The San Francisco Ballet Orchestra is one of the great unsung ensembles in the Bay Area and beyond.
In a February program called British Icons they performed Mahler's dark, hour-long Das Lied von Erde for British choreographer Kenneth MacMillan's ballet The Song of the Earth. The orchestra was joined by mezzo-soprano Gabrielle Beteag (above) and tenor Moisés Salazar, who were both wonderful.
Later in February,
Taylor Mac brought his ongoing four-and-a-half hour, intermissionless, queer rock opera, Bark of Millions, to Cal Performances at UC Berkeley. The joyful surprise of the show was how good the music was, 55 original songs with lyrics by Taylor Mac and music by Matt Ray (above).
Scent cannons, lightshows, and a huge orchestra were all involved in the
San Francisco Symphony's double bill of Scriabin's Prometheus: Poem of Fire and Bartok's opera Bluebeard's Castle. The March concert at Davies Hall was quite a trip.
SFMOMA presented a surprising, fascinating exhibit, The Art of Noise, which was part album covers and posters; part audio playback machines from the Victrola to Bang & Olufsen; and a high fidelity room where a DJ would play their favorite recordings.
The San Francisco Opera's summer season offered two knockout productions, starting with
Kaija Saariaho's final opera, Innocence, centering on the fallout from a school shooting in Helsinki. A perfect cast in a perfect production made this one of the most memorable pieces of theater I have ever seen.
The second success was
Handel's gender-bending comedy, Partenope with a cast that clicked together brilliantly, highlighted by soprano Julia Fuchs and countertenor Carlo Vistoli (seen above).
The American Bach Soloists had a short summer festival in July that included
an utterly charming concert of Italian secular cantatas by Handel and Vivaldi at St. Marks Lutheran Church, with the excellent soprano vocal soloists Maya Kherani and Sarah Coit singing with a great original instrument chamber orchestra.
The highlight of the fall SF Opera season for me was the dark, distressing
The Handmaid's Tale, a 1998 adaptation of the Margaret Atwood novel by Danish composer Poul Ruders. The new co-production with the Danish National Opera and SF Opera was both stripped down and cinematic, and the entire large cast was flawless.
In November, the Canadian conductor Bernard Labadie brought an early music approach to an
all-Mozart program with the San Francisco Symphony, highlighted by British soprano Lucy Crowe singing obscure concert arias by the composer. The entire concert was a joyful surprise.
In December, San Francisco Performances presented the Pacifica Quartet at Herbst Theater with the star clarinetist Anthony McGill joining them for a new clarinet quintet by Ben Shirley and Brahms'
Quintet for Clarinet and Strings. I have always wanted to hear the Brahms piece live and the exquisite performance surpassed expectations.
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