Opera Singer as Acrobat

Opera Singer as Acrobat

SANTA FE, NM—-Monteverdi’s opera “Orfeo,” like the ancient Greek tragedy, executes all the high drama, gore and bloodshed offstage. But this staging has the title character jumping through hoops suspended high in the sky for close to a half-hour in the most startling operatic tour de force I’ve encountered in 60 years of opera-going. The acrobatic Orfeo is the dramatic tenor Rolando Villazón, who I hope gets a nightly hazard pay supplement, like at Covent Garden, where one veteran London…

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New Mexico’s Pre-Oppenheimer Days

New Mexico’s Pre-Oppenheimer Days

LOS ALAMOS, NM—-Well before the start of the bio pic “Oppenheimer” delineating the birth of the atom bomb, the historic mesa was the home of the Los Alamos Ranch School and little else. At 7,350 ft. altitude, the mesa was healthy enough, miles away from traffic, towns, congestion, drugs and booze, a good hour’s drive uphill from Santa Fe. In the words of Richard Colgate from the Long Island toothpaste family, one of the teenaged students boarding there, “It was…

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UNSUNG HERO SAVING MUSICIANS FROM THE NAZI HOLOCAUST  

UNSUNG HERO SAVING MUSICIANS FROM THE NAZI HOLOCAUST  

One of the most significant conductors of the late 20th century was saved from the gas chambers of Central Europe by the intervention of a Berkeley orchardist. He never got the benevolent attention warranted for his multiple rescues of Budapest musicians in the 1930s. The stellar musician who emerged hale and hearty from the war years was Georg Solti. Repositioned in London, he eventually became a music legend, leading orchestras and opera in performances and recordings and garnering major awards….

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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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MEMORIAL MUSIC FOR TODAY AND AN EARLIER TIME

MEMORIAL MUSIC FOR TODAY AND AN EARLIER TIME

For the most memorable oratorio of the 20th century, I would propose Benjamin Britten’s “War Requiem” (1961), an extra-ordinary large-scale paean to those who served and never survived, now revived by the S.F. Symphony and Chorus. This is a work that leaves the listener profoundly moved on several levels, recalling those who fell in the world wars as well as the destruction of the hallowed Coventry, England Cathedral in the 1940 Blitzkrieg, then its reconstruction. It also provides us with…

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NEW “WET-INK” CHORAL MUSIC

NEW “WET-INK” CHORAL MUSIC

WALNUT CREEK, CA— With his audacious programming, credit veteran Director Robert Geary for pushing his Volti Chamber Singers a hair beyond. While Volti is not the most accomplished of our many chamber choruses, it is arguably the most adventurous. In their current concert set of five a capella works, the oldest one was two years old. Many a chorus (perhaps like one you’ve been in) manages four-part harmony, perhaps with keyboard accompaniment. But here there are eight-part unaccompanied harmonies, along…

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Smuin artists Cassidy Isaacson and João Sampaio in the revival of Val Caniparoli's “Swipe."
GOING FRENCH, SEIWERT STEPPING UP AT THE BALLET

GOING FRENCH, SEIWERT STEPPING UP AT THE BALLET

We tumble and we fumble, and then we meet the compact Smuin Ballet which has emerged from the pandemic seemingly unscathed. Its newest Bay Area run showed off 17 beautifully coordinated and trained dancers in pieces new and old, bursting with precision and energy. Purists may carp about the troupe’s leanings toward the commercial, but this group under Celia Fushille offers both sides, serving up contemporary with a capital C, abetted by the new associate director and adroit choreographer Amy…

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