Music News
In Music Too, the Only Constant Is Change
And this week, there are an unsually high number of changes, beginning with the Washington National Opera’s “indefinite postponement” of the Ring cycle, a coproduction with San Francisco. (See next item.) Some of the other headlines:
- Former San Francisco Symphony music director Edo de Waart is leaving the Santa Fe Opera, having taken up the position there only last year.
- In an even more sudden and dramatic move, Gérard Mortier, incoming general director of the New York City Opera, resigned his position before beginning his first official season. As NYCO’s home, the State Theater, is undergoing major renovations in 2008-2009, the company is now homeless and leaderless. NYCO is presenting a few concerts this year, Mortier had some big plans for the coming seasons, including new works and contemporary operas, but now it’s all up in the air. Casualties include planned productions of such 20th-century rarities as Messiaen’s St. François d’Assise. This is Mortier’s last season as director of Opéra National de Paris.
- Orange County’s Opera Pacific has closed down rather suddenly, canceling the rest of the season. The company presented 22 seasons at the Orange County Performing Arts Center. Next to L.A. Opera, this was the area’s major company, leaving a big hole in its wake. CEO Robert C. Jones blamed the economic downturn for the closure. The entire staff was let go, including Artistic Director John DeMain, and Artistic Administrator Peter Somogyi, formerly with the San Francisco and L.A. opera companies.
- General Director Michael Harrison of the Baltimore Opera Company for the past 20 years, has relinquished administrative duties and assumed the title of artistic director. The change was made “in order to allow him to devote more time to his son, who is critically ill.” James Handakas has been named acting general director. The company has cash flow problems this season, with the steep decline of single ticket sales.
Baron Gérard Mortier
When Will the Ring Resound?
Over the weekend, Washington National Opera postponed (probably indefinitely) the rest of the Ring cycle. The reason: “the dramatic changes in the nation’s economy.” With Das Rheingold and Die Walküre of Francesca Zambello’s so-called “American Ring“ produced already, WNO in effect canceled the remaining Siegfried and Götterdämmerung productions, saving an estimated $6 million with the decision. Plácido Domingo, the company’s general director, said he had “reluctantly come to the difficult decision … until the financial climate becomes more positive.”
San Francisco, with only Das Rheingold produced so far, is now faced with a difficult decision about the future of the cycle here. Communications Director Jon Finck told Classical Voice that San Francisco Opera learned about WNO’s decision only on Friday, via e-mail.
From the San Francisco Rheingold: Catherine Cangiano, Lauren McNeese, and Buffy Baggott
Photos by Terrence McCarthy
“As we were taken by surprise, it is still too early for us to make any definite pronouncements about our own plans,” Finck said about the remaining three operas and the complete cycle originally scheduled for the summer of 2011. The Opera will review the projected budgets over the next 60 days and “make a determination then where we stand on the presentation of this important operatic work,” he said, quoting General Director David Gockley:
We are all sensitive to the national economic slowdown currently being felt in all sectors of the economy, and especially among our performing arts colleagues. As a result, we are also taking prudent financial measures of our own with regard to future seasons. Our hope and goal is that San Francisco Opera audiences will have the opportunity to enjoy the complete Ring in 2011, and at this time, we will work towards that original programming goal.
If all goes well, San Francisco will present Die Walküre in 2010, as originally planned (skipping 2009 because such principal singers as Mark Delavan and Nina Stemme that conductor Donald Runnicles insists on casting are not available then), followed by the entire cycle presented as the summer season of 2011.
Mark Delavan as Wotan, with Jennifer Larmore as Fricka
Miriam Makeba
The great, iconic South African singer Miriam Makeba died Monday, after a concert in Italy. She was 76. For a half century, her voice and fight against apartheid (for which she was banned from her country for three decades) were recognized around the world. Her combination of jazz and South African folk and pop music made her known as “The Empress of African Song.”
She performed for President John F. Kennedy at his birthday party in 1962, and received the Grammy Award for Best Folk Recording in 1966 together with Harry Belafonte for An Evening With Belafonte/Makeba.”
“Mama” Makeba
Adler Finale
“The Future Is Now: Adler Fellows Gala Concert” will be the culmination of the San Francisco Opera’s 2008 program for selected young artists receiving training and important performance opportunities during the season. They will appear on the stage of the War Memorial Opera House on Dec. 6 in a varied, ambitious program; the Opera Orchestra is conducted by Patrick Summers, himself an alumnus of the Merola Program (some of whose alumni qualify as Adler Fellows).
Partipants are sopranos Heidi Melton (Spokane, Washington), Tamara Wapinsky (Pottsville, Pennsylvania), and Ji Young Yang (Seoul, South Korea); mezzo-sopranos Daveda Karanas (Mandeville, Louisiana), Daniela Mack (Buenos Aires, Argentina), and Katharine Tier (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia); tenors Andrew Bidlack (Chambersburg, Pennsylvania) and Alek Shrader (Alva, Oklahoma); bass Kenneth Kellogg (Washington, D.C.); and apprentice coaches Matthew Piatt (Victoria, Kansas) and Lara Bolton (Findlay, Ohio).
The program includes scenes from Strauss’ Capriccio (Wapinsky and Bidlack), Gordon Getty’s Usher House (Bidlack and Kellogg), Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde (Melton and Karanas), Bellini’s Norma (Wapinsky and Tier), Handel’s Semele (Yang and Shrader), Massenet’s Cendrillon (Mack and Kellogg), Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier (Melton, Ji Young Yang, and Tier). Tickets are $35-$90, available from the Opera Box Office.
Adler Class of 2008
Puccini-Verdi: The Early Days
According to David Gockley, speaking at one of his after-performance appearances in the Opera House, there are plans for featuring early works of Puccini and Verdi in an upcoming season. He didn’t name names, but possible (and daring) choices include Puccini’s Edgar and Le Villi; Verdi’s Attila, I Lombardi, Giovanna d’Arco, and Ernani, and perhaps the “middle-period” Luisa Miller, but surely not Nabucco, which had several turns in the War Memorial.
Gockley also confirmed a Lohengrin in the future, and two Puccini works in the next season. My recent guesswork looks pretty good, but I should have had Die Walküre in 2010 … if then (see item above).
Ligeti the Younger and His Afrikan Machinery
Apple not falling far from the tree, Lukas Ligeti, son of György, is a “postminimalist” composer of “difference” and distinction — without sounding at all like his father. Listen to some examples. Usually described as composer/percussionist, the younger Ligeti is on a nationwide tour with his new album, titled “Afrikan Machinery”.
Lukas Ligeti
Photo by Chris Woltmann
The concert comes to San Francisco’s Musicians Union Hall on Nov. 16, and features Ligeti’s percussive “sounds of Africa,” combined with electronica, jazz, and indie pop. The album is part of the Static Illusion Methodical Madness Music (SIMM) Series, featuring Marimba Lumina. See the Musicians Union Hall for information, or call (415) 575-0777 for ticket reservations.
‘Messiaen Illuminated’
In the tradition of the French salons of the early 20th century, the voice and piano duo ChamberBridge (soprano Lara Bruckmann and pianist Eva-Maria Zimmermann) will present an afternoon and evening of music, poetry, and art in celebration of Olivier Messiaen’s centenary. (See this week’s featurette.) Also participating: Mary Chun, oboist Kyle Bruckmann, violists Charlton Lee and Graeme Jennings, sfSoundGroup.
Programs also include the music of Jolivet, Dukas, Debussy, Campion, and others. The schedule on Nov. 15, at Old First Concerts, consists of three concerts (3 p.m., 5:30 p.m., and 8 p.m.), and an ondes Martenot demonstration at 4:30 p.m.
Lara Bruckmann and Eva-Maria Zimmermann
Messiaen Celebrated at Stanford
Stanford Lively Arts is launching a celebration of the Messiaen centenary on Nov. 13, in Stanford’s Memorial church. It’s the first of a three-concert series featuring members of the St. Lawrence String Quartet, organist Robert Huw Morgan, and other artists, with the Quartet for the End of Time and organ works on the program. Messiaen scholar Paul Griffiths gives a free preconcert talk at 7:00 p.m.
The series will continue with clarinetist Henry Akoka, cellist Matt Haimovitz, and electronic musician Socalled “reimagining” the premiere of the Quartet for the End of Time on Jan. 28 in Dinkelspiel Auditorium. Pianist Christopher Taylor will conclude the series by performing Messiaen’s most significant work for solo piano, Vingt regards sur L’enfant-Jésus, on Feb. 22 afternoon, also in Dinkelspiel.
Olivier Messiaen
S.F. Ballet A-Leaping
The San Francisco Ballet is on an extended national tour, having concluded an engagement at New York City Center, and now appearing at the Orange County Performing Arts Center — with a program including Yuri Possokhov’s Fusion and Christopher Wheeldon’s Within the Golden Hour. The group heads back East Nov. 25-30 for concerts in the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.
Within the Golden Hour
Tenor Poor Wide Receiver, Bassonist in Mishap
At the end of Friday’s San Francisco Opera performance of The Elixir of Love, when football players pile on Nemorino (don’t ask why), the ball hit tenor Ramón Vargas’ hand in such a way that he couldn’t catch it, so the ball bounced into the orchestra pit. There, it first landed on bassoonist Rufus Olivier’s shoulder, flipping onto the mouthpiece of the bassoon and snapping it off. Olivier picked up the mouthpiece and managed to stick it back into the instrument, just in time for the opera to end.
Eyewitnesses reported no effort by Olivier to haul the ball back up to the stage. If he had, there might have been a prelude to the final minute of Monday Night Football, with the Niners stuck on the wrong side of the goal line.
Olivier: no football for him
Philharmonia Joins Rush to Early Holidays
As the All-but-in-Name Recession is producing after-Christmas sales before Thanksgiving, Nicholas McGegan’s Philharmonia Baroque is already warming up for its Natale Barocco concerts. Conducted by Rinaldo Alessandrini, founder of Concerto Italiano, and featuring soprano Marta Almajano, the early December concerts will offer Scarlatti’s Cantata Pastorale per la nascità di Nostro Signore and Handel’s (curiously un-”seasonal”) Agrippina condotta a morire, HWV 110.
Soprano Marta Almajano
Orchestral pieces include concertos by Vivaldi, Corelli, Geminiani, and Dall’Abaco. Here’s the schedule for the concerts: Dec. 5, Palo Alto’s First United Methodist Church; Dec. 6 and 7, Berkeley’s First Congregational Church; Dec. 9, the Lafayette-Orinda Presbyterian Church; and Dec. 12, San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre.
Nicholas McGegan
Photo by Randi Beach
National Award to Goode
Joe Goode is one of the recipients of a $50,000 USA Fellows Award, the United States Artists (USA) program announced on Monday. The San Francisco choreographer was selected for his “unflagging commitment to innovation and experimentation.” The founder/director of the Joe Goode Performance Group is among the year’s 50 awardees.
Goode’s new show, a compendium of small experiments in song and dance, will be seen on Dec. 31, Jan. 2 and 3, at the Brava Theater Center, the dance company to be joined by singer/songwriter Holcombe Waller in premieres of works that “collide music and movement in unusual ways, testing tried forms and re-framing perceptions about sound and theater.”
Janos Gereben (janosg@gmail.com) is a regular contributor to San Francisco Classical Voice.
©2008 By Janos Gereben, all rights reserved.
Loved the anecdote about Rufus Olivier and am glad neither he nor Ramon Vargas were injured. I am waiting in great anticipation for Mr. Olivier and SF Opera tubist Zach Spellman to perform Peter Schickele’s “Dutch Suite” for bassoon and tuba, which may have been intended to be funny, but which I find a magnificent work.
Posted by Ruth C. Jacobs on November 11, 2008 at 10:29 pm