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.
Articles by this Author
The world premiere of Jacques Desjardins’ chamber orchestration of John Harbison’s The Great Gatsby gives us a taste of the late 20th century operatic premiere the Metropolitan Opera considered important enough to include in its multi-CD tribute to James Levine’s 40th year on the podium.
As one of the world’s most produced living opera composers, San Francisco’s Jake Heggie (Dead Man Walking, Three Decembers, Moby-Dick) always has multiple irons in the fire.
At 6:30 p.m. Central Time on Jan. 17, The Dallas Opera (TDO) announced a major opera commission to open the company’s 2015–2016 season.
You’d never know from the freshness of Susan Graham’s mezzo-soprano that she graduated from the Merola Opera Program almost 25 years ago.
So great is the Callas mythology, and so important her artistic legacy, that 37 years after her death, her many studio and live recordings remain the biggest sellers in EMI’s catalogue.
Maria Callas: The very name conjures up a voice and a reputation of near-mythic proportions. After launching her career as an unattractive, overweight soprano with a sensational voice, she transformed herself into a slim and glamorous diva whose mesmerizing stage presence and increasingly scandalous behavior earned her a frequent place on the covers of international magazines.
Well-attuned to the listening habits of the iPod-and-beyond generation, cellist Matt Haimovitz has teamed with pianist Christopher O’Riley on a project that further bridges the fabled divide between the so-called camps of classical and pop music.
This is a wonderful album. Arriving just two months after soprano Diana Damrau’s disc of orchestral lieder (songs) by Richard Strauss received the German Phono Akademie’s Echo-Klassik award for “Lieder Recording of the Year,” this fresh collaboration, with pianist Helmut Deutsch, yields 19 treasurable performances of Liszt lieder.
The title, “The Future Is Now,” may well prove prophetic for San Francisco Opera Center’s annual Adler Fellows Gala Concert. If the stars are aligned as they should be, no fewer than four of the artists who took to Herbst Theatre’s stage will soon shine brightly as leading artists at premier houses throughout the world.
The opportunity to hear two great pros, the divinely voiced Karita Mattila in partnership with master accompanist Martin Katz, is irresistible. Whether or not Mattila’s program — Poulenc’s five Banalités, Debussy’s Cinq Poèmes de Baudelaire, Aulus Sallinen’s Four Dream Songs, and five songs by Joseph Marx — capitalizes on her astounding theatrical acumen, it’s sure to bring out her gift for the sensuous.
Naumburg Award–winning violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg not only is a fine artist, but she also gives great interview. In this “on your mark, get set, go” conversation, she discusses her upcoming anniversary leading the New Century Chamber Orchestra, and her feelings about her ensemble.
True to its title, Dark Sisters opens with five women, dressed in floor-length white dresses, in tableau against a clouded, thunder-laden dark sky. With emotions churned by a lunar eclipse, the “sisters” (read: wives) in a polygamous compound in the American Southwest bemoan the feds’ seizure of their numerous children.
Despite having sung in the Bay Area numerous times since his 1999 debut — especially compelling were his roles in John Adams’ A Flowering Tree and Doctor Atomic, the Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess, and Handel’s Ariodante
— Eric Owens’ powers as a recitalist are relatively unknown here.
After directing at least nine productions for San Francisco Opera, Cal Performances, and San Francisco Symphony, including several world premieres, Peter Sellars, now 54, remains a controversial figure. As he explains in this interview, provocation is at the heart of his conception of theater.
How wonderful it is to again make Samuel Barber’s acquaintance.
After 41 years onstage, Frederica von Stade is winding down her career. To celebrate the many glorious performances she has given here over the years, as well as her extraordinary generosity of spirit, San Francisco Opera, San Francisco Performances, Cal Performances, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, and San Francisco Conservatory of Music are staging a one-night tribute to her at Herbst Theatre on Dec. 3.
This seems to be San Francisco Opera’s season for premiering major operas of earlier centuries that it has heretofore overlooked. On the heels of its first mounting of Donizetti’s 1834 opera, Lucrezia Borgia, comes the first production of Handel’s 1738 Opera Xerxes.
As baritone Simon Keenlyside’s adoring audience quickly discovered at his Oct. 27 evening recital with Malcolm Martineau at Herbst Theatre, he is more than a handsome man with an exceptionally handsome voice. His is also a most appealing and irrepressibly quirky stage presence.
