SF Opera Deficit: `Inherited'?

A new interview with Pamela Rosenberg reports that the San Francisco Opera general director, who took over the job two years ago, "inherited" millions of dollars in deficit during the same period. She is "addressing this tough situation with characteristic practicality combined with an unerring sense of vision," according to the article. Having eliminated 28 positions in recent weeks, Rosenberg nevertheless managed to present "a deeply bonding experience for staff and patrons alike, creating a strong sense of company."

The interview in the current issue of the London-based Opera Now says the company, "having run up" a $7.6 million deficit of Fiscal Year 2002 and a projected $9.2 million shortfall for Fiscal Year 2003, presented Rosenberg with a situation "no one could have foreseen." (Opera Now might not have been advised of IRS forms reporting surpluses of $3.9 million, $9m, and $5.7m, respectively, for the three fiscal years immediately before Rosenberg's arrival.)

Care to Carry a Spear?

The San Francisco Opera is holding its annual auditions for non-singing extras, or supernumeraries, on Thursday (5:30 to 8:30, Zellerbach Rehearsal Hall) and Friday (4:30 to 6, War Memorial Opera House, 6th floor ballet studio). Especially wanted: children, from 6 to 11, for Virgil Thomson's The Mother of Us All, and for "animal-costumed roles" in Mozart's The Magic Flute.

Summer Festivals, Small and Would-Be Grand

Advertising/publicity brains behind the press release associating the California Music Festival with "other prestigious sister festivals such as Aspen, Tanglewood and Interlochen," do the well-meaning but minuscule event no favor. If that's the expectation that takes you to the festival's modest events, you'll be disappointed. If you just want to see what a small summer music camp can produce, that's a different story, a much better experience.

Violinist James Greening-Valenzuela is in charge of the 10-day training program for some 50 students, which presents public performances this year at Oakland's Julia Morgan Center and in Walnut Creek churches. For information, see www.californiamusicfestival.org.

No talk of Tanglewood or Salzburg at West Marin Music Festival, its 13th season running August 10-24. Mixing orchestral and chamber music with a staged performance of West Side Story and an appearance by cabaret singer Wesla Whitfield and pianist Mike Greensill, the festival uses venues in Olema, Tomales and Point Reyes. Carol Negro is artistic director and conductor for the opening concert, which features Haydn's Oboe Concerto (with Jon Arneson), Barber's Dover Beach (with Tim Krol), and Beethoven's Symphony No. 1. Lacking a current Website, the festival may be contacted by calling (415) 663-9650.

Dead Man Documentary Gets Emmy Nomination

A KQED-TV documentary, And Then One Night: the Making of Dead Man Walking, about the SF Opera production of Jake Heggie's first opera, has just received an Emmy nomination. The program is up for the a 2003 News and Documentary Emmy Award in the category of "Outstanding Cultural and Artistic Programming."

The Grinch of December

Come next winter, there will be a musical December different from what the city is used to. The San Francisco Symphony has no concerts scheduled between Dec. 10 and January 7 (nothing Christmassy this year?), the San Francisco Opera will be dark from November 24 through January 6, then again from January 19 all the way to June 11. Looks like nothing but Nutcrackers.

Follow the Yellow Brick Road to the Emerald City Opera

Music organizations may be in deep trouble elsewhere, but Colorado is different. Hopping along a music-festival tour — Central City, Aspen, Vail — brought me to Steamboat Springs, a historic little town of 10,000, swelling to 300,000 in the winter. Substituting arts for snow, Steamboat activities range from the nearly century-old Perry-Mansfield School for the Performing Arts, the nation's — and most likely, the world's — oldest summer arts camp, to the 16-year-old Strings in the Mountains.

Small town? You bet. But with lots of gumption and smarts. "Strings" opened its season with the Tokyo String Quartet, and will close on August 12 with Stanislav Ioudenitch. Perry-Mansfield, founded in 1913, has scores of famous alumni, including Agnes de Mille, Doris Humphrey, José Limon, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Julie Harris and Dustin Hoffman. This year's student production is Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George.

And now, a brand-new company, Emerald City Opera, is about to present The Magic Flute. The founder-manager-Papagena is Keri Rusthoi, from the Manhattan School of Music. In the cast: David Malis as Papageno, an interesting young tenor, Dominique Moralez, as Tamino; Merola Program alumna Devonne Douglas as Pamina; a Texan Queen of the Night, Tracy Rhodus; and Met veteran LeRoy Lehr as Sarastro. See www.emeraldcityopera.org.

Bayreuth, the Easy, Inexpensive Way

All this week, several European radio stations, easily available on the Web, will rebroadcast the entire program of last year's Bayreuth Festival. See www.operacast.com/bayreuth02.htm. If you want to see information about hundreds of opera Webcasts, try www.OperaWorld.com.

Ring 2004: Dead in LA, So-So in NY, Passing Strange in Adelaide

If you don't hear much about the Los Angeles Opera's planned "Star Wars Ring," that's because the project with the huge budget is not likely to happen at all, especially in the post-Alberto Villar era. News comes now of the Metropolitan Opera's Ring cycles next year, and some of the casting is discouraging. Of the three cycles, Jane Eaglen takes one, two — alas — will be assigned to Gabriele Schnaut. Even more ominous: Jon Fredric West will sing Siegfried in all three! More attractive prospects: Plácido Domingo to sing Siegmund, Deborah Voigt Sieglinde. The Wotans are still up in the air... if not in Valhalla. James Morris is tentatively scheduled to sing at least one cycle.

There will be Ring cycles in Adelaide, most likely, Elke Neidhardt directing. It will be the first fully Australian-produced, directed, designed cycles, with a mostly local cast. Wagner Society members meeting Neidhardt had the following poignant report: "The production team met for a week in a house in the Blue Mountains and spent from 9:30 a.m. to midnight, brainstorming the work and the production interpretation. However, after four days, the team had only worked through Scene 1 of Das Rheingold. This is partly explained by the fact that only Neidhardt had actually seen a Ring Cycle or heard all of a recording." (It bears repeating: the production team, save one, had neither seen nor heard the gigantic work they are about to present.)

"Neidhardt, however, pointed out that there were advantages in having an artistic team that had no preconceptions about a work of art, since they are unlikely to be burdened by tradition, but are able to bring a typical Australian freshness to the interpretation." Oh, dear.

Smashing End to a Career

The Sydney Morning Herald may not bother with what's done to Wagner in Adelaide, but it's on the ball in Nice. Close to that picturesque French city, the paper reports, pianist Francois-Rene Duchable performed Beethoven's Third and Saint-Saens' Second concertos on Saturday, then had a helicopter scoop up his piano and drop it into Lake La Colmiane.

If you ask M. Duchable "pourquoi?," his explanation is that he is retiring, at the age of 51, planning to "change his life". The gesture, he said, was to show that everything was over, to get rid of the weight of a career: "It was a purification by water." Shouldn't he be dropped in the lake to be purified? His selfish comment on the unfortunate piano: "I leave with a real exaltation, a great freedom for what will follow." The next event on that journey will be the August 31 "purification by fire" in the village of Mazauges. After Duchable performs there, his clothes will be burned, completing (?) the process.

Duchable sees himself as a "man of nature" and never liked his life as a concert pianist, or the world of music, let alone the public that came to hear him. "How could I like 1% of the public since we know that 99% of people have no access to classical music? I cannot feel love for a public that despises others. People think being a musician reflects a passion. It doesn't. My profession has never brought me happiness," he said. "My love of music has never been in question. I reject money, the tinsel, this rigid, dusty world, a whole system in which I have never been at home." You say you never heard Duchable play? Too late now, sorry.

Hi, K-TIM!

On the dismal Bay Area classical-music radio scene, there is a small spark of encouragement. San Rafael's 1510 AM, which used to be KMZT and tried to present music, even the Metropolitan Opera, when the broadcasts were dropped by KDFC-FM, switched to religious programs some months ago, and is now KTIM-AM, playing... classical music!

Julie Long and Geoffrey Gallegos, who reported this turn of events, rather breathlessly, say that KTIM is a "welcome alternative to KDFC... presenting complete works, choral works, and very few commercials."

`Mavericks' in Stereo

Please excuse repeated mentions here; this will be the final one, a last reminder of a fine, important musical event. With the beginning of the music season in September, you can hear the Minnesota Public Radio/SF Symphony American Mavericks broadcasts every Sunday at 7 p.m. on KQED-FM (88.5) and Tuesday noon on KALW-FM (91.7), or, at any time, on the Web: www.musicmavericks.org.

Harold Schonberg

Harold C. Schonberg, chief music critic of the New York Times from 1960 to 1980, died in a Manhattan hospital Saturday. He was 87. He won the 1971 Pulitzer Prize for criticism, the first won by a music critic. His work both documented and influenced changes in the world of opera and classical music. His musical specialty was the piano and he championed the work of several Russian pianists. Schonberg joined the staff of Times in 1950, and became record editor in 1955. He estimated that he wrote 1.3 million words during his two decades as senior critic and wrote 13 books.

No Ground-Zero Move for NYC Opera

The New York Philharmonic is leaving Lincoln Center for Carnegie Hall, and the organization that really needs a new venue, the New York City Opera, is trying hard. Over the last weekend, one of NYCO's prime targets, the former World Trade Center site in lower Manhattan, became unavailable. The organization overseeing development of the area, reports the Monday Times, advised the company that the space designated for a performing arts center is not large enough to accommodate an opera house. NYC Opera director Paul Kellogg denied the story, and the company is proceeding with its application to be part of the redevelopment plan.