SFO Announces Busy Spring of Performances

Yesterday afternoon San Francisco Opera (SFO) Tad and Dianne Taube General Director Matthew Shilvock announced an impressive set of plans for Spring 2021 programming. These will include not only additional streamed content but also live performances to be experienced in a drive-in setting. Those performances will include a new production of a long-time favorite of SFO audiences, Gioachino Rossini’s The Barber of Seville. Given the magnitude and diversity of these offerings, this site will preview them in a series of separate articles based on a chronological ordering as follows:

• Beginning on March 6, Opera is ON will devote the four weekends of March to the four operas that Richard Wagner composed for his epic music drama Der Ring des Nibelungen (the ring of the Nibelung); these video streams will be supplemented by a series of live background events, which will take place on Zoom, allowing participants to interact and ask questions of the artists and performers.
• SFO will launch three new programs of both performances and useful background presented in short-form digital content. The first of these will be launched on March 11 under the series title In Song. Late in the same month, the first episode of North Stage Door will debut. This will be a series of four 45-minute episodes that focus on backstage activities. Finally, more intimate music making will be presented through the Atrium Sessions series.
• The eleven drive-in live performances of The Barber of Seville will begin on April 23 on the Marin Center campus.
• Beginning on April 29, the Marin Center will host three drive-in programs of performances by the 2021 Adler Fellows.

This article will focus on next month’s Wagner offering.

The server farm of the three Norns (Sarah Cambidge, Ronnita Miller, and Jamie Barton) (photograph by Cory Weaver, courtesy of SFO)

The videos for the four parts of Wagner’s Ring tetralogy were captured during the summer of 2018. This was the second round of performances based on staging by Francesca Zambello, which involved a variety of innovative perspectives to translate the narrative from the domain of Norse sagas to that of some 150 years of Californian history. Since the “source object” of the entire narrative is a magic lump of gold at the bottom of the river Rhine, where it is guarded by three “Rhine maidens,” Zambello began her account by setting it in the days of the Gold Rush. By the time the narrative has advanced to the final opera Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods), the rope of Destiny, woven by the three Norns, has transformed into a server farm where the Norns provide tech support! The music, on the other hand, is pure unadulterated Wagner given excellent realization by conductor Donald Runnicles.

Each of the four operas will be available for streaming beginning at 10 a.m. on Saturday and concluding until 11:59 p.m. on Sunday. As with all other Opera is ON offerings, subscribers and member-donors will retain access after the “window of public access” has closed. The Saturday dates for the four operas are as follows:

1. March 6: Das Rheingold
2. March 13: Die Walküre
3. March 20: Siegfried
4. March 27: Götterdämmerung

The Zoom events will begin at 5:30 p.m. on Saturday, March 6; and the final event will begin at 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, March 30. These are ticketed events with a price of $15 for each event. There is also a Festival Pass available for $99 with a reduced price of $69 for SFO subscribers and member-donors. An All-Access Festival Pass is available for $144, which includes all Zoom events and extended access to all four Ring operas. $75 of that fee can be claimed as a tax-deductible donation. Those with both forms of Festival Pass will also be able to attend the “Opening Salute” at 1 p.m. on Friday, March 5 and the “Closing Toast” at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, March 30. A single Web page has been created summarizing the content of all of these events with hyperlinks to further details.