It's News to Me

Janos Gereben on September 9, 2015

S.F. Symphony Caught Up in European Refugee Deluge

Romanian and musical royalty: Princess Lia and Prince Paul of Romania, with MTT and agent/husband Joshua Robison
Romanian and musical royalty: Princess Lia and Prince Paul of Romania, with MTT and agent/husband Joshua Robison

The chaos of thousands escaping from the Middle East through Turkey, Greece and Central Europe has caught up with the touring San Francisco Symphony, as reported by S.F. Symphony Director of Communications Oliver Theil from Bucharest where the orchestra gave concerts on Sunday and Monday:

While the orchestra arrived on time via charter flight from Berlin, the instruments and wardrobe trunks were not as lucky.

The tragic refugee crisis in Europe caused a massive strain on various border crossings around Hungary, Austria, Romania, and Germany, delaying the arrival of the instruments, stuck at the Hungarian border for over six hours. While certainly an insignificant trouble compared to the life and death situations around us on the continent, it did cause a few tense moments for crew, house managers, as well as the national television producers expecting the concert to begin on time.

The instruments arrived in the hall just before concert time, but the wardrobe trunks filled with concert attire were late. What to do? Play for a national television audience in street clothes? Wait and see? How to fill airtime?

We waited. The sold-out crowd waited. The wardrobe trunks fianlly arrived, but had to be hoisted to stage level from below.

No Ives tonight. The first piece was cut, the concert begun 30 minutes behind schedule.

Yuja Wang was the featured artist in the Bartók Second Piano Concerto, but Theil says "the true rock star in the building was S.F. Symphony violinist Florin Parvelescu who hails from Bucharest. Hometown hero!"

The orchestra's previous concert was in Berlin, where an important visitor was spotted at the concert:

One of our guests at the concert was Gerhard Casper, former President of Stanford University and now President of the American Academy in Berlin. The Quartet was surprised and thrilled to spot him in the audience as well, as the group was founded at Stanford through his support resulting in a happy reunion after the show.

Wednesday and Friday, S.F. Symphony performs at the Lucerne Festival, going on to Luxembourg on Saturday, and Amsterdam on Sunday, then the final concert of the tour on Monday in Paris. The orchestra's season-opening gala in Davies Hall is on Sept. 24.


Together again: Frederica von Stade and Jake Heggie (Photo by Liz Lauren)
Together again: Frederica von Stade and Jake Heggie (Photo by Liz Lauren)

Flicka Up and at 'Em

The queen of Bay Area opera (and beyond) and benefactor for many good causes, mezzo Frederica von Stade, told Martin Bernheimer in an interview that looking back at the career of some 300 appearances at the Met (and more than a hundred in the War Memorial between 1971 and 2009), she has "no regrets whatsoever" -

I loved it from the day I walked in to the Met. It was like a magic experience that I never could have imagined. In the beginning, I barely knew how to get around the opera house, much less the stage. I was taught by masters in every corner, directors, conductors, artists and nearly every member of the Met family, and it was really a family when I was first there.

It's been a long journey from 1970, when at age 25, she sang the Third Genie in Mozart's Magic Flute. She mustered her Met farewell, 31 years later, in the title role of Lehár's The Merry Widow, opposite Placido Domingo.

For her Ravinia program on Sept. 10 she shares the stage with Laurie Rubin, a most successful, younger mezzo-soprano who has been blind since birth. In 2012, Seven Stories Press published her memoir, Do You Dream in Color? Insights From a Girl Without Sight. In it she demonstrates her determination to surpass and redefine popular expectations.

The next major challenge on the von Stade agenda is an opera by Jake Heggie called Great Scott, which receives its world premiere at the Dallas Opera in October. The libretto, written by Terrence McNally, concerns an opera star who returns to her hometown to save the struggling ensemble that had launched her career. Opening night, unfortunately, falls on the same night as the home team’s first Super Bowl. Problems ensue. The central role falls to Joyce DiDonato, conspicuously supported by von Stade. Patrick Summers conducts and Jack O’Brien directs, with sets by Bob Crowley.

Von Stade expresses elation at the prospect. "Great Scott," she declares, "is sensational. We did a workshop in April and it was just wonderful. Jake has created another wonderful work, full of pathos, humor, great music and a hysterical libretto. To say nothing of the thrill of working with Joyce and a marvelous cast, director, Terrence, and on and on.


Public Invited to Veterans Building Re-dedication

Herbst Theater: new seats, new boxes, old (but cleaned) murals (Photo by Janos Gereben)
Herbst Theater: new seats, new boxes, old (but cleaned) murals (Photo by Janos Gereben)

The San Francisco War Memorial Board of Trustees and Mayor Edwin M. Lee invite the community to the re-dedication ceremony of the War Memorial Veterans Building, which has been under seismic reconstruction for the past couple of years.

The event will take place in Herbst Theater on Sept. 16, beginning at 11:30 a.m., followed by an open house and tours through the building. It's all free, but reservations are required both for the ceremony and the tours, which are also available 3:30 to 6 p.m. on Sept. 18 and 10 a.m. to noon on Sept. 19.

For the ceremony, doors will open at 11 a.m., seating is general admission. Guests for the open house will gather in the lobby after the ceremony. The Green Room and San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery will be open for touring at 12:30 p.m., and Herbst will re-open to guests at 1 p.m.


Wheelchair dancers in A Hero of Our Time (Photo by Damir Yusupov)
Wheelchair dancers in A Hero of Our Time (Photo by Damir Yusupov)

Bolshoi Premieres SFB Choreographer Possokhov's Ballet

Yuri Possokhov, former principal dancer of the San Francisco Ballet, has been the company's Choreographer in Residence during the past decade, presenting such memorable works as Magrittomania, Classical Symphony, RAkU, and Francesca da Rimini. At the same time, Possokhov has been welcome by some of the world's major dance companies to choreograph for them - including the Bolshoi Ballet, where his dancing career began in 1982. In addition to performing leading parts in classical ballets, Possokhov was also the first dancer in Russia to perform George Balanchine’s The Prodigal Son.

Twenty-three years after he left Moscow, becoming a principal dancer first with the Royal Danish Ballet and then the San Francisco Ballet, Possokhov returned to the Bolshoi to create the season-ending world premiere of a ballet based on Mikhail Lermontov’s novel A Hero of Our Time. The ballet is a joint work by Possokhov and film and theater director Kirill Serebrennikov, the artistic director of Moscow’s Gogol Center.

As Possokhov explained in an interview, the project had been conceived and organized from scratch by the artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet, Sergei Filin, who was blinded in an attack instigated by a Bolshoi dancer in 2013:

For a whole year, I heard nothing about the future of our production, was sitting at home, working on other ballets, thinking that the Bolshoi project had been canceled. And then suddenly everything quickly picked up again... I was invited to work in this new context, where the choreographer was no longer the main figure, though remained an important one.

A Financial Times review this summer said:

Literary ballet is moving in new directions. Dance versions of great texts are a time-honoured tradition but choreographers are increasingly experimenting with non-linear approaches. In May, the Royal Ballet explored a trilogy of Virginia Woolf novels in Woolf Works; this week, not one but three heroes took to the Bolshoi stage in A Hero of Our Time, a new ballet based on Mikhail Lermontov’s 1840 novel.