During a season otherwise filled with the iconic works of Beethoven, Mahler, and Handel, the San Francisco Symphony Chorus under the baton of Ragnar Bohlin will explore its eclectic side on April 19. The program features Carl Orff’s hugely popular work Carmina Burana, but will also introduce listeners to the work of Lars Johan Werle, Eric Whitacre, Joseph Rheinberger, and Veljo Tormis.
Mozart’s Idomeneo tells a tale of love, sacrifice, shipwreck, and war. Add to that a gorgeous score, stunning costumes, and good singing, and you should have all of the ingredients of a successful opera. The opening night of San Francisco Opera’s production, on Wednesday, however, was less than satisfying.
The Midsummer Mozart Festival's first foray into opera, a production of The Abduction from the Seraglio at San Jose's California Theater, was highly successful in most respects. The singers ranged from capable to excellent, with one standout. The orchestra, under George Cleve, was in fine form, and the production, though billed as semistaged, was brilliantly directed and full of comic verve.
There are always questions when small opera companies take on large works. Will a pared-down ensemble achieve the same effects of a full orchestra? Will the singers manage roles written for bigger voices? Will it work? In Berkeley Opera’s case, the answer to these questions is usually a resounding yes. Saturday night’s performance of Puccini’s Tosca, the final opera in Berkeley’s season, proved to be no exception.
Sometimes, a story is so universal that it can be updated without affecting the integrity of the drama. San Francisco Opera’s deeply problematic production of Verdi’s Macbeth, which debuted last Wednesday, proved to be one of the exceptions.
The world of music has several types of 22-year-old composers — brash, confident ones; shy, talented ones; and painfully insecure ones who look to the past and worry that they were born several generations too late.
Last Thursday, the Carmel Bach Festival presented works by each of these types. The program, made up of pieces composed in 1707 by composers who were 22 during that year, highlighted not only the shifting trends in music at the time but also the personalities of the composers themselves.
J.S. Bach, it seems, was of the shy, talented type.
It is fitting that San Francisco Opera's new production of Iphigénie en Tauride (Iphigenia in Tauris) feels extremely contemporary. Indeed, Gluck's work, which premiered in 1779, would have sounded revolutionary in its time. Christoph Willibald Gluck set out to reform opera, starting in 1762 with Orfeo ed Euridice, in order to strip it of all the complexities and decorations that he felt were unnecessary.
An ensemble as well-established and famous as Chanticleer is likely to inspire imitators. Its sound, which was once unique, has spawned countless men's a cappella choral groups around the country. Friday evening's Clerestory concert, however, proved that this group is not an imitator of the Chanticleer style but rather a champion of it. The depth and beauty of Clerestory's final presentation of its inaugural season established the group as one to watch in years to come.
Early-music enthusiasts have been known to say that it's not the size of the voice that counts, but rather the interesting things that it can do. The adage was bolstered by Magnificat's presentation of motets by Chiara Cozzolani on Saturday evening at St. Mark's Church in Berkeley.
Pocket Opera's concert-version of Handel's Flavio, presented on Saturday at the Florence Gould Theater in the Legion of Honor, combined humor, drama, and musicianship, all signatures of Donald Pippin's company. The occasional uneven moments didn't significantly hamper the enjoyable performance.
In 1968, Donald Pippin set out to create "singable, intelligible, and literate" English translations of operas. Over the years, he has achieved that goal with tight, concise, and often wildly funny translations. So I was apprehensive when I read that Flavio would be sung in Italian.
When you think of imagery and text painting in Baroque music, you are likely to think first of the era’s early Italian composers and the madrigal tradition. The American Bach Soloists, however, remind us that despite his reputation as a composer of highly technical and complex music, J.S. Bach also turned out incredibly vivid and colorful works.
Saturday’s concert, at Berkeley’s First Congregational Church, of five cantatas from his early years in Mühlhausen and Weimar, proved that Bach was by this time a master of creating drama.
During a season otherwise filled with the iconic works of Beethoven, Mahler, and Handel, the San Francisco Symphony Chorus under the baton of Ragnar Bohlin will explore its eclectic side on April 19. The program features Carl Orff’s hugely popular work Carmina Burana, but will also introduce listeners to the work of Lars Johan Werle, Eric Whitacre, Joseph Rheinberger, and Veljo Tormis.
