Alebrijes & Nahuales at Yerba Buena Gardens

Huge, colorful, and fantastic sculptures appeared suddenly in Yerba Buena Gardens in early May and just as suddenly exited in late June. (Pictured is The Coyote by Efrain Fuentes.)

We had gone to see the free Circus Bella show when we stumbled across them. (Click here for Yerba Buena's roster of free summer performances.)

According to the Yerba Buena website, there was a huge cultural festival in Lille, France in 2019 called El Dorado that focused on Mexico. One of the major highlights of the festival were 10 large sculptures lining Lille's main street that were 22-foot enlargements of alebrijes, which are small wooden sculptures of imaginary animals that have long been created in Oaxaca, Mexico. (Pictured is The Dog by Adrián Xuana.)

The statues traveled to Paris for six months but went into storage when the COVID pandemic arrived. This U.S. tour of eight sculptures is a new version and they are extraordinary. (Pictured is The Happy Alien by Constantino Blas.)

A few of them are nahuales, spirit animals for human beings. (Pictured is The Cat Nahual by Angélico Jiménez.)

Check out this website to see where the sculptures are traveling next. The U.S. tour began in San Francisco and continues in Reno for the month of July, San Jose in August and September, Fresno in October and November, and the rest of the United States in 2026. (Pictured is Catbird by the famous Mexico City artist Leonardo Linares.)

Verdi's Requiem at the SF Symphony

The 2024-2025 SF Symphony season was scheduled to begin last fall with music for chorus and large orchestra by Gordon Getty (pictured above) and Verdi's Requiem. However, it was canceled at the last moment because management was threatening draconian cuts to the paid members of the Symphony Chorus and when there was pushback, management canceled the concerts. Nine months later, the concert was rescheduled with conductor James Gaffigan replacing the recently departed Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen, who had his own issues with SF Symphony management.

I wrote a mean assessment of Gordon Getty ten years ago (click here) when the SF Opera presented his one-act The Fall of the House of Usher in 2015. In an older, more forgiving mood, let's just say that I am happy he donates so much money to musical institutions locally. That money probably helped to subsidize the Verdi Requiem performance Sunday afternoon that followed twenty minutes of Getty's three songs for chorus and orchestra with poetry written by the composer himself. He was even kind enough to pose for a photo with my spouse.

The Friday evening opener received mixed reviews from Michael Zwiebach and Joshua Kosman, but something came together two days later for a truly magnificent performance on Sunday afternoon. (All production photos are by Kristen Loken.)

The four soloists were soprano Rachel Willis-Sorensen, mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton, tenor Mario Chang, and bass Morris Robinson, and they were all in great voice which presumably was not the case on Friday evening.

Though I worship Verdi, I had never connected with his Requiem in a live performance before. It had always sounded overlong, bombastic, and dull in its quieter moments, but on Sunday afternoon everything clicked. Conductor James Gaffigan leaned into the operatic nature of the work and led a gripping rendition of of the mass's 90 minutes of meditation on heaven and hell. It was one of the best performances I have heard from him with this orchestra in some time.

It also helped that the soloists were so good. The voice of mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton, in particular, carried over the huge orchestra and chorus while sounding like creamy butter, and Morris Robinson's bass was powerful enough that it sounded like he could personally open the gates of heaven or hell.

The chorus, saved from penury by an anonymous donor at the beginning of the season, was superb throughout, with a dynamic range from soft to loud that was remarkable.

Congratulations to everyone for making me fall in love with Verdi's Requiem for the very first time.

Mozart's Idomeneo at the SF Opera

A musically compelling and dramatically pathetic production of Mozart's early opera Idomeneo is receiving five performances at the San Francisco Opera this month. Between the exquisite conducting of Music Director Eun Sun Kim and her remarkable orchestra, the beauty of the prominent chorus, the variable quality of the soloists, and the drab, colorless Opera Australia production, it was a very mixed bag. Pictured above is the opening scene with the luminous soprano Ying Fang as the Trojan prisoner of war Ilia surrounded her fellow refugees in ugly, stylized modern costumes by Anna Cordingley. (All production photos are by Cory Weaver.)

The three-and-a-half hour production directed by Lindy Hume took place on a unit set of three walls with three doors, along with projections and a turntable that was theatrically pointless except for the storm scene above where Idomeneo and his crew are buffeted by the elements. Tenor Matthew Polenzani, who has given a number of great performances in San Francisco over the years, was not sounding as supple as usual singing Idomeneo, the King of Crete returning from the Trojan War. However, his voice worked for the character and Polenzani's musicianship was impeccable.

The basic plot device is that hideous old story of a god commanding a mortal to sacrifice their own child, as in Jehovah commanding Abraham to murder his son Isaac. In this case, it is Neptune demanding that Idomeneo sacrifice the first person he encounters on shore after surviving a shipwreck, which of course turns out to be his son Idamante. The character was sung by the usually splendid mezzo-soprano Daniela Mack, who was having serious vocal problems due to illness. At the second performance of the scheduled five, she mimed her way through the finale of the last act while Laura Krumm sang the part from offstage. Krumm sounded great and eventually replaced Mack in the third performance for the entire role.

To complicate the plot, there are two women who are in love with Idamante, Ying Fang as Ilia and soprano Elza van den Heever as Elettra, who has somehow wandered off from the cursed House of Atreus. Even though there is plenty of gorgeous music to sing as Ilia, the role itself is rather dull as she sings about how sad she is about everything, usually ending with thoughts of suicide. The role of Elettra, however, is crazed and Elza van den Heever made the most of it.

Tenor Alek Shrader as Arbace, the King's counselor, was luxury casting and he sounded wonderful, as did Adler fellow Samuel White as the High Priest of Neptune. It's too bad they had to compete with acres of white chairs that kept being moved around by the chorus and occasionally twirled around slowly by the turntable for no particular reason at all.

The 1781 opera was only performed twice during Mozart's lifetime, and wasn't even performed in the United States until 1957. The San Francisco Opera has produced it four times since 1977 in two previous productions, by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle and John Copley, that were lovely and fairly static, but which didn't allow for the appearance of a huge sea monster without looking silly, even though the libretto explicitly has Neptune wreaking havoc through a sea monster when Idomeneo refuses to sacrifice his son. So there was hope, since the production consisted mostly of video projections, that we would finally get to see a Cretan version of Godzilla onstage, but the opportunity was lost and we saw more dull, textured imagery representing the mayhem instead.

In the original French tragedy on which the libretto was based, Idamante was sacrificed to appease Neptune, but in this Enlightenment operatic version of the tale, Neptune takes pity after murdering thousands on the island via the monster, and commands Polenzani to abdicate his throne and give it to Idamante and Ilia to rule together instead.

This makes Elettra go insane, and Elza van den Heever brought a jolt of excitement and energy to the stage, but it was too little, too late for this inert production.

Nocturnal Omissions with John Coons and Jonah Wheeler

On a wooden beach boardwalk in Puerto Vallarta this winter, I ran into the gay porn star Jonah Wheeler, who was handing out flyers for a cabaret show starring his partner John Coons. "You're my favorite actor on the internet," I sincerely gushed to Wheeler, which made him laugh. He introduced me to Coons, who happened to be sitting under an umbrella on the beach next to us, and I asked him what he sang. "My own material, mostly, but also everything from Broadway to classical." I jokingly asked him if he ever sang any Poulenc art songs, and the response was delighted, "Yes, and even Reynaldo Hahn, just to keep people on their toes."

I never did make it to the show in Puerto Vallarta, but six months later Coons and Wheeler brought their Noctural Omissions act for a sold-out, one-night stand last Sunday at the Oasis nightclub at 11th and Folsom. The show turned out to be musically sophisticated, silly, raunchy, funny, and politically acute. On top of it all, my experience with cabaret singers has been that they often have an unsteady relationship with pitch, but Coons's voice was lovely and true.

Broadway World published this entertaining bio of Jonah Wheeler, "Following a decade-long career as a theatrical music director and orchestrator (Sweeney Todd at Barrow Street, Gigi on Broadway, performances with Molly Pope), he pivoted during the pandemic into adult entertainment. Jonah’s video work is noted for genuine connection, goofy enthusiasm, and friendly authority role-play. He holds the questionable distinction of being the only person to work at both MormonBoyz [a gay porn site] and The Book of Mormon on Broadway."

There was no Poulenc at this particular show, but the "non-binary" Coons presented his own superbly witty songs and ended with a mash-up of the lyrics to the Gilligan's Island theme sung to the tune of Amazing Grace. Weirdly enough, it worked.

There was a genuine sweetness to the couple's interplay all evening, and it was refreshing to hear ribald humor that was less sniggering and more sex-positive. If you get a chance to see the show somewhere, it's highly recommended.