• Jeremy Galyon, bass-baritone, from Bethlehem, Penn.; returning to the program for the second year
• Kendall Gladen, mezzo, from St. Louis, Mo.; first year of fellowship
• Elza van den Heever, soprano, from Johannesburg, South Africa, returning for the second year
• Rhoslyn Jones, soprano, from Alder Grove, British Columbia, Canada; returning for the second year
• Heidi Melton, soprano, from Spokane, Wash.; first year
• Melody Moore, soprano, from Dyersburg, Tenn.; returning for the second year
• Matthew O’Neill, tenor, from Evansville, Ind.; first year
• Sean Panikkar, tenor, from Bloomsburg, Penn.; returning for the second year
• Noah Stewart, tenor, from New York, N.Y.; first year
• Katharine Tier, mezzo, from Sydney, Australia; first year
• Ji Young Yang, soprano, from Seoul, South Korea; first year

Pianist Matthew Piatt, from Victoria, Kan., continues his Apprentice Coach Fellowship. Outgoing 2006 Adler Fellows include soprano Kimwana Doner, countertenor Gerald Thompson, and baritone Eugene Brancoveanu.

In addition to performance opportunities on the mainstage, Adler Fellows are also featured in special events and the Schwabacher Debut Recital Series. The Adler season culminates in December 2007 with the "The Future Is Now" gala concert.

The Luisotti Rumor

Since the recent announcement that Donald Runnicles' contract as music director of the San Francisco Opera will not be renewed beyond 2008, two significant events have taken place. First, the widespread guessing game about Patrick Summers succeeding Runnicles was put to a sudden and decisive end as the Houston music director renewed his contract there for the next six years. Second, in the face of the turmoil about his contract, Runnicles conducted a series of world-class Tristan und Isolde performances here, well justifying General Director David Gockley's plan to retain Runnicles for a number of projects, including the Wagner Ring for years beyond 2008.

The "news" du jour is frequent speculation on the Internet that our conductor-in-waiting is Nicola Luisotti. If that yet-unsubstantiated rumor pans out, the San Francisco Opera will score a coup in the music world. The young Italian conductor is turning up in most of the world's leading opera houses, making his debut in a dozen important venues over the past three years. Born in Viareggio, Luisotti started his career in his native country, skyrocketing to La Scala, Naples, and the Verona Arena, then getting assignments throughout Europe.

His San Francisco debut, a year ago, was a unanimously acclaimed turn on the podium of the War Memorial, as he led fiery performances of Verdi's La forza del destino. Audiences and the orchestra's musicians responded enthusiastically.

Heggie Opera Premieres and Podcasts

San Francisco composer Jake Heggie's one-act opera, To Hell and Back, will have its world premiere this week in the Bay Area, on the occasion of Nicholas McGegan's Philharmonia Baroque celebrating its 25th anniversary. That "first" coincides with another in the music world, Opera News producing its first podcast — and part of that is a preview of To Hell and Back. Conducted by McGegan, the performances feature Patti LuPone and Isabel Bayrakdarian. You can read about the opera and listen to the podcast.

Barbiere Trifecta

Yes, Rossini's The Barber of Seville is getting threefold exposure in the area next month. San Francisco Opera is reviving its most fun, jazzed-up production of recent years, beginning tonight. Opera San Jose premieres its run of Barbiere on Nov. 18, in the California Theater. And there will be a Barber of Seville family matinee in the War Memorial on Nov. 5, in a two-hour abbreviated performance. Tickets are priced from $25 to $80 for adults, $10 to $40 for children and students.

In San Jose, the Rossini will signal conducting debuts for Festival Opera's Michael Morgan and San Francisco Lyric Opera's Barnaby Palmer. Casts include Michele Detwiler and Talise Trevigne as Rosina; Kenneth Mattice and Daniel Cilli as Figaro; and Thomas Glenn and Omar Gutierrez Crook as Almaviva.

Choral Peace Project to Premiere

The Choral Project and San Jose Chamber Orchestra, in their third annual collaboration, will present a "Winter's Gifts" concert, featuring the world premiere of The Songbird and the Eagle, by Kim Sherman. The work is based on a Buddhist Jataka tale about the possibility of global peace being attained through the small actions of each individual. Performances feature sopranos Allison Charney and Katrina Swift, with narration by Jordan Charney. Also on the program: Ralph Vaughan Williams' Dona nobis pacem, featuring Opera San Jose's Sandra Rubalcava and Joseph Wright.

"Winter's Gifts" will be heard Dec. 8 at Mission Santa Clara de Asis; Dec. 9 at Holy Cross Church, Santa Cruz; and Dec. 10 at St. Benedict’s Church, Hollister. For information, see www.choralproject.org/.

American Music Festival in Sacramento

The music department of Sacramento State University opens its 2006 Festival of New American Music on Thursday, with a keynote address by composer Frederic Rzewski, whose Nonsequiturs is being performed later in the day. The opening gala features Rzewski, pianist Eliane Lust, Melody of China, and percussionist Michael Lipsey.

On Friday, Capistrano Hall will serve as the venue for a composer's forum, with Martin Rokeach. The music of David Lincoln Burnam is performed by pianist Sunny Knable. Saturday will bring the Sac State Jazz Singers and C-Sus, with director Kerry Marsh, to Capistrano Hall. Composers Robert Greenberg and Rokeach are introuced by Stephen Blumberg. In the evening, pianist Lino Rivera is featured in a concert.

Events follow every day and evening through Nov. 12, when flutist Laurel Zucker and guitarist Mark Delpriora perform in the Crocker Art Museum. The concluding evening concert features the Sac State Jazz Ensemble again, with Steve Roach, director, and saxophonist Tim Ries.

MTT Missing the Davies Hall Ambience

Oh, sure, you have your horror story about a coughing-talking-wheezing-toe-tapping neighor in Davies Hall (or the Opera House or Herbst or Yerba Buena — take your pick), but the fact is that regular Bay Area audiences are well-behaved. Spending most of my evenings at such events, I often become aware of the receptive, appreciative, participatory silence that is the audience's required "performance." In the past few days alone, Tristan performances in the War Memorial, Midori playing the Britten Violin Concerto in Davies Hall, the California Symphony in Walnut Creek, and the Contemporary Music Players at Yerba Buena all earned "bravi!" for the audience.

Michael Tilson Thomas, who is known to have lost his patience locally with errant cell phone calls, is now in his second musical home, in Miami, where he is a key participant in the inauguration of the city's new concert hall, and the Miami Herald reports he had a bit of a noise problem there:

"'You can hear us very well and we can hear you very well,' MTT said when a noise came from the John S. and James L. Knight Concert Hall audience last Saturday night, at the New World Symphony's first concert of the season. He turned and raised his arms to conduct, only to lower them and wait for the hubbub to stop.

"Even as it offers new cultural and entertainment opportunities to our community, the Carnival Center for the Performing Arts poses new challenges to our manners. The acoustics are awesome, but as MTT pointed out, everyone can hear everything. Miamians have been lulled by our subtropical climate into a relaxation of propriety. Now we have these finely tuned new houses. Time will tell if we have the wherewithal to sit in them," the article concludes, skeptically.

Microsoft Grant to S.F. Opera

Microsoft Corporation is giving a $394,000 software donation grant to the San Francisco Opera to improve customer service support systems and expand outreach to opera patrons. General Director David Gockley said the "technology upgrade is a much-needed resource for San Francisco Opera." The grant provides for upgraded software applications and such infrastructure components as desktop, database, and server software, and software licensing to operate the Opera's Tessitura ticketing and patron tracking system.

The Cost of Music, There and Here

In an Associated Press interview with Berlin Philharmonic Managing Director Pamela Rosenberg last week, we spotted a bit of startling information. "Money was an issue in San Francisco [where Rosenberg headed the Opera administration until the end of last year]," the reporter said. "How is the [Berlin] orchestra's financial support?" Rosenberg replied: "We're in a stable position. We get 42 percent of our budget from the city, and the rest we earn with tickets and touring and various odds and ends. And we also have an extraordinarily generous sponsorship with Deutsche Bank."

If that percentage were to be applied in San Francisco, the Symphony here (with a budget of $56 million) would receive an annual grant of some $23.5 million from the city alone, never mind state and national government. The actual support figure for the Symphony — from the San Francisco Arts Commission and Grants for the Arts — is 2.7 percent of the SFS budget, or approximately $1.5 million. The total of all other government support to SFS: $11,200.

Granted that in Germany (and elsewhere in Europe), both government subsidies and the leading role of cities in supporting the arts have been established for a long time, the contrast is amazing. (Equally surprising is the fact that Rosenberg didn't fully realize the situation when she returned to California from Stuttgart in 2000. The Berlin equation would mean city assistance of $24 million for the San Francisco Opera's $57 million operation.)

But there is more to be figured out from the AP item. The article did not mention the Philharmonic's budget or the subsidizing city's fiscal plight, and there are some eye-popping figures there. This column has been harping for years about Berlin's $25 billion debt, as the city is resolutely continuing its support for numerous orchestras, opera companies, and other cultural institutions. Well, the deficit figure now, 16 years after the Wall came down, is well over $50 billion (a conseqence, in large part, of rebuilding the former East Berlin and absorbing thousands of East Germans). And yet, Berlin's three opera companies are still receiving an annual city subsidy of about $140 million, although they are on notice that by 2009, they will get "only" $126 million.

And what is the Berlin Philharmonic's budget, over $16 million of which comes from a virtually bankrupt city? It's approximately $38 million, making the cost of music-making in Berlin millions of dollars less than in San Francisco. In fact, there are at least seven American orchestras spending more than the Philharmonic (figures, coming from various sources, are approximate): Boston ($72 million), Los Angeles ($69 million), Chicago ($65 million), San Francisco ($56 million), New York ($52 million), Philadelphia ($41 million), and Cleveland ($39 million).

... and This Just In

Right after completing the above item, an article popped up on the computer screen from the Redding, Calif., Record Searchlight about the city's two orchestras. Shasta Symphony music director Richard Allen Fiske compared his band with his "cross-town rivals, the somewhat better-heeled North State Symphony."

At the Shasta Symphony's season-opener Sunday — with works by Mozart, Prokofiev, Verdi, and von Weber — Fiske said, "This is our 57th season. Long may we live. They [North State Symphony] have a budget of $320,000 and we make do with considerably less than that." His 53-piece community orchestra operates on an annual budget of ... $9,000.

The Revenue From Music

Lest the items above mislead readers into thinking of symphonic music in terms of expenses, deficits, and grants, let's recap some basic facts: There are as many as 1,200 orchestras in the U.S. today, generating about $1 billion in annual revenue, constituting a large part of the performing arts market in the country.

Most orchestras are small, it is true. Only 153 organizations have budgets of more than $750,000 (and only 17 have 52-week seasons and budgets of more than $10 million). And yet, large and small, orchestras employ 78,000 musicians and 11,000 administrative staff; they give 27,000 performances annually for 32 million people. What other "industry" is as beneficial for so many consumers?

In Somalia: Play Music and Die

Members of Somalia's National Music Committee are facing arrest, trial, and execution for promoting music under the terms of a new fatwa, or religious edict. Officials of the organization have fled the country, but their families remain behind, facing persecution. The order was issued after the Islamist government raided the already dormant East African Radio in North Mogadishu, a station that used to broadcast music now forbidden. Offices of the National Music Committee have been destroyed, including equipment and research documents being prepared for the International Music Council on the subject of musical diversity and cultural rights.

Lyric Schedules Magic Flute

San Francisco Lyric Opera's next production, Nov. 17-24, is Mozart's The Magic Flute, performed in the Legion of Honor's Florence Gould Theater. Barnaby Palmer conducts, Heather Carolo directs, and the cast includes Svetlana Nikitenko (Queen of the Night), Heidi Moss (Pamina), Brian Thorsett (Tamino), and Michael Mendelsohn (Monostatos).