Music News
Music at Meyer Season
The fifth season of the concert series at Temple Emanu-El begins with the Alexander Quartet on Jan. 7, in a program of John Adams’ John’s Book of Alleged Dances, Shostakovich’s Quartet No. 9, and Brahms’ Quartet in B-flat.
Aleck Karis (piano), Charles Curtis (cello), and Anthony Burr (clarinet) perform on Jan. 21, playing works by Schumann, Brahms, and Berg. “Broadway by the Bay Headliners” perform songs from musicals by John Kander, Fred Ebb, Stephen Schwartz, Stephen Sondheim, and others, on Feb. 4.
The Janaki String Trio — winners of the 2006 Concert Artists Guild International Competition — will give a concert on March 10, playing period instruments in a program of rarely heard materworks and new pieces. Israeli percussion artist Chen Zimbalista, accompanied by pianist Jose Guillardo, performs on March 31.
On April 14, pianist Gila Goldstein performs works by contemporary Israeli composers, plus selections by Bach, Debussy, Rachmaninov, Prokofiev, and several Spanish composers. Baritone Jesse Blumberg is presented on May 12 by the Marilyn Horne Foundation’s “On Wings of Song” radio series in his San Francisco recital debut.
Gila Goldstein
Photo by Doron hanoch
Premiere for Kirke Mechem’s John Brown
San Francisco composer Kirke Mechem is adding to his repertoire of a dozen operas with John Brown, a work about the great abolitionist whose “truth is marching on” in The Battle Hymn of the Republic. Lyric Opera of Kansas City will present the premiere in May 2008, closing the company’s 50th anniversary season.
The title role will be taken by James Maddalena, and Donny Ray Albert sings Frederick Douglass. Kristine McIntyre directs — she was also in charge of Jake Heggie’s The End of the Affair in Kansas.
James Maddalena
About Kurtág
There is an excellent story about the uncompromising, powerful, and still little-known composer György Kurtág, by Jeremy Eichler in The Boston Globe.
György Kurtág
Time to Start Planning for the Met HD Simulcasts
Last weekend, tickets went on sale for the second season of the Metropolitan Opera’s worldwide distribution of live performances by high-definition simulcasts, to be broadcast in movie theaters on Saturdays. Most productions will air at 10 a.m. Pacific Standard Time.
The season opens Dec. 15, with Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette (Anna Netrebko, Roberto Alagna, Nathan Gunn, with Plácido Domingo conducting); Jan. 1: Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel (Christine Schäfer, Alice Coote, Rosalind Plowright, Philip Langridge, Alan Held, with Vladimir Jurowski conducting); Jan. 12: Verdi’s Macbeth (Maria Guleghina, Roberto Aronica, Lado Ataneli, John Relyea, with James Levine conducting); Feb. 16: Puccini’s Manon Lescaut (Karita Mattila, Marcello Giordani, Dwayne Croft, Dale Travis, with Levine conducting).
Anna Netrebko and Roberto Alagna in Manon
Free Concert by the Alexander String Quartet
San Francisco State University Morrison Artists Series presents the Alexander String Quartet — SFSU’s Quartet-in-Residence — in a free concert, on Dec. 9 at the McKenna Theater. On the program: Mozart’s Divertimento, K. 136; Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 9; and Schubert’s String Quartet in D Minor, D. 810 “Death and the Maiden.” The quartet is comprised of Zakarias Grafilo (violin), Frederick Lifsitz (violin), Paul Yarbrough (viola), and Sandy Wilson (cello).
Alexander String Quartet
Runaway Fees
San Francisco Opera, San Francisco Symphony, and most music and theater organizations charge for ticket processing, even at times when you walk up to the box office, and that’s certainly irksome. But devoted opera fan Terri Stuart ran into something unexpected at the Sacramento Community Center Theater.
While purchasing a $69 ticket for the Nov. 16 Otello production by Sacramento Opera (conducted by Timm Rolek, but no cast information available online), Stuart found a “convenience fee” of $10.25, and an “order processing” fee of $3.50 tacked on to the price. Thus “convenience” and “processing” raised the total from $69 to $82.75. In the admittedly expensive world of opera, should the simple act of ticket-selling really take more than 16 percent of the cost of something involving the work of many artists?
Washington Tiff: Music Critic Versus Barry
Pulitzer Prize-winning music critic Tim Page has been suspended by The Washington Post because of an e-mail exchange with Ward 8 Councilman (and former D.C. Mayor) Marion Barry, who has a prison record on drug convictions. Irritated by an e-mail announcement from Barry’s office, which he received by mistake, Page responded:
Must we hear about it every time this Crack Addict attempts to rehabilitate himself with some new — and typically half-witted — political grandstanding? I’d be grateful if you would take me off your mailing list. I cannot think of anything the useless Marion Barry could do that would interest me in the slightest, up to, and including, overdose. Sincerely, Tim Page.
Barry demanded that the Post fire Page, and the paper has placed him on leave. It looks like an early vacation for the critic, who has revealed his problems with Asperger’s Syndrome in a New Yorker personal profile. Page had planned to take a sabbatical to take a teaching appointment at the University of Southern California next semester.
Because of the sabbatical plan for Page, Anne Midgette, a junior critic at The New York Times, was slated to become interim classical music critic on January 1.
Tim Page
One Swallow Makes It Summery in November
It’s somewhat of a mystery why Puccini’s 1917 La Rondine (”The Swallow”) is such a neglected, rarely performed opera. With simple, repetitious, but ravishing melodies, this updated story of La Traviata (good-hearted courtesan finds and loses true — if impecunious — love) is almost as rare as hen’s teeth.
In fact, the San Francisco Opera production, which opened on Wednesday, is only the second time the opera has been seen in the War Memorial. There was a single performance in 1934 (and Spring Opera Theater productions elsewhere in the city).
David Gockley took a chance on this cotton-candy Italianate Viennese-Hungarian operetta (the best Franz Lehár piece he never wrote) about love in Paris, reviving it after a hiatus of seven decades. The risk of filling the house seven times is ameliorated by engaging Angela Gheorghiu to sing the title role in her San Francisco Opera debut — and, equally important, by assembling a good cast, well-complimented in this issue of Classical Voice.
Gheorghiu — a soprano of beautiful, soaring voice — sang the heck out of the role, but the diva also fit into an excellent ensemble. In the role of Ruggero, the man who takes the “fallen woman” away from her comfortable den of cheerful depravity, Misha Didyk had by far his best outing in the War Memorial. He has it all: a lyrical lilt, a strongly projected voice in a seemingly effortless performance.
Anna Christy is the lively Lisette, the maid; and Gerald Powers makes his local debut as the world-weary, happily exploitative poet, Prunier. Adler Fellows Rhoslyn Jones, Melody Moore, Katherine Tier, and Ji Young Yang make fine contributions in this large production. So strong is the cast that the minor role of sugar daddy Rambaldo is assigned to Philip Skinner, the mighty bass-baritone.
The Nicolas Joel production, coming from London and Toulouse, is quite beautiful, with Ezio Frigerio’s sets and Franca Squarciapino’s costumes. Stephen Barlow’s direction is misguided, however, forcing artificial, exaggerated movements on the principals, taking away whatever realism there is in the work. Gheorghiu and Christy especially overdid the frisky acting at the beginning. Gheorghiu settled down in the second act, and created a dramatically more valid portrayal in the long duet that makes up most of the final act.
Overdoing it is also the hallmark of Ion Marin’s conducting, those already large, sweeping melodies made to thunder as if Walhalla went up in smoke in a misplaced Twilight of the Cafe Society. Even in the passages not written fortissimo, Marin’s hard-working orchestra stepped all over the vocal lines.
And yet, the pleasantness of the score, the excellence of the principals’ performance, and the likelihood that La Rondine may not come around again in this century, add up to an easy recommendation to attend the tale of the swallow.
Angela Gheorghiu and Chorus
Photo by Terrence McCarthy
Janos Gereben (janosg@gmail.com) is a regular contributor to San Francisco Classical Voice.
©2007 By Janos Gereben, all rights reserved.
I saw La Rondine in the War Memoria Opera House when Spring Opera did it in 1968. It is a cherished memory of the past 39 years.
Posted by Bill Medigovich on November 14, 2007 at 1:41 pm