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IN Music News THIS WEEK:
Fresno Grand Opera Gets Grander
The Trouble in Seattle
Resnik Program Set
Quasthoff and the Kahane 'Family Tradition'
Chicago Symphony Settlement
Tavener's Conversion
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By Janos Gereben
Runnicles: 'Five More Years'
San Francisco Opera Music Director Donald Runnicles, turning 50 today, received a contract extension through the end of the
2008-2009 season, assuring him of a place on the podium here for Berlioz's complete Les Troyens. That major undertaking was
postponed from 2005 to 2008 when the Opera ran into a serious deficit. General Manager Pamela Rosenberg, whose contract will
expire at the end of the next season, said the partnership with Runnicles "has been one of the highlights of my career."
No salary figures have been released, but the Opera's last required public tax statement showed a fee of $361,000 for the music
director in the fiscal year ending July 31, 2002, a figure $7,000 over Rosenberg's salary. In that season, the Opera's revenue was
$57.7 million, against expenses of $62.6m. (Just across the street from the War Memorial, the San Francisco Symphony reported
income of $49.4m, expenses of $45.9m, for the same period. For a much longer season than the Opera's, Symphony concertmaster
Alexander Barantschik received a salary of $366,000, and music director Michael Tilson Thomas a fee of $1.4 million.)
Fresno Grand Opera Gets Grander Placido Domingo, no less, will give a Fresno Grand Opera concert on April 9, accompanied by the Fresno Philharmonic. Theodore Kuchar's orchestra (www.fresnophil.org) is well- known in the area, with an extensive schedule, and Joseph Bascetta's six-year-old opera company (www.fresnograndopera.org) is producing a Pagliacci/Gianni Schicci doublebill and Turandot this season, in addition to special events, culminating with the Domingo concert, to be conducted by Eugene Kohn.
The Trouble in Seattle Classical Voice relied on the Seattle Opera in reporting from the opening of McCaw Hall last year that the company raised and invested $27 million on top of the reconstruction cost of $100 million to come up with a smashing house: www.sfcv.org. That happy story is turning sour now, as the city is telling the Opera and co-tenant Pacific Northwest Ballet to pay for large interest payments. Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels pledged two years ago that no general fund money would be used to pay off the immediate debt, which turned out to be $456,000 next year, and $910,000 in 2006. Because of the recession, particularly severe in the Northwest, financing was slow to come in, so the city took out a bond to bridge the gap, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports. Eventually $72 million in private money was raised, but the public portion was $11.5 million short, and the result is a need to pay for the financing debt. The Opera and Ballet together pay $1.1 million in annual rent to the city. According to the Opera, the mayor's action will mean that a total of $13 million in public debt is to be made the responsibility of the two organizations. A statement from the Opera warns that the mayor's proposal could "signal a dangerous precedent for other arts institutions performing in public buildings."
Resnik Program Set Regina Resnik, who will open the Music at Meyer season in Temple Emanu-El on Dec. 13, will narrate a program of "American Jewish Composers in Classical Song," marking the 350th anniversary of the arrival of the first Jews in the US. With soprano Roslyn Jhunever Barak (who is also the temple's cantor), tenor Michael Philip Davis, and baritone Charles Robert Stephens, the program will include world premieres by John Corigliano and William M. Hoffman, Seymour Barab, Jack Gottlieb and Ronald Senator; US premieres by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Frederick Jacobi, and David Schiff; and the music of Samuel Adler, Leonard Bernstein, A.W. Binder, David Diamond, Abraham Goldfaden, Max Helfman, Reuven Kosakoff, Leo Low, Simon Sargon, and Lazar Weiner. For information, see www.emanuelsf.org.
Quasthoff and the Kahane 'Family Tradition' Thomas Quasthoff is in Los Angeles, appearing with the Philharmonic in a series of concerts, singing Mahler's Kindertotenlieder, conducted by Christoph Eschenbach, Bach and Mozart arias with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Jeffrey Kahane. On Sunday, Quasthoff sang jazz and pop in the Walt Disney Hall, with Gabriel Kahane — the son of pianist/conductor Kahane — at the piano. The first time the jazz-loving German baritone gave such a concert was several years ago, at the Oregon Bach Festival, with Kahane Sr.
Chicago Symphony Settlement Musicians of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra approved a three-year labor contract, the Associated Press reports, providing a raise after a year, but granting concessions on benefits. The orchestra administration, facing a deficit of $11 million, had demanded reduction in the number of players, and was granted a token drop, by attrition, from 111 to 106 musicians. The contract freezes the musicians' base salary at $104,000 for the first year but grants increments every six months thereafter, topping out at $114,400. The musicians also agreed to freeze annual pension benefits at $63,000 for the life of the contract, and to begin paying a portion of their health-care premiums.
Tavener's Conversion Composer John Tavener, famously devoted to the Orthodox Church in his life and work since 1977, has denounced his own strict musical code by which he used to live as "tyranny," and he is turning a new leaf over in a big way: his latest work is based on Islamic texts, and he is working on a theatrical composition based on the life of Krishna and influenced by Mozart's Magic Flute.
(Janos Gereben, a regular contributor to www.sfcv.org, is arts editor of the
Post Newspaper Group. His e-mail address is janosg@gmail.com.)
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