The icon “accompanying” this year’s Schwabacher Recital Series (from the Series event page)
This year the annual Schwabacher Recital Series will begin a few weeks earlier than it did last year. As a result, this site’s account of the series is about a week earlier than it was in 2023! This year will amount to somewhat of a landmark, since it will be the 40th anniversary of this series of programs presented jointly by the San Francisco Opera (SFO) Center and the Merola Opera Program. Regular readers probably know by now that 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 SFO Center.
Readers familiar with this event probably know that, in the past, the season consisted of four concerts. This year there will be only three: one each in the months of February, March, and April. As was the case last year, the March program will feature multiple vocalists (four of them); and that event will be curated by tenor Nicholas Phan. The other programs will be solo recitals. They will all take place in the Dianne and Tad Taube Atrium Theater beginning at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday evenings. Brief reviews of the specifics are as follows:
February 21: Mezzo Simona Genga, an alumna of last year’s Merola Opera Program, will be accompanied by pianist Hyemin Jeong. She has prepared a program entitled Two Laurels, which she describes as “a journey through the intimate moments of a queer love story.” The songs themselves occupy a broad span of music history, reaching back to the nineteenth-century composer Hector Berlioz and advancing into the immediate present of Chelsea Pringle-Duchemin. It is also worth noting that the program will include two of the songs from Arnold Schoenberg’s Opus 2 collection.
March 6: The four vocalists will be sopranos Arianna Rodriguez and Olivia Smith, mezzo Nikola Printz, and bass-baritone Jongwon Han. All of them will be accompanied by pianist Yang Lin. All five of them are second-year SFO Adler Fellows. As might be guessed, the program will span a broader repertoire, reaching all the way back to the seventeenth century of Henry Purcell. Once again the “other end” will be the immediate present, represented by Stacy Garrop.
April 3: The final recital will feature another mezzo, Samantha Hankey. Of particular interest will be the performance of a set of five songs composed by Alma Mahler. This will be coupled with the Opus 13 of her teacher, Alexander von Zemlinsky, a set of six settings of poems by Maurice Maeterlinck. In addition, Hankey will present selections from musicals performed on Broadway with Cole Porter and Kurt Weill as the composers. She will also give a nod to Hollywood with Harold Arlen’s “Over the Rainbow,” composed for the film The Wizard of Oz.
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, and the “series package” of all three recitals may be purchased for $75. Tickets may be purchased in advance online through an event page on the San Francisco Opera Web site. Note that it is possible to select the option of Wheelchair Accessible seats. In addition, subject to availability, student rush tickets will go on sale at 7 p.m. at the reduced rate of $15. There is a limit of two tickets per person, and valid identification must be shown.
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