Jason Victor Serinus
Jason Victor Serinus writes about music for Opera News, Opera Now, American Record Guide, Stereophile, San Francisco Magazine, Muso, Carnegie Hall Playbill, East Bay Express, East Bay Monthly, San Francisco Examiner, Bay Area Reporter, hometheaterhifi.com, and other publications.
Mi Alma Mexicana abounds in revelations.
Less than nine months after her dynamic San Francisco Symphony debut conducting the annual SFS “Day of the Dead” concert, Alondra de la Parra is set to make an even deeper impression on her audiences.
Changing character and voice is nothing new for lyric soprano Alyson Cambridge. Equally comfortable in her high and low ranges, she recently celebrated the release of her recording of William Bolcom and Sandra Cecelia Seaton’s The Diary of Sally Hemmings, which was written for mezzo Florence Quivar.
Boom! Wham! As the percussion of Orquesta La Pasión, led by Mikael Ringquist and Gonzalo Grau, pounds away, Argentinean-born composer Osvaldo Golijov wastes no time proclaiming that his St. Mark Passion will take a giant step away from the language of J.S. Bach’s monumental achievement.
Proof of our good fortune in having Ragnar Bohlin as director of the San Francisco Symphony Chorus is this tremendous CD, which demonstrates his overarching sense of line and purpose. In six contemporary works by Swedish and (in the case of Ned Rorem) American composers, Bohlin’s leadership of the 32-person Swedish Radio Choir produces mesmerizing dynamic gradations and shading.
Tenor Jonas Kaufmann will likely be your tenor of the hour, if not the decade, after you hear his new Decca recording of German arias by Mozart, Schubert, Beethoven, and Wagner. Supported and urged on by the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, magnificently conducted by Claudio Abbado, the tenor lavishes as much care, love, and passion on his repertoire as you can ever expect to hear.
It was an event like no other. Answering San Francisco Opera’s clarion call, on June 13, seven human contestants — two linked by blood — and one irresistible canine of similar Amesian pedigree straggled into the courtyard north of the War Memorial Opera House starting at 11 a.m. or so for SFO’s Wagner Ring Cycle Costume Contest. 
Frederica von Stade, the beloved mezzo-soprano, is saying good-bye to her fans. She is in the middle of a series of farewell appearances, winding down a 40-year, Cinderella-like career in opera that began in 1970, when she unexpectedly won the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions and received a contract from Metropolitan Opera General Manager Rudolf Bing.
This 2-disc DVD gives the lie to the notion that opera can remain relevant only if the setting is updated to contemporary times.
In 2008, baritone Mark Delavan sang the first Wotan of his career in San Francisco Opera’s production of 
How could I not lose myself completely in the wondrous beauty of baritone Eugene Brancoveanu’s voice during the first set of his Sunday afternoon, San Francisco Performances-sponsored recital? The sound in the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Concert Hall was so glorious that it called to mind the words of the great Italian basso Ezio Pinza, who wrote of singing beside soprano Rosa Ponselle, “lost in the dark splendor” of her voice.
Bay Area musician/composer Pamela Z is doing her best to describe the premiere of the live version of Baggage Allowance. A living extension of a gallery installation currently on display at the Krannert Art Museum in Champaign, Illinois, the work will debut in Z Space at Project Artaud in San Francisco on May 20-23.
Baritone Matthias Goerne, one of the few truly great lieder singers of our age, has now released four volumes of Harmonia Mundi’s ongoing Matthias Goerne Schubert Edition.