ORCHESTRAL FEEL-GOOD LOVE-IN

ORCHESTRAL FEEL-GOOD LOVE-IN

SANTA CRUZ, CA—Nowhere in my (seems-like) centuries of reviewing is there closer bonding between audience, orchestra, conductor and live composer than at this Cabrillo Festival, now 56 years old. Despite playing in a scruffy former boxing palace with steep stairways, and with musicians thrown together from all over the map, the fest is a feel-good love-in night after night, year after year. Virtually all the composers performed appear in person to introduce their music, take a bow and hug everybody…

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HIT OPERA: IDENTITY IN FLUX

HIT OPERA: IDENTITY IN FLUX

Faust is back again in a modern-day operatic setting with a female Mephisto, thanks to composer Jake Heggie. Is San Franciscan Jake Heggie the next Leos Janacek? In initiating ultra-dramatic opera when nearing the age of 60, Heggie’s path suddenly parallels that of that amazing late-starting Czech operatic master whose belated bursting forth had ushered in the 20thcentury. Heggie, 58, had already created several operas marked by fluid story-telling and lyricism but little fire. Now, for the first time, he…

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Chamber Music Explorations

Chamber Music Explorations

ATHERTON, CA— Music@Menlo is one of the jewels of the Bay Area summer, which needs it; otherwise, the season is so often laggard in performing arts. This major chamber-music outlet brings in distant artists (19 of 49 from New York this year) for a wealth of concerts in an inviting setting. This year’s format is stimulating: Seven concert programs in chronological sequence, each focusing on a significant decade of creativity. And each time a whole new team of three or…

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FAILING IS AN OPTION, NOT REALITY

FAILING IS AN OPTION, NOT REALITY

Three peas in a pod? Hardly. Three new dances differ. But count on Imagery ballet to come up with an adroit unifying element for three choreographers doing world premieres. This time, it was: Use projections, any way you want them (plus suggestions of the usual 20-to-25-minute length). And in movement, innovation and risk-taking should prevail, even if you fail. So instead of three works heading off willy-nilly toward different nebulae, the current program had a link, with the same eight…

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CASTING THE FIRST STONE, OPERATICALLY

CASTING THE FIRST STONE, OPERATICALLY

WALNUT CREEK, CA—Zounds, is acting now encroaching on the world of opera? It flourished this summer in both the top-of-the-line S.F. Opera’s “Orlando” and now the struggling Festival Opera here with its history of multiple Lazarus-like revival modes. The casts of actor-singers provide a new vitality to the medium, often compensating (and then some) for less-than-Met voices. The latest such miracle was brought off by a stage director better known as a Bay Area dance director, Mark Foehringer. The vehicle…

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Large theater thwarts intimate baroque

Large theater thwarts intimate baroque

A lesser-known baroque opera took over the S.F. Opera Sunday, offering first-rate stage direction and conducting while falling short of vocal expectations. Handel’s “Orlando” (1733) is a fictional love story inspired by Charlemagne’s eighth-century military leader Roland, one that took 238 years to reach US shores. It had ridden high during London’s craze for Italian opera, though its modest dimensions don’t fit expansively into the huge Opera House. This intimate chamber opera boasts a string orchestra and cast of five,…

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Troupe Making Silk Purse from Sow’s Ear

Troupe Making Silk Purse from Sow’s Ear

The miracle of West Bay Opera is not just that they pulled off yet another highly professional show in Verdi’s “Falstaff;” it’s what they do bringing that tiny community theater never built for opera so vibrantly to life. Consider that you have no overhead space for flying scenery, no prompter’s box, very limited stage depth, a pit that can’t even seat half a Verdi orchestra, and space even tighter than Falstaff’s drinking buddies usually are. The conditions would be enough…

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UNIQUE TROUPE’S FEARLESS ‘ACROBALLET’

UNIQUE TROUPE’S FEARLESS ‘ACROBALLET’

BERKELEY—Is this a ballet company on speed? Or, much more likely, a dance troupe in a new genre best called Acroballet. Whatever the name, the Eifman Ballet from St. Petersburg Russia is a unique fireball of frenzy, playing out Boris Eifman’s “The Pygmalion Effect” dance drama in a three-day run here. Half of the 80-member cast traveled with this full staged work, dazzling the audience with faster-than-the-eye moves. I hope they brought their own chiropractor, as my neck is sore…

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The Song of the (Unsettled) Night

The Song of the (Unsettled) Night

Mahler’s rarely heard Seventh is for many an ugly duckling, but for others a connoisseur’s delight. For 84 minutes his giant forces hammer away, reflecting I believe the foment of the times (1905) and the breakdown of the old world order. Here Mahler puts aside his elegant opera-night chapeau and gets into the sonic nitty-gritty, bristling with abrasive exuberance while falling in love with dissonance and inner-orchestral conflicts. The Viennese composer is troubled, he is pessimistic, he unreels those dour…

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A Hope-ful Jam Session

A Hope-ful Jam Session

Is violinist Daniel Hope a reincarnation of the great California-born (but English) Yehudi Menuhin? He is headed down that very path in his versatility while hopping across the Atlantic, but this time in a westerly direction. Now he is whipping up Americana music like a local, then pairing with the amazing jazz of the Marcus Roberts Trio in idiomatic outpourings that are driving audiences wild. His Friday (May 10) audience in fact was so demanding of encores that, in order…

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