Pride 2026 Begins (Again) at the Opera House

As was the case last year, this year’s 56th annual Pride Celebration got under way at the War Memorial Opera House with San Francisco Opera (SFO) hosting its seasonal Pride Concert. The program was curated by Gregory Henkel; and, as was the case last year, the SFO Orchestra was conducted by Robert Mollicone with Kay Stern as Concertmaster. This being an opera house, most of the music was vocal with leading soloists Melody Moore (soprano), Nikola Printz (mezzo), and Reginald Smith, Jr. (baritone). When the selections required, they were joined by soprano Alexa Franklin, mezzo Sadie Cheslak, and tenor Thomas Kinch. Sapphira Cristál, best known as Miss Congeniality for Season 16 of RuPaul’s Drag Race served once again as emcee.

Ironically, the program began with the same music the opened last week’s memorial program for Michael Tilson Thomas (MTT) performed by the San Francisco Symphony (SFS). This was his “Agnegram,” and I have to confess that my second encounter with this music was no more satisfying than my first! Indeed, I am afraid that the paragraph about this music in last night’s program book was more memorable than the music itself. Fortunately, once the vocalists took charge, things picked up for both the classical and pop offerings.

Where the former genre is concerned, the most memorable offering involved one of the most familiar works in the standard repertoire. This was “Belle nuit, ô nuit d'amour” (beautiful night, oh night of love), best known as the barcarolle from Jacques Offenbach’s opera The Tales of Hoffmann. Moore and Printz brought just the right chemistry to the music, which I found refreshing no matter how many times I have heard it in the past. Printz was just as compelling on the pop side with her command of Stevie Wonder’s “I Can Only Be Me,” in an orchestral arrangement by Christopher Willis.

Last night’s “after party” at the Opera House

In many ways the evening was a party that no one wanted to end, which is why the “all hands” medley for the finale was followed by a sumptuous reception in the Opera House lobby!

SFO Announces Program for Pride 2026

Photograph of last year’s Pride Concert by Kristen Loken

Some readers may recall that this past Wednesday saw the announcement on this site of the program Dearly, Queerly, Over the Rainbow, the contribution of the Bay Area Rainbow Symphony (BARS) to this year’s 56th annual Pride Celebration. Of course, BARS is not the only ensemble to prepare for the event. San Francisco Opera (SFO) has announced its second annual Pride Concert, which, as most readers will probably expect, will be performed in the War Memorial Opera House. The SFO Orchestra will be conducted by Robert Mollicone. Program details have not yet been announced; but three vocal soloists will perform with the musicians: soprano Melody Moore, mezzo Nikola Printz, and baritone Reginald Smith, Jr. The host for the event will be Sapphira Cristál, best known as Miss Congeniality for Season 16 of RuPaul’s Drag Race.

As might be expected, there will be a diverse ensemble of composers involved with different genres. The nineteenth century will be accounted for with music by Umberto Giordano, Charles Gounod, and Jacques Offenbach. However, it is also worth noting that the program will include a composition by Michael Tilson Thomas (who died almost exactly a month ago).

The performance will take place a little less than a week after the BARS concert. It will begin at 8 p.m. on Friday, June 26. Most readers probably already know that the venue is located at 301 Van Ness Avenue, directly across from City Hall on the southwest corner of Grove Street. Ticket prices range from $30 to $229 and may be purchased at the Box Office or by calling 415-864-3330. SFO has also created a Web page for online purchases. There will be a facility fee of two or three dollars, depending on the seat location. Box Office hours are 10 AM to 5 PM on Monday and 10 AM to 6 PM Tuesday through Friday. Tickets may also be purchased by phone on Saturday between 10 AM and 6 PM.

Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain: the 3rd Visit

The members of the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain making it clear that they take their music seriously (photograph by Stefan Mager, courtesy of San Francisco Performances)

Last night in Herbst Theatre, San Francisco Performances concluded its 2025–26 season with a third appearance of the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain. George Hinchcliffe continues to manage as Musical Director; but, as in the past, he did not make an appearance. The stage was occupied, as it was at the last visit in April of 2024, by seven performers playing a diversity of instruments. The Concert Ukulele was played by Guy Hargreaves and Leisa Rea, the latter doubling on sopranino ukulele. Peter Brooke Turner played soprano ukulele. Ben Rouse and Laura Currie both played tenor ukulele with the lower register shared by Ben Hales on baritone ukulele and Laurie Higgins on bass ukulele.

As usual, the program was a diverse one. Television was honored with theme music from both Bonanza and The Muppet Show (one for each side of the pond). The concert genre was shared by the “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies” from Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker ballet and the can-can music from Jacques Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld. The more popular side saw a quodlibet of “Fly Me to the Moon,” “Love Story,” and “Killing Me Softly.” These were the most familiar selections from the broader diversity of the entire evening.

Taken as a whole, the content was as rich as ever; but the musicians kept things going at their usual breakneck clip. Personally, I enjoy an evening in which the performance technique is as diverse as the selections being performed. Indeed, the diversity of this one single program served as a perfect reflection on the overall diversity of this season’s offerings. I look forward to many return visits by this ensemble in the future.

Pocket Opera to Conclude Season with Offenbach

The Swedish Baron de Gondremarck (baritone Jonathan Spencer, right) with his baroness wife (soprano Madison Hatten, left) and Raoul de Gardefeu (Andrew Metzger, center)

Pocket Opera will wrap up its season with an opéra bouffe. As might be expected, the season will go out with raucous comedy. The music of Jacques Offenbach will support this comedy of Parisian life based on a libretto by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halevy. It involves the efforts of the Parisian dandy Raoul de Gardefeu (tenor Andrew Metzger) to seduce a baroness, more specifically La Baronne de Gondremarck (soprano Madison Hatten).

As usual, the performance will take place in the Gunn Theater at the Legion of Honor. It will begin at 2 p.m. on Sunday, July 27. As many readers probably know by now, the Legion of Honor is a component of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. It is located at 100 34th Avenue, which is basically right in the center of Lincoln Park. General admission will be $89. Those age 30 and under may purchase tickets for $35. A Web page has been created for online purchases. Those visiting that page will quickly notice that not many seats remain available for purchase.

Pocket Opera Announces 2025 Season

Next month will begin with a new Pocket Opera season. Here in San Francisco, the performances will again take place in the Gunn Theatre on the lower level of the Legion of Honor Museum. This will be a season of four performances; and a Web page has been created for purchasing full subscriptions as well as those for either three or two productions. All performances will take place on Sunday afternoons as follows:

A scene from the Pocket Opera production of The Marriage of Figaro

1. March 2: The Marriage of Figaro by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
2. April 13: There will be more Mozart with a production of his one-act Singspiel, “Bastien und Bastienne” (K. 50), which will be paired with an abbreviated production entitled “A Pocket Magic Flute.”
3. June 22: Tartuffe by Kirke Mechem
4. July 27: La Vie Parisienne by Jacques Offenbach

De los Ángeles: “Post-Romantic” Opera

Victoria de los Ángeles on the cover of her Warner box set (from the Amazon.com Web page)

In my last dispatch in accounting for the Victoria de los Ángeles: The Warner Classics Edition; Complete Recordings on His Master’s Voice & La Voix de son maître anthology, I decided that it would be appropriate to separate the earlier composers from the nineteenth century (Gioachino Rossini, Giuseppe Verdi, Charles Gounod, and Georges Bizet) from composers that chose to work with more dramatic “post-romantic” material. This later genre flourished in both Italy and France. Italy lead the way with Giacomo Puccini and the “Cav and Pag” composers, Pietro Mascagni (“Cavalleria rusticana”) and Ruggiero Leoncavallo (“Pagliacci”). On the French side, Jules Massenet accounts for two operas (Manon and Werther). He may be viewed as the predecessor to two more recent French composers, Claude Debussy (Pelléas et Mélisande) and Jacques Offenbach. The latter is represented only by the fourth act of Les Contes d’Hoffmann, since the libretto calls for three different sopranos accounting for the three different “tales,” the last of which being the one in which de los Angeles sang the role of Antonia. The one remaining opera in the collection is Manuel de Falla’s La vida breve.

Taken as a whole, this is clearly the lion’s share of the de los Ángeles collection. From a personal point of view, I am glad to have been able to fill in some of the gaps in my library of recordings. For the most part, however, I was not particularly concerned about those gaps. At the risk of drawing fire from unhappy critics, I would say that these operas all have narratives for which the decisions of the stage director count for more than the musical expertise of the performers. Thus, where my own work is concerned, I can benefit from familiarizing myself with the music so that I can subsequently consider the role that it plays in establishing the critical elements of a fully-staged drama.

Where de los Ángeles herself is concerned, I suppose the primary issue is whether or not her talents as a vocalist carry the same impact in the recording studio as they did on the operatic stage. Readers may recall that, where the earlier operas from the nineteenth century were concerned, I was never really drawn to any of these studio recordings. However, the full collection will be released for sale on an Amazon.com Web page, after which readers may feel free to disagree with any of my assertions or positions!

International Pride Orchestra to Debut in SF

Next month will see the inaugural performance by the International Pride Orchestra (IPO). This ensemble was conceived to bring together LGBTQ+ musicians from around the world, not only to present concerts but also to celebrate community and raise funds for LGBTQ+ causes. True to its name, the ensemble has drawn upon applicants from over 30 states in the United States, as well as musicians from countries such as New Zealand and Peru.

The program prepared for the ensemble’s debut will offer a generous diversity of genres. On the traditional side the second half of the concert will be devoted entirely to Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Opus 36 (fourth) symphony in F minor. At the other end (so to speak), the program will begin with the world premiere performance of “Loud,” composed by Jimmy López Bellido on a joint commission by IPO, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM), and the Seattle Youth Symphony.

The featured soloist will be soprano Breanna Sinclairé, who will perform three stylistically different selections. She will begin with “Elle a fui, la tourterelle” (she fled, the dove), which opens the “Antonia” act from Jacques Offenbach’s opera The Tales of Hoffmann. This will be followed by “O mio babbino caro” (oh, my dear papa) from the more upbeat one-act opera, “Gianni Schicchi,” by Giacomo Puccini. Finally, these French and Italian selections will be followed by “Somewhere,” from Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story. The first half will then conclude with “Soul of Remembrance,” the second of the five Movements in Color by Mary Watkins.

 

Michael Roest, IPO Found and one of the conductors for the program being discussed (courtesy of IPO)

IPO Founder and Director Michael Roest will be one of the three conductors for this program. The other two will be Robert Moody, Music Director of the Memphis Symphony Orchestra and Arizona Musicfest, and Christine Brandes, who has led West Edge Opera and the Virginia Symphony Orchestra and will be making her conducting debut with the Seattle Opera during the 2023/24 season. Drag legend Peaches Christ will host the entire program, which, in turn, will be hosted by SFCM.

The performance will take place in the Caroline H. Hume Concert Hall, which is in the 50 Oak Street SFCM building. The concert will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, June 22. All tickets are being sold for $25 and may be purchased online through an Eventbrite event page. Those visiting this site will also be invited to make a donation to LYRIC, which is one of the first and largest LGBTQ+ youth centers in the United States. Its mission is to build community and inspire positive social change through education enhancement, career trainings, health promotion, and leadership development. The plan for the future is to choose a different city each year to host an IPO concert, establishing new partnerships with LGBTQ+ organizations.

Ian Robertson Bids Farewell to SFO

Last night in the Dianne and Tad Taube Atrium Theater of the Diane B. Wilsey Center for Opera, San Francisco Opera (SFO) presented the first of two performances by the SFO Chorus, led by Director Ian Robertson. Robertson is retiring from his position after the second of those performances this afternoon. In honor of his 35 years of service with SFO, the program was entitled, appropriately enough, Celebrating Ian Robertson.

Following two selections of sacred music by leading composers of the Baroque period, Marc-Antoine Charpentier and Johann Sebastian Bach, the program traversed an extensive survey of selections from operas composed by George Frideric Handel, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Gaetano Donizetti, Giacomo Puccini, Giuseppe Verdi, Jacques Offenbach, Jennifer Higdon, Scott Joplin, and Leonard Bernstein. The second half of the program also presented a generous offering of secular music, much of which was sung a cappella. These included the world premiere performance of “Invitation to Love,” a setting of a text by Paul Laurence Dunbar composed by Cava Menzies on a commission by SFO in Robertson’s honor.

Other living composers on the program were Joan Szymko, Gabriela Lena Frank, and Kate Rusby. Their twentieth-century predecessors were Florence Price, Joseph Canteloube, and Maurice Ravel. All instrumental accompaniment was provided by Associate Chorus Master Fabrizio Corona at the piano.

Ian Robertson conducing an earlier performance by the San Francisco Opera Chorus in the Atrium Theatre with projected text (photograph by Matthew Washburn, courtesy of the San Francisco Opera)

Robertson preceded each offering with a brief verbal introduction, often establishing the significance of the selection. Rather than burden members of the audience with text sheets that could barely be read in darkness, all texts were projected on the Atrium wall behind the performers, always in English, regardless of the text being sung. Those familiar with the space know that it has no acoustics of its own. As a result, the performance owed as much to the Constellation® acoustic system provided by Meyer Sound. The controller of this technology appears to have had some difficulty early in the performance, but those problems were resolved quickly enough that most of the audience was probably unaware of any problems.

My guess is that almost all of the operatic selections were familiar to the audience, most of whom were probably SFO subscribers. The most notable exceptions would have been Joplin’s Treemonisha and HIgdon’s Cold Mountain. (Those encountering Offenbach’s La Belle Hélène for the first time would probably still have found some of the music familiar.) On the other hand those subscribers would also have been familiar with the instrumental accompaniment from the “source” operas; and there were several occasions when the piano could not provide the rhetorical support encountered in the original scores. Nevertheless, it is difficult to imagine the Atrium space being conducive to a large instrumental ensemble; and most of us were more than content to focus attention on the vocalists.

Personally, I must confess that I was more impressed with the diversity of the selections that were not operatic. While I am have long been satisfied with my Decca Complete Edition collection of Ravel’s music, I must confess that my recording of the three a cappella choral songs he composed between 1914 and 1915 had slipped my mind. Each of these pieces was brief; and the second afforded an excellent opportunity to appreciate the solo voices of soprano Angela Moser, contralto Silvie Jensen, tenor Alan Cochran, and baritone Mitchell Jones. For that matter all of the a cappella offerings were thoroughly engaging “adventures of discovery,” with the premiere of Menzies’ “Invitation to Love” leading the way.

Robertson’s command of repertoire clearly extends far beyond the usual operatic bill of fare, and my mind is still processing the stimulating diversity of the program he prepared for his farewell concert.

Pocket Opera’s Mini Series: Whitney Steele

According to my records, the Pocket Opera’s San Francisco performance of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 527 Don Giovanni on the afternoon of Sunday, March 8, was one of the last events to take place prior to the full-scale cancellation of performing arts events throughout the Bay Area. Fortunately, Pocket Opera was a relatively early adopter of streaming video technology as a means of both maintaining an audience base and keeping their artists works. The result was the 3-Song Mini Concert Series, launched on YouTube on April 13 with a performance by baritone Anders Frölich, who had sung the title role in the Don Giovanni performance.

Since that time videos have been uploaded to YouTube on roughly a monthly basis. Following the Pocket Opera approach to opera production, all selections are sung in English; and subtitles are provided. All performances are collected on the Pocket Opera home page, easily found without too much scrolling. The response has been positive, and the May upload of soprano Chelsea Hollow received second place in the recent voting for Best Vocal Recital Performance and Best Streamed Performance Created During the Pandemic in the 2019–2020 Audience Choice Awards presented by San Francisco Classical Voice.

Rabihah Davis Dunn and Whitney Steele with fingers of pianist Frank Johnson (screen shot from the YouTube video of the recital being discussed)

The most recent of these offerings is planned for availability tomorrow. The recitalist is mezzo Whitney Steele. One of her selections is a duo with soprano Rabihah Davis Dunn, who had sung the role of Donna Anna in Don Giovanni and had uploaded her own mini concert this past July. The two of them gave a socially-distanced performance of “Belle nuit, ô nuit d'amour” (beautiful night, oh night of love), the barcarolle that opens the third (Giulietta) act of Jacques Offenbach’s opera The Tales of Hoffmann. Steele began her program with “Voi che sapete che cosa è amor” (you who know what love is), the song that Cherubino presents to the Countess Rosina Almaviva during the second act of Mozart’s K. 492 The Marriage of Figaro. The program then concluded with “Quando me’n vo’” (when I go along), best known as “Musetta’s waltz” from the second act of Giacomo Puccini’s La bohème.

Accompanied at the piano by Frank Johnson, Steele gave a confident performance of all three selections. Her blending with Dunn could not have been more satisfying. Indeed, the only sign of weakness came from the upper-register soprano demands that Puccini composed for Musetta. While Steele’s pitch in that register was solid, there was more than a suggestion that she was punching her way to achieving it. Cherubino’s register was much more in her comfort zone, allowing her to transcend much of the awkwardness of the English-language account of the text.

Opus Arte’s Second Ashton Collection: Part 2

Cover of the original release of the video of the staged version of Tales of Beatrix Potter (from the Amazon.com Web page)

Last month I discussed how I planned to write about the second volume of The Frederic Ashton Collection in three separate articles, one for each of the full-evening ballet performances by The Royal Ballet in the release. The ballet I covered on that occasion was Sylvia, based on recordings of performances that took place at the Royal Opera House on December 1 and 5, 2005. This afternoon I finally had the occasion to view another of the ballets in the volume, Tales of Beatrix Potter, this one based on recorded performances on December 23 and 27, 2007. I should also remind readers that this second volume in the series is available in both Blu-ray and DVD formats; however, in this particular case, the fact that the video was based on staged performances provides a significant point of departure.

Unlike any other ballet that Ashton created, Tales of Beatrix Potter was conceived as a film. Ashton’s intention seemed to be to bring to life not only the narratives of the tales themselves but also the visual impressions of Potter’s own illustrations, that were equally essential in her approach to storytelling. One should thus begin by crediting Christine Edzard, who not only developed the overall narrative of the entire film with her husband Richard Goodwin but also provided designs that would translate Potter’s two-dimensional artwork into three-dimensional costumes for the dancers that would realize Ashton’s choreography.

I also feel it important to note that this is a ballet in which the music is decidedly secondary to both the narrative itself and the visualization of that narrative. John Lanchbery’s score is pastiche unto an extreme. The Wikipedia page for the film cites Arthur Sullivan and Michael Balfe as sources, but they are two among many. Unless my ears deceived me, there was a least one reference to music by Léo Delibes that was familiar to the orchestra by another ballet; and my guess is that Jacques Offenbach was also lurking in the mix. There was also an abundance of what might be called “music hall standards,” more recognizable through their structural idioms than by the tunes themselves.

The film was released in 1971, and I have lost count of the number of times I have gone to see it screened. While Ashton never saw Tales of Beatrix Potter as a ballet that could be transferred to the stage, Anthony Dowell did just that in 1992, assisted by Edzard. This is the version whose performance is now part of The Frederick Ashton Collection. Most important is that Dowell did not try to make the staged performance mirror the filmed one. The episodes that relate the tales have been reordered; and, for the most part, the action has been reconceived to deal with the constraints of performance on the stage, rather than the capture-and-edit process of filmmaking.

As a result, for one who has seen the film as often as I have, the staged version is an entirely new ballet. Most of the overall narrative is intact; but the details have been retuned to suit the new context. Furthermore, the performance is by an entirely new generation of dancers, providing a fresh perspective on the narrative as it was originally realized.

For the most part I found the new approach satisfying. The hedgehog Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle (originally danced by Ashton himself) had less to do; but, on the other hand, there was more tension in the effort of The Fox (Gary Avis) to seduce (and, we assume, ultimately consume) Jemima Puddle-Duck (Gemma Sykes). Furthermore, the havoc wrought by the “two bad mice,” Tom Thumb (Giacomo Ciriaci) and Hunca Munca (Iohna Loots), made for a first-rate joy ride from start to finish.

The only difference that really registered with me involved the frog Jeremy Fisher (Zachary Faruque). This role was danced by Michael Coleman in the film. Just about everyone I know who saw that film found that episode a welcome relief by offering up an agile pair of legs in tights instead of limbs carrying considerably thick fur! Dowell’s version seemed to allow for more attention to dexterous leg-work, which somewhat blunted the “shock value” of the choreography for Fisher.

The bottom line is that I have no desire to prefer one version of this choreography over the other. Dowell’s reconception meant that choosing between the versions would be like comparing apples and oranges. Most important is that the spirit of Ashton’s wit is as strong in Dowell’s version as it was in the original film. Dowell just happened to channel it in a few different directions for the sake of a more compelling stage performance.

Better Offenbach by Minkowski on Bru Zane

Nine days ago (June 20) marked the 200th birthday of Jacques Offenbach; and, as far as I can tell, the occasion went entirely unnoticed here in the Bay Area. Readers may recall that Erato Records had been preparing for this event for some time, releasing an anthology of three of the composer’s best known comic operettas this past November. The operettas in this six-CD package were Orphée aux enfers (“Orpheus in the Underworld”), La belle Hélène, and La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein. The performances on these recordings were all conducted by Marc Minkowski, founder and director of the period-instrument ensemble Les Musiciens du Louvre.

From a musical point of view, this was a delightful collection. Minkowski was clearly as comfortable in the “period” of the nineteenth-century as he has been in dealing with performances “informed” by earlier historical eras. (When he made his debut with the San Francisco Opera in June of 2017, he conducted Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 527 opera Don Giovanni. It seemed as if his primary “historical” gesture involved the use of valveless trumpets on that occasion; but the overall production could not have been more effective.) Nevertheless, where Offenbach was concerned, I felt obliged to take Erato to task for releasing a package that provided neither synopses of the plots nor libretto texts in either the original French or in English translation. Under such circumstances I would have been thankful for a URL leading me to a PDF file of all of that vital content; but even that “do it yourself” tool was lacking.

Yesterday, another recording of Minkowski conducting Offenbach was released; and I am happy to report that the “information content” is far more satisfying. The operetta is La Périchole; and I have to confess that it is a personal favorite, since I had the opportunity to experience it in performance at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées (designated a monument historique by the French government in 1957) when I was in Paris on a business trip back in the Eighties. (There are any number of reasons for calling this venue a “historic” site, the best-known of which is probably the riot that took place there during the first performance of “The Rite of Spring.”)

This new recording was not released by Erato but by the Palazzetto Bru Zane, a center that specialized in French romantic music, even though it is based in Venice. The center has issued a series of recordings of French opera; and La Périchole is the 21st release in the series, the first by Offenbach. As a result, one can now appreciate Minkowski’s sensitivity as a conductor with more attention to the twists and turns of the libretto as it unfolds a wacky plot in which authority is undermined.

Indeed, when it comes to goring sacred cows (so to speak), Offenbach revealed himself as an “equal opportunity gadfly,” as capable of ridiculing the all-powerful divine powers of Greek mythology as the figures of power in his own day. The Erato collection takes on mythology through both Orphée and Hélène, leaving only Gérolstein to skewer contemporary life. La Périchole now rights that balance with a farce about colonial authority in Peru. This includes a generous share of delightful tunes, one of which is spiced up by some silly singing delivered by the “hapless hero” and given a first-rate account by tenor Stanislas de Barbeyrac.

My only quibble if that the album itself is being treated as a “luxury item.” The form factor is that of a bound book whose title page declares it to be one of a limited run of 4000 copies. This strikes me as an ironic twist given the “proletarian delights” of the operetta itself. Nevertheless, the price on the Amazon.com Web page does not quite rise to the level of outrageous. Personally, I am so pleased with having a libretto at my disposal that I am not inclined to make much of a fuss!

Remembering the Anniversary of Rossini’s Death

courtesy of Sony Music

Gioachino Rossini died, at the age of 76, 150 years ago last month. Sony Classical marked this anniversary occasion last month with the release of the album Hommage à Rossini, featuring cellist Raphaela Gromes, who records exclusively with Sony. This is a little bit peculiar, since Rossini wrote only one composition for cello and piano; and that was not published in his lifetime. That piece was “Une larme” (a tear), which was in the ninth of the fourteen volumes collected under the title Péchés de vieillesse (sins of old age). On the other hand, among cellists, Bohuslav Martinů is particularly known for his “Variations on a Theme of Rossini,” scored for cello and piano, which he composed in 1942 when he was living in New York. Less known is the composition entitled “Hommage à Rossini,” composed by Jacques Offenbach, himself a cellist, for cello and orchestra.

All three of those pieces are on the Hommage à Rossini album, and they are the only original contributions. All of the others are arrangements prepared by Julian Riem, who also appears on the album as Gromes’ piano accompanist. For the three orchestral selections on the album Gromes is accompanied by the WDR Rundfunkorchester Köln, the “house orchestra” for WDR (West German broadcasting) in Cologne, conducted by Enrico Delamboye.

The best way to honor Rossini’s legacy is to recall his capacity for high spirits. I must confess that I have particular affection for the Martinů variations, which I first encountered on a recording by Janos Starker. Martinů knew exactly how to match Rossini’s upbeat qualities with a sassy rhetoric of his own that occasionally seems to reflect on “big city life” in New York.

Sadly, those high spirits never seem to come across in Gromes’ performances, whether she is playing original works or arrangements. This is particularly evident in the Offenbach “Hommage,” which amounts to an amusing reminder that selections we now tend to regard as “Rossini’s greatest hits” had the same popularity in Offenbach’s day. On the other hand the arrangements of three of the songs from the Les soirées musicales cycle are as flat as a bottle of champagne left open for a week. (Benjamin Britten was far more successful than Riem in capturing the spirit of these songs, but he was arranging them for full orchestra.)

This was clearly an album whose program was conceived with good intentions, but the road from intention to execution did not lead in a fortuitous direction.

Erato Honors Offenbach with Anthology

from the Amazon.com Web page for this recording

Jacques Offenbach was born on June 20, 1819, meaning that, towards the end of this season, there will be celebrations to honor his 200th birthday. However, to get an early start on the festivities, this past Friday Erato released a six-CD collection of three of the composer’s best known comic operettas, Orphée aux enfers (“Orpheus in the Underworld,” although I have always felt the spirit would be better served by translating the title as “Orpheus goes to Hell”), La belle Hélène, and La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein. The conductor for all three of these operettas is Marc Minkowski, best known as the founder and director of the period-instrument ensemble Les Musiciens du Louvre. Here in San Francisco, he is also known for his debut with the San Francisco Opera in June of 2017, when he managed the orchestra pit for a particularly dark (and highly effective) account of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 527 opera Don Giovanni.

While it may seem anachronistic, Minkowski conducts Les Musiciens du Louvre, along with its associated chorus, on two of the operetta recordings, those of Hélène and Gérolstein. The recording of Orphée, on the other hand, comes from a production by the Opéra National de Lyon, with its orchestra and chorus supplemented by musicians from Grenoble, probably affiliated with Les Musiciens du Louvre. Each operetta fits comfortably on two CDs.

Among “serious” opera-goers Offenbach is probably best known for The Tales of Hoffmann, written at the end of his life and not completed. However, for the better part of his life he was best known for his operettas, the first of which was Orphée. He worked with librettists that were never shy of providing him with no end of risqué humor, which he would harness in the interest of undermining many sacred cows of authority, whether they were the all-powerful divine powers of Greek mythology or those of nineteenth-century military forces.

Indeed, Otto von Bismarck was in the audience for a performance of Gérolstein and apparently remarked that the satire of the script was right on the money. (He also is said to have observed that a country that makes fun of its military is ripe for conquest. Three years after Bismarck saw Gérolstein, France declared war on the German confederation; and, as Bismarck predicted, things did not go well for France as the Franco-Prussian War ensued.)

Across the three operettas in this collection, the music is consistently delightful; and Minkowski never fails to serve up the instrumental and vocal work with the light touch it deserves. The only downside with this release is that the accompanying booklet provides only cast summaries and track listings. There are no synopses of the the plots, let alone libretto texts in either the original French or in translation. In this digital age, one could at least expect a URL for PDF sources of this information!

The fact is that the text is just as much fun as the music. There are plenty of instances in which the vocalists provide some sense of that humor through their rhetorical delivery. Nevertheless, having seen two of these operettas staged (Orphée and Gérolstein) I know the sorts of devils that lurk in the verbal details; and things are much more fun when they come to light. (The New York City Opera production of Gérolstein that I saw was performed in English, as was a Los Angeles Opera production of Orphée.)

Nevertheless, the spirit behind Minkowski’s leadership definitely makes the trip through each of these operettas worth taking.

A Tale of Two Opera Productions

In catching up with my viewing of PBS opera broadcasts, I found myself watching a “rerun” of a live broadcast from the Metropolitan Opera House of Bartlett Sher’s staging of Jacques Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann that took place on January 31, 2015. I took a particular interest in this production because it seemed to have drawn upon the same score that had been used by the San Francisco Opera (SFO) during its Summer 2013 season, the so-called “integral edition” edited by Michael Kaye and Jean-Christophe Keck and published by both French and German publishers in 2011. For those who do not know the story behind The Tales, so to speak, when Offenbach died on October 5, 1880, he left behind a completed piano score and orchestrations of only the prologue and the first act.

As a result, over the course of my early years of going to the opera, it would be fair to say that I never saw any performing version of the opera twice. (The Wikipedia author of the page for this opera has done an admirable job of accounting for the many versions that have been staged.) The “integral edition” was supposed to converge on a single “authoritative source,” although Keck is still treating the project as open, his latest insights having been published in 2016. While I am not sure when the 2011 publication was first staged, seeing it in 2013 at the War Memorial Auditorium was an eye-opener, particularly with respect to the role of the Muse in the overall narrative. At the time I was writing for Examiner.com; and I suggested that, instead of three tales framed by a prologue and an epilogue, there was a “whole-cloth” approach to the narrative that could be called “The Tale of the Storyteller.”

Matthew Polenzani in the title role of the 2013 Tales of Hoffmann presented by the San Francisco Opera (photograph by Cory Weaver, courtesy of the San Francisco Opera)

The SFO staging was by Laurent Pelly; and I have to say that I had not previously experienced such a clear approach to the overall narrative, perhaps because the source for that narrative now enjoyed greater clarity. Furthermore, I remember that, on that evening, I was joined by a friend who, while familiar with much of Offenbach’s music, had never seen any production of the opera. Pelly’s staging held her in rapt attention from the first images of the key characters (Hoffmann, Muse, and Nemesis) until the final curtain. There was no shortage of special effects; but, where Olympia was concerned, Pelly ended up tipping his hand, letting us know why we were seeing the uncanny movements that we experienced.

In that context I have to say that I was far more disappointed with Sher’s efforts at the Met. The fundamental problem was that he let the special effects overwhelm the narrative. As a result, all the clarity that Kaye and Keck had brought to clarifying the narrative simply threw the whole concoction back into obscurity. Indeed, the visual overkill was so strong that one could easily lose touch with the music itself and how it was being performed by vocalists, instrumentalists, and the conductor leading them all. All the “usual champions” of the opera experience were thrust into the background by one outrageous staging device after another; and any sense of “tale,” whether by or about Hoffmann, seemed to dangle behind Sher’s images like the tip of a dog’s tail (or tale?).

This is not the first time that a Met production has labored under extreme excess. Unless I am mistaken, Jean-Louis Barrault created a Carmen that was conducted by Zubin Mehta in the Sixties that came close to being all choreography and no opera. One can appreciate that Barrault wanted a Carmen that would not be dismissed as the “same old same-old.” There is no doubt that he met that goal but at a price that ended up confounding and/or frustrating much of his audience!

Dynamic will Reissue Offenbach’s Comedy about the Military that Deserves More Exposure

My “first contact” with Jacques Offenbach’s opéra bouffe (comic opera) La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein (the Grand Duchess of Gerolstein) was the 1982 English-language production by the New York City Opera. I knew that, when it came to topics of Offenbach’s librettos, nothing was sacred. I also knew that dramatists had been making fun of the military since the days of Aristophanes. Nevertheless, I was not really prepared for how off-the-wall this particular opera was, particularly with a set designer who had clearly been influenced by Monty Python. I deeply regret that, to this day, that City Opera performance was my only opportunity to see this opera staged, although I see that it has become a regular favorite at the Santa Fe Opera.

Like John Oliver, Offenbach knew that satire is at its best when it is reinforced with dispassionate research. The narrative that Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy created for the libretto had enough of a ring of truth to it that, upon seeing it, Otto von Bismarck was said to have made note of its accuracy. This involved not only the absurd complexities of bureaucracy but also the primary theme that a young woman had a right to tell her generals what to do solely on the basis of her hereditary title. (There are many who believe that Catherine the Great with the inspiration for the opera’s title character.) It is unclear how Offenbach and his colleagues felt when the Franco-Prussian War broke out about three years after Grande-Duchesse was first performed, a war in which the French suffered a painful defeat. That defeat was due in no small part to Bismarck’s military skill. It has also been said that Bismarck believed that any country that made light of its military was ripe for conquest. Thus, his approval of the opera’s libretto turned out to be a double-edged sword!

In 1996 Dynamic released a 2-CD recording of a live performance of Grande-Duchesse with Emmanuel Villaume conducting the Orchestra Internazionale d’Italia, the Bratislava Chamber Choir, and a cast of vocalists who never allowed personal inhibitions to get in the way of Offenbach’s outrageousness. While copies of this are still available (hence the hyperlink to an Amazon.com Web page that is still active), Dynamic will release a re-edition tomorrow, for which a new Amazon Web page has been created for taking pre-orders. I never had a chance to see the original release, but the new one comes with a generous libretto that will allow listeners not familiar with French to savor just about all of the satirical twists in the libretto.

The only thing that is missing is the visual element. Given that all of the spoken dialog has been preserved on this recording, one can make any number of inferences from tone of voices and various noises coming from the stage. One can even be caught up in the spirit of the final track, which is basically music prepared for all of the performers on stage to take their bows. However, the photographs provided in the booklet cannot begin to suggest the absurdities that unfold when this opera is given ingenious staging. Thus, for many, it will serve best as a reminder of a past encounter with this opera on the stage; but it will also serve well those with an opportunity to see the opera in the near future, simply by making them acquainted with both the plot and the delightfully sparkling music that Offenbach prepared to support the narrative that Meilhac and Halévy cooked up for the occasion.

The Glitz Question

At 12:05 PM (Eastern time) today Daniel J. Wakin used a post to the Arts Beat blog maintained by The New York Times to pose the inevitable question about Gustavo Dudamel. Actually, he framed the question within an observation made by Larry Livingston, Chairman of Instrumental Conducting at the Thornton School of Music of the University of Southern California. Having run through the usual encomia to praise Dudamel ("huge talent," a "breath of fresh air," "thrilling"), Livingston popped the question that was really on the mind of probably every musician striving for a career in (at least) the classical domain:

Do we need glitz to save classical music?

I give points to Wakin for recognizing that there is nothing new about glitz and for tracing it back at least as far as the popularity of Italian castrati (which I found a particularly appropriate example, since it was only two days ago that the BBC had a Newshour slot for an interview with Cecilia Bartoli about her new CD that celebrates, if that is the right word, the castrato repertoire). He might also have recalled Donald Francis Tovey's entry for "Music" in the eleventh edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (now available in the book The Forms of Music), in which he discussed the impact of "the efficiency of [the] press bureau" on the progress of music history, although that institution does not really emerge until the nineteenth century.

Wakin does not provide his own conclusive answer to Livingston's question. Instead he threw it open for discussion through comments. So I found it interesting that, after an hour and a half had elapsed since his post appeared, no comments had accumulated. Are Arts Beat readers really that uninterested in the question? Have they grown tired of it because it has already been discussed to death over water coolers or in concert hall lobbies?

One problem may be that the question actually unpacks into two questions:

1. Does classical music need saving?
2. Can salvation be achieved through glitz?

From a historical point of view, Tovey demonstrated that the second question hardly needs asking. What we would now call "serious music" has been grist for the mill of "press bureaus" for as long as they have existed; and, from Nicolas Slonimsky's Lexicon of Musical Invective, we know that "critical assaults" (to borrow the phrase from Slonimsky's subtitle) preceded the institutionalization of the press as we now know it. Like it or not, public opinion rules, which is why Jacques Offenbach should be remembered for turning Public Opinion into the central character of his opera Orphée aux Enfers (which I have always preferred translating as Orpheus Goes to Hell). Notwithstanding Brüno's scathing exposé of what some people will do to get their children (or themselves) in the spotlight, I doubt that any institutions of serious music would still be with us without the efforts of those press bureaus.

The trickier question is whether public opinion feels the institutions of serious music are worth saving. Ironically, even though I live in a city that lacks its own radio station for the serious listener (as opposed to those who simply want a higher-class level of background music), I think that even the first question is not worth posing. Serious music is part of our environment, and I do not see its future as being in jeopardy. Even many of those for whom it is not preferred listening seem to recognize it for what it is and acknowledge the value of institutions such as Davies Symphony Hall and the War Memorial Opera House. This was particularly evident when I was doing my "Great Recession" coverage from Examiner.com, and I realized how much interest there was in opportunities to enjoy serious music on a tight budget.

In other words Wakin may not be getting any comments because both he and Livingston are asking the wrong question. The real question is:

Why am I not getting as much attention as Dudamel?

Some of the answers to that question clearly have nothing to do with music, and that is ground that those who implicitly want to ask this question fear to tread. If Dudamel is currently doing well in the spotlight, it is because he understands "spotlight rules" (even when they involve getting enthusiastic about Gustav Mahler while being interviewed by Andy Garcia sitting there looking like he neither knows nor cares who Mahler was) as well as he understands his performance technique. If he can get people to listen to Mahler under conditions as adverse as that television interview (which seems to have been the case, at least in the world of iTunes), then more power to him! After all, one day he may be able to do the same for former Los Angeles resident Arnold Schoenberg!