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IN Music News THIS WEEK:
Met Broadcasts Begin on Saturday
Lemony Snicket: Born of Opera
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By Janos Gereben
Of Contracts They Sing
The San Francisco chapter of AGMA (American Guild of Musical Artists) is fighting on two fronts these days, suing SF Opera for the treatment of singers there (see www.sfcv.org), and asking local government and the community to help in contract negotiations for the SF Symphony chorus.
Concerning the Symphony contract, negotiations for which have been delayed repeatedly, in a letter to the Board of Supervisors, the union said it has "proposed a yearly income of $12,000, for which we agree to appear in 28 Symphony performances and devote more than 200 hours to rehearsals and preparation. The difference between our last compensation proposal and their last compensation proposal is less than sixteen hundredths percent (.16%) of the current SFS annual budget — yet to your professional choristers, the difference is significant.
"Mediated negotiations resume the second week in December 2004. We would like to continue performing in the New Year with no threat of disruption because of unsuccessful contract negotiations. We encourage you to direct SFS management to apply resourcefulness and creativity to address the concerns of our members and to reach agreement on a contract. The disruption of even one performance threatens the loss of revenue far in excess of the amount of money it would require to meet the difference in our last compensation proposals."
As previously reported, AGMA has the support of the San Francisco Labor Council and the Musicians Union local, which represents the orchestra, and if the singers go on strike, orchestra members are not likely to cross picket lines, meaning that lack of a contract may shut down the Symphony for a while. The spokeperson for the Symphony Association said today that "Both sides agreed to resume negotiations next and look forward to continuing talks."
Met Broadcasts Begin on Saturday The 74th season of live Metropolitan Opera broadcasts begins on Saturday, with Verdi's I Vespri Siciliani. In the Bay Area, only the University of San Francisco's small KUSF-FM, 90.3, carries the programs, but www.operainfo.org can provide you with the necessary information to listen on the Internet. After Texaco's decades-long sponsorship of the broadcasts, their continuation was in question until new sponsors took over, led by the Annenberg Foundation and the Vincent E. Stabile Foundation. Among highlights of the 2004-05 season's 20-opera live series: the network premiere of Handel's Rodelinda, and new Met productions of Die Zauberflöte and Faust.
Lemony Snicket: Born of Opera There wouldn't be a Daniel Handler without opera. His parents met as supernumeraries at the San Francisco Opera, on the same stage where the 10-year-old Daniel himself made his debut as a street urchin in the 1980 production of Boheme, he says. [See note below.] You may hear about Handler these days, although Jim Carrey, Meryl Streep, and Jude Law will be more discussed when Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events opens in movie theaters soon. While Law — without whom no film can be made these days — plays Snicket, the real author of all 11 books is Handler. He is producing a different kind of music, performing accordion and keyboards with Magnetic Fields, having engaged Stephin Merritt of that band to write the theme song for "Lemony Snicket." [Now the note.] With Kori Lockhart's wondrous SF Opera database available online now, research is easy. If you go to www.archive.sfopera.com, and look for Bohème, you'll find out that there was no production of the Puccini that year! But if you search for Handler by name, he pops up in the 1983 Bohème, listed along with the entire SF Boys Choir. Memory is short, databases are forever. Bookmark that archive site.
(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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