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.