SF Opera to Flower Piano

The San Francisco Opera traditionally opens its annual season on the Friday after Labor Day concurrent with a huge society fundraising dinner and ball. Because the beginning of Rosh Hashanah fell on that date this year, the opening was moved to Saturday, September 12th. However, because of a threatened strike by the SF Opera Orchestra over a new contract, the gala was moved to Thursday, November 12th in case negotiations didn't work out.

The opening featured what is reportedly a dark, Euro Konzept production of Verdi's Simon Boccanegra, a complex, narratively confusing, musically gorgeous opera with lots of roles for dark bass and baritone voices, rather like Don Carlo or Macbeth.

The final dress rehearsal was early Tuesday evening, and I went to the Veterans Memorial Park next door where Sid Chen was practicing his 24-minute pre-opera talk that attempted to explain the baroquely complicated narrative along with the cultural and political setting. Sid did a masterful job unraveling all those strands but it was truly a near-impossible task.

Meanwhile, orchestral musicians were on the sidewalks of Van Ness Avenue and Grove Street with protest signs decrying the deep cuts to compensation in an era where inflation is out of control, particularly in the Bay Area.

On Saturday evening, the parking lot for Opera House workers was full at 7PM, and tuxedoed patrons were arriving at the Opera House, but there was still no official word of a settlement from either side. I usually go standing room to the opera opening every year in the same spirit as sports fans go to the opening game of the SF Giants baseball season, which both start with a rendition of The Star Spangled Banner. "Let's play ball/let's sing!"

Instead, this year I went to the SF Conservatory on Saturday evening for a concert by the Bay Area Rainbow Symphony, an amateur orchestra staffed mostly by the gay community. It was an interesting program of Barber (The School for Scandal Overture), Respighi (Ancient Airs and Dances Suite 2), Korngold (Cello Concerto), and Chausson (Symphony No. 1). On my way home, I ran into a pair of men in tuxedos walking down Franklin Street, and asked them if the opera had gone on. "No, about ten minutes before the curtain was supposed to open, they canceled the performance, with everybody in their seats waiting for it to start."

On the Sunday afternoon following the opening, the SF Opera company traditionally puts on a free performance in Golden Gate Park of operatic hits that attracts thousands of people. This was canceled too so many of the would-be operagoers walked to the nearby SF Botanical Garden for an eleven-year-old festival called Flower Piano, and the line to enter stretched for over a block. Thankfully, the location is huge and the dozen different locations for concerts are spread across the gardens, so it wasn't claustrophobic. The festival runs daily through September 20th and is free if you have San Francisco proof of residency. (Click here for more information.)

I ran into friends who had been in the Opera House the night before and who had changed their Opera in the Park plans for Flower Piano, where they had already seen Spencer Day perform at one location and SF Symphony musicians performing chamber music at another.

We met at the Great Meadow where pianists Sarah Cahill and Regina Myers were performing a dual piano concert. The Berkeley pianist Cahill has been a star attraction from the event's inception (click here for a 2016 account), and it was a joy seeing her again.

Plus, their matching floral jumpers were the perfect look for a beautiful day.

Margaret Halbin & Friends Perform in the Sky

On the 11th floor of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music's new building on Van Ness Avenue, there is a gorgeous room with wraparound windows that was originally designed as a fundraising event space, but has accidentally morphed into a performance hall for chamber music concerts. Besides the spectacular view, the space is not ideal for concerts since there is no tiered seating so the sightlines are poor unless you're in the front row. Additionally, the acoustics are too bright, particularly for a piano which always sounds clangy when the volume crosses a certain decibel level, no matter who is the pianist. Still, there are amazing concerts to be heard for the price of a free online reservation.

Late Sunday afternoon there was a Faculty Recital of pianist Margaret Halbig with three pieces of music I had never heard before. The opener was Zita, a five-minute arrangement for two pianists from the longer 1975 Suite Troileana by Astor Piazzolla. (Click here for a YouTube performance by the composer and his Octeto Electronico in Rome.) The duo of Halbig and Sharon Kim were delightful and so was the music.

I first encountered Margaret Halbig when she was a member of the new music group Wild Rumpus over a decade ago, and since then she has moved on to teaching at the SF Conservatory and anchoring another new music group called Ensemble for These Times. In other words, she is a specialist in collaboration, and this recital was a good example of that. The second work was the 2020 Little River Songs by Jennifer Higdon, written for piano, cello, and mezzo-soprano. The two songs are dark, folksy and captivating, and were given a heartfelt performance by Halbig, vocalist Melinda Becker and cellist Megan Chartier. (Click here for a YouTube performance with the composer at the piano.)

The major work on the program was Rachmaninoff's 1901 Sonata for Cello and Piano, Op. 19. Pianist Halbig and cellist Chartier obviously loved the complex, four-movement, 35-minute piece and kept the full house audience suspended in attentive silence. It was a lovely concert.

25th Annual SF Zine Fest

The 25th Annual San Francisco Zine Fest on Sunday afternoon was a blast from the past in more ways than one.

First of all, it was being held at the 1892 Hibernia Bank building at Jones and McAllister...

...which was recently renovated as an event space after sitting vacant for decades.

Secondly, the free admission event was requiring all vendors and attendees to wear masks...

...which engendered immediate PTSD in those who were transported back to the bad old days of COVID's onset in 2020.

Security at the door, who were handing out snug black masks, explained that it was for the benefit of vendors who lived with disabilities and immunosuppression, but it felt strange and uncomfortable.

Though zine culture seems like vintage pre-internet, its current creators represent a physical corrective to our increasingly corporate, digital world.

In a side room I stumbled across one of the serious legends of alternative culture, V. Vale. I had no idea who the gentleman was until returning home and reading his bio at the RE/SEARCH website: "Possibly the ONLY surviving 70s punk publisher who never quit, V. Vale’s RE/Search continues to provide ‘Against-the-Status-Quo’ publications that stimulate the imagination and optimistic skepticism. Vale has been doing counterculture publishing since 1977, when he founded the Punk tabloid, Search & Destroy, San Francisco’s first. It was published at City Lights Bookstore, where V. Vale worked, and was funded by $100 each from Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg. Then in 1980, V. Vale launched RE/SEARCH, which is best known for its impact on the total world of underground culture."

Also attending was another legendary publisher, Larry-Bob Roberts, who started the Holy Titclamps queer punk zine in Minnesota in 1989 and continued publishing it in San Francisco until 2003.

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." (All photos are by Kristen Loken.)

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.