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Month: June 2023

THE OPERA ON FRIDA KAHLO, WHO HAD BEEN THROUGH HELL

THE OPERA ON FRIDA KAHLO, WHO HAD BEEN THROUGH HELL

The S.F. opera house was like a trip to Mexico City, starting with the lobby and numerous patrons in flower-capped formals, thanks to a contingent that had never been to opera before. Then came the new work in Spanish, and a fantasy based on the real-life couple Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, both of them art-world, New-World luminaries—-their loves, their spats, their splits, their reconciliation. For the 50-year-old composer with a strong lyrical bent, this was a promising initial venture…

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ANOTHER WAR, A LAST TESTAMENT

ANOTHER WAR, A LAST TESTAMENT

The San Francisco Symphony made its once-a-year venture into theater with the semi-staged opera “Adriana Mater” (2006) by Kaija Saariaho, displaying a brilliant cast with dramatic singing and evocative acting on the confined makeshift stages. The performance of the rabidly antiwar tragedy “Adriana Mater” about the heroine’s travails in a brutal conflict could hardly have been timelier, echoing the on-going Ukraine campaign’s bloodshed. It also serves as a heartfelt memorial to composer Saariaho, who had passed away at age 70…

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BERKELEY’S NEW VOICES

BERKELEY’S NEW VOICES

BERKELEY, CA—Minorities and timeless tales stepped up in the Berkeley Symphony’s program of June 4 concurrent with Black Music Month. The timely program featured no less than three salient women’s issues and two living composers, the latter in attendance to supplement the interpretations by Music Director Joseph Young. This orchestra has always been about relevance, going back to Kent Nagano’s podium leadership. Curiously, the two novel works from the past six years took varied approaches, but with parallel paths: Both…

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AN OPERA COLOSSUS AND SPLIT-LEVEL DRAMA

AN OPERA COLOSSUS AND SPLIT-LEVEL DRAMA

Too bad composer Richard Strauss has fallen out of favor these days, given his great work in both opera and tone poems. Happily, for its centennial year the S.F. Opera has revived the spectacular fairy tale for adults, “Die Frau ohne Schatten” (The Woman without a Shadow), for which a crowd of critics congregated from near and far for the June 4 opening. This may well end up the superior operatic experience of 2023, just in time for the troupe’s…

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