This past Wednesday the San Francisco Opera Center and the Merola Opera Program jointly announced the program plans for the 36th season of the Schwabacher Recital Series. The series is named after James Schwabacher, who was a co-founder of the Merola Opera Program; and it provides an opportunity to showcase the talents of the exemplary artists who have participated in the training programs of the Merola Opera Program and/or the San Francisco Opera Center. As in the past, the season will consist of four concerts. This year two of those performances will take place in February, and the other two will be held in April. As was the case last year, all of this season’s concerts will take place on Wednesday evenings, beginning at 7:30 p.m., and the venue will again be the Taube Atrium Theater. Specifics are as follows:
February 13: The first program of the season will be shared by two Korean vocalists, tenor WooYoung Yoon and baritone SeokJong Baek. The accompanist will be pianist (and first-year Adler Fellow) Kseniia Polstiankina Barrad. Baek will begin the program, singing Francis Poulenc’s eight-song cycle Chansons gaillardes (ribald songs) followed by Gustav Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (songs of a wayfarer), for which Mahler wrote his own texts. Yoon’s solo offerings will be the four songs collected in Richard Strauss’ Opus 27 and Jake Heggie’s cycle Friendly Persuasions: Homage to Poulenc. As is almost inevitable when a tenor and a baritone are in the same place at the same time, there will be a performance of the duet “Au fond du temple saint” (at the back of the holy temple) from Georges Bizet’s opera Les pêcheurs de perles (the pearl fishers). The two will also offer a selection of folk songs from South Korea.
February 27: Pianist John Churchwell will accompany baritone David Pershall in a program that includes three distinctively different song cycles. There will be a reprise of the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, preceded this time by Ludwig van Beethoven’s only song cycle, An die ferne Geliebte (Opus 98), usually considered to be the first example of a song cycle by a major composer. The program will conclude with a twentieth-century cycle, Gerald Finzi’s settings of ten poems by Thomas Hardy collected under the title Earth and Air and Rain. Pershall will also present a selection of songs by Sergei Rachmaninoff.
First page of the manuscript of Schubert’s “Auf dem Strom” (photographed from MS Mus 99.2, Houghton Library, Harvard University, public domain)
April 3: This will be another shared recital, bringing soprano Mary Evelyn Hangley together with tenor Christopher Oglesby. Piano accompaniment will be provided by San Francisco Opera Center Director of Musical Studies Mark Morash (a Merola alumnus from 1987). The program will begin with Franz Schubert’s D. 943 song, “Auf dem Strom” (on the stream), which includes an obligato part for horn (as may be seen in the above manuscript). The horn will also be required for Benjamin Britten’s Opus 55, the third in his series of five canticles. Setting a text by Edith Sitwell, the full title of the song is “Still falls the rain: The raids 1940. Night and dawn.” The program will also include another collection Strauss songs, this time the six songs in his Opus 19. The next collection will be Antonín Dvořák’s Opus 55 setting of seven poems by Adolf Heyduk, collected under the title Cigánské melodie (gypsy songs). There will also be selected songs by both Charles Ives and Gabriel Fauré, along with Italian duets by several different composers.
April 24: Pianist Martin Katz will lead a quartet of current Adler Fellows, soprano Hangley, mezzo Ashley Dixon, tenor Zhengyi Bai, and bass-baritone Christian Pursell. The one cycle to be performed in its entirety will be Samuel Barber’s Hermit Songs. There will also be selections from the Mörike Lieder collection of Hugo Wolf and Johannes Brahms’ Deutsche Volkslieder.
The Taube Atrium Theater is part of the Diane B. Wilsey Center for Opera, which is located in the Veterans Building (on the fourth floor) at 401 Van Ness Avenue on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. General admission will be $30. Tickets may be purchased in advance online through an event page on the San Francisco Opera Web site. Note that, because much of the seating is raked, it is possible to select the option of Wheelchair Accessible seats. In addition, subject to availability, student rush tickets will go on sale at 5 p.m. at the reduced rate of $15. There is a limit of two tickets per person, and valid identification must be shown.
Subscriptions for the entire four-recital series are available for $100. However, these are not available online. They may be purchased in person at the San Francisco Opera Box Office, located in the outer lobby of the War Memorial Opera House at 301 Van Ness Avenue, on the northwest corner of Grove Street. They may also be purchased by calling 415-864-3330.
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