Avast Ye, Intelligible Pirates!
Lamplighters Music Theatre is a splendid, smart, and kind organization. Its productions feature wonderful diction and supertitles, to boot, so that ordinary (American) mortals can have a shot at understanding a large portion — if still not all — of William Gilbert's devilishly clever and oh-so-British lyrics.
In the Lamplighters' current superb production of the Gilbert & Sullivan Pirates of Penzance, or the Slave of Duty, this double effort to communicate pays off beautifully. Without the long-time San Francisco institution’s kind of customer service, G&S is very much like a "Wagner-without-translation" experience. Consider unaided muddle vs. "aha, it's funny!" understanding of the very opening:
For today our pirate 'prentice"'Prentice / scent is": positively Sondheimian.
Rises from indenture freed;
Strong his arm, and keen his scent is
He’s a pirate now indeed!
Or, whilst (to stay in character) you sway to Brett Ruona's operatic treatment of the sweeping melody of "Poor wondering one!" you also get what Mabel is singing:
Though thou hast surely strayed,That’s something that would be difficult to sing to a slightly simpler translation of "you messed up, but may yet be redeemed."
Take heart of grace,
Thy steps retrace ...
Conducted by Monroe Kanouse and directed by Phil Lowery, Pirates opens the Lamplighters' 58th season, on Peter Crompton's imposing (and yet tour-ready) set, with vibrant costumes by Melissa Wortman.
Two alternating casts feature appealing singing-comic-dancing actors as maudlin pirates, perky maidens, and cordial cops, serving up a whole lot of mirth and music to bounce by. At the Walnut Creek matinee on Saturday I saw, the stars of the show were sparkling indeed. Hopelessly square and "enslaved by duty," Joshua La Force's 'prentice pirate Frederic was both hilarious and musically outstanding. He and Ruona made a fetching pair of lovebirds. Charles Martin's Pirate King was swashbuckling, swaggering, reckless ... albeit helplessly soft-boiled vis-à-vis all orphans, no matter what their parentage may be.
Sara Couden, as Ruth, the scatterbrained, love-struck pirate nursemaid, made plausible the character's fatal mishearing of the instruction for apprenticing Frederic to a pilot:
Mistaking my instructions,No matter which cast you'll see in upcoming performances in Napa, Mountain View, San Francisco, or Livermore, there’s only one Major General — Jonathan Spencer — and he dazzles with encyclopedic noesis:
Which within my brain did gyrate,
I took and bound this promising boy
Apprentice to a pi-rate.
I'm very well acquainted, too, with matters mathematical.(Thank you, again, for supertitles!)
I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical.
About binomial theorem I'm teeming with a lot o' news,
With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse.
Going above and beyond exemplary musical and stage direction, as well as dedicated individual and ensemble performance, Lamplighters' Pirates possesses the rare and delightful quality of something being all of one piece.
True 'Friends' Offer Fall's Best Music Deal
San Francisco Friends of Chamber Music presents its annual "live and free" Chamber Music Day on Sept. 12, in the S.F. Conservatory of Music, from noon to 6:30 p.m. Come as you are, wander in and out, behold everything from Baroque to contemporary to jazz to improv.
Roughly two dozen music groups will perform in the Conservatory's various venues. Come to hear Les grâces, Musica Pacifica, Voices of Music, Alexander String Quartet, Classical Revolution, Ives Quartet, San Francisco Piano Trio, Earplay, Potaje, Melody of China ... and more.
Dominique Pelletey, the presenting organization's executive director, calls attention to the "extra, vibrant dimension" this year of "many of the ensembles performing works by Bay Area composers."
Plus, it’s live, free — and local!
Credit is due to the sponsors of the event: Mervyn L. Brenner Foundation, Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Zellerbach Family Foundation, and Porto Franco Records.
'The Lost One' Finds Fremont
"The Woman Who Strayed" or "The Lost One": translate La traviata any which way, yet she will find you — even if the character remains elusive. Right in the wake of Pocket Opera's production, now David Sloss' Fremont Opera is stepping up to the plate. The Verdi opera will be presented at Fremont's Smith Center for the Performing Arts at Ohlone College, on Aug. 27 at 8 p.m. and Aug. 29 at 2 p.m.
Sloss, at the helm of the Fremont Symphony, conducts a cast led by Danielle Talamantes, winner of the first prize in the 2010 Irene Dalis Vocal Competition (singing Violetta in this production), Benjamin Bunsold (Alfredo), and Scott Bearden (Germont).
The director is Jonathon Field, who has over 90 productions to his credit, some as artistic director of Lyric Opera Cleveland.
Farewell, Walda Hamilton Bradley
Mezzo-soprano Walda Hamilton Bradley was a member of the San Francisco Opera Chorus for 11 years, and sang with West Bay Opera in the 1960s, including a performance in the title role of Carmen. She was killed in San José last week after she was struck by a car while walking her dog.Bradley, 79, and widowed five years ago, was also a founding member of Opera San José, and was active in the San Jose Music Study Club scholarship program.
Choral Artists, Alexander Quartet Co-commissioning
San Francisco Choral Artists and the Alexander String Quartet have joined to commission, perform, and record new works. The initial three commissions have been awarded to Paul Seiko Chihara, Michael Gandolfi, and Veronika Krausas for full-length works. ASQ first violinist Zakarias Grafilo will arrange Brahms’ Opus 92 quartets for choir and string quartet. Next year, three Bay Area premiere performances are scheduled for May 7, 14, and 15, and Grammy Award-winner Judith Sherman will produce a full-length CD.
Sandy Wilson, of the quartet, commented on the venture: "Music that combines a vocal chamber ensemble with an instrumental chamber ensemble is particularly compelling. It permits a level of intimacy between the performers and the audience that isn't possible in larger ensembles."
SFCA's Magen Solomon concurred: "There is magic when two chamber groups, each with its own sound world, are brought together. The synergy offers composers and performers a dazzlingly broad palette for exploring color, emotion, and creative expression, and offers audiences an unparalleled musical experience."
Choral Artists' 2010-2011 season opens with "Silent Night, Noisy Night," a celebration of seasonal music on Dec. 4, 5, and 12.
Familiar Names at Edinburgh International Festival
This month brings events and people we know to the Edinburgh Festival's Usher Hall on Lothian Road:- Aug. 13, (Berkeley resident) John Adams' El Niño, with Los Angeles Opera Music Director James Conlon conducting the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
(Then, following the Finnish Radio Symphony, with Sakari Oramo, and the Cleveland Orchestra, with Franz Welser-Möst:)
- Aug. 19, (the Gordon Getty-supported, Napa-resident ensemble) Russian National Orchestra, scheduled to be conducted by Mikhail Pletnev
- Aug. 20, Mozart’s Idomeneo in concert performance, with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Roger Norrington, who replaces the late Sir Charles Mackerras, originally scheduled to conduct
- Aug. 21, (San Francisco's) Kronos Quartet
- Aug. 22, (Merola alumna) mezzo Joyce DiDonato in concert
- Aug. 28 and Sept. 4 (San Francisco Opera's) Donald Runnicles conducts the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Putting Music Income in Perspective
Against occasional items in this column detailing salaries of conductors, which reach up to around $2 million, here are some 2009 income reports for musicians in the world of rock/pop/and other:1. U2 — $130 million,
2. AC/DC — $114m,
3. Beyoncé Knowles — $87m,
4. Bruce Springsteen — $70m,
5. Britney Spears — $64m,
6. Jay-Z — $63m,
7. Lady Gaga — $62m,
8. Madonna — $58m,
9. Kenny Chesney — $50m,
10. Black Eyed Peas, Coldplay, Toby Keith — $48m each.
Finding the Good in a Ratty Lohengrin
Andrew Clark's Financial Times review of last week's season-opening performance of Lohengrin at the Bayreuth Festival begins in a factual fashion:
The stage is swarming with rats. Well, they move like rats and behave like rats, and are dressed in rat-like costumes. They show rat-like intelligence and appear, as rats do, by the dozen.But then, by the end of this report about the latest EuroTrash production, Clark goes uncharacteristically indulgent:You might wonder what these vulgar rodents could be doing in the Bayreuth festival theatre, the Wagner world’s holy temple, in a performance of Lohengrin.
The finale brought to mind the foetal star-child in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Where Wagner stipulates the arrival of a minor to take the place of the departing swan-knight, Neuenfels provided an adult-size figure, half-foetus, half-alien, who emerged from a simulated egg and started cutting up its own umbilical cord.Sunday’s audience, which had grumbled and tittered its way through the performance, was stunned into silence. Suddenly, Lohengrin had become a more troubling, more ambivalent work than we all imagined it to be. In place of utopias, it spoke of false dreams, taboos, uncertainty. The rats’ herdlike belief in a better life had been smashed, just as Lohengrin’s quest for unconditional love had failed. No wonder Wagner called Lohengrin his saddest opera.
S.F. Opera's Search for Body Doubles
Incidental intelligence: Tenor Ramón Vargas is 5'10". The way we know is that San Francisco Opera, where Vargas will sing the title role of Massenet's Werther this fall, has announced a public casting call for three supernumeraries who can match Vargas' height."As part of the directorial concept for the production," says the announcement, "three men who are approximately 5 feet 10 inches tall will be cast as doubles for the title role of Werther, played by renowned tenor Ramón Vargas. This is a nonspeaking, nonsinging, nondancing, volunteer role."
The public casting call will take place on Aug. 9 at 7 p.m. in the Ballet Studio of the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco. To reserve a place, call (415) 551-6205 and leave a name and phone number, or send an e-mail to [email protected].
As for the "concept," the director is Francisco Negrin, making his San Francisco debut. (No rats in his biography, so far.)
Zwölftonwerbung: Twelve-Tone Commercial
Composer Eric Salzman calls attention to a splendid spoof, the audio version of which was started in 1977 by Robert Conrad, founder of WCLV classical radio in Cleveland.The script was written by conductor Kenneth Jean, and Mathias Bamert is said to have had a role in the production. The video, which followed the audio version by three decades, adds an entertaining extension of the original. Enjoy.
Washington National Opera Merger?
The Placido Domingo-managed Washington National Opera is in big trouble, even worse than the great tenor’s other company, the Los Angeles Opera.The Wall Street Journal reports that WNO has an $11 million deficit, and the company's assets last year fell 16 percent, down some $7 million from the previous year.
To deal with the crisis, the company is reported to be exploring a merger with the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (where it performs), so that the Center would assume the Opera's assets and liabilities.
In return, WNO would cede to the Center approval on artistic and budgetary matters — meaning that instead of Domingo, Kennedy Center President Michael Kaiser would be in charge.
Among the many recent financial crises for opera companies: New York City Opera taking $23.5 million from its endowment, the Met using its Marc Chagall murals as partial collateral on a loan, and Domingo's L.A. Opera getting an emergency $14 million bond issue backed by guarantees by L.A. county. Connecticut Opera and Baltimore Opera, among others, have shut down.
The Wall Street Journal report says:
Some have blamed the leadership of Mr. Domingo, who became general director in 2003 after several years as artistic director. Although lauded for his creative vision, he has faced criticism for what has been described as inattentive supervision."Why can't a general director with the fame, charm and ability of Domingo roll up his sleeves and work to realize his vision, rather than distancing himself from the results?" classical-music critic Anne Midgette wrote earlier this year in The Washington Post. "The answer: Because he isn't actually there, running the company."
Marlboro Festival Online This Week
American Public Media's Performance Today offers a week of coverage from Vermont's famed Marlboro Music Festival, through Aug. 6. The program includes concerts, interviews, and previously unheard archival material from Marlboro. The festival was closed to the media for over a decade, and Performance Today is given an opportunity to open up Marlboro again.Since 1951, the Marlboro Music Festival has welcomed some of the finer chamber musicians to southeast Vermont. They are given an exceptional opportunity to experiment with music, performing in public only about a quarter of the works they rehearsed.
The festival's artistic directors are Mitsuko Uchida and Richard Goode.