Music News
“Once More Unto the Breach”
We went through this after Prop. 13, after the dot-com meltdown, after 9/11 … then there was a slow recovery. And now, with the deafening crescendo of economic bad news, guess where the first funding hits will come again? Reports The New York Times on Monday:
In the Alameda school district in Northern California, trustees voted to reduce the $83.7 million budget by cutting $200,000 to the sports programs, eliminating music programs for all children below fourth grade, and increasing class sizes in ninth grade to an average of 29 students, up from 20.
And this is before the real impact of major California state budget cuts is being felt, before the “trickle down” of corporate losses diminishes contributions.
Buckle up, educators, artists, art organizations. The Troubles are here again. Bear Stearns, which nearly collapsed on Monday, will obviously not provide support again. Even before the current bad run of news, the Altria Group (formerly Philip Morris), the Reader’s Digest Association, and other big donors cut or eliminated their budgets for contributions. Unlike in Europe, where government still plays a vital role in supporting the arts, on the American scene individual, foundation, and corporate giving is the be-all and end-all of financing.
Unlike the calamitous disregard for economic decline in 2001 by the San Francisco Opera administration that was in charge then, almost certainly the city’s arts administrators today will be prudent — it’s not as if they have a choice.
“Eliminating music programs …” — what a terrible thing, especially in face of the well-demonstrated benefits of music education early in life, and against the evidence of such heartening events as reported in the next item.
Call & Response & Awesome Kids
I’m glad to have the collaborative testimony of Classical Voice colleague Jeff Dunn in his review of the Cypress Quartet’s “Call & Response” concert at Yerba Buena Center on Saturday, because I still find it difficult to believe what happened there.
Arriving at the Forum, I was taken aback by the sight of a full auditorium, full mostly with children. Not “youth” — children, of the 5th- and 6th-grade variety, in addition to a few high school students. Mostly kids, little ones.
Even somebody not of W.C. Field’s disposition couldn’t help wondering: What will they do? What will they do during the performance of the last quartets by Haydn (No. 77) and Bartók (No. 6), and the premiere of Kurt Rohde’s Gravities? Will they fidget, shuffle, cough, sneeze, whisper, slap, kick, text, or just make cellphone calls outright? If they get through the Haydn, what will they do during 35 minutes of the darkest, heaviest, most sorrowful of all Bartók, a Transfigured Night on steroids and without transfiguration?
The kids (and accompanying or independent adults) were spectacularly quiet during the Haydn, there was some coughing during the Rohde (a stunning work, instant classic, but Bartók-like “heavy”) — and that wasn’t the story. During the Bartók — that Bartók, the one with each movement opening mesto (sadly) and going downhill from there — there wasn’t a sound from the audience, not one. From the Franz Liszt Academy to Carnegie Hall, I heard this work, always with some “ambient sound” from the audience; at Yerba Buena, there was only listening, zero sound emission. It was uncanny, spooky, impossible.
Cypress’ rich outreach programs, the schools’ teachers, parents — all should be recognized, but the heroes of this story are the 11- and 12-year-olds (some looking “young for their age”) who listened to Bartók’s angst without a peep. (And I still think such a demanding, difficult, full-blown concert is not really appropriate for such an audience, results notwithstanding.)
To make sure the children were not Conservatory students of short stature, I surveyed them during the intermission, verified the information with Cypress outreach coordinator Lindsay Jones, and here is a partial honor roll:
Miller Creek Middle School, San Rafael
Westlake Middle School, Oakland
Edna Brewer Middle School, Oakland
James B. Davidson Middle School, San Rafael
Aragon High School, San Mateo
Bravi!
The Cypress: They silence children
Lucia di AT&T Park
Last year, it was Samson et Delilah in the AT&T ballpark, a free, highly successful simulcast from the San Francisco Opera, with some 15,000 showing up on a chilly September night. According to an announcement on Monday, it will be Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor making a similar outing to home plate on June 20. The Opera and the San Francisco Giants will collaborate in presenting the simulcast from the Opera House, in a production featuring Natalie Dessay in the title role.
Tenor Giuseppe Filianoti, baritone Gabriele Viviani, Merola alumnus Oren Gradus, former Adler Fellow tenor Matthew O’Neill, and currecnt Adler Fellows soprano Heidi Melton and tenor Andrew Bidlack, will be in the cast. Graham Vick directs, and French conductor Jean-Yves Ossonce will make his company debut.
Once again, the transmission technology will involve 1920 x 1080 high definition via fiber and satellite to AT&T Park’s 103-foot-wide Mitsubishi Electric Diamond Vision scoreboard. In the theater, a multicamera shoot will be directed by Frank Zamacona, director of the company’s simulcasts of Samson and Delilah, Don Giovanni (June 2007), and Rigoletto (October 2006). The Opera’s new Koret-Taube Media Suite uses Sony cameras and Cambotics robotics, operated by robotic camera operators using remote-control technology.
Natalie Dessay will be in the ballpark, but Barry Bonds won’t
PALM Resurgent: Celebrating Performance and Design
San Francisco’s splendid Performing Arts Library and Museum has renewed itself, spectacularly so, and changed its name to the acronymically less appealing Museum of Performance and Design. On Saturday, MPD (formerly PALM) threw itself a reopening party, and a wondrous event it was. Vitally interlinked with the city’s ballet company from its foundation in 1947 by dancer and costume designer Russell Hartley, the restructured museum’s first exhibit is “Art & Artifice: 75 Years of Design at San Francisco Ballet.” And, as long as the Ballet — “America’s Oldest” — is celebrating that diamond anniversary, the museum opening was coupled with a reunion party for SFB, with the participation of artists whose careers go back to near the beginning of the company.
Alphabetically, from Tilly Abbe to Alexi Zubiria, chronologically from Jocelyn Vollmar — the first Snow Queen in the country’s first Nutcracker, in 1944 — to choreographer Val Caniparoli, who is still dancing with the company, over 150 famed artists converged at the museum reopening, some from around the corner, others from overseas.
Jocelyn Vollmar as Myrthe in San Francisco Giselle, 1947
The party is over, but the exhibit remains, a free show on the fourth floor of the War Memorial Building, right next to the Opera House. In place of the library (which was moved to the north side of the building), there is now a stunning new 3,000-square-foot main gallery, packed full of the “Art & Artifice” ballet memorabilia. The exhibit was curated by Brad Rosenstein, William Eddleman, and Melissa Leventon. The show is a whirl of costumes, sketches, rare photographs, printed programs, and even video from the company’s past, going back to influences from the Ballets Russes. (Don’t miss Caniparoli’s Lambarena excerpt on the big screen.)
In addition to exhibits, the museum also offers collections, archives, and a library containing over 3 million items having to do with the city’s artistic history and legacy — all accessible to the public. An announcement is pending about the museum getting its own building in the Yerba Buena Center within a few years, all the better to spread around.
Board President Cherie Mohrfeld, Museum Director David R. Humphrey, and an advisory council that includes John Adams, Marilyn Horne, Natalia Makarova, and Frederica von Stade also work on further developing the Center for Stage Design, an international forum utilizing the museum’s own holdings and the Eiko Ishioka Archives, a recent acquisition. MPD is continuing and expanding PALM’s community outreach, performances, lectures, screenings, and publications.
Mishima, from the Eiko Isioka Collection, “Art & Artifice”
Festival Opera Plans
Walnut Creek’s Festival Opera will present Verdi’s Il Trovatore and Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream during the 2008 season, in July and August, respectively. Company Music Director Michael Morgan has engaged some of the most successful young singers from the area, getting them to return from burgeoning careers elsewhere. They include soprano Hope Briggs (Leonora), mezzo Patrice Houston (Azucena), tenor Noah Stewart, who is a recent Adler Fellow (Manrico), and Kirk Eichelberger (Ferrando).
Patrice Houston and Noah Stewart
Choral Loss for Us
Joshua Haberman, a prominent singer, conductor, and teacher with San Francisco Symphony Chorus and San Francisco State University for the past 12 years, has accepted a position directing the choral program at the University of Miami starting this fall, so he is leaving town — reluctantly, he writes. “UM is a beautiful private university, and the Frost School of Music has about 800 majors. I will be teaching masters and doctoral students as well as undergrads, and am looking forward to working with some really outstanding colleagues down there.”
La Rondine Comes Home
After all the anticipation and discussion, the San Francisco Opera’s series of digital cinema presentations made its first appearance back where the project began — in San Francisco. On Monday morning the Castro Theater screening of a spectacularly high-definition film of the local production of Puccini’s La Rondine attracted an audience of about 400, in pleasant contrast with reports of a handful of viewers elsewhere in the country at the first screenings.
Images are breathtaking (including the brief introductory San Francisco postcard shots), the sound is good, if occasionally too loud, and coming from the appropriate speakers somewhat erratically. The vocal performances — in close-ups to a fault — are grand, especially by Angela Gheorghiu (Magda) and Gerard Powers (Prunier). About the closeups: Yes, they are too close, showing whoever is singing in tight, too tight, fast-moving shots.
These singing actors are remarkably good, and they produce the required sound while acting. But Misha Didyk is still all teeth, the pores are showing on skin, and a little distance would go a long way to help suspend disbelief. But, beyond that pick, the fact of featuring these performances on film is one of General Manager David Gockley’s most important accomplishments in this short (two-year-old), but eventful and rewarding tenure.
Here is another view of the La Rondine film, from Classical Voice reader Howard Gitlin:
I saw the 12:30 p.m. screening on March 8 in Sebastopol. Only about 30 people were in the audience, not surprising given that there was no publicity.
As others reported, there were technical problems with the movie. The sound was too low — the projectionist said it was as loud as could be — and it emanated from the front speakers only, not like the DLP digital surround sound that was demonstrated before the movie began. The early scenes displayed bad lip-syncing.
The main problem, however, was in the transfer from stage to screen. Translating a work from one medium to another is an art. I saw the stage production in San Francisco in November 2007. It was brilliantly staged by Steven Barlow. In contrast, the movie seemed to be edited by an amateur. From the opening scene to the final heart-shattering moment, the editing ruined Barlow’s staging. Barlow created a total experience, a oneness of the music, libretto, sets, costumes, and movement. The movie’s editor undercut this, revealing a complete misunderstanding of Puccini’s score. The incessant cuts, for no discernible reason, created a rhythm all their own that had nothing to do with the music or the action, and the frequent use of close-ups neutralized Barlow’s visually arresting stage pictures.
After the movie, I spoke with a few people in the audience who hadn’t seen the stage production. Most of them liked it, despite its imperfections. They loved Angela Gheorghiu, as did I, though those of us who saw her onstage saw a more nuanced performance. I can recommend the movie to those who’ve never seen Gheorghiu. If you saw it in the Opera House, you might want to pass.
MTT, sí; Voigt, no
In an otherwise complimentary New York Times review of the San Francisco Symphony’s tour, Allan Kozinn writes something similar to what appeared in San Francisco reviews of the same work:
The performance of Strauss’ Four Last Songs, on Wednesday, was unusual as well, though not in a good way. A listener had every reason to expect great things from Deborah Voigt, unquestionably one of the more eloquent Straussians of our time, at least in the operas. And there was no reason to expect that she might not produce the burnished, autumnal sound that the Four Last Songs demand. But she didn’t. Instead she sang them with a bright, slightly brassy hue, sharp articulation instead of sensuous fluidity and, oddest of all, a tendency to swoop into phrases, particularly in “Beim Schlafengehen.”
Janos Gereben (janosg@gmail.com) is a regular contributor to San Francisco Classical Voice.
©2008 By Janos Gereben, all rights reserved.