San Francisco Classical Voice

Under the belt: a couple of hundred productions, more than a thousand performances, tons of Handel (even before the international revival), dozens of standard works, many rare, forgotten, even "unknown" operas, such as Mussorgsky's The Marriage Broker, Bizet's Don Procopio, Verdi's Oberto, and Marta Johansen's Salon Viardot.

The 2006 Pocket season will unfold in many venues, locally anchored in the Legion of Honor's Gould Theater. On the program: Smetana's The Bartered Bride, Offenbach's Genevieve of Brabant (Pippin-ized as The New Woman), Handel's Agrippina, von Weber's Der Freischütz, and Offenbach's Tales of Hoffmann. Last season's remarkable Lady Macbeth, Marcelle Dronkers, will sing leading roles in Agrippina and Der Freischütz; Merola alumnus Matthew Trevino and his bride, Carrie Ann are joining Pippin's singers, the latter to be the The Bartered Bride as well.

Don't know Genevieve? Few do, and you won't have a careful reconstruction in the The New Woman, whose story goes: "Scandal twelfth-century style shakes the colorful and heretofore placid little town of Ham on Rye, and a heroine is born." Something to look forward to. See www.pocketopera.org.

Markle's Marriage to Figaro Goes Full Time

Patrick Markle, production director for San Francisco Opera, is leaving the company to become president and CEO of Figaro Systems, a supertitle company he had helped to create five years ago. Figaro initially installed the multi-language Simultext of translation and information on the backs of seats in the reconstructed Santa Fe Opera House, since then expanding business to some of the world's major opera companies, including those of Vienna, Milan, Barcelona, London, Seattle, and just last month, in Denver's new Ellie Caulkins Opera House, at a cost of about $5 million.

From the Classical Voice report on the Denver installation last month: "The Ellie sports the latest (and possibly the best) installation from Santa Fe's Figaro Systems, of an electronic seat-back text delivery system, instead of the usual projected supertitles. The electronic signs are discreet, legible (you can even use bifocals to watch the stage and read the text without moving the head), and provide song text and information in several languages — all of which can be turned off by punching a button."

Finding Operatic Gold . . . in Livermore

Unlike real estate, opera is not about location. It doesn't matter where the search for excellence takes you — where there is talent, it will out. It was in Boise, a year ago, that I first heard the young tenor Christopher Bengochea. A second encounter, on Sunday, in Livermore, confirmed what I first heard in Idaho: musical sensitivity, clarity of expression, and true power, all in one, a Fach-less tenor, who doesn't need to develop a lyric sound into a Heldentenor — he has it all, now.

Bengochea's power, sure intonation, and fine diction come in a package tied with a ribbon of "natural sound." What makes him special is different from Gösta Winbergh's or József Réti's effortlessness or Juan Diego Flórez's elegance; it is a unique, broadly-projected "wide" sound that can serve lyrical or heroic music equally well.

The circumstances of hearing Bengochea are about as exotic as these locations. He was singing the cover (and in the second-cast matinee) as Eric at the Boise world premiere of the Alva Henderson-Dana Gioia Nosferatu, giving a performance fully equal to the excellent Robert McPherson in the lead role. Sunday, at a concert of excerpts marking the opening of the Livermore Valley Opera's 14th season, he sang Rodolfo and Alfredo (to ex-Merolina Svetlana Nikitenko's Mimi and Violetta).

On a tiny high-school auditorium stage, to the accompaniment of a pickup orchestra — conducted well by Alexander Katsman — Bengochea created several Moments of a memorable performance. Rotund, barrel-chested, with long, flowing hair, the tenor from Montana is Zero Mostel-large . . . and with the same kind of twinkle-toed buoyancy.

In Nosferatu, last year, Bengochea's acting was rather stiff; in Livermore, he was just fine in that department as well. In the Act 1 duet of Boheme, when he found and hid the (imaginary) key, his smile — both crooked and sweet — told the story better than expensive sets and props could. The overflowing passion in the Act 3 duet was put in the voice, not in gestures that could have been misplaced, given the minimalist, spartan environment.

Nikitenko sang yet another leading role, as Gilda, in Rigoletto, with Jorge Gomez as the Duke, the tenor returning later as Don Jose, the foil to Carmen's viles. Another big-voiced participant: San Francisco Opera Adler Fellow Lucas Meachem, as the Marcello in Boheme, in the title role of Rigoletto, and the Escamillo of Carmen."

Another hit among the multi-tasking young singers was Nina Yoshida Nelsen, who sang Giovanna and Maddalena in Rigoletto excerpts, Aninna in Traviata, and then stepped up to the title role in Carmen — progress that may, with luck, take a decade, compressed in one easy matinee. (You won't see a program note like that in La Scala or Covent Garden, but here you could read about the former Ms. Yoshida marrying just last week the principal horn player in the orchestra, Jeff Nelsen.)

A footnote from the past: in 1904, the Sweeney Opera House was built in Livermore, on the Southwest corner of East First Street. The addition of a maple floor in 1912 received much ink, but opera proper might not have arrived here until almost a century later. For information about the company, see www.livermorevalleyopera.com.

It's Prof. Vaness Now

Soprano Carol Vaness (Merola Class of 1976) has been named to the faculty of the Indiana University School of Music at Bloomington. She joins pianist André Watts (2004) and violinist Jaime Laredo (2005) as recent "Commitment to Excellence" appointees to the school. The university's "Commitment to Excellence" program is helping the school add "eminent master teachers" to its faculty ranks.

Affair on the Air

San Francisco composer Jake Heggie's second opera, The End of the Affair, now in production at the Seattle Opera, was broadcast and Webcast on Saturday by Seattle classical station KING-FM (www.king.org). Reworked since its Houston world premiere (under David Gockley, San Francisco Opera's incoming general manager), the work now more closely relates to its source, the 1951 Graham Greene novel. Lead roles are sung by Mary Mills, Philip Cutlip and Robert Orth. Excerpts from the broadcast are still available at www.seattleopera.org.

Catering to Opera's 'Lost Generation'

Positing that twenty-somethings are the "lost generation," lost to opera, that is, Glyndebourne Touring Opera has reached out to them with a new operatic thriller, called Tangier Tattoo. A report in the Guardian says those between 18 and 30 make up "only a tiny percentage of the average operatic crowd, which is still dominated by a greying, elderly population," and so Glyndebourne focused on them with Tangier Tattoo, by composer John Lunn and librettist Stephen Plaice. It is "a tale of drugs, sex, terrorism and skin decoration, subjects that emerged from focus groups as the most likely to turn on the target audience." Two previous youth-oriented operas were aimed at younger audiences: Misper and Zo”, the latter about cloning. For the full story, see www.guardian.co.uk

Tyva Kyzy's Adventures in Sound

One by one, four young, tiny women took their turn Thursday night in the SF Asian Art Museum's jam-packed Samsung Hall. One by one — clad in ancient and exotic outfits of leather and silk — each sang soprano, alto, tenor, baritone, bass, a bit of didgeridoo . . . and then all at the same time. It was throat singing at its stupefying best, voices like light seen through a prism, like water squirting from a constricted hose. Indeed, the mechanism of throat singing is similar to putting a finger at the end of the hose — the trick is tightening the throat.

One of the singers, Sholbana Denzin, is both a musician and an economist, so I asked her after the show how she would estimate the degree of frugality to be achieved by using one Tuvan instead of five opera singers in the world's financially stressed companies.

She sidestepped the issue (fraught with danger of union politics) by asking if Americans know the proportion of Tuvan men practicing throat-singing. This American guessed one in 10, but Devan Miller, producer of the tour, had the right answer: one in four. Counting only ethnic Tuvans — and not the large number of Russians left over from the bad old days — that translates to about 50,000.

And right there, you have one of two essential facts about Tyva Kyzy, "Daughters of Tuva" — they are not men, but rather five (with instrumentalist Ayana Mongush) of Tuva's 50 women throat singers, and only female professional group.

The other important — and statistically improbable — thing to know about Tyva Kyzy is that they are the best. When you listen to European throat singers, Mongolians or Tuvan men, after the initial amazement of hearing numerous overtones and two simultaneous pitches, interest tends to lag. These rare women throat singers go far beyond novelty and shock value. They are outstanding musicians.

Choduraa Tumat, the group's leader and star, hits the high-C equivalent sygyt — a powerful, whistle-like overtone — while maintaining kargyraa, the low, rumbling, four-note fundamental, shifting seamlessly into khöömei, the multiple-note, multiple-tone sound... and does so with elegance and melodic beauty.

There are some Mongolian throat singers performing with as much lyricism and humor as Tyva Kyzy, but I haven't heard any better. (Tuvans are often confused with Mongolians, but in fact, they are Turkic, ethnically different, and even a small Tuvan enclave — the tsengel Tuvans — within Mongolia exists in strict separation.) Throat singing or "just singing," the Daughters of Tuva are special every way. The group also performed in Berkeley and Santa Cruz last week. See www.tyvakyzy.com.

Among upcoming events in beautiful but cavernous (and thus acoustically iffy) Samsung Hall, the catalogue room of the Main Library in its previous incarnation: a Filipino music concert on October 27; Rajeev Taranath's sarod recital on November 10. See www.asianart.org.