This coming Friday, San Francisco Opera (SFO) will present its one-night-only Live and In Concert: The Homecoming performance. The event will celebrate the start of a new era involving not only the return of audiences to the War Memorial Opera House but also the first full season for Caroline H. Hume Music Director Eun Sun Kim. As previously announced on this site, the concert itself will serve as a “centerpiece” for three different options of festive events. These will take place both before and after the concert and in both the War Memorial and Oracle Park.
For those interested only in the concert, the music will be provided by the San Francisco Opera Orchestra with Kim on the podium. The program will feature two guest artists, soprano Rachel Willis-Sørensen and mezzo Jamie Barton. Readers may recall that both of them had leading roles when SFO presented Antonín Dvořák’s best known opera, his Opus 114 Rusalka, during the spring season of 2019 (the last spring season prior to the pandemic). Those performances marked Willis-Sørensen’s debut in the role of the opera, as well as Kim’s SFO debut, which also provided her first opportunity to conduct a Czech opera. Barton is probably more familiar to SFO audiences, particularly for her solid command of the role of Fricka in the SFO production of Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelung, which was presented in its entirety by the SFO Opera is ON streaming service this past March.
While there will not be any Wagner on the Homecoming program, there will be two selections from Rusalka. The Orchestra will play the polonaise for the festive occasion that takes place during the second act; and, as expected, Willis-Sørensen will reprise her performance of the “Song to the Moon” from the first act. On the mezzo side Barton will sing Delilah’s seductive aria “Mon cœur s'ouvre à ta voix” (my heart opens itself to your voice) from the second act of Camille Saint-Saëns’ Opus 47 opera Samson and Delilah. Other composers to be featured will be Vincenzo Bellini (Norma), Gaetano Donizetti (La favorite and Anna Bolena), Gustave Charpentier (Louise), and Giuseppe Verdi (La Traviata, Don Carlo, and Aida). Kim will begin the program with the overture to Franz von Suppé’s operetta Leichte Kavalierie (light cavalry); and, towards the end, she will perform the so-called “moonlight” music from Richard Strauss’ final opera (in one act), “Capriccio.”
Opera at Oracle Park (photograph by Stefan Cohen, courtesy of the San Francisco Opera)
This performance will take place on Friday, September 10, beginning at 7 p.m. It will run for 100 minutes, including a single intermission. Ticket prices range from $179 for premium orchestra seating to $29 for the side and rear of the balcony. SFO has created a Web page for the purchase of all tickets. The War Memorial Opera House is located at 301 Van Ness Avenue on the northwest corner of Grove Street (across Grove from Davies Symphony Hall and across Van Ness from City Hall).
In addition the entire performance will be simulcast to Oracle Park. Tickets will not be required for admission, but those who register will receive a special ticket discount code for upcoming SFO performances and be automatically entered to win awesome prizes at the ballpark. (Only those present at Oracle Park will be eligible to win.) A Web page has been created with hyperlinks for registration. There will be open seating, and admission to Oracle Park will begin at 5:30 p.m.
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