2026 Merola Grand Finale

Over the last couple of decades, I have written eight posts about the summer-ending Merola Grand Finale at the San Francisco Opera House. As Joshua Kosman notes in his short wrap-up of this year's concert of aspiring professional opera singers, "Good luck to any critic trying to write about it, though. There’s no story on offer aside from Here are the Merolini to give you one last glimpse of what they can do."

Somebody once left a comment on one of my Merola posts to the effect that "you always say that this year had the best overall crop of singers ever," and they were probably right about the repetitive hyperbole. This year I am not making that claim, however, and if you can't say anything nice, refer to people who can. Steven Winn wrote an extensive, appreciative listing of his favorite moments at SFCV, Charlise Tiee at the Opera Tattler did the same, and educator Matthew Travisano offered a sweet-spirited account at Parterre Box.

Most of the operatic greatest hits selections were love duets, and one of my favorites was Ariana Maubach as Charlotte and Charles Styles as Werther, singing Il faut nous separer from Massenet's Werther. Styles's voice is too small to be singing this role in a large opera house at this point in his career, but it's a very pretty tenor, and his interaction with mezzo-soprano Maubach made me remember how lovable this opera can be.

Another duet was performed by mezzo-soprano Theo Claveles as Didon and Matthew Sink as Enee, singing Nuit d'ivresse et d'extase infinie from Berlioz's Les Troyens. It may be my favorite operatic love duet in the world, and the pair did it justice.

Near the end of the three-hour long concert, there was a huge bolt of energy from tenor Ryan Bryce Johnson, singing the grotesque Aria of the Worm from Corigliano's Ghosts of Versailles. The young singer has stage charisma to burn and it was a joy to see him light the place up. Johnson's evolving career should be be interesting to watch.

West Edge Opera 2026

West Edge Opera's summer festival this year at Oakland's Scottish Rite Temple has been a great success overall, with the only disappointment being the opener, Benjamin Britten's 1954 The Turn of the Screw. I was looking forward to the production because Britten is a favorite composer and the soprano Laura Bohn, heading a strong cast as the Governess, is one of my favorite singing actresses in the world. However, the show didn't work for me on any level. (All production photos are by Cory Weaver.)

The main problem is that over three-quarters of the live action takes place behind scrims on which videos are projected along with the two singing ghosts transmitted from a makeshift video room high in the hall. This creates a severe distancing effect for the audience, and half the time it's difficult to even discern whats going on or where each of the 16 scenes are supposed to be taking place.

Henry James's 1898 novella is famously ambiguous as to whether the erotically insinuating ghosts are real or are the invention of a sexually repressed young Governess, or both. The Britten version leans in the direction of the ghosts being real, and before their deaths having corrupted the abandoned children Miles and Flora. However, the director went with the hysterical young Governess interpretation, which didn't make much sense. The Freudian case study of an hysterical woman inventing sexual crimes feels like an outdated cliche, particularly in our Epstein saturated moment. Additionally, most of the sensual vocal music in the astringent score is between the boy soprano Miles and the ghost of Peter Quint, seen above in a strong, convincingly creepy performance by tenor Alex Boyer. Britten was also a bit of a tortured pedophile himself, and you can hear that anguish in his music in everything from Peter Grimes to Curlew River.

The second opera of the festival, Handel's 1711 Rinaldo, was a wildly colorful palate cleanser. The narrative about Christian Crusaders tangling with Muslim Saracens was updated to comic-book superheroes battling archvillains by director and choreographer Keturah Stickann in a marvelous production that worked splendidly. The production also featured six dancing supernumeraries playing Cops and Villains, and they were unexpectedly delightful, deserving their own shoutout: Ellis Broderick, Eden Magana, Elena Martins, Devon Martinez y McFarland, Christopher Nachtra, and Max van der Sterre.

The bottomlessly deep voice of contralto Sara Couden was perfect for the bumbling police chief Goffredo and countertenor Kyle Tingzon as our superhero Rinaldo proved that his star turn as Oberon in Pocket Opera's A Midsummer Night's Dream earlier this year was no fluke. Best of all, the comic-book concept was played straight, without campy, wink-wink asides, even though there was plenty of humor involved, particularly in some of the colloquial supertitle translations ("This is freaking me out").

Villains usually have the juiciest roles in superhero tales, and baritone Efraín Solís as the evil Argante and soprano Nikki Einfeld as the sorceress Armida inhabited their parts with amusing style and vocal beauty.

The production was also helped immeasurably by the colorful, outrageous costumes of Bethany Deal (pictured above). A special acknowledgement also needs to go out to trumpeters Daniel Norris and Rob Wilkins in the orchestra who did a splendid job in some of Handel's most festive music.

The final opera of the festival, American Apollo, was a complex, emotionally resonant triumph that premiered in Des Moines in 2024. The libretto by Lila Palmer is unusually intelligent, giving every character their due, and it's singable as well without a lot of extraneous text. The score by Damian Geter is written in a conservative, tonal idiom that manages to stay compelling throughout, and at times lyrically beautiful. You could hear the audience breathing a sigh of relief that it wasn't going to be a thorny musical afternoon in the theater. The narrative is fascinating, centering on Thomas McKeller, a young black man who was part of the Great Migration from Wilmington, North Carolina to Boston, Massachusetts at the beginning of the 20th century. While working as an elevator attendant at the upscale Hotel Vendome in Boston, McKeller was approached by the famous painter John Singer Sargent who asked if he would model for him.

Tenor John Bellemer did a fine job as Sargent, and soprano Marnie Breckenridge was reliably brilliant as the rich, eccentric patroness Isabella Stewart Gardner, who was building her Boston art museum, and was a close friend of the artist. In the opera, she watches with sympathetic interest the dynamic between Sargent while he was using McKeller as a body model for a series of murals commissioned by the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. This involved erasing McKellar's face and black skin while having him pose as everyone from Achilles to Apollo.

Though Sargent has never been officially tagged as homosexual by historians, anecdotally among acquaintances it was well-known, and in this opera it is posited that the relationship between model and painter was an on-again, off-again love affair, interrupted by McKeller's fear of exploitation and then by World War One. When that war ended, Sargent reunited with McKeller and proposed that they travel through Europe together, but the young man turned him down, saying being a "kept man" would destroy him. Incidentally, a friend who saw the world premiere of this opera in Des Moines two years ago said, "This is a much gayer production than we saw in Iowa."

Markel Reed gave a magnificent performance as Thomas McKeller, and his baritone was one of the strongest voices to be heard in the entire festival. His final aria, as he discovered the nude portrait Sargent painted of him and kept hidden away in his private collection, was a fitting finale.

The new Music Director of the Oakland Symphony, Kedrick Armstrong, guided the 21-person orchestra expertly, and the scenic designer Nina Ball did an excellent job creating a unit set that could easily be everything from a hotel lobby to an artist's studio with the change of a few props and lighting. Finally, director Nataki Garrett created a sensitive, believable world onstage. Their contributions were a reminder that West Edge Opera is a serious local treasure, and you can still see all three operas in the festival's upcoming final weekend. Click here for tickets.

Treasures of the Pharaohs

A dazzling Egyptology show called Treasures of the Pharaohs opened at the deYoung Museum this week.

There's one major problem for San Francisco Fine Arts Museums members, though, which is that their membership is good for only one visit during the six-month run of the exhibit.

After their one visit, members can buy "discounted" $28 dollar tickets if they want to return, which feels like a middle finger, especially since there is no notice of this policy to be seen except in small print in the museum magazine.

I heard an unsubstantiated rumor from a museum employee that the policy was at the behest of the Egyptian government who want to maximize revenue.

It's too bad because this really is an extraordinary exhibit, and I only wish it had been installed in the usual basement space for traveling exhibitions rather than the narrow, strangely shaped rooms on the second floor.

Unlike the Ramses II exhibit in the same museum in 2022, which felt a bit like a crowded amusement park ride, this installation actually tries to teach Egyptian dynastic history.

The signage is excellent, though most of us barely looked at it while snapping pictures of the treasures with cameras and phones.

There are lots of gold objects and jewelry, which drew chrysophiles (a new word for me too) like moths to a flame.

My favorite piece was the above coffin lid from the 21st Dynasty, hidden in the back of a small room. Don't miss it.

Merola Opera's "Ariadne Auf Naxos"

Every opera fanatic has their own favorite Richard Strauss opera. Most choose Salome or Elektra, both short and intense, while others prefer Der Rosenkavalier or Die Fau Ohne Schatten, both long and sprawling, with all four of them employing a humungous orchestra. My personal favorite is his 1912 Ariadne auf Naxos with its two-and-a-half hour running time and a 36-piece chamber orchestra. Unfortunately, the opera has not been performed in San Francisco for 24 years, so it's been a long stretch to hear it live. Fortunately, the Merola Opera program got everything right with their production on Thursday evening, and I fell deeply in love with the work all over again.

What Merola did right, first of all, was put up the money to staff the full orchestra of 36 players that the score calls for, including a celeste, a harmonium, and TWO harps. Under the direction of the young German conductor Ann-Katrin Stöcker, the complex, witty, quicksilver score was completely transparent, and sitting almost in the lap of the orchestra in the smallish auditorium was pure musical heaven. They sounded gorgeous throughout.

The plot of the opera is simple. A billionaire is hosting a lavish evening at his estate and has paid for a serious operatic premiere along with a saucy show featuring Zerbinetta and Her Four Lovers. The 45-minute Prologue is a backstage comedy, with the high art opera people and the low art commedia dell'arte people clashing while last minute theatrical emergencies are popping up all around them. The Prologue is usually a German comedy slog, but the Merola ensemble directed by Omer Ben Seadia actually made me laugh for the first time. There were two comic standouts. First, tenor Ryan Bryce Johnson as The Choreographer (moustache and unruly curls above) brought a hang-loose in the middle of chaos vibe that was specific and hilarious. Second, stage director Claire Choquette (purple pantsuit) performed the spoken part of the Billionaire's Chief of Staff with a deadpan crispness that got funnier every time she would deliver some variation of "Yes, you can have an opinion, but if you want to pay your rent, you'll do exactly what you've been paid to do." (All production photos are by Kristen Loken.)

When the offstage fancy dinner runs late, the Chief of Staff announces that both serious opera and sexy divertissement will have to be performed at the same time because the fireworks have to start at nine. "Figure it out amongst yourselves," they announce. The Composer, beautifully sung by mezzo-soprano Theo Claveles (purple suit), has a nervous artiste breakdown, and is consoled by both the Music Director, sympathetically sung by Enes Pektas, and Zerbinetta the seductive charmer, in a spectacular performance by soprano Emilie Kealani. What ensues after intermission is the insane combo.

The serious opera begins, depicting the mythological Ariadne longing for Death after she has been abandoned by Theseus on the island of Naxos. She is joined by three nymphs performed by Jennifer Robinson as Naiad, Katherine Dobbs as Dryad, and Abigail Raiford as Echo. Some of Strauss's most sublime music is given to this trio, and the three sopranos did it justice.

I was apprehensive about this production with aspiring young professionals because this opera requires two world-class sopranos to tackle the incredibly difficult arias written for both Ariadne and Zerbinetta. I have heard enough young singers over the years making valiant, misguided attempts at climbing these particular aria Everests before falling, so I was prepared to be indulgent. What I was not prepared for was the sheer magnificence of soprano Adia Evans, whose voice was solid from the deepest contralto to the highest reaches. It felt very much like a star is born moment.

Soprano Emilie Kealani was similarly astonishing as Zerbinetta. The funniest part of the opera is hearing the deeply despairing laments of Ariadne immediately followed by Zerbinetta and her lovers telling Ariadne to just get over it. Zerbinetta's outrageously challenging aria Großmächtige Prinzessin, is as difficult and high-flying as the Queen of Night's big number in The Magic Flute, except it's twelve minutes long. Kealani nailed every note and was an athletic delight besides.

Zerbinetta turns out to be correct in her advice because the god Bacchus arrives on a ship, having narrowly escaped the clutches of Circe on a nearby island, and immediately falls in love with Ariadne. Tenor Matthew Sink did a fine job in a nearly impossible role where he has to sing full-blast for the last fifteen minutes of the opera with no warm-up.

Much speculation about the meaning of this opera tends to focus on high art versus low art, but the real conflict is between Germanic music and Italian music, which Strauss combines and contrasts ingeniously throughout the entire marvelous score.

The two-performance run, by the way, is sold out which feels tragic. Let's hope another 24 years doesn't go by before San Francisco sees another performance.