San Francisco Classical Voice

The April 1 San Francisco broadcast will be Puccini's Manon Lescaut, with Karita Mattila in the title role. Other plans for the 8 p.m. broadcasts from the last season call for Verdi's Rigoletto, with Paolo Gavanelli (May 6), Tchaikovsky's Joan of Arc, with Dolora Zajick (June 3), Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, with Christine Brewer, Thomas Moser, and Donald Runnicles conducting (July 1), Verdi's A Masked Ball, Bizet's Carmen, Mozart's Don Giovanni, and the summer 2007 production of Richard Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier.

Gockley says broadcast Executive Producer Shane Gasbarra and Marilyn Mercur (who headed the Opera's radio program from 1972 through 1987) will go "back in time, locating old analog tapes of performances, one by one. They will try to rehabilitate and make broadcast-ready whatever is possible ... even that 1932 Tosca!"

Asked about the recent ownership change (from Bonneville International to Entercom Communications), and the possibility of a format change away from classical music, KDFC Program Director Bill Lueth said the new owners told him to go ahead with negotiations about the opera broadcasts.

Except for a handful of occasional local broadcasts in recent years — nothing since the 2002 Madama Butterfly on KALW, Rusalka in 1995, four live broadcasts in 1992, and 10 in 1987 — you have to go back to 1977-1982 for the kind of full-season, regular schedule Gockley is planning. Four years after the 1932 Tosca, there were several abridged broadcasts over NBC, using a single microphone by the prompter's box. Concerts and airchecks followed until another wartime, in 1944, when the full season of the San Francisco Opera was broadcast over KFRC, and sponsored by Safeway.

San Jose Dances to Live Music

Dance, performed to live music, is becoming an expensive rarity. But Ballet San Jose is sticking with a full symphony orchestra for its next season. Dennis Nahat's programs include a large-scale ballet based on Orff's Carmina Burana, performed with Symphony Silicon Valley, the 100-voice Symphony Silicon Valley Chorale, and Cantabile Youth Singers. Nahat's Nutcracker and Swan Lake will have the Tchaikovsky scores played by the orchestra, as well.

Recorded music will be used for Nahat's Summerscape (Shostakovich's Piano Concerto No. 2), Firebird (Stravinsky), Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 4, and an all-Balanchine evening of Serenade in C Major, Theme and Variations (both Tchaikovsky), and The Four Temperaments (Hindemith).

Inaugural Concert in Antioch

Antioch's El Campanil Theater will have the first orchestral concert in its 79-year history on April 21, when the California Symphony performs a "Broadway and Beyond" program there. Barry Jekowsky continues to lead a season of special events on the orchestra's 20th birthday. Michael Maguire will be the soloist. The city of Antioch and the Dean and Margaret Lesher Foundation are sponsoring the event.

Choral Directors Honor Mechem

At its national conference in Miami last weekend, the American Choral Directors Association presented a 50-year chronological retrospective of Kirke Mechem's choral works, from his first publication (1957) to his most recent (2007). Choral Journal reports that the association concentrated on the San Francisco composer's shorter works: madrigals, motets, and selections from choral cycles and operas. The University Singers of Western Illinois University, directed by James C. Stegall, sang 12 Mechem pieces.

Lyric Opera Kansas City has announced the commission of Mechem's opera, John Brown. The premiere next season will celebrate the company's 50th anniversary. Mechem's Tartuffe continues with six new productions this season, most recently at Skylight Opera Theater in Milwaukee. Locally, BASOTI will produce the work on July 27 and 29 at the Legion of Honor. Audiences here will also get a preview of Mechem's latest, Pride and Prejudice, in Davies Hall on Aug. 3 and 4, when the San Francisco Choral Society, conducted by Robert Geary, performs the first scene on a program featuring the Brahms Requiem.

L.A. Opera's Baitzel Dies

Edgar Baitzel, chief operating officer of the Los Angeles Opera, died Monday morning of liver cancer, at age 51. He joined L.A. Opera in 2000 as artistic administrator. Koblenz-born Baitzel began his stage career working as an assistant stage director under Götz Friedrich and Jean-Pierre Ponnelle. He worked as assistant manager to August Everding at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, and later became head dramaturg when Wolfgang Sawallisch ran the company. He also filled management positions at the Karlsruhe and Bonn opera companies.

The Music of ODC

Brenda Way's ODC/DANCE is presenting the company's 36th annual spring season at Yerba Buena Center, featuring a greatly varied music program. KT Nelson's Scramble uses Yo-Yo Ma's recording of the Bach Cello Suite, No. 6; Way's Book of Hours is set to music by Meredith Monk. Way's classic (but ever-fresh and funny) Scissors, Paper, Stone mixes Moschitta, Hooker, Wainwright, Hendrix, Nichols, and Coppola. Nelson's The Water Project has commissioned music from French Canadian composer Linda Bouchard, and Way's Investigating Grace utilizes the Glenn Gould recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations.

Nelson's Stomp a Waltz is choreographed to Brazilian pianist and composer Marcos Zarvos' Nepomuk's Dances, performed by Ethel, a New York-based string quartet, which recorded the work with the help of a grant from the Argosy Foundation.