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IN Music News THIS WEEK:
Bluebeard at the Conservatory
Who Did the Search Leading to Gockley?
Is Summers Coming 'Home'?
Music on KALW-FM
From the World of Opera (and Basketball) PR
Seattle Opera Season
Voices of Severance Hall
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By Janos Gereben
Gunn to Retire from Conservatory Opera
When the San Francisco Conservatory of Music presents Massenet's Cendrillon in Cowell Theater, April 7-10, there will
be a Cinderella on stage and another one backstage. The unseen "humble-but-successful" heroine is Willene Gunn, who has
headed the Conservatory's busy and prominent Opera Program for the past three decades. Cendrillon will be Gunn's last
hurrah before retirement.
The Opera Program had Cinderella-like beginnings, with a workshop and a single production. In a remarkable show of continuity, the
two lead singers in the first opera, Wendy Hillhouse and Nikki Li Hartliep, are both on the Conservatory faculty
today. For two of the program's three decades, Gunn worked closely with another notable musician and educator, Kathy
Cathcart. The conductor and music director has described her work with Gunn, stage director and "producer," as a "process of
collaboration and exchange."
A double major in voice and drama at the University of Montana and the Juilliard School (where she studied with Jan Popper), Gunn
participated in the Merola Program in 1960, and after a singing career as a dramatic mezzo, she went on to direct some 75 opera
productions in the Bay Area, Nevada and Arizona, in addition to her work at the Conservatory. She has taught at the University of
California, at Berkeley and Santa Cruz.
Gunn, who is moving to Ashland (home to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival), is thinking of "trying some of those great roles such as
Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest." (It's easy to imagine Gunn demanding to see her missing bag, with the
missing baby in it, from the balmy Miss Prism.) As to a career of producing the most expensive art form on a school budget, Gunn
says "Over the years, we have tried to give students under our care the tools to survive and prosper in this competitive, stressful
(but always wonderful) world." She and Cathcart have compiled information on running opera workshops suitable for classrooms,
cataloguing 400 scenes; the publication is due at the end of the year.
Some of the singers who came through the Conservatory program: Elena Bocharova, John del Carlo, Daniel
Montenegro, Catherine Naglestad, Elza van den Heever; and composer Alva Henderson, a former singer.
Bluebeard at the Conservatory Not through the Opera Program, but rather as the result of individual effort comes a free performance of Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle in the Conservatory. Doug Han, a graduate student who is planning a career in conducting, is producing and conducting the opera, at 8 p.m., Friday, February 11. With a zero budget, Han has spent months to prepare performance of the difficult work "with piano, two talented young singers, uncut, and of course in the original Hungarian." Paul Murray sings Bluebeard, Kathleen Sisco is Judit, Abraham Fabella is the pianist, and Andrea Gulyás serves as the diction coach. For information, email vorrei_spiegarvi@yahoo.com.
Who Did the Search Leading to Gockley? Now that the search for the San Francisco Opera's new general manager is coming to an end, with Houston Opera's David Gockley as the likely successor to Pamela Rosenberg next year, it may be instructive to revisit the list of those making the decision. The SF Opera Association's Search Committee consists of 14 members, the first 10 from the Board of Directors: George Hume (committee chair), Franklin "Pitch" Johnson, board president Karl O. Mills, Doreen Woo Ho, Edward Eschbach, Robert Ellis, John Gunn, Paul Crane Dorfman, Craig Henderson, and Carol Nie. The four non-board members are mezzo Marilyn Horne, SF Opera music director Donald Runnicles, SF Opera production director Patrick Markle, and John Killacky, from San Francisco Foundation. No participation has been offered to members of the orchestra, chorus, unions or the public — unlike the practice of inclusion followed elsewhere in the affairs of publicly- supported organizations.
Is Summers Coming 'Home'? If (or rather, when) David Gockley moves from Houston to San Francisco, will his music director there tag along? Patrick Summers originally went from here to there, but chances are he will stick with the Houston company. Reason No. 1: SF Opera has a music director, Donald Runnicles, his renewed contract running through 2009. No. 2: a Summers interview with the Houston Chronicle's Charles Ward, in which the conductor speaks of his devotion to the city, "smitten with the contemporary art scene," having a house built for himself near downtown, and acquiring Julius. The last-named is a Cavalier King Charles spaniel, transportable, at least in theory, but that new house is another matter. What San Francisco can count on is an increasing number of guest appearances by the former resident.
Music on KALW-FM KALW-FM, 91.7 on the dial and available on the Internet, offers a great deal of interesting classical music programs these days, considerably more than KQED-FM that's many times larger and more affluent. For the ongoing documentary series on Leonard Bernstein, the San Francisco-generated "American Mavericks" programs, the BBC My Music, and weekly regulars, such as Jim Svejda's Record Shelf and Music from Other Minds, see www.kalw.org.
From the World of Opera (and Basketball) PR The prediction here a couple of weeks ago that former Levi Strauss & Co. and Portland (OR) Trail Blazers spokesperson Melinda Gable will become Director of Public Relations and Communications at the San Francisco Opera has become an accomplished fact. The additional news is that Robert Cable, acting Associate Director of Communications in San Francisco, has moved on to the Los Angeles Opera, to be Public Relations Manager there.
Seattle Opera Season Seattle Opera's next season — following the summer's Ring cycles — offers Jake Heggie's End of the Affair (premiered last year by the Houston Grand Opera); Jonathan Miller's production of Mozart's Così fan tutte; Strauss' Die Fledermaus, with Jane Eaglen (Rosalinde), Richard Berkeley-Steele (Eisenstein), and Christopher Feigum (Falke); and a new production of Verdi's Macbeth, with Andrea Gruber and Gordon Hawkins.
Voices of Severance Hall Franz Welser-Möst and the Cleveland Orchestra are presenting an unusually rich vocal program during the next season, just announced. For fans of Thomas Quasthoff, the end is the best - the season-closing concerts, June 8 and 11, will have the bass-baritone in the title role of Verdi's Falstaff, with Twyla Robinson, Simon Keenlyside, Celena Shafer, Luciana D'Intino and Kelley O'Connor in the cast (which is incomplete at this point). During the season's opening week, Stravinsky's Requiem Canticles will be performed (soloists TBA), followed in November by the Fauré Requiem and the Poulenc Gloria, with Heidi Grant Murphy, Robert Porco conducting. Lorraine Hunt Lieberson sings in Berlioz "Les nuits d'été" and in the local premiere of her husband's Neruda Songs, Dec. 5-8, Robert spano conducting. Thomas Hampson sings Faust, Juliane Banse Gretchen, Alan Held Mephistopheles, and John Tessier Ariel in January 12 and 14 performances of Schumann's Scenes from Goethe's `Faust'. Felicity Lott and a mezzo not yet selected will be on the February 2-4 programs of Chausson's Poème de l'amour et de la mer and the complete Mendelssohn A Midsummer Night's Dream. Bach's St. Matthew Passion in April will have Malin Hartelius, Bernarda Fink, Christoph Strehl, James Taylor, Christian Gerhaher, and Olaf Baer. On the other hand, so to speak, Lorin Maazel will conduct concerts in May, of the Wagner Ring... "without words," and therefore quite without singers. Karita Mattila is featured June 1 and 3, in Saariaho's Quatre Instants. Incidentally, both San Francisco "opera conductors" — Donald Runnicles of, yes, the SF Opera, and Michael Tilson Thomas, of the SF Symphony, but very fond of vocal music — will appear in Severance Hall during the season, conducting symphonic music only. Welser-Möst will conduct the Cleveland Orchestra in Davies Hall June 2 (Bartók Concerto for Orchestra; Dvorak, Symphony No. 5), June 3 (Stravinsky, Dumbarton Oaks Concerto; Dahl, Concerto for Alto Saxophone; Debussy, "Nuages" from Nocturnes; Mozart, Symphony No. 36), June 4 (Ravel, Alborada del gracioso and Boléro; Beethoven, Symphony No. 1; Henri Dutilleux, Symphony No. 2.)
(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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Willene Gunn