 between December 2005 and April 2006.
Over this period, the organization grew overconfident about its potential for revenue growth with the reopening of the Lincoln Theater, increasing performance schedules and engaging high-priced soloists without a confirmed income stream to cover these expenses.
At the same time, increased educational outreach programming and existing outside educational programs that were brought under the Symphony’s umbrella (such as the NV Youth Symphony and the Music Connection) resulted in increased costs and greatly expanded staff — with no confirmed revenue base to pay for these programs. A fiscal crisis ensued that led to a significant percentage of the organization’s endowment fund needing to be utilized to retire accrued expenses.
To deal with the crisis, Aldag said, the administrative staff was cut from 12 to five, only three of those being full-time positions; all graphic design has been brought in-house; the full-time bookkeeper was replaced by a part-time contractor; and educational outreach has been reduced. Instead of five pairs of classical subscription concerts there will be four Sunday matinees, and fees for guest artists were renegotiated.
Aldag reports that appeals for support have resulted in new contributions totaling over $100,000, and the Napa Valley Symphony League donated $115,000 to the orchestra. Aldag is part of the new push at Napa Valley as the executive director, with both music and fundraising experience, while also maintaining his position as executive director of the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra.
Opera on Film by Cronenberg, Allen, Friedkin
From Walter Addiego’s interview with David Cronenberg and Viggo Mortensen, director and star of the upcoming Eastern Promises, in The San Francisco Chronicle:
Q: I heard there’s going to be an opera version of The Fly.
CRONENBERG: There are a lot of film directors who have been doing opera. William Friedkin is doing it, and I’ve heard Woody Allen is doing one (Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi). It’s not so strange when you consider that the people on the cutting edge of the opera world are working with a fixed repertoire, and you can get pretty bored doing La Bohème for the 8,000th time.
Plus, they really worry about the aging opera audience, and to get a new audience you really have to reinvent the form. The difference (with The Fly opera) from what Woody’s doing is that it’s based on my own movie. I don’t know if that’s happened before.
(Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises, which opens in San Francisco on Sept. 14, is hard to take because of its extreme violence, and impossible to forget because it’s a great film.)
All Classic Radio, All the Time
On the Internet’s Radio Locator, you will find 123 classical-music stations, some actually playing entire symphonies, not just one movement at a time.
Janos Gereben (janosg@gmail.com) is a regular contributor to San Francisco Classical Voice.
©2007 By Janos Gereben, all rights reserved.
“… some actually playing entire symphonies, not just one movement at a time.”
What a concept!
With “stuffy” classical music stations available online, there’s no reason for anyone with an internet connection to listen to kdfc anymore! Frankly, after their obnoxious TV ads, which refer to classical music as “stuffy,” I won’t be sorry when they go down. Perhaps a classical station with a small amount of artistic integrity would enter the pathetic SF radio market in kdfc’s absence.
Posted by joeschmeaux on September 11, 2007 at 1:51 pm