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IN Music News THIS WEEK:
Degas, NEA Chief's Opera, Local Angles in Idaho
Drive for Art
ACSO Conference
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By Janos Gereben
Comings & Goings, Facts & Rumors
This is an unusually busy time for changes at the top of arts organizations, even if you don't consider new positions for Kent Nagano. Topic A locally, of course, is the non-renewal of SF Opera general manager Pamela Rosenberg's contract, meaning that we'll have only two years now to speculate about her successor, IF she doesn't leave sooner to take the top job in Salzburg the buzz says she will. More about the rumor mill later, first here's something you can take to the bank.
Simultaneously with publishing the news in the last column about the appointment of David Finckel and Wu Han as artistic co-directors of the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society, Classical Voice asked the couple if this means an early exit from Music@Menlo they started only last year. The reply was instant and emphatic, in capital letters and with an exclamation mark: "NO WAY!" The message from Finckel continued: "Menlo came first, and it's our exclusive summer festival, so different from presenting a winter season. Music@Menlo is really like a precious jewel to us, as is ArtistLed." (ArtistLed —www.artistled.com — is an independent recording company, founded in 1997, by cellist Finckel and pianist Wu Han.)
Back to the future of San Francisco Opera. An interesting new rumor adds a dark-horse entry to the ever-present list of the usual suspects for general manager. With strong international, New York and local credentials, San Francisco Ballet general manager Lesley Koenig is now believed to be on that list... even though she hasn't sought the job, being quite contented in her position, just across Franklin Street from the War Memorial.
Koenig's career spans more than 20 years as a producer and director; she was staff stage director for the Metropolitan Opera for 13 consecutive seasons in over 30 productions and has directed at other venues, such as Lyric Opera of Chicago, Stadttheater St. Gallen, the Salzburg Festival, Vereingte Bühnen-Graz and Stadttheater Aachen. She won two Emmy Awards for her contributions to the Metropolitan Opera broadcast productions of La Boheme and Tosca; is coauthor of the book Renaissance and Baroque Drawings.
And, there is a Nagano item for the "changing times" category, after all. Multiple sources indicate that when he takes the top opera position in Munich in 2006, he will not renew his contract as music director with the Los Angeles Opera. If that happens, it would obviously impact his work in Berkeley, at least from the logistical point of view: he has been piggybacking trips to West Coast locations, and if you take away the major landing spot here, a Munich/Paris-Berkeley commute may become more difficult to sustain.
Degas, NEA Chief's Opera, Local Angles in Idaho BOISE, Idaho — The visitor, who followed "Degas in Bronze: the Complete Sculptures" exhibit from the SF Legion of Honor to the Boise Art Museum, bumped by sheer chance into news of Nosferatu here. That would be an opera about the good Count Dracula, by Alva Henderson and Dana Gioia, its world premiere to open Opera Idaho's 32nd season on November 6. The company's artistic director, Douglas Nagel, who is responsible for landing the event in this fine, but "faraway" city of 200,000, is our Local Angle of the day. Nagel was the first in a long line of resident artists at Opera San Jose, selected by company founder-director Irene Dalis in 1988. The young baritone's first assignment in San Jose was the role of Paul in Henderson's West of Washington Square. Almost a decade later, Nagel and Henderson connected again when the singer was asked by the composer to perform an "opera in progress" fragment in Colorado. That worked progressed to the full-blown Nosferatu in seven years, to join Henderson's oeuvre of Medea, The Last of the Mohicans, Achilles, and The Tempest. Recently, there was a showcase production of the new work in Palo Alto. As to the librettist, Gioia is now chairman of the National Endowment of the Arts, but in his leaner years, the Stanford graduate was but a humble music critic for San Francisco magazine. A much-published author with the 2002 American Book Award for Interrogations at Noon, Gioia has taught at Johns Hopkins, Sarah Lawrence and Wesleyan University. Not shy about the role of the libretto in music theater, Gioia says opera as a genre began as "a kind of poetic drama... the Renaissance Florentines who invented it were trying to recreate the ideal balance between poetry and music found in classical Greek drama. That balance between words and music should remain the artistic goal. I consider the libretto a significant poetic form whose literary potential has barely been realized in English." Future plans for Nosferatu? "La Scala, Covent Garden, and the Met," says Gioia, with a vision of broad horizons beyond Boise. Along with Nagel, the San Jose connection is also present in the opera's female lead, Ellen, sung by Susan Gundunas, another veteran of the Silicon Valley West of Washington Square, who returned to California after a long run with the Hamburg Opera. Nagel is taking the title role, and the third principal, Eric is sung by Robert McPhearson. Nagel is also the artistic director of Rimrock Opera, in Billings, Montana, and Nosferatu's $187,000 price tag is paid for jointly by the two companies as a collaborative production. For information about the Boise world premiere, see www.operaidaho.org.
Drive for Art More than 100,000 drivers have it, raising $6 million for a good cause, but the California Arts License Plate is still somewhat of a well-kept secret. For example, would you know who designed it or what other state has a custom license plate benefitting only arts education? The answers are, respectively, Wayne Thiebaud, and None. Join a good cause and beautify the old jalopy and the same time: /www.cac.ca.gov.
ACSO Conference The Association of California Symphony Orchestras will hold its 36th Annual Conference, August 5-7, in San Francisco's Hotel Nikko, San Francisco. The subject: "Made in California, Land of Music Makers." For information, www.acso.org.
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