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IN Music News THIS WEEK: Dead Man Unrevived
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By Janos Gereben
Dead Man Unrevived
San Francisco Opera had the perfect chance to break the Curse of Single Production, but the administration chickened out at the last minute, using a singularly lame excuse. It was never announced officially, but plans were firm enough to start signing contracts for a revival of the 2000 world-premiere production of Jake Heggie's Dead Man Walking during the 2004-05 season in the War Memorial.
This precedent-breaking move to give a new opera more than a single, initial production is not to be. SFCV has learned that the future production, which would have reunited most of the original cast, has been cancelled by the Opera, which is dealing with a deficit approaching $8 million. Singers who were to participate in the project said they were "heartbroken" when they learned of the decision shortly before the holidays.
Regardless of individual feelings about Heggie's work, pleading poverty makes no sense to cancel the revival. The Opera owns the production and Dead Man did better at the box office than any other new opera — even some of the old chestnuts — prompting Lotfi Mansouri, the general manager who commissioned the work, to add an unprecedented eighth performance to the run. If memory serves, even that was sold out. So, here's an opera that's a best-seller and in a production already "paid for" — how do you justify cancellation based on budget considerations? An answer may be forthcoming on January 15, when Pamela Rosenberg holds a press conference to announce the 2003-04 season.
Meanwhile, Dead Man is going international, with a production being prepared for four performances in Adelaide, August 7-16. If cast members there are different from those singing the work in San Francisco, New York and elsewhere in the US, it's because the rules Down Under specify the use of Australian singers. At the State Opera of South Australia, the principals are Kirsti Harms (Sister Helen), Teddy Tahu Rhodes (Joseph de Rocher), Elizabeth Campbell (Joseph's Mother).
Upcoming US productions include January 10-13, Austin Lyric Opera, with Margaret Jane Wray, Mary Phillips (Sister Helen), John Packard, Mel Ulrich (Joseph de Rocher); June, Michigan Opera Theater; June, 2004, Pittsburgh Opera.
Too Many New American Operas? One possible wrinkle in the story above, about Dead Man, is the commission to John Adams for an opera about J. Robert Oppenheimer, to premiere in 2005. (SFCV, Dec. 10.)Maybe we just couldn't take two contemporary American operas separated only by a year? Adams said the commission came from Rosenberg in 1999, more than a year before she officially took over the reins in the War Memorial. Oppenheimer's story, Adams said, is a matter of "American mythology." Growing up in the 1950s and '60s, the composer lived through "the worst part of the Cold War, and these images are planted in my consciousness... I'm interested in using in part the structure of the 1950s science-fiction movie. These events were played out during a time when all those movies about bombs and monsters and strange genetic mutations were very popular, and they invaded the consciousness, the unconsciousness, of the country." Adams will start composing next summer, after completing commissions for the San Francisco Symphony and the opening of the Los Angeles Philharmonic's Disney Hall.
Rorem, Glennie of 'Another Mind' The ninth annual Other Minds festival of contemporary music, scheduled for March 5-8 in the Palace of Fine Arts Theater, will feature an early 80th birthday celebration of Ned Rorem (born October 23, 1923) and performances by percusssionist Evelyn Glennie. Festival director Charles Amirkhanian has also commissioned new works from Stephen Scott (known for his use of bowed piano) and Ge Gan-ru. Among the festival premieres: Daniel Lentz's Café Desire, a musical theater work for 60 players, a male soprano, female baritone, mixed chorus, and two "bartender percussionists" performing with 80 wine glasses. For information, see www.otherminds.org.
Digital Rights — Whose? "DRM" may not be in the forefront of your concerns, but it's really an important issue, a host of legal-moral-technological puzzles. Digital Rights Management deals with copy protection, content management, region-encrypted DVDs, fair use, privacy, and much, much more. To bring this closer to home, every time you play a music CD, video or DVD, you're involved with the confusing, fast-developing aspects of DRM. DRM will come closer to home geographically as well in a few weeks when the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology and the Berkeley Technology Law Journal co-sponsor a ground-breaking conference about it. The event, expected to focus national and international attention on the matter, will be attended by representatives of industry, academia, government, and the nonprofit sector. The conference is scheduled February 27 through March 1, in the Bancroft Hotel, across Bancroft Way from Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law. For information, see www.law.berkeley.edu
'Operas of Social Protest' Paul Smith's tiny but daring Contemporary Opera Marin starts January (17-18, 24-25, and as a "Superbowl alternative" on January 26) with never or hardly-ever heard works, involved in social protest. On the program: Shostakovich's Rayok, Harry Partch's Barstow and Peter Maxwell Davies' Yellow Cake Review, and Suffragette songs. For more information (badly needed), see www.COM-opera.com.
Federal Pittance: Poor US Vs. Magnanimous Europe On Monday, the National Endowment for the Arts announced that its first round of 2003 grants will total $26 million. NEA is budgeting $1.6 million in 45 awards to orchestras around the country, including the San Francisco Symphony ($100,000), the Berkeley Symphony ($25,000), $10,000 to the California Symphony, the Oakland East Bay Symphony, and the Philharmonia Baroque. In another category, the San Francisco Opera is granted $50,000. Keeping the above figures in mind, consider this: also on Monday, news came from Berlin that, for the first time, the city's three major opera houses agreed to work together and consider reducing their share of the subsidy. And how much are the three opera companies receive annually from the city alone? $118 million. From Berlin, whose $41 billion debt well exceeds the new record deficit for the entire state of California. Amazing.
(Janos Gereben, a regular contributor to www.sfcv.org, is arts editor of the
Post Newspaper Group. His e-mail address is janos451@earthlink.net.)
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