San Francisco Classical Voice

Soprano Change in The Merry Widow

The latest cast replacement in the San Francisco Opera's current season was announced by Pamela Rosenberg, that soprano Yvonne Kenny, will sing Hanna Glawari in all fall performances of The Merry Widow that opens November 27. Originally scheduled for two performances, Kenny will replace soprano No”mi Nadelmann, who was forced to withdraw from the production due to a respiratory infection. Mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade, will take over the role in January as scheduled. Australian soprano Yvonne Kenny made her San Francisco Opera debut as the Marschallin in last season's Der Rosenkavalier.

Youth Orchestra Breaks from San Jose Symphony

Last week, parents of the members of the San Jose Symphony Youth Orchestra announced that that they are setting up their own board of directors and will separate the orchestra from the silenced San Jose Symphony. The Symphony association had absorbed the parents' tuition money into the adult orchestra's debt-ridden general fund. The reorganized and independent SJ Youth Symphony will go ahead with its concerts. The move comes less than a month after the adult symphony suspended operations and canceled concerts in an effort to reorganize and find financial solvency.

Losses in Our Opera World

Monte Pederson, bass baritone, and Barry McCauley, tenor, two fine artists who were products of the San Francisco Opera's training programs and starred for the company, have very recently passed away. Mr. Pederson, 43, who died in Munich last week, was a graduate of the Merola Program and an Adler fellow, and made his SF Opera debut in 1985 as a mandarin in Turandot, singing numerous comprimario roles, then, in 1988, he sang a performance of the title role of in The Flying Dutchman,, the Spirit Messenger in Die Frau ohne Schatten (1989), Donner in Das Rheingold (summer 1990), and Oreste in Elektra. (1991). He went on to sing at the Metropolitan Opera, Covent Garden, La Scala, the Vienna State, Deutschen Oper Berlin, the Hamburg and Paris Operas, as well as on the Salzburg Fstival.

Barry McCauley, who died of a brain tumor two weeks ago, made his San Francisco Opera debut in 1977 as Vanya in Katya Kabanova, the following year singing Froh in Das Rheingold and the title role in a student matinee performance of Faust. He sang Cassio, in Otello and Rodolfo in La Boheme (1986), Edgardo in Lucia di Lammermoor (1989) Alva in Lulu (1991), Don Jose in Carmen, and Pierre in War and Peace.

Domingo Forever?

In Berlin, awaiting Plácido Domingo's first Siegfried (excerpts, that is, in a gala with the Deutsches Staatsoper), I remembered a statement he had made in 1996 about planning to sing for another five years.

Now that it is five years later, the end is not in sight at all. There is this Friday Siegfried, the business of running opera companies in Washington and Los Angeles... and signing contracts four-five years into the future. Asked last week how will know when enough is enough, the tenor, who is in his 60s, had a simple answer, which neatly excludes external critera: "I have a good ear and a good sense, and my wife would tell me."

At the Friday gala, a major fund-raiser, the Staatskapelle Berlin is conducted by Daniel Barenboim, the program includes the first act of Die Walküre, with Jane Eaglen und Matti Salminen, and an extended excerpt from the final act of Götterdämmerung. In the former, Domingo will repeat Siegmund which he has sung and recorded several times, but in the latter, his "live" Siegfried will be a role debut.

(Janos Gereben is arts editor of the Post Newspaper Group and technology editor for www.the451.com. You can contact him at janos451@earthlink.net.)

©2001 Janos Gereben, all rights reserved