San Francisco Classical Voice

Runnicles Recovers Quickly

San Francisco Opera music director Donald Runnicles, who has been appearing regularly at the Vienna State Opera for several years now, has a particularly heavy season this year, leading performances of Elektra, Billy Budd, and Parsifal. Mid-week, he fell ill, and weekend performances of Elektra were conducted by Michael Boder instead, and the March 29 Billy Budd by Michael Halasz. Contacted by Classical Voice in Vienna, Runnicles wrote that he has been resting over the weekend on his doctor's recommendation, and the problem had to do with "some medication for high blood pressure, which is now regulated." He was planning to return to work on Monday, but not taking the easy way. On the schedule: orchestra rehearsals for Parsifal.

Same Time, Same Place: the Staatsoper

Also at the Vienna State Opera, writes Donald Rosenberg in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, there are some new developments in the search for a music director to succeed Seiji Ozawa. We went to the Plain Dealer for information because the scoop is that Cleveland Orchestra music director Franz Welser-Möst has been offered the position, but he turned it down last weekend. With a contract in Cleveland through 2012 and more offers from all over than even Kent Nagano gets, Welser-Möst said accepting the Vienna post would mean "breaching the contract" in Cleveland because "both institutions deserve 100 percent focus . . . I cannot give each institution 50 percent, which would mean in the end both institutions would suffer."

Just a couple of weeks ago, Music Notes, listed the 44-year-old Austrian's current mind-boggling schedule, which includes continued musical leadership of the Zürich Opera (accounting for zero percent?). Turning the job down in Vienna doesn't change plans for Welser-Möst conducting a new Staatsoper Ring cycle, beginning in 2007.

Santa Rosa Season

At the Santa Rosa Symphony, the next year will mark Jeffrey Kahane's tenth and last season as music director, and programs include a four-concert celebration of "Vienna's Golden Age," and two Magnum Opus-commissioned works: Kevin Puts' Vespertine Symphonies and Ingram Marshall's Bright Kingdoms. Guest conductors Joana Carneiro and Mariusz Smolij are likely to be on auditions to succeed Kahane.

The Vienna series begins with three Jackson Chamber Music Insights concerts, the series in its fourth year at Sonoma Country Day School, with chamber concerts performed by principal players of the SRS, featuring Joseph Edelberg, violin, in one concert and Kahane at piano in two performances. The fourth concert, at the Luther Burbank Center, will have Kahane conducting and playing Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4.

The subscription season begins October 9, with 17-year-old Caitlin Tully as the soloist in Beethoven's Violin Concerto; the West Coast premiere of Robert Aldridge's Leda and the Swan, and Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe.

Relief for Tower, but Not in Berkeley

Last week's report here about Tower Records's quick emergence from bankruptcy protection did not include a probable obituary for the Berkeley store. According to reports, it will be the only store in California to close. It will be a sad day, comments the Berkeley Symphony's Jennifer Easton, "for classical music buyers in these parts, and those of us who grew up in that store buying anything our parents hated."

Scots' Operatic Thrift

Unions are in the vanguard of developing plans for the Scottish Opera, which is facing financial problems threatening the survival of the company. Equity (the performers' union) and Bectu (for technical and backstage staff) have submitted their own business plan, proposing to stop the production of large-scale works in Glasgow and Edinburgh for at least two years, saving the company $3.2 million. The alternative is to follow the management plan, continuing with standard productions and increasing the deficit to the point of inevitable large job losses.

Without a drastic reorganization, the unions say, "We believe that if the body of talent that works for Scottish Opera is dismantled, the investment of the last 40 years would be wasted." The union plan is to organize four tours of 80 performances on a small scale, the Opera Go Round and Essential Scottish Opera brands, and two tours of 30 performances on medium scale, using the Scottish Opera on Tour brand.

At the SF Opera: Labor's Love Lost?

You read it here first: in spite of bad omens, a strike jeopardizing the San Francisco Opera's summer season may yet be avoided. That's a (hopeful) opinion. Here are the facts: there seems to be little progress in negotiations between the San Francisco Opera administration and AGMA, representing the chorus in four months (see www.tinyurl.com/27spx) or, indeed, since the expiration of contracts for the chorus in February . . . of 2003! The problem is that the clock is now ticking very loudly, and a strike is possible if there is no settlement by mid-April. (Small units of IATSE are more on track, see item below.)

In spite of all obvious and well-justified references to the matter of compensation and the Opera's financial problems, there is another elephant in the room, all too familiar both from labor negotiations involving artists anywhere and in particular, in this city. It's Feelings. Salaries and benefits are as important for artists as for anyone else, but being respected, appreciated is a major issue, more so if not by much — than for others.

I covered the 1996 SF Symphony labor negotiations, which eventually led to a bitter, devastating 10-week strike. From the beginning, months before the strike, it was clear that hostility between management and the musicians made traditional contract issues less important than usual. One of the musicians put it simply: "We want to deal with a management that has a decent and fair regard for us. The executive director lives a life of luxury and disrespects us, who make the music." Peter Pastreich might not have lived a "life of luxury," but the musicians' feelings were a major factor in the headlong rush into a probably unnecessary strike (money issues were resolved already). As to the executive director's public stand, it was: "I have great respect for our musicians. I know they are among the finest in the world." Words were not enough.

The strike and the major psychological reasons for the strike were resolved when the musicians and management went away for a three-day retreat, conducted by psychologist Gary Friedman, an expert on mediation. Things have been hunky-dory since, the next contract signed well before the deadline, in a virtual love-fest.

Conflict of emotions is perhaps not as severe in the War Memorial today as it was in Davies Hall eight years ago, but there are clear echoes of it. In Steven Winn's SF Chronicle report on the AGMA negotiations (www.tinyurl.com/33bnm), labor negotiators were quoted about SFO general manager Pamela Rosenberg's "complete lack of respect . . . for the contributions made to the opera by the chorus, the extra chorus and the dancers." Rosenberg replied, not unlike Pastreich: "I thoroughly appreciate and respect their contributions. They are incredible artists. To their toes they all care about the art form."

And now, just as compliments were turned away at the Symphony, AGMA is disputing the point. In a letter to Rosenberg on Thursday, AGMA executive director Alan Gordon wrote of her praise for the artists: "in point of fact both you and your negotiating team have refused to translate that hollow statement into any realistic accommodation of the economic needs of AGMA's members and, worse, you have consistently failed to recognize that AGMA's members have already sacrificed 25 percent of their actual take home pay, a sacrifice far greater than that made by any other group of employees.

"The chorus, which has not had any salary increase since April of 2002, suffered devastating financial setbacks to themselves and their families, truly losing a quarter of their disposable income. You publicly thank the orchestra for its 'sacrifice'. . . but you wholly, completely and consistently fail to recognize or appreciate the tremendous real sacrifices already made by your chorus to the viability of the opera."

Gordon's statement concludes: "Thus far, instead of rewarding the tremendous contributions made to the Opera by our members, your contractual proposals have reflected disrespect for their craft, disregard of their economic needs, and contempt for the contribution they make, every single day, to the continuing success of the San Francisco Opera as a cultural institution."

Sounds like a session or two of mediation would be useful just about now in the Opera House, but some of the singers are not as upset about respect and regard as concerned with issues of economic survival.

"With the cancellation of the Winter season," a chorus member told Classical Voice, "and the apparent desire on the part of the administration to utilize the chorus less, 31 weeks of work per year could well become the norm. In the past we always surpassed the guaranteed minimum number of weeks, so the `guarantee' had no real meaning to us. Now it threatens to be the norm.

"On our current weekly salaries, the `guarantee' to the lowest full-time chorister is $37,500. Choristers employed 11 years or more are guaranteed $43,792. Our salaries could drop to that level whenever the company chooses a repertoire that under-utilizes the chorus, or if they choose to under-rehearse us, as has happened in the past. This is one of the justifications for us seeking a meaningful annual guarantee at a living wage. Next year, despite a proposed 1% (or hinted 2%) increase, our salaries are expected to drop drastically. The orchestra, earning far more money than the chorus, is protected from these fluctuations. The chorus is not."

Rosenberg's response to what she understands as AGMA's plan to hold a meeting on April 14th "where they will be asked to vote on a proposal calling for various types of work stoppage activities in the coming weeks" is that "Any labor actions sanctioned by AGMA would have detrimental consequences to the Opera and its future."

Opera Labor Miscellany

SF Opera negotiations involve some 200 employees besides orchestra musicians, represented by the Musicians Union, and chorus members, who belong to AGMA. There is a bewildering variety of occupations and a number of specific locals of IATSE involved. (That abbreviation stands, in an abbreviated way, for the "International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees Moving Picture Technicians Artists and Allied Crafts of the United States Its Territories and Canada".) Without F.X. Crowley, of IATSE Local 16, we couldn't have figured out the who's-who and what's-what of that picture.

Local 16, which has a contract through Dec. 31 of this year, is the largest unit, representing about 100 stage technicians, carpenters, electricians, warehouse workers. The IATSE unit known as B-18 represents ushers and box-office employees. Local 784 has those working in wardrobe. Hairdressers and makeup artists are in Local 706. Scenic designers belong to USA 829; scenic artists (painters) to Local 800. Given the different units and various expiration dates for contracts, it's unclear just where talks stand with IATSE, but most of them seems to have either settled or getting near to an agreement.

All the Opera Fit to Hear, Live or Online

OPERA America, a national "trade association" of opera, makes important information services public at its Website, including an interactive database of performances by its member companies. There are performance schedules and casts for some 220 opera companies at www.operaamerica.org/perfdatabase.asp, and detailed information about hundreds of opera broadcasts at www.operaworld.com/special/broadcast.shtml.