Music News: Sept. 7, 2011

Levine Injured, Luisi Steps In, Withdraws from SFS Concerts

Met General Manager Peter Gelb named Fabio Luisi as Levine's replacement, the Principal Guest Conductor now acting as Principal Conductor, while Levine retains the title of Music Director. Luisi will take over the podium for major fall projects, such as Siegfried, Don Giovanni, and others — in addition to operas already assigned to him.

An immediate consequence of these developments is Luisi's cancelation of performances with the Rome Opera, the Genoa Opera, the Vienna Symphony, and the San Francisco Symphony's Oct. 19-22 performances of the Verdi Requiem. SFS and the other organizations will now have to scramble to find replacements in a few days during the beginning of busy fall seasons — planned over many months — everywhere.

Young Tenor Orgies With the Borgias

Second, at 27, Fabiano is having an explosive career, this wand’ring minstrel from New Jersey-Minneapolis-Philadelphia now orbiting New York, Milan, London, Athens, Spoleto, and more.

And, perhaps more than anything, the young tenor knows that he has not blind, but rather eminently sighted, ambition, plus total dedication and an iron will that should help him through the usual trials and tribulations of a singing career, even on the level of top bananas.

Opera fans around the world first met Fabiano not in a role, but being himself as the brash, forceful, stubborn and charismatic 23-year-old in the Metropolitan Opera’s 2007 National Auditions, captured in the memorable documentary The Audition.

Viewers followed Fabiano in merciless close-ups through struggle and triumph as one of 22 semifinalists selected from 1,800 contestants; he became one of the six winners (along with the Merola Program’s Alec Shrader).

He said then what he tells every interviewer: “I want music in my life and I want to be successful. I am driven to be a singer. I would do anything ... nearly everything that it takes to be successful. I want it really badly.”

Arriving in San Francisco for the first time (he discounts a family vacation at age 12), Fabiano finds the company here “terrific ... people really care ... combining, not separating, work and life.”

Singing Gennaro here — which he did already at the English National Opera — came suddenly and close to the beginning of rehearsals last week when Fabiano was asked to replace the originally scheduled Francesco Meli.

Fabiano’s workload and list of successes are dizzying. Having sung 17 major roles in four years of studies at Philadelphia’s Academy of Vocal Arts, he went on to win top prizes in seven international contests.

Engagements followed as Duke of Mantua (Rigoletto) at the Dresden Semperoper and English National Opera; Edgardo (Lucia di Lammermoor) with Vancouver Opera and in Bilbao; Rodolfo (La bohème) with Limoges Opera; Cassio (Otello) with Paris Opera; Raffaele (Stiffelio) with the Met; Alfredo (La traviata) at the Teatro San Carlo.

Offers are coming in for all kinds of leading tenor roles, but Fabiano is disciplined in staying within the lyric-tenor range. Whatever time is left from his 24/7 dedication to singing, Fabiano is still pursuing childhood hobbies of cars and baseball.

Legend has it that at age 2, he knew the make and model of all the cars in his neighborhood; and, as a passionate fan of the New York Yankees, he became at age 17 the youngest umpire in varsity sports in Minnesota — not otherwise a Yankee domain.

Four-Year-Old MTT's Culinary Memories

1949, San Francisco: The name spelled magic for me, then a boy accustomed to the San Fernando Valley’s smells of dust and citrus. For a kid used to unpaved streets, it was like the Emerald City.

Getting there by train was an adventure. The Coast Daylight made its streamlined sashay up the coast and valleys. Four years old, and I was glued to the windows, chatting and singing with everyone, especially the white-coated waiters in the dining car. The food was great and some of it even fresh. I still remember the crisp string beans of one Blue Plate Special.

It was visiting my mother’s family that brought us north. They were a fairly tough crowd of first-generation, self-made mini¬machers who all lived within blocks of one another in the Marina district. These are the flats that have very long stairways right off the street leading to a single spacious apartment on the second floor. Two sisters lived only a few doors from each other on North Point.

From the beginning, my favorite adventure was to walk to the Palace of Fine Arts. My relatives tried to interest me in feeding the ducks, but it was the building that fascinated me. It made me dream and evoked questions. What was the building? Who were the stone women on high who huddled in confidential quartets engrossed in their mysteries?

The family was doing well in the city’s hotel and real estate scene and liked to go out. As the only child, I was taken to restaurants like Jack’s, the Blue Fox, Ernie’s and, of course, Tadich Grill and Swan Oyster Depot. ...

Licitra Dies of Injuries from Road Accident

Salvatore Licitra, 43, San Francisco Opera's Dick Johnson, a.k.a. Ramerrez, in last year's Girl of the Golden West, and a Met favorite since his stand-in for the ailing Luciano Pavarotti in 2002, died on Monday after a week in coma. The tenor lost control of his Vespa, slammed into a wall, suffered cranial injuries and underwent emergency surgery.

On vacation, Licitra was on his way to collect the Ragusani nel Mondo prize when the accident occurred. He was not wearing a helmet.

Police reports said at the time he was traveling at a low speed, of about 30 miles per hour, before the crash.

The full announcement is posted on Licitra's Web site.

Profiling Our ‘Centennial Players’

Associate principal cellist Wyrick occupies the Peter & Jacqueline Hoefer Chair. He served as assistantprincipal from 1986 to 1990, worked in New York in the cello sections of the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra and New York City Opera. Wyrick then returned to the San Francisco Symphony in his current position in 2000.

As a member of the Ridge String Quartet, he has toured throughout the world and recorded the Dvořák piano quintets with Rudolf Firkušný, a disc that won France’s Diapason d’Or and a Grammy nomination.

Wyrick also recorded the Fauré cello sonatas with pianist Earl Wild (dell’Arte), and has performed at major festivals such as Santa Fe, Spoleto, and Helsinki.

He and S.F. Symphony violinist Amy Hiraga have two teenage daughters already receiving great reviews: violinist Mayumi Wyrick and cellist Mariko Wyrick.

Nicole Cash, Horn

Virginia native Nicole Cash is the orchestra’s associate principal horn. She came to the San Francisco Symphony from the Dallas Symphony, where she played for eight years. Cash has earned degrees from Northwestern and Rice universities.

Cash also served as coprincipal horn with the Kwa-Zulu Natal Philharmonic of South Africa and has performed with the orchestras of Honolulu, San Antonio, and Houston, the Grand Tetons Music Festival Orchestra, the Sun Valley Summer Symphony, and as guest principal horn with the Saint Louis Symphony.

She is an active chamber musician, and has also appeared as a soloist with several orchestras.

Power (and Music) to the People in Berkeley

San Francisco Symphony is repeating most of Wednesday’s centennial season-opening gala on Thursday,beginning at 11:30 a.m. in Civic Center Plaza at a free event, featuring the orchestra, with MTT conducting, and Lang Lang as the soloist in the Liszt Piano Concerto No. 1.

Cal Performances will have another large-scale freebie, on Sept. 25, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., in and around Zellerbach Hall on the UC Berkeley campus. No tickets are needed for a full day of music, dance, and theater; there will be some 25 free performances, in addition to demonstrations at the “instrument petting zoo,” the chance to meet artists at CD signings, and more.

One inviting event is a 45-minute performance in Zellerbach Hall, beginning at 11 a.m., by Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg’s New Century Chamber Orchestra, now celebrating its 20th year. NCCO’s season-opening concerts around the Bay, Sept. 22–25, feature Bloch’s Concerto Grosso No. 1, Shchedrin’s Carmen Suite, and the orchestra’s founding music director, Stuart Canin, in performance of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto in D Minor.

Handel the Bold (and the Lucky)

Hosted by the Center for Computer Assisted Research in the Humanities at Stanford, the site contains transcriptions of original documents relating to Handel and his contemporaries.

Here’s just one random example, from the 1776 Morning Chronicle and London Advertiser, almost two decades after Handel’s death, recalling an anecdote about him bumping up against “the late Royal Highness Frederick, Prince of Wales, father of his present Majesty” at a public rehearsal in Carlisle House:

The rehearsal began to a full auditory, the band was an extraordinary good one, and much applause was given to several of the early passages in it. At length that divine actress, Mrs. Cibber began the enchanting air of “Lord God of Hosts,” in which her most expressive and exquisite manner took possession of the very soul of Handel; but unfortunately, at this instant, the prince had entered into a full and loud conversation with some noblemen who sat near him.

Their talk, indeed, was so very loud, that Handel was not a little piqued to find that the merit of his composition, when aided by the amazing excellence of Cibber, had not sufficient charms to win their attention; he patiently bore for a while, what, at length, he could no longer endure: accordingly he made a loud crash upon the full organ, which made them stare for a while, and wonder what was the matter: the wonder being over, she continued singing, and they continued talking.

Handel’s patience was now quite exhausted, when rising from his seat, and turning round to the band and the audience, he exclaimed with a loud voice in broken English, “You dam musician, why you make all this noise? Do you no perceive his Royal Highness is dispose for conversation, why you disturb him with your music?”

A dead pause ensued, when the prince mildly replied, “Handel, some princes would not brook such treatment, but I kiss the rod; I perceive my error, and desire you would go on with your rehearsal.”

Game Theory in Opera: A New Look at the Old Swan

Once Wagner’s most popular opera, Lohengrin has suffered scholarly neglect in the post-war period. This essay re-engages with the work from the novel perspective of game theory analysis. Centring on Elsa’s breach of the Frageverbot, it offers a close epistemological study of the opera’s main characters.

As an alternative to traditional interpretations of the heroine’s fatal decision, we propose a complex and psychologically more compelling account. Elsa asks the forbidden question because she needs to confirm Lohengrin’s belief in her innocence, a belief that Ortrud successfully erodes in Act II. This interpretation reveals Elsa as a rational individual, upgrades the dramatic significance of the Act I combat scene, and, more broadly, signals a return to a hermeneutics of Wagnerian drama.

Elsa’s martyrdom is hardly tolerable in an era of female emancipation, and the knight’s tender feelings for his ‘lieber Schwan!’ (Act I, scene 3), which Wagner underlines with an orchestral Generalpause, raise homoerotic suspicions among gay and straight listeners alike.

The S.F. Conservatory of Music Season

- Pianist Paul Hersh, nocturnally themed compositions of Schumann, Debussy, Chopin, and Fauré — Sept. 12,Recital Hall

- Clarinetist Jeffrey Anderle performs works for clarinet and electronics, joined by alumna flautist Jill Heinke — Sept. 22, Recital Hall

- Violinist Ian Swensen presents Dvořák’s Piano Trio in F Minor, Op. 65, and Schoenberg’s Phantasie, Op. 47 with Eric Zivian, piano, and Tanya Tomkins, cello — Sept. 26, Concert Hall

The Conservatory Orchestra, under the direction of Music Director Andrew Mogrelia, will perform Bartók’s Violin Concerto No. 2, with Douglas Kwon as the soloist, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1, on Sept. 18 and 19, in the Concert Hall.

Berkeley-born violinist Nora Chastain, now a recording artist and professor at the Universität der Künste Berlin, is giving a free master class on Sept. 27, in the Concert Hall.

Among events taking place in the Conservatory Concert Hall, rented for the occasion, on Sept. 10, it’s the Bay Area Rainbow Symphony season-opening event, featuring “Nimrod” from Elgar’s Enigma Variations; Lowell Liebermann’s Concerto for Flute, Op. 39, with David Latulippe as soloist; and Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet Suite.

Persian Music at Iranian Film Festival

The event, at the San Francisco Art Institute, consists of the following films:

- The Scorpio
- 1 in 10
- Bahram an Iranian Rapper (followed by Q&A with the director, Sam Ali Kashani
- And Dammam Again
- What Patience God Has (followed by Q&A with the singer Sattar)

On Sept. 11, at 3:30 p.m., the festival will screen the U.S. premiere of Crossroads of Civilization, a 1976 documentary about Persian history. The score was composed by Ahmad Pezhman, who will be in attendance to share his memories of conducting the music for the film. David Frost, who interviewed the Shah in his last days in Panama, was producer and narrator of the documentary.

From the S.F. Symphony Centennial Album

The following season, five more women joined the SFS, including two already famed in San Francisco: cellist Dorothy Pasmore (left) and her violinist sister Mary (right), shown here with their pianist sister Suzanne. As the Pasmore Trio, they had captivated Europe. Mary Pasmore remained with the orchestra until 1957.

From Larry Rothe’s Music for a City, Music for the World:

For years, symphony orchestras were boys’ clubs, and only the angelic harp seemed suited to a woman’s touch. In bastions of what someone once called “old Europe,” the Berlin Philharmonic did not admit women until 1982, the Vienna Philharmonic not until 1997.

Sixty years before Berlin opened its ranks (grudgingly) to women, a fugitive from old Europe, Alfred Hertz, knocked down the gender barrier in San Francisco. [Hertz served as SFS music director from 1915 to 1930.] During the 1923–24 season he hired violinist Helen Atkinson, the first woman (other than a harpist) to take membership in a major American orchestra. Violinists Eugenia Bern, Modesta Mortensen, and Frances Simonsen followed the next season.

But two other women who also joined that year were more celebrated — not only in San Francisco’s musical circles, but throughout the country and abroad. These were violinist Mary Pasmore and her cellist sister Dorothy.

The Pasmore sisters were the daughters of Henry Bickford Pasmore, a composer, an organist, and a choral director who was himself the son of an amateur flutist and cellist. Henry Pasmore had studied in Leipzig, where he heard Brahms conduct Brahms, and in London. After his return to San Francisco in 1885, he held teaching posts at the College of the Pacific, Mills College, and Stanford. Of his six children, four daughters were musical. Besides Mary and Dorothy, Suzanne became a pianist and Harriet a singer.

Trio Opens Berkeley Chamber Performances

The program also offers Ravel’s Sonata for Violin and Cello, and Brahms’ Trio in B Major, Op. 8.

The season consists of five concerts, with music ranging from the 16th century to contemporary works. General admission is $25, but there is no charge for high school students, and tickets for post-secondary students are priced at $12.50.

Gockley's New 'CNN Opera'

Besides John Adams, responsible for those two and other works, a number of composers have been involved in the drive of enabling voices of our times in opera houses.

“Mozart, Verdi, Beethoven, Shostakovich also spoke of their days,” said Heart director Francesca Zambello, who is credited by Gockley for initiating the project, “and so should works of today.”

Thomas Hampson creates the role of Rick Rescorla in Christopher Theofanidis’ opera, and Merola alumna Melody Moore is sure to be launched on an international career in the role of Susan Rescorla.

The “middle-aged romance” of the Rescorlas, who found each other in their 50s, is one of the opera’s moving components. It is greeted by Zambello as part of a new trend to deal with “second-chance” love stories.

Rescorla was a Vietnam veteran who died heading the successful evacuation of all but six of the 2,700 Morgan Stanley employees when the World Trade Center collapsed on 9/11. The casualties — including Rescorla — were members of his security team. The opera’s libretto, by Donna Di Novelli, is based on the 2002 book of the same title by Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist James B. Stewart.

Heroism is at the heart of the opera, but so is Theofanidis’ music: It is tonal, accessible, contemporary, with some twisting harmonies and lush sounds reminiscent of Richard Strauss.

The composer has also incorporated music evoking an era stretching from the end of World War II to 9/11 — not as pastiches, but as an integral part of the score.

Theofanidis, 43, is winner of the Rome Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, six ASCAP Gould Prizes, and a Fulbright Fellowship, in addition to being a veteran of the California Symphony’s pioneering Young American Composer-in-Residence Program.

The premiere’s conductor, Houston Opera Artistic Director Patrick Summers, says his company has already commissioned another opera from Theofanidis, whom he called “a born musical dramatist.” Specifics about the opera, to be part of the 2014 season, will be announced in the future.

How can such expensive and risky new commissions be realized, especially — considering the Heart timeline — during the 2008 global fiscal meltdown (awaiting an opera of its own)? Gockley credited “our own King Ludwig,” San Francisco Opera board chair John A. Gunn, whose recent joint contributions with his wife, Cynthia Fry Gunn, have come on top of their $40 million donation to the company three years ago.

San Francisco Opera on Film

A reminder of the month’s KQED-TV high-definition screenings of recent San Francisco Opera performances Thursdays at 8 p.m. on KQED ch. 9, and repeated at 2 a.m. (ouch!) on Fridays. If you have KQED Life service, check repeat screenings there.

- Sept. 8, Donizetti, Lucia di Lammermoor, with Natalie Dessay, Giuseppe Filianoti, and Gabriele Viviani; the Graham Vick production is conducted by Jean-Yves Ossonce

- Sept. 15, Puccini, Tosca, with Adrianne Pieczonka, Carlo Ventre, and Lado Ataneli; Marco Armiliato conducts, Jose Maria Condemi is the director

- Sept. 22, Donizetti, The Elixir of Love, with Ramon Vargas and Inva Mula; directed by James Robinson, conducted by Bruno Campanella

Berkeley Symphony Opening Gala

Proceeds from the dinner will support the music director’s Artistic Initiative Fund, which helps introducing new composers, artists, and works.

Domingo Vs. Regietheater (aka Eurotrash)

“As an Intendant I would never allow such things,” Domingo is quoted as saying. He would take issue with the director, and “if that doesn’t help, I would cancel the production.”

From the List-Maker: Our Composers

This week: Who are the accomplished or promising Bay Area composers who should get more opportunities to be heard? There are hundreds of possible names, so this is just a quick, preliminary list.

Your additions and comments are welcome in the comments field at the end of the column. Note: John Adams and Jake Heggie are obvious exceptions, having a delightful surfeit of exposure here and everywhere.

Aaron Einbond
Allen Shearer
Belinda Reynolds
Ben Boone
Beth Custer
Brian Ferneyhough
Christopher Jones
Dan Becker
David Coll
David Conte
David Jaffee
Elinor Armer
Erling Wold
Frank La Rocca
Gabriella Frank
Hi-Kyung Kim
Jean Ahn
Jeffrey Miller
Jonathan Russell
Jonathan Berger
Ken Ueno
Kenneth Froelich
Kirke Mechem
Kurt Erickson
Kurt Rohde
Laurie San Martin
Marcia Burchard
Marty Rokeach
Matt Ingalls
Mika Pelo
Pablo Furman
Pablo Ortiz
PamelaZ
Paul Dresher
Rafael Hernandez
Robert Greenberg
Ross Bauer
Ryan Brown
Sam Nichols
Wayne Patterson