Savoyards Just Wanna Have Fun

A vital element all too often missing from performances is the ability to have fun. FUN, in all caps, was overflowing at the 54-year-old Lamplighters' 41st annual gala performance Saturday in Herbst Theatre. A complex, highly instructive story about Queen Victoria's visit to a theater out in the picturesque English countryside served as the hilarious vehicle to tweak the lyrics in some of the best-known Gilbert and Sullivan songs.

Sergeant Pepper of Scotland Yard attempted to secure the Queen's entrance, and the alert level increased from ochre to fuchsia as the police searched for weapons and sang woefully: "A screener's lot is not a happy one." The Three Little Maidens of The Mikado did their number to supertitles in Japanese. A certain Dame Ruthe Drench (refrain from gagging) was waylaid on her way to portray Victoria in the presence of the Queen. With a female impersonator portraying the Dame appearing as Victoria, the Queen herself got away from her minders. And, bingo! Three Victorias, hounded by two rival Sherlock Holmes wannabes ... well, you get the idea, if not the full measure of mirth therein.

Victoria's Secret, or, an Inconvenient Ruth was produced and directed by Lamplighters' artistic director, Barbara Heroux, with musical direction by Baker Peeples. It's based on the book by Mike Dederian. In the huge cast (how did they get all of them on that tiny stage?), outstanding musical performances included Jennifer Ashworth as Marie Antoinette, who dissuades a Les Miserables crowd from excessive bread consumption. Among Ashworth's fellow stars: Katy Daniel as poisoned Dame Ruth, and Stacey Helley as Mary Scott of Queens (borough).

Other Minds Spring Into Action

One of the country's most resolutely "new music" organizations, Charles Amirkhanian's Other Minds, will open its 12th annual festival Dec. 8-10, in the San Francisco Jewish Community Center. On the program of three concerts over the weekend is an international conglomerate of composers: Per Nørgård (Denmark), Peter Sculthorpe (Australia), Maja Ratkje (Norway), Joëlle Léandre (France), Ronald Bruce Smith (Canada), Daniel David Feinsmith (U.S.), Markus Stockhausen (Germany), and Tara Bouman (Netherlands). And the performers include: the Del Sol String Quartet, the Feinsmith Quartet, accordionist Frode Haltli, and didjeridu player Stephen Kent.

Adams Opera Premieres in Vienna

Self-described as a "retired art and music critic, and semiretired composer," Healdsburg's Charles Shere popped over to Vienna last week, to attended the world premiere of John Adams' A Flowering Tree, due for a U.S. premiere in Davies Hall on March 1. Adams and director Peter Sellars collaborated on the libretto, a fairy tale about a girl who turns into a flowering tree by night.

The occasion for the premiere, Shere writes, is Sellars' commission to present a citywide celebration of Mozart's 250th birthday: "But Sellars refused to present Mozart — who was already well enough represented elsewhere — and instead chose to present the revolutionary and visionary spirit that animated Mozart, especially in his last years, when he belonged to an idealistic Masonic lodge called New Crowned Hope.

"And so the opera was performed by three young American singers, a pair of Indonesian dancers, a chorus, and musicians of a youth orchestra from Venezuela. The stage was dominated by a stylized tree upstage center. Stage left, there were three wide lilypadlike platforms on which the stylized action took place. On stage right, another platform high and back, with the orchestral winds seated in front, and the strings in the pit.

"The opera is in two acts, each about an hour long. The music is continuous, with very few silences, and in Adams' familiar style, with chuffing repeated figures providing energy and motion, and long phrases riding over them, providing emotional charge and color. The story: A girl turns into a tree whose blossoms are sold at the village market to provide for her aging mother. They attract a prince who falls in love with her, but demands she continue to turn into a tree during their nights of love. A jealous sister of the prince tricks her into repeating the trick, but stops the process by which she returns to human form, leaving her a limbless torso. The prince wanders disconsolate; the torso is carried by beggars from city to city, where she sings her sad songs for what pennies she can. Ultimately, the lovers are reunited, and her sacrifice and love returns her (and, presumably, her prince) to their rightful form. We don't find out what happens to the evil sister.

"All this is presented at one remove, sung by a narrator (baritone Eric Owens), and directly, by a soprano (Jessica Rivera), and tenor (Russell Thomas). The action is also danced throughout (Rusini Sidi, Eko Supriyanto, and Astri Kusama Wardani). And the story is commented on by the chorus (they sing in Spanish, the soloists in English, and the whole supertitled in both English and German). Adams led the Orchestra Joven Camerata de Venezuela, who played well, and the Choir Schola Cantorum de Venezuela, an effective large chorus. The stage design was by George Tsypin, the costumes by Gabriel Berry, the lighting by James Ingalls, and the sound design by Mark Grey. I found the opera long but beautiful, and the effect tranquilizing in the end (I mean that in a good sense), a sort of corrective and logical sequel to Doctor Atomic, the previous Adams-Sellars collaboration, given last season by San Francisco Opera."

For more of Shere's report, see his blog.

Kronos Contemporary Concert at Stanford

Stanford Lively Arts' next event is a concert by the Kronos Quartet, on Dec. 1, in Dinkelspiel Auditorium. They will offer four of the numerous new works commissioned for the Kronos during the past 14 years by Margaret I. Dorfman. A preperformance discussion, "Commissioning New Music," will be led by Stanford Lively Arts Artistic and Executive Director Jenny Bilfield.

On the program: Sofia Gubaidulina’s 1993 Quartet No. 4, inspired by the poetry of T.S. Eliot, Peteris Vasks’ Quartet No. 5 (2004), Michael Gordon’s The Sad Park (2005), and Unsuk Chin's ParaMetaString (1996). Founded by violinist David Harrington 33 years ago, the San Francisco-based ensemble includes violinist John Sherba, violist Hank Dutt, and cellist Jeffrey Zeigler. The quartet has released more than 40 recordings and commissioned more than 500 new works and arrangements.

If You Wonder Where the Stubs Went ...

Forever and a day, your concert tickets have been torn on entrance, often in a crudely irregular fashion, and you're left with a stump, instead of a collectible. You might have noticed lately, however, that Davies Hall ushers no longer tear tickets, nor are there any scanners (the alternative) in evidence.

Your inquiring reporter, worried about the apparent lack of accounting for actual attendance, observed the entrance scene long enough to figure out what's happening. One usher looks at the tickets, another uses a clicker to keep count. For whatever reason, it's done discreetly. But don't worry about carpal tunnel befalling the clicking ushers: Scanners are on their way.