Runnicles, who has been music director and principal conductor in San Francisco since 1992, leads five of 10 productions this season: Tristan und Isolde, Der Rosenkavalier, Manon Lescaut, Don Giovanni, and (a strange choice, well-executed) Die Fledermaus. This summer was Runnicles’s inaugural season as music director of the Grand Teton Music Festival; he also serves as principal conductor of New York’s Orchestra of St. Luke’s and is principal guest conductor of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.

Mayor MTT Nominated as Emperor of New York

In the Sept. 18 issue of the New York Sun, music writer Fred Kirshnit suggests that Michael Tilson Thomas "would be an excellent choice to replace Lorin Maazel at the head of the New York Philharmonic, both for his musical versatility and his New York-friendly demographic niche, being both gay and openly Jewish."

In a reference that may surprise Gavin Newsom (and others), Kirshnit introduces MTT as "not only the de facto mayor of San Francisco but also an accomplished pianist, music educator, and composer." The man who is all that, and more, is in Switzerland at the moment, leading the San Francisco Symphony in a performance of Mahler's Symphony No. 8 at the Lucerne Festival.

According to the Symphony's blog on Sept. 18, adjusting the "Symphony of a Thousand" to Jean Nouvel's sensational new concert hall in the Swiss city took some doing: "This group now knows this work well, but each concert hall poses its own acoustic and technical challenges, especially with a piece like Mahler’s Eighth, with off-stage brass players and the angelic soprano Laura Claycomb now perched 100 feet above the stage in the fourth balcony.

"During the rehearsal, the two sets of brass players needed to be moved from the fourth balcony down [to] the second, as the sound [was] just not carrying as well from these heights. The operations team rushed to move the chairs, music stands, and monitors (from which to watch the MTT cues) to get them in place. The other noticeable difference from the Luxembourg hall is the slightly smaller stage space, as the risers for the Boys Chorus now took up some valuable percussion-section real estate. But all the kinks are worked out and everyone is anticipating the tour finale."

Did the Devil Take Faust?

There was a time, not long ago, when Gounod's Faust was on the menu of every opera company on a more-or-less annual basis. At the same time, Gounod's Roméo et Juliette was a rarity outside La Belle France. How times have changed.

Following a recent Festival Opera production of R&J, it is currently being performed in San Jose, and the improbable but true news is that both the San Francisco Lyric Opera and Berkeley Opera are scheduling it for next season.

In Berkeley, the star-crossed lovers will share the season with Verdi's Aida (probably with an elephant-free "Triumphal March"), in a treatment by Jonathan Khuner and Yuval Sharon (who directed the company's Der Meistersinger). Berkeley Symphony's George Thomson will conduct Mozart's The Abduction From the Seraglio, and Ross Halper will direct. For R&J, which will use spoken dialogue from the Shakespearean original, Khuner conducts, and John McMullen is the director.

At S.F. Lyric, Barnaby Palmer conducts all productions, and Heather Carolo is the stage director. Besides the Gounod, the 2007 season will offer Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, Offenbach's Tales of Hoffman, and Johann Strauss' Die Fledermaus.

$20 Million in Grants to Artists

"USA" in this case stands for United States Artists, a new organization created to provide $50,000 grants to artists in support of their work. Initially, 50 artists will receive the no-strings-attached grants, with the names to be announced in December. At this point, panels of artists, critics, scholars, and arts administrators are reviewing the applications of 300 artists, originally nominated by 150 anonymous arts leaders around the country.

Four foundations — Ford, Rockefeller, Prudential, and the Alaska-based Rasmuson — have put up a total of $20 million to create the organization and seed its initial operations, but USA is expected to become a larger, ongoing conduit between artists and individual donors. "The individual artist has been at the back of the line in terms of support in American funding over the last decade, so any new system designed to get support directly into the hands of working artists is important," says Philip Bither, performing arts curator at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

Local Cellist Makes Good

Hai-Ye Ni, 34, a product of San Anselmo's San Domenico School and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, has been appointed principal cellist of the Philadelphia Orchestra. A graduate of the Juilliard School of Music and winner of the Naumburg competition at age 19, she has served as associate principal cellist of the New York Philharmonic for seven years.

Eat, Drink, and Listen to Music

San Francisco Performances' Salons at the Rex concert series is starting up again, offering a wide array of music in an intimate environment, with an inexpensive admission price. The hourlong concerts begin at 6:30 p.m. in the historic Hotel Rex, located a block from Union Square at 562 Sutter St.

Some of the upcoming Salon programs: "Music of the Americas" (Sept. 28), Richard Patterson and Radim Zenkl (Oct. 12), Luciana Souza (Nov. 2), Afiara Quartet (Nov. 30), Quartet San Francisco (Feb. 21), Antigoni Goni (March 13), Daniel Lockert (April 25), and Paula West (May 2).

Public Broadcasting ... With Music

Give credit to KALW-FM, 91.7, for including classical music in its programming, unlike its rich cousin (now conducting a pledge drive for $1.5 million).

Friday evenings at 8 p.m. on KALW offer archived "My Music" and "My Word" programs from the BBC, followed by an exploration of the great American songbook with "Fascinatin' Rhythm," at 9 p.m. Classical music from "The Record Shelf," with Jim Svejda, is at 10 p.m., and an hour of contemporary music from "Other Minds" is at 11 p.m.

On Saturdays, "Tangents," with Dore Stein, runs from 8 p.m. to midnight. Sunday evenings bring classical and new music program "Then and Now," with Sarah Cahill, at 8 p.m., followed by "Music From the Hearts of Space" at 10 p.m.

Ira Brilliant

Beethoven specialist and philantropist Ira F. Brilliant died Sunday in his San Jose home, at age 84. The former real estate developer financed the creation of one of the world’s major centers for the study of Beethoven's work. Housed at San Jose State University since it was founded in 1985, the Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies contains first editions, musical instruments, and a lock of the composer's hair.

Pogorelich: Lost and Found

Croatian pianist Ivo Pogorelich, famous around the world (and making numerous Bay Area appearances) in the 1980s, virtually disappeared a decade ago. Die Welt music critic Manuel Brug has found him, reporting that the artist is back at work.

"The ponytail is gone, now his hair is shorn short as a soldier's," Brug writes. "Pogorelich, 47, born in Belgrade, packed off to Moscow at the age of 11 to practice the piano for 10 years, was the classical music icon of the Eighties after not winning the 1980 International Chopin Competition in Warsaw. Martha Argerich quit the jury in protest. Pogorelich himself fueled his dizzy career with provocative statements and a bird-of-paradise image. Old and young alike flocked to his concerts. His records were bestsellers. Critics love or hate him. There's no middle ground.

"When his wife and teacher, Aliza Kezeradze, 21 years his senior, died in 1996, he withdrew from the public eye, appearing only for rare, and often eccentric, solo evenings. Pogorelich, who knows nothing of iPods or Lang Lang, now lives in Lugano and designs jewelry for fun. On August 27 and 31, he performed with the Thuringia Youth Orchestra at the Weimar Arts Festival, playing Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 and Prokofiev's Concerto No. 3."

Pogorelich is now preparing to record Rachmaninoff pieces and Beethoven sonatas, and possibly to return to concertizing, as well. Asked what he thinks today when he hears himself described as "eccentric," "arrogant," and "difficult," the pianist said, "That was my image. I worked on it myself like a child making a toy. That was the price a 22-year-old had to pay to make an awful lot of money. People are always after the 'dark power,' like in Star Wars. Why? It makes it easier for them to accept an exceptional person. That way they could forgive me my success. I began with a scandal, and my rise to intercontinental fame went hand-in-hand with the explosion in the media. Of course, it was never my goal in life to be involved in creating an image. And I've also seen how apparently perfect, scandal-free careers have their ups and downs."

Oakland's L'enfants

Oakland Opera Theater presents the last of Philip Glass' trilogy of operas based on the works of Jean Cocteau: Les Enfants Terribles will be performed Oct. 6-22 in Oakland's Metro Theater. Joohee Choi and Axel Van Chee sing the principal roles in the production, which features the Vietnamese ("Indochinese," to be historically accurate) setting with the help of the Nguyen Dance Company.

Paying for an L.A. Ring

The long-planned and "fiscally challenged" Los Angeles Opera production of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen appears to be on again, thanks to a $6 million donation from philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad. Company director Placido Domingo once planned a "Star Wars Ring," a terribly expensive Hollywood production — and a pipe dream that disappeared, almost taking the cycle with it for good. It left the city without ever having produced a Ring (performed many times in San Francisco).

Domingo, in thanking the donors, said he will participate in the production by singing the role of Siegmund, "if I am still singing then." The tenor is 65 years old. Eli Broad said the Ring's "impact on the city's cultural and economic life goes beyond the power of the production itself. ... It must be presented over a series of six days or so. It encourages visitors from all over the world to stay at least a week." The SunAmerica and KB Home founder has also spearheaded efforts to renovate downtown L.A. and is a staunch supporter of the arts.