Music News: July 5, 2011

The Ring Experience

Young standees and globe-circling Wagnerites all knew that something extraordinary happened in this great house, with so many triumphs (among routine performances) in the company's 88-year history.

Even with Ian Storey's weak Siegfried, it was what Wagner intended: a Götterdämmerung as the brilliant, sweeping culmination of a 17-hour ride between the depths of Nibelheim and the summit of Walhalla, through all emotions, to a wracking climax.

Donald Runnicles' Opera Orchestra — magnificent through it all — went from thrilling, moving sonic beauty in Siegfried's Rhine Journey to spellbinding tragedy in the funeral march, and the cosmic redemption at the end. (Read Laura Albers' blog post for a sense of what it was like to prepare for and to be a key part of all this.)

When the entire orchestra took a bow at the end, Runnicles in front along with 28-year-old horn co-principal Kevin Rivard, the ovation for them justly rivaled that for Nina Stemme's Brünnhilde, an unforgettable performance, with the Immolation Scene crowning it all.

There were too many highlights in the cycles to list, but we will probably remember for many years most of Mark Delavan's Wotan (especially the way he held the audience spellbound with the Wotan-Erzählung every time), the sensational debut of Brandon Jovanovich as Siegmund (and Froh), Jay Hunter Morris' debut in the title role of Siegfried, Stefan Margita's masterful Loge, David Cangelosi's super-athletic Mime, Elizabeth Bishop's riveting Fricka (especially in Walküre), Andrea Silvestrelli's Hagen and Fasolt, and the men of the Opera Chorus producing a wall of solid sound.

Francesca Zambello's stage direction and Jan Hartley's projection design made major contributions. And, as General MacArthur said of the West Point corps, in case of this Ring for me, "Always there echoes and re-echoes: the orchestra, the orchestra, the orchestra."

Taking a leaf from the book of a nationally known reviewer, who took the occasion to criticize Wagner: In my revision, Loge would sing a duet with Brünnhilde at the end of the world, and then he would plant a tree, or perhaps a burning bush, foreshadowing the Old Testament.

The Ring Entertainment

One of the most basic rules for Perfect Wagnerites is no applause (or any noise) during the performance. We old-timers remember, with a mix of guilt and pleasure, the burst of applause for Leonie Rysanek's frightening Ortrud after the opening duet of Lohengrin's second act ... 29 years ago. (For bonus points, name the singer with Rysanek in that duet, in the role of Telramund, making his U.S. debut — but without use of a search engine.)

Once every three decades is the exception that proves the rule of silence during Wagner performances (or after the first act of Parsifal).

The "shocking" contrast is with audience behavior at the last, magnificent Walküre in the San Francisco cycles, on June 29. Not only were there bursts of applause here and there, but shouts, along with snickers and guffaws in response to some directorial shticks, and — good Lord! — hurrahs for the parachuting Valkyries and other spectacles.

But I came to praise the noisy newbies, not to bury them. You cannot complain both about the inevitable and progressive graying of the audience, however proper they may be, and the casual behavior of newcomers. It's one or the other, and I am certain the noisy new blood is far preferable to the respectful silence of veterans; it is also the only possible future. At any rate, both groups united at the end in thunderous ovation. It was a win-win-win for music.

Wondering whether there may be an official stance on the matter, I asked the general director, and got this response from David Gockley, who made these Ring cycles possible:

I love the spontaneous reactions. It shows the production and artists are really making an impact, one that can't help elicit a response, especially from the noninitiated.

As Gockley says, it's a response, and that's surely better than worshipful silence. Still, there is another side to this, and for fair-and-balanced journalism, we present a sample from the (anonymous) opposition:

Enthusiastic crowd? YES! If only they stop whistling in my ear when I am still floating in the air on the music. And the baseball-style shouting is just awful.

Ring Statistics

San Francisco Opera's just-concluded Ring of the Nibelung rang up some impressive figures:

• Total of 415 persons working the performances, including 94 in the orchestra, 76 in the chorus (who had it relatively easy, with only a brief — if demanding — appearance in Götterdämmerung), 115 crew; and that’s not including administrative staff, volunteers, ushers, box office, and the like.
• Twelve animals: two dogs, one bear, and one frog (neither real), one (humanlike) bird, one serpent, six dead animals as part of the scenery.
• Twenty-six 53-foot trucks to transport the set.
• Four hundred lighting cues, 2,650 supertitle slides, 920 liters of liquid nitrogen for fog at every performance, 15 notes sung by the women's chorus. Each cycle required 14 terabytes of storage to record video and audio.

Half-Million Dollar Grant to Stanford

"This grant is rocket fuel for our programming and residencies as we ready ourselves for the Bing Hall opening in January of 2013," says Jenny Bilfield, Stanford Lively Arts' artistic and executive director. "We'll be able to augment existing collaborations, initiate dynamic new projects that bring academic and regional partners closer, and sustain our investment in new work."

The Mellon Foundation contribution will be used to expand Lively Arts' collaborations with regional performing arts partners, deepen its academic connection to the university with enhanced curricular ties and performances by visiting and local artists in humanities courses, and facilitate increased student involvement in Lively Arts' classical music programs through student-curated programs and collaborations with guest performers.

Among new works already slated for a Bing Concert Hall premiere is a chamber opera by Stanford composer Jonathan Berger and playwright Dan O'Brien, with an ensemble including the St. Lawrence String Quartet, the all-male vocal quartet New York Polyphony, and direction by Rinde Eckert.

Guzik Foundation Young Artists Triumph in Moscow

Daniel Levenstein, head of Chamber Music San Francisco, is proud as a peacock as he reports the amazing success of young Russian artists sponsored by the Guzik Foundation and presented by Levenstein's organization in San Francisco since 2005.

Three of them won top honors at the 14th International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow last week:

• Daniil Trifonov, 20, presented here in 2008, won the gold medal in the piano competition.
• Narek Hakhnazaryan, who played here in 2005, won the gold medal in the cello competition.
• Sergey Dogadin, in San Francisco in 2008, shared the silver medal in the violin competition (no gold awarded).

"This is a remarkable tribute to the judges at the Guzik Foundation," says Levenstein, "who chose their young artists with such a discerning eye: Constantine Orbelian and Svetlana Gorzhevskaya."

Incidentally, those three artists also won the Webcast Audience Awards in their categories, sweeping the field.

Performing Arts Migrate to Electronic Media

- The first 3-D ballet film, Giselle, from Russia, two performances in movie theaters around the country and seven in the Bay Area

- HD transmissions from the Metropolitan Opera, repeats on Wednesdays at 6:30 p.m., goes live in the fall on Saturdays at 10 a.m.; see information for both

- Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost, from London's Globe Theatre, July 6, Balboa Theater and other venues.

- Israel Philharmonic Orchestra live from Jerusalem, Zubin Mehta conducting, with soprano Renée Fleming, July 28, at Daly City 20 and other cineplexes

All this and more coming to your local movie theaters, even in the summer off-season. The rest of the year now is full of international opera, ballet, theater, and symphonic concerts on the silver screen. It's all part of today's fluid media-exchange of the arts.

Movies have long since spilled over from theaters to videotapes, to DVDs, and currently to streaming. Music has moved from CDs to the Internet. And now, the performing arts have migrated from opera houses and concert halls to movie theaters, TV, and also streaming.

The Metropolitan Opera has been providing live radio broadcasts for 80 years, but in the recent past, its high-definition simulcasts have exploded from a handful of theaters to perhaps a million viewers in 1,500 theaters around the world.

When David Gockley took over leadership of the San Francisco Opera in 2006, he set up live and free telecasts from the War Memorial, first in the Civic Center Plaza, now in AT&T Ballpark.

Gockley has also established the Koret Media Center, where every performance is recorded on both video and audio. Films created in the center are shown in movie theaters; audio recordings are heard on radio stations. The opera broadcast season on KDFC-FM ended on July 3, but at 8 p.m. on Aug. 7, the station will feature one of the last season's operas, to be selected by listeners.

Notable among summer offerings is the St. Petersburg 3D Giselle, from the Mariinsky Theater, the company known during the Soviet era as the Kirov Ballet, a 150-year-old institution. Screening of the film nationwide coincides with the Mariinsky's residency at the Met in New York.

The concert from Jerusalem, on July 28, will provide views of the city, along with the program in which Renée Fleming and tenor Joseph Calleja sing in tribute to Richard Tucker, the late American tenor, a cantor and loyal friend of Israel. The event is for the benefit of the Richard Tucker Foundation for Music.

Besides events in movie theaters, there are PBS-TV specials, including the Domingo Rigoletto from Mantua, at noon, July 17, on KQED Ch. 9, repeated at 7 p.m. on July 18 and 1 a.m. on July 19 on KQED Life.

Throughout the summer, London's famed BBC Proms daily concerts can be heard live on BBC-3's Internet site. Between July 15 and Sept. 10, programs include a concert performance of Rossini's William Tell (July 17), the Verdi Requiem (July 24), Gustavo Dudamel conducting Mahler (Aug. 5), and Valery Gergiev conducting the Mariinsky Orchestra in the music of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake (Aug. 15).

Leggat's Sudden Departure from S.F. Film Society

Graham Leggat, executive director of the San Francisco Film Society, parent organization of the San Francisco International Film Festival, announced his immediate departure from the position on July 4, citing "health issues [that] make it impossible for me to continue to serve effectively."

It has been known for some time that Leggat is battling a serious illness, and some aspects of the job have been turned over to Deputy Director Steven Jenkins (who now becomes interim director), but until today there was no indication that Leggat would step down.

In his six years of heading the organization, Leggat transformed SFFS into a year-round "engine of exhibition, education and filmmaker services, with public programming offered daily," rather than an overseer of an annual, month-long festival. The Society now is equal to similar institutions in the much larger markets of New York and Los Angeles.

Where Have All the Young Gone?

The Concert Chorus, fortified with a few men, will perform excerpts from Mozart's Requiem, Durante's Magnificat, and Tchaikovsky's Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, in addition to American songs, spirituals, and even Broadway hits. Venues include the National Cathedral in Copenhagen; and in St. Petersburg, both in the 18th-century Catherine the Great Theater (Winter Palace) in the Hermitage Museum, and in the Glinka Capella, which is considered to be one of the best concert halls in the world. Robertson says:

I am delighted that our young men will have yet another opportunity to perform in world-class venues while experiencing different cultures and cities. With home stays in Copenhagen, the tour will broaden their cultural understanding and deepen their young lives most memorably.

The girls of San Francisco Girls Chorus, they just wanna go to Cuba. On Saturday, they left for a week-long, four-concert tour of Havana, Santa Clara, and Matanzas. The 40-voice chorus is performing as part of the U.S. Special Interest Section Headquarters Fourth of July celebration and at concerts as guest artists with three of Cuba’s leading choral ensembles.

This evening, they are in the Casa de la Cultura de Villa Clara, appearing with the Coro Profesional de Villa Clara and Coro de Cámara Coramartha.

Tomorrow, it's a workshop with José Antonio Méndez and, in the evening, a concert at the Biblioteca Gener y del Monte.

The final concert, on July 8, is in the Oratorio San Felipe Neri, with the participation of the Coro Nacional de Cuba and Ensamble Vocal Luna.

In addition, the Girls Chorus will participate in three master classes with Cuban choral conductors, including Maestra Digna Guerra, conductor of Coro Nacional de Cuba. Repertoire includes Cuban-American composer Tania León’s newly commissioned Rimas Tropicales, which received its world premiere at the SFGC 2010-2011 home season closing concerts last month.

Managing Labor Relations in Music: Part I

When Michael Kaiser, president of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, rose to the support of unions — now frequently (and wrongly) held responsible for all money woes — responses were quick to come, including a strong one from a local source.

San Francisco Opera General Manager David Gockley, facing crucial labor negotiations in coming days, went on record against turning the all-dark view of unions to sweetness and light. He called for "sharing the burden."

The thread began with Kaiser writing in the The Huffington Post:

A recent article I read suggested that labor unions are a primary cause for today's financial problems in the arts. I could not disagree more.

It is absolutely true that when income falls precipitously, as it has for many arts organizations, costs must be realigned. And it is also true that unions, in protecting their workers, fight tooth and nail to maintain their members' standard of living and work environment. That is why there are unions in the first place.

But the key issue is: why has revenue fallen so far for so many arts organizations?

It is not the fault of union members that we are selling fewer tickets or raising less funds. We can blame a terrible economy, lack of arts education in our schools, substantially lower government grants at every level and new forms of entertainment that compete for the time and resources of our audiences for much of the reduction in resources available for arts organizations...

Gockley's polite, but firm, view:

Michael Kaiser should be granted honorary membership in all the performing arts unions!

To say that raising more contributions is the cure for ailing performing arts organizations is like telling mayors and governors across the country to simply raise taxes to close budgetary gaps.

If there are problems, dump them on to the public! For San Francisco Opera the public consists of ticket buyers who are paying prices that are already too high and contributors who are unbelievably numerous and generous. Still, we have a serious, and perhaps fatal, imbalance.

In the performing arts, costs have continued to grow faster than income, and generous union contracts are one of the reasons for this. Raising more money is only part of the solution. Labor must assume its share of the burden.

Managing Labor Relations in Music: Part II

San Francisco Opera's orchestra musicians and staff, who are covered by American Federation of Musicians and AGMA contracts, respectively, are holding negotiating sessions, trying to reach agreements before the five-year-old contracts expire July 31.

Details of the musicians' agreement call for minimal annual compensation of $78,445 for the 24-week season, with additional electronic media guarantees, translating to a basic weekly salary of $2,514, and hourly of $104.75. Seniority addition after 20 years of service is $4,152 per annum. The company pays 100 percent of health insurance, including in retirement and for families, but not for future hires.

The American Guild of Music Artists contract covers soloists, choristers, dancers, and backstage staff. AGMA Local San Francisco covers more than 300 people at the Opera, and about the same number at ballet companies in San Francisco, Seattle, and Pennsylvania. Otherwise, AGMA covers organizations in Northern California, Colorado, Nevada, and Utah.

Managing Labor Relations in Music: Part III

The Santa Rosa Symphony and the American Federation of Musicians Union Local 292 have reached an agreement on a new three-year contract for the orchestra. The musicians will receive a wage increase of 2 percent per year, and the agreement allows greater flexibility in the number of their required services. This provision enables musicians who are contracted with the SRS to generate more income by having time to accept other performance opportunities.

"Given the fiscal challenges so many orchestras face today, we are delighted to have negotiated a new multiyear agreement in a spirit of mutual respect and trust,” said SRS Executive Director Alan Silow. "It will enable us to remain both fiscally and artistically strong as we enter a new era at the Green Music Center."

Merola Programs, Casting

Scenes from Verdi's Don Carlo, with Scott Quinn, Deborah Nansteel, Guodong Feng, and Joo Won Kang; Bellini's I Capuleti e i Montecchi, with Elizabeth Zharoff, Laura Krumm, and Suchan Kim; Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, with Cooper Nolan and Joo Won Kang.

Also, from Verdi's Rigoletto, performances by Xi Wang, Cooper Nolan, Joo Won Kang, and Laura Krumm; and from Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, by Marina Harris, Suchan Kim, and Joo Won Kang.

2011 Season sponsors include the Arques Charitable Education Trust, the Frances K. and Charles D. Field Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, the Bernard Osher Foundation, Rusty Rolland, and the Schick Foundation.

Professional Report from S.F. Symphony 'Amateur Night'

Nan Warren, associate at Michael Willis Architects, has long been a fan of classical music, but she is new at performing, so she managed to convey the excitement of her debut:

What fun! I signed up to be in a group of singers who would participate in "Community Music Makers," a first for the San Francisco Symphony. The idea was that they would send you a PDF of the music to be sung, you would practice and learn it (with the help of YouTube in my case). Then on the appointed evening, you would show up at Davies Hall, and sing on stage. The audience would consist of anyone you could cajole into showing up.

About 40 people were dragooned, all of whom were inordinately enthusiastic about the performance. On the stage, we outnumbered the audience 6 to 1, but our enthusiasm was even of a higher ratio.

When I arrived, I was surprised to find that there was a soprano seat right in the middle of the stage. Naively, I sat right down, and the women on either side of me told me I was courageous to sit in the seat that ended the soprano section, right next to the first singer who was an alto. I told them that it was no problem, since I was a weak singer easily influenced by those around me, and would be sure to mess up in equal proportions for each of them.

Ragnar Bohlin, the director of the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, was a wonderful coach. There were 125 sopranos, 119 altos, 48 basses, and 112 tenors. He gave some general hints about each piece, helped us through the warm-ups, and urged us to have good posture, open our chest, and breathe properly.

We sang a four-line Chorale by Bach in German, a four-minute meditation (He That Watches Over Israel) by Mendelssohn, and the Hallelujah Chorus from Messiah.

The most change came over the Mendelssohn piece, because it wasn’t well known to most singers, and was most easily changeable. Every little suggestion seemed to make it better, most particularly the one in which we were urged to carefully separate the words "slumber" and "not." "I’m hearing 'Snot'," said the section leader.

We divided into sections and practiced and had coffee and cookies and a little chance to get acquainted. I sat next to a man who sings with the Palo Alto Symphony Chorus, and he said that he figured the Symphony had gotten a grant for this gig. At $20 a head, the fees barely paid for the lights, to say nothing of the staff, the folders with the music printed out, the programs with all of our names in them, and the ushers with their tuxedos.

The audience, as I mentioned, was wildly enthusiastic. It would be easy to believe that they were related to the singers.

Fantasy Music Camp at Kirkwood

That was the question not only asked but answered by prominent San Francisco musicians Dawn Harms (associate concertmaster of the New Century Chamber Orchestra) and Amy Duxbury (of Symphony Parnassus) in 2004 when they established Music at Kirkwood, near Lake Tahoe, on Route 88. It provides training and a performance opportunity venue for adult amateurs, called "Chamber Music for Grownups."

This year's festival is July 13-17, with a concert by faculty on July 16 and by workshop participants on July 17.

The faculty consists of San Francisco Opera and Ballet orchestra members, and principal chairs of NCCO, including Harms, Liz Prior, Anna Kruger, Susan Babini, Thalia Moore, Roxanne Michaelian, and Rufus Olivier.

Their concert on July 17, at 7:30 p.m. at the Kirkwood Mountain Resort, will include works by Vivaldi, Dvořák, Piazzolla, and Britten, along with Broadway show tunes, featuring Melody Moore, soprano.

Gitler to LINES

Gitler most recently served as an independent nonprofit consultant and producer, working with nonprofit organizations on strategic planning, production, program development, communications, and fund-raising. Her clients included the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, Angel Island Association, and San Francisco Free Clinic.

As a consultant, she also served as the interim executive director at 142 Throckmorton Theater and as interim chief operating officer both at ArtWorks for Change and at the Marine Mammal Center.

Previously, Gitler was director of programming at KRON-TV from 1991 to 2000 and associate director and executive producer at KQED-TV from 1985 to 1991. During her work in broadcast media, she received numerous awards, including the Koret Prize, the George Foster Peabody Award, and eight Northern California Emmys.

Gitler succeeds Renée Heider, who has served as interim executive director at LINES Ballet since February, while the organization conducted its search.

'I am a beast of the stage'

However audacious it seems to drop a vocal register, [Domingo] says that the baritone vs. tenor thing is actually a bit of a red herring. "I know how to colour the voice," he observes, "and I have substantial weight in the lower part, and the middle, for the big line, the legato cantabile ['tied together' in a song-like way]. But I never pretend to be a baritone. I can't say if I'll ever be one properly!"

The baritone as father is one of those cast-iron operatic rules, particularly in Verdi. "They give me a lot more satisfaction than the heroes and big lovers," Domingo says. "OK, when you're a father and you have young children you're still close to those young parts, but then your children start to grow and you start to feel like a real father figure."

He has nothing but pride for the Three Tenors phenomenon (he was one of the Three). "Many things came after," he jokes. "After the Three Tenors came the Three Sopranos, then the Celtic Tenors, then the Three Finnish Basses. But it was great for everybody. I know there were many people who were purist about it, but I don't care, because I have given to the purists all my life. I have the right to enjoy it."

Domingo is emphatically positive about crossover, which the Three Tenors — "no matter what monstrosities the mega-trio were to spawn," writes Neil Fisher — were instrumental in launching in our time: "Opera singers like Gigli, Pons, Chaliapin, Melchior ... you see all those people involved in what was crossover those days. You see Caruso singing 'Over There,' etc."

Always an avid soccer fan (and amateur player), Domingo may even take on a role in helping FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association), the international governing body of what is called “football” everywhere but in the U.S., out of its current crisis. Domingo and Henry Kissinger have been appointed by the discredited FIFA chief Sepp Blatter to a committee to restore ethics to the organization.

That is such a challenging task that even Domingo sounds uncertain: "I don't know what they expect of me," he remarks, suggesting that he knew nothing about the appointment until it was made. "I would say they want me to give a clean-up of football, but I don't know what one can do."