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IN Music News THIS WEEK:
No Time Like the Present to Hear Walther
Tebaldi Ill
Not a Stuffed Kangaroo in Sight . . .
Slatkin to Quit, MTT Looks Younger
In Miami, MTT Looks Bolder
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By Janos Gereben
Money Matters
San Francisco Opera, nearing the end of a successful season — good attendance, mostly good reviews — is still in
the financial fight of its corporate life, and there is both news and rumor with a dollar-sign prefix pouring forth from the War
Memorial. Current fiscal figures are not available, but the last report made public (for the fiscal year ending in 2002) showed a
$5 million deficit added to $58m income for an operating budget of $63m.
Against the likelihood of a continued shortfall, salary decisions become even more important than they would be under normal
circumstances. When music director Donald Runnicles' contract extension through 2009 was announced a week ago, Music
News added this to the story: "The Opera's last required public tax statement (in 2002) showed a fee of $361,000 for the music
director, a figure $7,000 over (general manager) Pamela Rosenberg's salary."
Later that day, the SF Chronicle's Matier & Ross column stated that Runnicles' current salary increased from the
figure quoted here to $513,241. An employee of the Opera told SFCV: "That's $152,000 more, or a 40% raise, at a time when
the company said there was nothing in the kitty to pay the chorus, the orchestra, the ballet, after months and months of bitter
negotiation. Members of the staff agreed over this past year to give back at least two weeks' pay to help make the deficit go away.
People here are steamed."
On Friday, Rosenberg told a company meeting that the Chronicle has been asked to correct the article because "To say that
(Runnicles') compensation was `boosted' is inaccurate. As with other conductors and guest solo singers, the level of Maestro
Runnicles' compensation is directly connected to the number of times he performs. The increase in question can be attributed to the
fact that he conducted three more productions in the 2002-03 season than the 2001-02 season. His compensation will necessarily
fluctuate, depending on his SFO conducting schedule." The statement only confirms the reported total, and at the same time,
corrects the time reference: if the compensation was for 2002-2003, then the figure for the current season is still not known...
and is likely to be higher.
Also on the financial front, there are widespread rumors — not confirmed, but coming from multiple, reliable sources —
that the Opera has set up a special fund, in the amount of $2 million, earmarked to protect the music director's salary; that the
company has purchased a building in San Francisco to house props and sets, with a new crew to work there; and that AGMA has
33 outstanding contract grievances against the SFO administration, receiving little or no response. The grievances allege the
company has failed to honor the terms of its labor contract, and the union is said to be preparing legal action.
No Time Like the Present to Hear Walther Violist Geraldine Walther, one of the SF Symphony's most esteemed principals, will be featured on the Dec. 1-4 subscription concerts, along with concertmaster Alexander Barantschik, in the Britten Double Concerto, and here's a special recommendation to attend one (or more) of those concerts. Nobody knows yet for sure, including Walther, but the Britten may yet turn out to be a local swan song for the violist. Among three finalists, she is the favored candidate to succeed Roger Tapping, who is planning to retire from Boulder's globe-trotting Takács Quartet, touring New Zealand and Australia at the moment. If Walther joins violinists Edward Dusinberre and Károly Schranz, and cellist András Fejér on their rounds around the world, she will not be able to continue with SFS. (Schranz and Fejér were among the quartet's founders in Budapest 30 years ago; Tapping joined in 1995.)
Tebaldi Ill Renata Tebaldi, one of the surviving superstars of opera from the middle of the last century, will be 83 on February 1, and newspaper reports from her San Marino residence speak of "various illnesses," saying that "her condition is worsening."
Not a Stuffed Kangaroo in Sight . . . for Johannes Schaaf's Onegin production, opening this week in the War Memorial, but well-informed sources report that Schaaf's animal toys for his Barber of Seville are replaced in the Tchaikovsky opera by hats of large bird nests, bronze sheath dresses with huge feathers, and similar authentic 19th century Russian apparel.
Slatkin to Quit, MTT Looks Younger In reporting Leonard Slatkin's decision to leave the music director's position with the National Symphony at the end of the 2007-2008 season, Tim Page writes in the Washington Post: "It is unclear where Slatkin might go from Washington, where he was paid $1.1 million in 2003, the last year for which there are public records. A number of leading American orchestras — Boston, Philadelphia, St. Louis, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Cleveland among them — have relatively youthful music directors, some of them appointed quite recently, who are expected to remain in their positions for years to come . . ." Slatkin turned 60 on September 1, and the "relatively youthful" MTT will hit the mark on Dec. 21 (not to be confused with his "official birthday," to be celebrated at an SFS gala concert on January 13, with Renée Fleming, Audra McDonald, Frederica von Stade and Thomas Hampson). As to the "quite recent" appointment, the San Francisco Symphony music director is marking his first decade in the position.
In Miami, MTT Looks Bolder Michael Tilson Thomas' "other orchestra," the New World Symphony, is preparing a bold project, crowning an already adventurous season (see www.nws.org). The young orchestra's "In-Context Presentations" include "Upheaval: Composers and the Third Reich." The two-week-long series in January, will explore and perform the music of composers who perished in the Holocaust or whose lives were fundamentally altered by the oppression of the Third Reich. The multi-dimensional educational and performance project includes concerts of orchestral music led by James Conlon, featuring Garrick Ohlsson. MTT and Conlon have both made determined efforts to raise the consciousness of musicians and the public about a significant body of work representing this "missing chapter" in Western cultural heritage. The program to be conducted by Conlon, includes Bohuslav Martinu's Memorial to Lidice, the (Jazz) Suite for Chamber Orchestra by Erwin Schulhof, who died in the Wülzburg concentration camp after his music was labeled "degenerate" by the Nazis; Victor Ullman's Piano Concerto, written in Theresienstadt, before the composer's death in Auschwitz; and a suite from The Florentine Tragedy by Alexander von Zemlinsky, one of the thousands of refugees from Nazi persecution. The "Upheaval" series also includes chamber music concerts, which feature Ullmann's String Quartet No. 3, Olivier Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time, composed in a German prisoner-of-war camp and premiered for an audience of inmates; and Marc Neikrug's Through Roses, a contemporary music drama for actor (John Rubinstein), eight solo instruments and conductor, a monodrama that delves into the mind of a Jewish violinist and concentration camp survivor.
(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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