The San Francisco Opera has a young professionals training course called the Merola Opera Program, named after their first General Director Gaetano Merola. About 25 years ago, the company added what amounts to a graduate school for a dozen singers every year called the Adler Fellowship Program, where a wealthy patron basically supports a young singer for a couple of years.
Last night at the Opera House, there was a concert called "The Future is Now: Adler Fellows Gala Concert" where the students strutted their stuff in a selection of complete opera scenes that were bizarrely eclectic, ranging from a long chunk of Handel's "Alcina" to the murder scene in "Billy Budd." (But did we need Gordon Getty's "Plump Jack" AGAIN? I know he hands out a lot of money and everything, but really...)
They were accompanied by one of the great pit bands in the world, The San Francisco Opera Orchestra which was being conducted by its outgoing music director, Donald Runnicles. Stars of the evening in my completely biased, subjective opinion were Elza van den Heever in "Alcina" and Sean Panikkar in "La Boheme." Congratulations to everyone, though, and good luck in your hard, competitive artistic life.
San Francisco Opera supernumeraries (non-singing extras, often carrying spears) have an annual Christmas party where "Hammy Awards" are given out for each production in the season, usually to somebody who unintentionally falls down a flight of stairs or otherwise calls attention to themselves in some fashion.
It seems that I received one of the awards for the last-minute substitution in the middle of this summer's "Madama Butterfly" run (click here if you missed the story), but didn't go to the party. This was rather like a Best Actress nominee who doesn't show up at the Oscars because she figures she doesn't have a chance, and then wins the whole enchilada. (If you're interested, you can read an account of the awards ceremony on the supernumerary website, "Spearhead News," by clicking here.)
During the Advent Sunday matinee of "Carmen," I went backstage to the opera house basement canteen and picked up the award with as much over-the-top appreciative hamminess as could be mustered in front of a large group of supernumeraries who were conducting a bake sale. The papparazzi went mad.
Then it was off to Civic Center Plaza, passing newsracks with nicely stenciled journalism brands that also included a well-done "9/11 Was An Inside Job" logo.
In the plaza itself, there was a diarist contemplating her life under the large, public Christmas tree...
...along with a cute young couple clumsily playing frisbee...
...and a scattering of hobos, as Beth Spotswood calls them, sleeping on the lawn.
Not only was it warm, but the light all day couldn't have been more exquisite.
The Civic Center farmers' market was thinning out at 3PM...
...and the vendors were starting to pack up their goods.
The Lone Star Saloon south of Market on Harrison Street...
...was jammed for a beer bust...
...which was being presided over as usual by Avis the tarot reader.
Then it was on to a small jewel box of an Anglo-Catholic church on Fell Street between Franklin and Gough called Church of the Advent of Christ the King (click here for their website that includes a sampling of music)...
...where there was an Advent mass being conducted with an eight-member professional chorus singing polyphonal music by Palestrina, Benjamin Britten and other masters. At times, their soloist lines intertwined with the voices of the small congregation who were an extraordinarily in-tune group.
I stood next to Carol Schaffer, above, who had just finished being a Gypsy chorus girl all afternoon at the San Francisco Opera's "Carmen," and who was in absolutely superb voice.
Though I'm not much of a fan of High Episcopalian services and Christian dogma, through some combination of all the beers drunk at the Lone Star Saloon...
...plus the candles, incense, and extraordinary music bouncing polyphonally through the small, high-ceilinged church...
...there was a long moment when it was easy to see and feel God, not to mention Mother Mary and Baby Jesus too.
Christmas has arrived in the Civic Center, and one of the earliest commercial exploitations of the season has been by the San Francisco Symphony, which is sponsoring "Christmas parties" for children at $32 a person.
The program presumably involves music, amongst the face-painting activities and the Henry Moore statue scrambling.
On Hayes Street nearby, the children's parties often repair for more treats...
...on the trendy shopping area between Franklin and Laguna...
...where a store called Scandinavian Details had a window display of Swedish stuffed toys called "Pee & Poo."
At Flipper's outdoor cafe, I met up with a couple of good-government gadflies who were enjoying a rare victory after the Rules Committee of the Board of Supervisors had voted last Thursday in their favor (click here to see a video stream of the complete meeting from the San Francisco government TV website).
The dispute was over the city's practice of taking every document, whether it was originally in Word, Excel or whatever software program, and converting it into Adobe PDF documents which were then printed out and handed over. This made for a ridiculous amount of work for city bureaucrats and it also left out a lot of data that is included in certain documents, such as formulas in Excel sheets for coming up with numbers, commentary by interested governmental parties on documents, and so on.
In any case, Gloria Young, the Clerk of the Board had gone to the City Attorney's office who told her that for confidentiality purposes nobody could have original files, which was disputed by commenter Joe Lynn at the meeting with the analogy that it was ridiculous for somebody to go upstream at a campground for a crap to then complain about the water being polluted at his campground when he returned. "Make sure you put all legally confidential information in separate documents, and you won't have a problem."
The commenters at the meeting were a formidable roster of the usual good-government gadflies who one doesn't want to piss off because they show up at meetings, come prepared, are articulate, and are generally relentless. Besides Joe Lynn, Kimo and James, they included Doug Comstock, Richard Knee, Allan Grossman, Marc Solomon and a half dozen others.
We then visited a store on Fell Street between Gough and Octavia that opened a year and a half ago (click here for their wonderful website and be sure to read the "Staff" section).
It's definitely the coolest place in the Hayes Valley...
...and I write that as someone who is completely uninterested in comic books or "graphic novels"...
...even after all the attempts to seduce me with their charms by my Portuguese illustrator friend, Pedro Murteira (click here to get to a website dedicated to his awesome work).
Their are groovy couches to lay around on and hang out...
...and a balcony where their are live artist demonstrations, bands, and fabulous Events.
When artists have an in-store appearance, they are asked to create an illustration on toilet seats with Sharpies, and it's quite a collection.
Check the place out.
The very famous Russian expatriate pianist and conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy is in town this week conducting the San Francisco Symphony in an all-Russian program.
The first piece was a 15-minute United States premiere by another Russian expatriate, a 36-year-old named Victoria Borisova-Ollas who lives in Sweden. Called "The Kingdom of Silence," it was sort of a post-minimalist version of the modern Slavic mystics like Arvo Part and Henryk Gorecki, and it was altogether beautiful.
Unfortunately, both the beginning and the end of the piece were extremely quiet and delicate, which meant that it was difficult to ignore the cacophany of coughing audience members that seem to be so plentiful during the holiday season.
Also unfortunate was Joshua Kosman's review of the piece in the "San Francisco Chronicle" this morning where he wrote: "The opening and closing chapters are stretches of tinkly landscaping from a snow globe music box. In between, the orchestra gathers itself into big crescendos, then recedes, in neat alternation. None of it makes much of an impression."
Ignore him. It was a wonderful piece of music that I wanted to hear again immediately.
Following "The Kingdom of Silence" was Rachmaninoff's "Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini," which the composer wrote in 1934 after he had moved to the United States.
Whether you know anything about classical music or not, you've heard "Variation 18" in the piece, one of the most voluptuous and overplayed tunes of the 20th century. In fact, its inclusion in the Reader's Digest Condensed Music 10-album set which belonged to my grandfather was one of my first doorways into classical music.
It was performed by a 27-year old Macedonian named Simon Trpceski with insane aplomb, making the virtuosic "Atlantic Crossings" of a couple of weeks ago look almost like child's play.
I had never heard it played live before and it was completely amusing.
After intermission was the San Francisco Symphony premiere of Tchaikovsky's Symphony #3, The "Polish," which is the unloved stepchild among his six symphonies.
It was easy to hear why, as the long piece meandered all over the place in five movements, ending with a finale so over-the-top that the audience roared rapturously at its final crescendo.
Still, it was fun to hear something new from an overplayed composer, and there were moments such as the fourth movement Scherzo that were amazing. There are $20 rush seats available for this evening's Friday concert at the box office, so if you're in the mood, do check it out.
