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.

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.

An Enlightening Rehearsal with NCCO

The New Century Chamber Orchestra is offering a concert entitled Enlighten Me this weekend, and the public were invited to a free rehearsal on Thursday morning at the SF Conservatory of Music. There is something magical about listening to a musical performance being shaped in real time, and the two-hour-plus session was thoroughly absorbing.

The young American violinist Simone Porter is the concert's guest soloist and concertmaster, and the first half of the rehearsal was dedicated to Sabina, an enormously complex composition by Andrew Norman depicting a sunrise inside a Roman church. The 10-minute piece has gone through a number of transformations since its origin as a work for solo cello in 2008. In 2013, he created a solo violin version which you can hear on YouTube in a wonderful performance by Simone Porter. In 2020, Norman was commissioned by the Berlin Philharmonic to write an expanded version for string orchestra and the result is exquisite, starting with a nearly inaudible opening that eventually blooms into a glorious sound. (Pictured above are Simone Porter, Associate Concertmaster Dawn Harms, and violinist Michael Yokas.)

The complexity stems from the fact that each of the 23 players has their own separate music so getting the timing and the accents to work with each other took over an hour, and it was fascinating to hear the new music evolving and improving with each repetition. Because there is no official conductor, various members of the orchestra offered their suggestions when something didn't sound right. Pictured above is the viola section trying to figuere out a tricky section with Simone Porter

Then it was on to Heinrich Biber's eccentric, fabulous Battaglia from 1673. It consists of eight short movements depicting any army readying for war, getting drunk and cacophonous, and going into battle. Pictured above is Simone Porter rehearsing with double bassist Colin Corner in a duet where Corner makes his instrument sound like a marching drum while Porter plays an aria over the beat.

They also practiced foot stomping in another movement, and a stand-and-salute sequence led by principal cellist Evan Kahn.

This concert is also featuring a half-dozen SF Conservatory of Music students joining the ensemble in the Norman and Biber pieces, and a Mozart Divertimento. It was fun watching their energetic blend of excitement and sheer nervousness.

The program also includes short pieces by Heitor Villa-Lobos (Bachianas Brasileiras No. 9), J.S. Bach (Violin Concerto in E Major), Hildegard von Bingen (O virtus sapientiae, and Juhi Bansal (Cathedral of Lightt). The first performance is Friday the 23rd at Stanford's Bing Hall, and the second performance will be at the SF Conservatory of Music on Saturday the 24th. Click here for tickets.

Favorite Musical Moments 2025

The San Francisco Bay Area is home to one of the richest, most varied classical music scenes in the United States. I only attended a fraction of what was on offer this year, and here are some of my favorite moments, starting with the world premiere in January at the San Francisco Symphony of After The Fall, a new piano concerto by Bay Area composer John Adams. He wrote the concerto for Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson who gave an incredible performance with David Robinson conducting.

Also in January, the New Century Chamber Orchestra gave a wonderful concert at the Presidio Theatre, highlighted by a performance of the Shostakovich First Piano Concerto with pianist Inon Barnatan and trumpeter Brandon Ridenour as soloists.

The Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and Chorale have been fairly rudderless since Nicholas McGegan stepped down as Music Director and his replacement didn't work out. In March, the 47-year-old Irishman Peter Whelan conducted a delightful performance of Handel's Alceste. Soon after, he was named the new Music Director, starting in the 2026-27 season.

The San Francisco Conservatory of Music offers free concerts on almost every day of the week, and there are treasures abounding. In April, I went to an orchestral concert led by student conductors that featured a thrilling performance of John Adams's incredibly difficult Chamber Symphony, led by Chih-Yao Chang.

I've never been particularly moved by La Boheme, Puccini's sentimental weepie about young artists in mid-19th century Paris, but the San Francisco Opera production this summer actually moved me to tears with its fine ensemble cast and production.

The saddest artistic news of the year was the penny-wise, pound-foolish behavior of the SF Symphony Board which managed to so alienate Esa-Pekka Salonen that he refused to renew his contract as Music Director. His final concert was a barn-burning performance of Mahler's huge Resurrection Symphony in June.

The happiest artistic news of the year was the literal last-minute rescue by a venture capital family foundation of The Oasis, a nightclub at 11th & Folsom Streets specializing in drag shows, performance art, cabaret and whatever catches the fancy of D'Arcy Drollinger, its hardworking genius impresario. I caught a sophisticated, filthy cabaret show there in June called Noctornal Omissions featuring John Coons and Jonah Wheeler.

Verdi's Requiem was scheduled to open the 2024-2025 season last year with Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting, but there was a walkout by the SF Symphony Chorus after serious mistreatment by the SF Symphony Board. Finally, an anonymous donor contributed a few million dollars so that the union choristers could continue to be paid, and at the very end of the season, the Requiem was finally performed with James Gaffigan conducting. Even though I'm a longtime Verdi worshiper, I had never warmed up to the massive choral work until this performance at the end of June, which was magnificent.

The Merola Opera Program for aspiring opera professionals put on an absolutely gorgeous production in August of a rarely performed Rossini opera, Le Comte Ory. This was the composer's penultimate opera, written right before his swan song William Tell, and the music is some of the best he ever composed. The young cast did it full justice.

In Oakland, West Edge Opera commissioned and nurtured Dolores, a new opera by Nicolás Lell Benavides about the California labor organizer Dolores Huerta. The titular heroine is still alive in her 90s and attended a number of the performances. Even better, Benavides's music for a small orchestra and voices was consistently brilliant.

The annual Other Minds Music Festival, headed for decades by founder Charles Amirkhanian, took place in October at the Brava Theater on 24th Street this year. One evening of the new music festival's programs was dedicated to composer Samuel Adams performed by a full roster of Bay Area musicians, including Sarah Cahill and the Friction Quartet. It was a perfectly joyful evening.

Also in October, the American Bach Soloists gave a wonderful early music concert called The Grand Tour at St. Mark's Church on Cathedral Hill. Featuring works by Handel, Vivaldi, and J.S. Bach, it was a reminder of why this group under Music Director Jeffrey Thomas is such a treasure.

The San Francisco Opera finished its shortened fall season with two productions that the company conceived and built themselves, and both were invigoratingly successful. First up was Wagner's final opera, Parsifal, with tenor Brandon Jovanovich giving a sensitive performance as the title character and a supporting cast that was pretty much flawless. Music Director Eun Sun Kim conducted the four-hour-plus score beautifully.

Next up was the world premiere of The Monkey King, a new opera by composer Huang Ruo with a libretto by David Henry Hwang. Much of its sold-out success can be attributed to a fantastic production involving thousands of yards of silk, puppetry, dancing, flying, and ingenious staging by director Diane Paulus and puppeteer/designer Basil Twist. Plus, the tenor Kang Wang in the title role was sensationally good, heading up a strong cast and chorus playing gods, monks, undersea creatures, and monkeys. It exceeded everyone's expectations.

Rossini's "Le Comte Ory" at Merola Opera

Le Comte Ory is a rarely performed Rossini opera from 1828 that is based on a very naughty French sex farce, and it has some of the most sophisticated music the composer ever wrote. It was a complete treat to hear the work live for the first time last Thursday thanks to the Merola Opera Program which presented an extraordinarily accomplished production at the SF Conservatory of Music. The generously-sized orchestra, conducted by the Met conductor Pierre Vallet, required the removal of a few rows of audience seating, and was probably too large for the space as they were very loud through most of the evening.

It didn't matter much as the "emerging artists" onstage all had strong voices that easily carried over the orchestra. That was particularly true of tenor Minghao Liu in the challenging title role. He already sounds ready for big time stages. (All production photos by Kristen Loken.)

Though the music is Rossini at his best, it's easy to see why the opera is rarely performed. The plot is both blasphemous and risqué, set in a 12th century French town where most of the men are away fighting in the Crusades. The town's women have locked themselves away with the virtuous Comtesse Adele, who is waiting for her brother to return home. Le Comte Ory dons a number of disguises while trying to seduce the Comtesse and is repeatedly unmasked by Meg Brilleslyper as his male page Isolier and Wanchun Liang as his tutor/babysitter. Pictured above, they were both strong-voiced delights.

For the first act, Ory posed as a wise, holy hermit dispensing advice to credulous women in his quest to gain access to the Comtesse Adele.

The ruse works and the depressed Adele is given license by the fake wise man to open up and love a little. This induces a series of arias sung spectacularly well by Eva Rae Martinez. Also noteworthy was the rich, warm voice of mezzo-soprano Ariana Maubach as the Comtesse's best friend.

The opera has a lot of echoes of both Don Giovanni, with its rapey protagonist, and The Marriage of Figaro, except in this version the Cherubino pageboy character ends up happily ever after with the Countess, and the sexually foiled youg aristocrat slinks away rather than being dragged to hell.

In the second act, Ory disguises himself as a female religious pilgrim caught in a Rossini storm who asks for hospitality from the Comtesse.

He's brought along some bad boy pals and they ransack the wine cellar during a wild scene that alternates between solemn prayers and raucous drinking songs. The chorus has a lot to do in this opera, and the small contingent from the Merola Opera Program did such a wonderful job that they deserve to be named individually: Alexa Frankian, Chea Kang, Anna Maria Vacca, Christopher Oglesby, John Mburu, Joeavian Rivera, and Jim Yu. Also noteworthy was the straightforward direction of Garnett Bruce and the simple, flexible set of scenic designer Miriam Lewis.

The penultimate scene depicts the tenor Count in nun drag trying to sexually assault the soprano Countess who has switched clothing with the mezzo-soprano male page Isolier. What makes this outrageous, gender bending scene amazing is the the vocal trio, which is one of the most gorgeous pieces of music Rossini ever composed.

Over the last few years, the SF Conservatory of Music has made major improvements in their main concert hall. Productions have advanced from bare-stage affairs with a few props to elaborate, fully staged operas with sophisticated lighting and projection setups. It was a pleasure to see it being used so well for this Merola production.