San Francisco Classical Voice

An Early Macabre Event

The Opera Guild presents an "Insight Panel" discussion of Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre tonight at 6, in Herbst Theater, in advance of the work's US stage premiere in the War Memorial on October 29. See www.sfopera.com/events about the panel, www.sfopera.com/Macabre about the production.

Other ancillary events include: "György Ligeti: To the Edge of Sound" (the first program in the Blueprint Project this year, surrounding performances of Ligeti's harpsichord works [Corey Jamason] and the piano Etudes, Book II [Stephen Drury] with Bartók, Lutoslawski, and Gubaidulina, performed by the SFCM New Music Ensemble, in the SF Conservatory of Music's Hellman Hall, October 25); Guild preview lectures (see www.sfopera.com); Ligeti's String Quartet No. 2, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, SF Veterans Building, Dec. 6; Ligeti's Ramifications, New Century Chamber Orchestra, June 2-5, various locations, see www.ncco.org.

Reflections on a SURTITLES^TM Anniversary

Classical Voice reader Barbara Baxter writes from Stratford, Ontario, that the nearby little town of St. Marys celebrated "Opera Day" last week, complete with a declaration by the mayor, and a visit by former San Francisco Opera general manager Lotfi Mansouri, who gave a lecture on the subject for John Leberg's opera classes.

In the same message, Ms. Baxter takes issue with several previous references in this column, crediting Mansouri with the introduction of supertitles in opera, when he was heading the Toronto company. She says it was Leberg — working as Mansouri's assistant at the time — who invented them. Approaching the 22nd anniversary of this important enhancement for the enjoyment of opera, some research seemed to be in order. It was the Canadian Opera Company's staging of Strauss' Elektra that SURTITLES^TM made their first appearance on January 21, 1983. More American than British, and probably easier to pronounce without the "TM," supertitle is the standard reference in this country.

Defined as "capsulized translation of an opera's libretto, projected onto a screen on the proscenium of the stage during a live performance," supertitles have spread around the world in a relatively short time. There is one more name to add to the honor list: Gunta Dreifelds, part of the COC team, and now a major consultant to opera companies using supertitles. If Mansouri is credited alone at times, there is a good reason for that: as the head of the company, he took the praise and the blame for the newfangled thing, mostly the latter. It's only a faint memory now, but at the first appearance of supertitles, there were angry and anguished letters to the editor about "destroying opera." Well, yes, and putting professional football on television put an end to that business . . .

Chanticleer's Youth Choral Festival

Chanticleer is holding its fifth annual Youth Choral Festival on Friday, October 29, in the First Unitarian Universalist Church in San Francisco. The event, involving more than 200 students from Bay Area high school choral groups, is part of Chanticleer's "Singing in the Schools" education program. On the program: Chanticleer and the massed choirs performing Eric William Barnum's She Walks in Beauty (winner of the 2003 Chanticleer Composer Competition), and David Dickau's Stars I Shall See. The evening performance is free and open to the public, but seating is limited and reservations are required. Call (415) 252-8589, ext. 307 or write to invite@chanticleer.org. See www.chanticleer.org.

Spock to Jewish Music Series: 'Live Long and Prosper'

The 13-week-long Milken Archive American Jewish Music series, now broadcast nationwide, is hosted by Leonard Nimoy, the memorable Mr. Spock of "Star Trek" fame. The series, on the WFMT radio network (none in Northern California) and on XM satellite radio, excerpts works from the literature developed since the arrival of the first Jews in America in 1654. As an actor, writer and director, Nimoy has long been involved with Jewish music and culture, as exemplified by the Nimoy Concert Series in Los Angeles.

Each program has a theme reflected in American Jewish music: biblical epics set to music by Kurt Weill and others; Jewish legends in tone poems, film scores and operas; sacred masterpieces and the cantorial tradition; the joy of klezmer; symphonies and concertos based on Jewish themes; the mysteries of Sephardic music; Holocaust reflections; songs from the Golden Age of Yiddish theater; and world premieres of recently discovered Jewish compositions by Leonard Bernstein. For program information and a list of stations, see www.milkenarchive.org.

'Meet the Music'

The American Symphony Orchestra League, supported by a grant from American Express, is offering a free educational Website for concertgoers, called Meet the Music: www.meetthemusic.org. The site features a different work every week, with an introduction by Greg Sandow, and linked to performances and recordings by member orchestras. The site includes an international calendar of concerts: www.findaconcert.com/index.html, providing information state by state, as well as for orchestras from Australia to the United Kingdom.

A Soprano for the Met Broadcasts

Margaret Juntwait, host of a classical-music program on WNYC-FM, has been named the announcer for the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts, only the third "voice of the Met" since the series started 73 years ago. Peter Allen spent 29 years of Saturdays in the radio booth, following Milton Cross, on the job for 44 seasons. Juntwait, 47, studied singing, as a lyric soprano, but did not have a career, raising a family instead. She will make her debut on Dec. 11, with the season-opening broadcast of Verdi's I Vespri Siciliani.

Any mention of the Met broadcasts in the Bay Area, of course, brings up the question of how to listen to them. No major FM station in or near San Francisco carries the programs, leaving small FM stations, a couple of AM broadcasts . . . and the Internet, an adequate (but inferior) substitute. For program information, see www.metopera.org/broadcast, station listing is available at www.operainfo.org. Local stations include KUSF-FM, 90.3, and KDIA-AM, 1640.

Houston Opera Broadcasts on KUSF

The University of San Francisco's tiny KUSF-FM, 90.3, not only carries the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts (see item above), but before that series begins in December, it will offer National Public Radio's "World of Opera" Saturday mornings at 10:30, including eight complete performances from the Houston Grand Opera. See www.houstongrandopera.org and www.kusf.org. (Why is it that dozens of opera companies around the world make performances available for broadcast, but not the San Francisco Opera?)

Levine's First Orchestra

Metropolitan Opera music director James Levine, 61, who became the Met's principal conductor 31 years ago, is about to take charge of a major American symphony orchestra for the first time. Conducting Mahler's Symphony No. 8 in Symphony Hall on October 22, Levine will become the Boston Symphony's 14th music director. The singers for the "Symphony of a Thousand" include Jane Eaglen, Hei-Kyung Hong, Heidi Grant Murphy, Stephanie Blythe, Yvonne Naef, Richard Margison, Eike Schulte, and John Relyea.

Seattle Manon Lescaut's SF Connections

When Speight Jenkins's Seattle Opera begins the new year with Puccini's Manon Lescaut, January 15-29, audience members from the Bay Area will have déja vu all over again. In the title role: the War Memorial's current Tosca, Carol Vaness (Merola class of 1976); the Chavalier Des Grieux is Jay Hunter Morris, who sang Mitch in the SFO world premiere of Previn's Streetcar Named Desire and also his first Wagner: Walther von Stolzing in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg here; and the Lescaut is Merola/Adler alumnus Earle Patriarco, who started his career in San Francisco.

Further down the cast list, there is a name that should ring bells with old-timers: Archie Drake sings the Innkeeper; his work with SFO goes back to the super-busy year of 1968, when he sang a Delegate in Christopher Columbus, Giacomo in Fra Diavolo, the Fifth Jew in Salome, the First Apprentice in Wozzeck, Zuniga in Carmen, and Rambaldo in La Rondine. Drake went on to sing here in 1969, then skipped 22 years, until appearing as Antonio in the 1991 Le Nozze di Figaro.

Pogorelich: No Jet-Setter

In a world of play-and-run musical stars, pianist Ivo Pogorelich is a throwback to a kinder, gentler age of travel. Scheduled to give his first recital in San Francisco in 15 years (October 24, Davies Hall, see www.performances.org), Pogorelich arrived in the area almost a month in advance. He is vacationing in Napa Valley, preparing for the concert leisurely, instead of giving a concert-a-day.

Let Us Now Honor Page-Turners

It's been such a long time those humble but vital participants in chamber-music concerts have been ignored that an acknowledgment now comes with understandable excess. Perhaps not entirely fact-based and boldly ignoring particulars of the alleged concert it describes, here's the "review" from the Edmonton Centre Newsletter, widely reprinted by page-turner sympathizers everywhere:

"Tonight's page turner, Ruth Spelke, studied under Ivan Schmertnick at the Boris Nitsky School of Page Turning in Philadelphia. She has been turning pages here and abroad for many years for some of the world's leading pianists. In 1988, Ms. Spelke won the Wilson Page Turning Scholarship, which sent her to Israel to study page turning from left to right. She is winner of the 1984 Rimsky Korsakov Flight of the Bumblebee Prestissimo Medal, having turned 47 pages in an unprecedented 32 seconds. She was also a 1983 silver medallist at the Klutz Musical Page Pickup Competition: contestants retrieve and rearrange a musical score dropped from a Yamaha.

"For technique, Ms. Spelke performs both the finger-licking and the bent-page corner methods. She works from a standard left bench position, and is the originator of the dipped-elbow page snatch, a style used to avoid obscuring the pianist's view of the music. She is page-turner in residence in Fairfield Iowa, where she occupies the coveted Alfred Hitchcock Chair at the Fairfield Page Turning Institute. Ms. Spelke is married, and has a nice house on a lake."