On a sunny Sunday a couple of weeks ago, we walked along the downtown San Francisco waterfront, which was jammed with people, including survivors of that morning's San Francisco Marathon, music lovers attending a free noontime concert by the San Francisco Symphony, and hordes of tourists taking selfies.
The huge lawn in front of the new Pier 27 cruise ship terminal is just about perfect for outdoor concerts except for the lack of shade on a rare, fog-free San Francisco summer day.
Edwin Outwater was the affable conductor of what was essentially a pops program of excerpts from Bernstein, Copland, Dvorak and Holst, and he even had the entire audience shouting out "Mambo!" on cue with the orchestra during the Symphonic Dances from West Side Story.
We didn't stay for the second half on account of frying by the sun without a cool sun hat like the daddy above.
So we continued walking down the waterfront, dodging the video selfie tourists.
For a couple of decades, Tony and I used to have a breakfast or lunch at Flipper's, a greasy spoon in Hayes Valley which was presided over brilliantly by Kirby, a 300-pound drag queen who returned to Texas last year when the restaurant closed.
The place has now become Anina, a bar operated by the same people who own Brass Tacks, which took over Marlena's a couple of years ago next door, and the asphalt garden is open during the daytime as a beer garden that also features "low-proof libations."
The clientele seems to be young, beautiful, and smart, sort of Zeitgeist meets Silicon Valley.
The quartet we shared a picnic table were welcoming and charming, and a perfect representation of California right now. From left to right, we were talking to a North Carolina blond, an Israeli woman who looked like a 1960s movie star, a Pakistani, and a Texas woman living with her French husband in Redwood City. I hope Kirby would approve.
The Merola Opera summer training program presented an ambitious triple bill of one-act operas last weekend at the SF Conservatory of Music, and the highlight was the quality of the aspiring professional singers themselves. First up was Pergolesi's 1733 comedy La Serva Padrona about a female servant's maneuvers to have her boss marry her so she can become mistress of the household. Pictured above are David Weigel as a mute servant, soprano Jana McIntyre as the scheming Serpina, and bass-baritone Daniel Noloya as the dim Uberto. Both McIntyre and Noloya have terrific voices, moved well onstage, and made you realize why the trivial La Serva Padrona has been popular for centuries, with one great tune after another.
David Weigel returned with a rich, bottomless bass-baritone as Death in the second opera, Gustav Holst's wondrously spare chamber opera, the 1908 Savitri. Taken from an episode in the Mahābhārata, the simple tale has Death taking away the woodcutter Satyavan (tenor Addison Marlor above sounding splendid) and his wife Savitri's successful plea for Death to spare his life. The director decided on a concept production that took place in England during World War One where the piece was premiered in 1916, which didn't make a lot of sense, particularly with the anachronistic flapper dress on soprano Kelsea Webb. Festival Opera presented the piece in Oakland a couple of years ago and it was deeply moving, but the staging here was static and dull.
The final opera was William Walton's 1966 adaptation of a short Chekhov play (which he referred to as a vaudeville), The Bear. The score is closer to Facade, the parody pastiche that Walton composed in the 1920s to Edith Sitwells's poems than his more "serious" works that followed, and it was a treat to see it for the first time. Mezzo-soprano Ashley Dixon was delightful as a recent Russian widow whose ostentatious mourning is interrupted by bass-baritone Cody Quattlebaum as a misogynist neighbor who is owed money by her late husband. There is a quarrel which leads to a thwarted duel which leads to a kiss which leads to humping on the floor in this production. Quattlebaum was wild, woolly and sounded great, and Daniel Noyola returned to play the old servant who is trying to encourage his mistress to get out of the house.
The conducting by Christopher Ocasek (above right) was lively all afternoon, and particularly good in the Walton. The direction by Peter Kazaras (above left) was not so fine, with La Serva Padrona and The Bear overstuffed with shtick when they should both be comic souffles. The performers managed to overcome much of the nonsense through sheer charm.
The final event in Saturday's multicultural marathon was Weekend Two of the Ethnic Dance Festival at the San Francisco Opera House, which was as interesting as the previous week's program. Highlights for me were the great live musicians for Ballet Afsaneh's World Premiere The Persepolis Project, Ballet Folklorico Mexico Danza's exuberant La Revoluccion, and the Gurus of Dance, an Aditya Patel Company who closed out the first half with a deliriously synchronized Bollywood-meets-EDM extravaganza.
At intermission I realized that after 40+ years of attending performances at the SF Opera House, this was the first time I was an ethnic minority as a white audience member, which was both refreshing and shame inducing.
The differentiator of this festival is that dance and musical traditions from all over the world are presented side by side, with the implicit message that there are no good or bad cultures, only different ones. And while the various dance troupes are true to their own specific traditions, everyone is influencing everyone else.
After a long curtain call, all the performers exited through the orchestra aisles, into the lobby, and continued dancing. Sunday was a day of rest.
