Another Opening, Another Show: July 2026

Sometimes when I ask people how they are they respond, "Can't complain" & I tell them that sure they can, if they'd just put a little effort into it. There's a lot to complain about in life! I was going to go off on certain subjects but decided that they can wait because this is July, & I have to complain about my least favorite holiday, the Fourth of July, or, as I usually refer to it, "the goddamn Fourth of motherfucking July". A relative of mine told me he loved having his birthday on the Fourth because "you can have barbecue"; I pointed out that you can (& probably should) have barbecue any day. Here's why I hate the Fourth: (1) Explosions (2) Fire Danger (3) Patriotism. (I've never thought a place was special just because I happened to be born in it.) I am of course dreading this year more than ever, given that the nation's 250th anniversary occurs when we have the absolute worst President, the absolute worst Supreme Court, & a Congress that acts like an elderly turtle flipped on its shell, legs flailing helplessly in the air (no offense to the admirable reptile, who is functioning here in a merely metaphorical status). And you know what? Even if a beneficent providence rids us of the President, it can never wipe away the knowledge that he was aided, abetted, enabled, & supported every step of the way by nearly half the population. This whole "representative government" thing doesn't work unless people (1) pay some sort of minimal attention & (2) have some sense (again, however minimal) that we're all in this together. The Berkeley poet Julia Vinograd wrote a poem decades ago titled Against Punk Rock & it reads It is better to light a single candle / Than to praise the darkness (I'm quoting from memory). So in that spirit, let's go out & try to light at least a single candle, as despite the heat & the lengthy summer days we are wandering in darkness.

Theatrical

From 3 to 19 July in John Hinkel Park, Actors Ensemble of Berkeley presents Alice in Wonderland, adapted by Brainerd Duffield from Lewis Carroll's books & directed by Michael Sally; the show is free & though reservations are encouraged (especially for those in wheelchairs or with limited mobility) they are not necessary.

From 3 July to 7 September, the SF Mime Troupe presents WRECKAGE: A Musical Tragicomedy (written by Michael Gene Sullivan, with music & lyrics by Daniel Savio, directed by Lisa Hori-Garcia, & music direction by Daniel Savio & Will Durkee); these free shows play throughout the Bay Area & you can check here for a location convenient to you.

Scabmuggers, The Play: Based on a Labor Organizer’s True Story, written by Yvonne Martinez & directed by Tanika Baptiste, about sexism in the labor movement, plays at Freight & Salvage in Berkeley on 7, 14, & 21 July.

Godless: a new cabaret show by Rotimi Agbabiaka, runs at the Presidio Theater from 9 to 19 July; "[b]lending renditions of Broadway, pop, and jazz standards with Greek, African, and contemporary mythology, Godless is a journey through a glittering world of gossiping gods, fabulous muses, and mischievous mortals, all in search of their divine destiny. . . . tells the tale of Dion Damilola Lokinaesha Divine—a lowly nymph who dreams of someday becoming a big-time god on Mount Olympus!"

From 10 July to 7 August, The Marsh Berkeley presents The Bumpy Road Less Traveled, written & performed by Anthony Michael Jefferson & directed by Dylan Russell, about a sudden tragedy that changes what two families thought their lives would be.

The San Francisco Playhouse usually does a long run of a musical for summer, & this year it's Hairspray (book by Mark O’Donnell & Thomas Meehan, music by Marc Shaiman, lyrics by Scott Wittman & Marc Shaiman, based on the John Waters movie), directed by Bill English, with musical direction by Dave Dobrusky & choreography by Phoenyx Rose, & that runs 10 July through 12 September.

From 11 to 19 July, Berkeley Playhouse presents the Sondheim/Lapine musical Into the Woods, co-directed by Jesse Cortez & Megan McGrath, with music direction by Daniel Alley & choreography by Megan McGrath (this is one of the Playhouse's Spotlight Shows, meaning the performers are in grades 7 - 12).

Night Driver, written & performed by Pearl Ong & directed by David Ford, about a "Hong Kong princess . . . behind the wheel of a San Francisco cab? And how does her very proper mother react?" returns to The Marsh Berkeley from 11 July to 8 August.

The Orpheum presents the tour of Disney's stage musical Beauty and the Beast, & you can be their guest from 14 July through 9 August.

On 20 June & 18 & 25 July at The Marsh San Francisco, you can see The Saddest Night of Musical Entertainment in the History of the World, written & performed by Johnny Lonely & Joshua Raoul Brody & directed by Cliff Mayotte, about a torch singer who thinks "his 'Unhappy Hour' isn’t gloomy enough" while his accompanist "sabotages Johnny’s plans by throwing in happy songs, sharing mindfulness tips and changing minor keys to major ones"; Johnny Lonely is the creation & creature of Brian Lohmann, a"singer-songwriter, actor-improviser".

From 18 July through 16 August, the San Leandro Players present The Unexpected Guest by Agatha Christie, directed by Miranda Bumstead.

Shotgun Players present Iphigenia in Splott by Gary Owen, a current-day tale inspired by Iphigenia in Aulis by Euripides, directed by Michelle Talgarow, & that opens 25 July & runs through 23 August.

Talking

On 28 July at the Calvin Simmons Theater at the Henry J. Kaiser Center for the Arts in Oakland, Samin Nosrat will be in conversation with Alexis Madrigal as part of Forum Live, presented by KQED Live.

Operatic

The Merola Opera Program presents Peter Brook’s La Tragédie de Carmen in the San Francisco Conservatory of Music's Hume Concert Hall on 9 & 11 July; the show, a "condensed and starker adaptation of Bizet’s Carmen, created by Peter Brook, Jean-Claude Carrière, and Marius Constant", will be conducted by Stephanie Rhodes Russell & directed by Mo Zhou. (Merola's other summer opera, Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos, also in Hume Concert Hall but on 30 July & 1 August, has already sold out.)

The Lamplighters present Gilbert & Sullivan's gorgeous fairy opera, Iolanthe, with music direction by Jennifer Ashworth & stage direction by Ted Zoldan, at the ODC Theater from 10 to 19 July.

Pocket Opera presents Puccini's La Rondine, with music direction by Mary Chun, stage direction by Elly Lichenstein, with Michelle Allie Drever as Magda & Maxwell Ary as Ruggero, on 17 July at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 19 July at the Hillside Club in Berkeley, & 26 July at the Gunn Theater at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco.

Festival Opera presents free Opera in the Park, the opera this time being Donizetti's Elixir of Love, with piano accompaniment by Chun Mei Wilson & Festival Opera Artistic Director Zachary Gordin as director & narrator, & the parks in question are Orinda Community Park on 23 July & Civic Park in Walnut Creek on 26 July.

Philharmonia Baroque performs a semi-staged production Handel's Tolomeo, re d’Egitto, conducted by PBO's new music director, Peter Whelan, & directed (or semi-staged) by James Darrah Black, with Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen (countertenor, Tolomeo), Lauren Snouffer (soprano, Seleuce), Nicole Heaston (soprano, Elisa), Kangmin Justin Kim (countertenor, Alessandro), & Dashon Burton (bass-baritone, Araspe), & that's 23 July in Herbst Theater in San Francisco & 24 July in First Congregational in Berkeley (& 26 July at the Caramor Center in Katonah, New York, if you want to be a completist).

On 9 July at the Jewish Community Center in San Francisco, Kip Cranna presents I Hear America Singing: American Opera in the Mid-20th Century, a talk exploring "American opera from the 1930’s through the 1970s, including the ground-breaking, decidedly American work of influential composers, many of whom were of Jewish background, George Gershwin, Virgil Thomson, Gian Carlo Menotti, Leonard Bernstein, Samuel Barber, Aaron Copland, Carlisle Floyd, and Philip Glass".

On 11 July at the Jewish Community Center in San Francisco, the Wagner Society of Northern California presents composer & game designer David Kanaga speaking on Das Kaliforniagold: California Wagnerisms 1848-2026.

Choral

On 3 July in Calvary Presbyterian in San Francisco, the San Francisco Boys Chorus & the Los Angeles Children's Chorus will give a free concert; the program has not been announced yet.

Vocalists

On 18 July, the San Francisco Symphony presents An Evening with Sutton Foster & Kelli O’Hara; the specific program has not been announced yet beyond singing & story-telling.

Orchestral

On 1 July, Chloé Van Soeterstède leads the San Francisco Symphony in Elfrida Andrée's Overture in D major, Max Bruch's Violin Concerto #1 (with soloist Paul Huang), & the Mendelssohn 5, the "Reformation".

The San Francisco Symphony gives its annual Stern Grove summer concert on 12 July, when Edwin Outwater leads the band in Bernstein's Overture to Candide, Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition (in Ravel's orchestration), Barbers School for Scandal Overture, & Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue arranged for Banjo & Orchestra (featuring Béla Fleck on banjo).

On 16 - 17 July, Nicolas Ellis leads the San Francisco Symphony in the Forest Murmurs from Wagner's Siegfried (arranged by Zumpe), The Lark Ascending by Ralph Vaughan Williams & the Carmen Fantasy by Franz Waxman (edited by Heifetz) (the two latter pieces feature violinist Geneva Lewis), selections from Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night’s Dream, & Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet, Fantasy-Overture.

On 23 - 24 July, Steven Reineke leads the San Francisco Symphony in James Bond Forever, a program featuring musical excerpts (some featuring singer Lena Hall) from classic Bond films (this is a musical evening, without film clips).

Instrumental

On 20 July in the Littlefield Concert Hall of Mills College at Northeastern University in Oakland, Other Minds presents pianist Stephen Siek in Alexander Reinagle: Composing a New Nation, part of OM's Mavericks 250, "our celebration of America’s semiquincentennial"; Siek will perform works by Alexander Reinagle (1750–1809), "the most accomplished pianist of the New World and piano teacher of George Washington’s granddaughter".

Early / Baroque Music

Philharmonia Baroque brings back its morning Coffee Concerts in the Conservatory at One Sansome (right off Market Street); the first concert in this series is 10 July & features members of PBO in Café Fandango: Music from Baroque Spain, a program including two works by Boccherini (the Quintet for Guitar and Strings in E Minor, #7, & the Quintet for Guitar and Strings in D Major, #4, “Fandango”; the series is free & open to the public.

See also Handel's Tolomeo under Operatic.

Modernist / Contemporary Music

The Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music takes place in Santa Cruz from 26 July to 9 August with the theme We the Dreamers, examining 250 years of the United States, with a suitably starry line-up, which you can check out here.

Jazz

The Wynton Marsalis Septet plays the SF Jazz Center on 14 - 15 July.

Burnt Sugar The Arkestra Chamber plays the SF Jazz Center from 30 July to 1 August.

Dance

From 3 to 12 July at the Orpheum Theater, you can see Dracula, choreographed by Joel Burke, with an "international cast of alumni from the Mariinsky Theatre, English National Ballet, Stuttgart Ballet, The Australian Ballet, Queensland Ballet and more", to music by "Bach, Rachmaninov, Mozart, Liszt, Mussorgsky, Mendelssohn, Saint-Saëns and Debussy".

On 18 July at Dance Mission Theater in San Francisco, World Arts West presents the first of three programs on the theme Legacy of Liberation! (the other two programs will be in August & September); this first festival day explores dance films: "​We will be joined by Delina Patrice Brooks of Delina Dream Productions who created a four part documentary, Bare Soles Bare Soul, in partnership with Clenched Fist Productions and OLU8 Films. We will also view three short films by Ishami Dance Company: Ancestor Song, Because You're a Woman, and Teele Dharo. Ishami Dance Co-founder Ishika Seth, will join our question and answer session for the films as well. ​Finally, World Arts West will share a short compilation of archival footage highlighting recently digitized as part of our Multicultural Archiving Project (MAP)".

From 30 July to 2 August, ODC/Dance presents a Summer Sampler, featuring a revival of KT Nelson’s Nothing's Gonna Make Sense (Reflections on Grief), a world premiere by Mia J Chong, & a world premiere by Guest Choreographer Catherine Galasso: Unreliable Narrator, "drawn from the lives and artistry of ODC’s founding women, Brenda Way, Kimi Okada and KT Nelson".

Mostly Museums

Nengi Omuku: The Gathering, the first solo museum exhibit in the USA for the Nigerian painter, opens at the de Young on 27 June & continues through May of next year.

Graciela Iturbide: Between Two Worlds, a retrospective of the Mexican photographer's work that spans over 50 years, opens at SFMOMA on 11 July & runs through 29 November.

The Minnesota Street Project Foundation presents The 2026 San Francisco Art Book Fair from 23 to 26 July at 1150 25th Street / 1275 Minnesota Street / 1201 Minnesota Street in San Francisco (all these locations are pretty much right next to each other, & easily accessible on MUNI).

You have until 26 July to see the lovely Monet and Venice show at the de Young; it is, not surprisingly, very popular, so if you haven't been don't wait until the last minute, when it's sure to be unpleasantly crowded.

You have until 27 July to see the fascinating installations of Chiharu Shiota: Two Home Countries at the Asian Art Museum.

Cinematic

On 1 July at the Roxie, you can attend ZYZZYVA Movie Night with Ingrid Rojas Contreras, in which a writer (this time it's T Kira Māhealani Madden, author of Whidbey) selects a movie to discuss & watch (this time it's Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train); a Q&A with Madden follows the film, & there will be  a "Book signing and a chance to shop T Kira Madden’s recommended reading list (courtesy of Dog Eared Books) . . . both before and after the show".

Here are the film series launching at the PFA portion of BAM/PFA this month: starting 2 July, we have Some Nostalgic Place: The Films of Isao Takahata, covering the long career of the Studio Ghibli co-founder (whose works include Grave of the Fireflies & The Tale of The Princess Kaguya; & from 9 to 11 July, you can hear Film Preservationist Ross Lipman in Person, as he discusses his archiving & preservation work, along with screenings of several films he's been involved with.

The Orinda Theater has a couple of Disney events this month: on 4 July, you can see a newly restored print of The Sword in the Stone from 1963, an animated take on the King Arthur origin story, & on 18 July you can see One Hundred and One Dalmatians with Special Guest Mimi Gibson, the voice of Lucky (the second movie on the bill is Houseboat, with Gibson, Cary Grant, & Sophia Loren). Yes, I always root for Cruella de Ville. Not a dog person! Sue me.

On 7 July at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, Dave Radlauer will present Star Spangled Song & Dance of WWII, a program featuring "wartime movie clips of morale-boosting lively song and dance routines by tap dancers Eleanor Powell, Stump Jones, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson and Bugs Bunny".

At the Roxie from 8 to 18 July, The Fraenkel Gallery presents the Fraenkel Film Festival, "an annual cinema series curated entirely by visual artists"; there is a terrific line-up of films, ranging from Princess Mononoke to The Rules of the Game; you can find the full schedule here.

The San Francisco Symphony will provide live musical accompaniment to the 1961 West Side Story on 9 - 10 July in Davies Hall.

On 12 July at the Orinda Theater, as part of their Wide Screen Roadshow series, you can see El Cid, with Charlton Heston & Sophia Loren.

The 46th San Francisco Jewish Film Festival runs 16 July to 2 August in a variety of venues; you can find the Festival schedule here.

On 17 July at the Paramount, you can see the 1920 Mark of Zorro, directed by Fred Niblo & starring Douglas Fairbanks, with live musical accompaniment by Mark Herman; the film is preceded by an organ concert on the Mighty Wurlitzer, classic cartoons & trailers, & a "Dec-O-Win game with prize giveaway".

On 24 July at the Paramount, you can see The Maltese Falcon, directed by John Huston & starring Humphrey Bogart & Mary Astor; as is usual with the Paramount Movie Classics series (see Mark of Zorro above), the film is preceded by an organ concert on the Mighty Wurlitzer, classic cartoons & trailers, & a "Dec-O-Win game with prize giveaway".

On 25 - 26 July, the San Francisco Symphony provides live musical accompaniment to Matilda; David Newman conducts his score & director Danny DeVito acts as host & narrator.

On 26 July at the Orinda Theater, you can see Suddenly, Last Summer, with Elizabeth Taylor, Montgomery Clift, & Katharine Hepburn, based on a particularly lurid Tennessee Williams play.

The BLUSH San Francisco Porn Film Festival, "a celebration of the Bay Area’s adult film history . . . with a focus on experimental arthouse, raunch comedy, educational documentaries, and explicit storytelling", will be at the Roxie on 31 July & 1 August.

Schwabacher Recital Series #3: Invitations

The third & final recital of this season's Schwabacher series took place last Tuesday, & it was all mostly marvelous (except for the venue, the Conservatory of Music's Barbro Osher Hall, which I will complain about below). The featured players were bass-baritone Kyle Ketelsen, currently slaying across the street as Orest in Richard Strauss's Elektra, & pianist Carrie-Ann Matheson (who is also Artistic Director of the San Francisco Opera Center, co-presenters with the Merola program of this recital series). Ketelsen  & Matheson were joined by several participants in this year's Merola program. Before the music started, Matheson gave us the key to the eclectic program: invitations, a theme malleable & capacious enough to provide a program of surprises & satisfactions. Surtitles were used for the songs as well as the opera excerpts, & I wish every recital did this.

The first piece was Là ci darem la mano, from Don Giovanni; as the recital took place on Bloomsday, this was a lovely but perhaps inadvertent homage to the day, as that duet is one of the musical notes ripping through Leopold Bloom's day in Dublin. Ketelsen was joined by soprano Shannon Crowley & they were accompanied by pianist Deven Shah. (stage director Claire Choquette supplied minimalist but effective movements for the dramatic pieces). Ketelsen as Giovanni (& later as Scarpia) is sexy & seductive; the commanding but nuanced authority of his voice is familiar but what struck me, seeing him at relatively close range, is how good an actor he is: convincing, insightful, nothing overdone; he could hold the stage even without his distinguished singing. Crowley was charmingly conflicted as Zerlina, & the next two numbers, L'invito by Rossini & Stornello by Verdi, for which she was accompanied by Matheson, confirmed her strength in the pert/perky/winsome repertoire; I'm sure there are sassy servant girls & clever peasant sweethearts in her future.

The next set had Matheson accompanying tenor Ryan Bryce Johnson in three Duparc songs: L'invitation au voyage, Chanson Triste, & Phidylé. He took these dreamy songs from a convincing ardent angle, which worked very well; there was a lot of youthful yearning there in songs that don't always sound as youthful as they should. There were lots of passionate, big voices on this program. After the Duparc, Ketelsen & Shah returned to the stage for Ravel's Don Quichotte à Dulcinée, a loose cycle of three songs: Chanson Romanesque, Chanson épique, & Chanson à boire. In the latter Ketelsen gave clear but subtle, insofar as a drunk can be subtle, indications of the singer's inebriation; it was another demonstration of his skill in inhabiting the persona of a song, something also revealed by the switches in mood among these three very different pieces. Shah is a strong accompanist.

Two sets, both accompanied by Matheson, closed out the first half: a trio of Italian songs (Sognai by Schira, Il poveretto by Verdi, & Nebbie by Respighi) sung by tenor Chester Seungyup Han & a trio of Korean songs (San A / O Mountain by Dong Soo Shin, Ma Joong / Welcome by Hak Joon Yoon), & Mot I Jeo / Unable to forget by Hye-Young Cho) sung by baritone Paul Jang: powerhouse passions to send us into intermission. Han's rendition of Il poveretto was for me the highlight of his set, a song about an old soldier begging for any small coin so he could buy some sort of meal that turned out to be surprisingly touching. It made me think of beggars I had passed that day, particularly one lying on the sidewalk moaning that he couldn't even buy a cup of coffee. The three Italian songs were not ones I had heard before, but the Korean songs seemed a greater rarity & were a real treat; recitals so seldom step off the German-French-Italian-OK-maybe-some-English song path. Musically they sounded to my ears like American folk songs. The song to the mountain was particularly moving. Both Han & Jang really let it rip in their sets.

The entire second half was an excerpt from Tosca, with Ketelsen as Scarpia, soprano Charlotte Kelso as Tosca, Chester Seungyup Han as Cavaradossi, Paul Jang as Sciarrone, & Ryan Bryce Johnson as Spoletta, with Carrie-Ann Matheson as a fluid & evocative accompanist. Matheson started off by giving us a plot summary of what was happening. I'm not sure this crowd needed such a summary, but Matheson knows her audience better than I do.

(left to right: soprano Charlotte Kelso, bass-baritone Kyle Ketelsen, pianist Carrie-Ann Matheson)

Even without a full orchestra, & even in excerpt, Tosca is a musically & dramatically powerful opera. It's one I have mixed feelings about, though: the only interesting (& even, in a weird way, sympathetic) character, as far as I'm concerned, is Scarpia, the reactionary head of the secret police: not the choice the opera or my heart would really want a listener to make. Cavaradossi is passionate & romantic & mostly a cipher. As for Floria Tosca, let's look at her behavior just in this Act 2 excerpt: Cavaradossi is the one tied up & tortured, with blood running down his face, but she insists she's the one who is being tortured & she is just too sensitive to take it. That's why, against Cavaradossi's wishes, she betrays his compatriot (& also, by association, him). Her lover can keep quiet under torture but she, under the mere thought of torture, breaks his confidence & betrays his trust. Then, during her big aria, she insists that she has never harmed a single person – really? I just heard you sell out Angelotti – & she doesn't deserve any of this anyway because she has brought flowers & jewels to adorn the church. (Do I need Latin Catholic trigger warnings?) Yet, despite her efforts to bribe the Creator with His own creations, bad things have happened to her (of course to her; forget Angelotti & even Cavaradossi). There are just too many bitch, please! moments with her.

That aside: the opera is, as I said, musically & dramatically effective, & the excerpt was gripping. Ketelsen is a superb Scarpia. Again, he doesn't overdo it, but he makes very clear the sadism, the sexual tingle, underlying the police chief's machinations. He doesn't indulge in snarling & bellowing (genuinely powerful people don't need to bellow); he even amuses himself with his sadism. Kelso was compelling & even touching (at least, as touching as I will find this character) as Tosca. with lovely rich tones for Vissi d'arte. Han really belted out his Vittoria! Vitorria! triumphantly, which is pretty much Cavaradossi's business in this act. The smaller parts were well taken; Jang portrayed amusing confusion on Sciarrone's part at the start again / stop again orders of the seemingly capricious Scarpia (the torturer, being in the other room torturing, of course doesn't hear the conversation with Tosca). It was quite a show, received very enthusiastically by the full house. Ketelsen & Matheson followed it with an encore, Cole Porter's very funny Tale of an Oyster, made even more hilarious by Ketelsen's commanding tones & authoritative stage presence. He also nicely delineated the oyster's different emotions at each stage of its journey, from Oyster Bay to high-society meal to being upchucked back into the Bay, sadder but wiser for his social-climbing adventure.

(left to right: tenor Chester Seungyup Han, pianist Carrie-Ann Matheson, bass-baritone Kyle Ketelsen, soprano Charlotte Kelso, tenor Ryan Bryce Johnson, & baritone Paul Jang)

Now I will complain about the venue. I have been to the Conservatory's Barbro Osher Hall several times. First something good: once you're up there, in a glass-encased room on the 11th floor of the Conservatory's new building, there are attractive views down Van Ness Avenue & across the street to Davies Hall & the Opera House, & it's very pretty at night, with all the lights of the city sparkling below you. When you see the room from the street, it glows like a jewel.

But: the room (it's not really a "hall") is described as "intimate", but I'd describe it as "small", which is not the same thing. The chairs, the cheap plastic kind that can be stacked up easily & moved out of the way, are not very comfortable. But the real problem is getting to & from the room. I've been to several concerts there & only once were people allowed up to wait when they arrived. Every other time, we have to collect in the lower lobby of the building, where there are not nearly enough seats, so concert-goers, who are often elderly, cranky people (& I include myself in that) have to stand, often for long periods, before we can get upstairs, where we have to stand waiting again. There is usually some sort of rough line that forms, with the policing that that involves (on Tuesday there was a man keenly invested in letting everyone know he was first in line; I had arrived at least 10 minutes before he did, but didn't bother disputing precedence with him, as I had taken one of the few seats available & preferred that to standing the whole time). And that line he was so intent on? It's just to get on the elevator! The audience has to be led up, one carload at a time, to the 11th floor. Once there, as I said, a line has to form again before we can get into the actual room (which, again, I'm not going to call a hall). There is lots of anxiety & fraying tempers, as seats are not reserved & so where you are when the doors open affects where you sit during the concert. And I am far from the only person who cares a lot about where he or she sits.

And then, after the concert, you have to do the same thing in reverse: line up by the elevators to be taken down one carload at a time. And if you need to use the restrooms before descending, because of course you do, you have to get through the crowd jammed up by the elevators, most of whom stand there staring like angry lumps even after you explain that you're not trying to cut ahead of them, you're trying to get past them to the restrooms. I don't really understand why a recital like this, which could have drawn a larger crowd, wasn't in a larger venue. Even if the size of the room weren't a problem, the logistics definitely are. Not sure what the Conservatory was thinking when they came up with this arrangement. But when I see the Osher Recital Hall as a venue, I definitely think twice about attending.

Friday Photo 2026/25

a view of Douglas Tilden's Admission Day monument on lower Market Street, San Francisco

Nightbird nightsun nighttown

BLOOM

I wanted then to have now concluded. Nightdress was never. Hence this. But tomorrow is a new day will be. Past was is today. What now is will then tomorrow as now was be past yester.

VIRAG

(Prompts into his ear in a pig's whisper.) Insects of the day spend their brief existence in reiterated coition, lured by the smell of the inferiorly pulchritudinous female possessing extendified pudendal verve in dorsal region. Pretty Poll! (His yellow parrotbeak gabbles nasally.) They had a proverb in the Carpathians in or about the year five thousand five hundred and fifty of our era. One tablespoonful of honey will attract friend Bruin more than half a dozen barrels of first choice malt vinegar. Bear's buzz bothers bees. But of this apart. At another time we may resume. We were very pleased, we others. (He coughs and, bending his brow, rubs his nose thoughtfully with a scooping hand.) You shall find that these night insects follow the light. An illusion for remember their complex unadjustable eye. For all these knotty points see the seventeenth book of my Fundamentals of Sexology or the Love Passion which Doctor L. B. says is the book sensation of the year. Some, to example, there are again whose movements are automatic. Perceive. That is his appropriate sun. Nightbird nightsun nighttown. Chase me, Charley! Buzz!

Once again, Happy Bloomsday to my mountain flowers.

Berkeley Early Music Festival/Festival Opera: Handel's Alcina

Handel's Alcina is such a great opera, & I feel very fortunate to have experienced it live three times. The first, in 2002, was at San Francisco Opera, when a Stuttgart production was brought here by Pamela Rosenberg. I already loved the opera from recordings but had not heard good things about the production (that includes reviews not only of the SF production but in Gramophone of the DVD of the Stuttgart performance). I was overwhelmed by the intelligence & style of the production & regretted that my ticket was for the final show & I couldn't go experience it again. It's still one of my fondest memories among my opera nights. (It may have helped that I knew the opera, as mentioned, but had also read the Barbara Reynolds translation of the source, Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, so I was already aware of the characters & context). The second time I heard it was at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music this past April; each spring the Conservatory does a historically informed performance of a baroque opera, & this year it was Alcina. I heard & very much enjoyed the first cast (I had a conflict & couldn't go the next day to hear the other group of singers). The third time was last Saturday, in the first of two concert performances presented at Hertz Hall at UC Berkeley by Festival Opera as the climax of the bi-annual Berkeley Early Music Festival. There will be two fully staged performances on 19 & 21 June at Festival Opera's usual venue, the Lesher Center in Walnut Creek, & their audiences are, based on Saturday's performance, in for quite a treat.

Alcina is one of Handel's "magic" operas, meaning there are plentiful opportunities for visual splendor & shifting scenic extravaganzas, so although it works very well concert-style as a psychological study, staging adds to the fun & the sheer theatricality of the piece, but, as I said, the opera can stand on its own without baroque visual effects. One of the fascinating things about the piece is the potential ambiguity of character: how sincere is Alcina's love? She is a Circe-like sorceress who lives on her island, surrounded by wild beasts, rocks, & even waves that were once lovers whom she tired of. But she does seem – possibly – genuinely attached to the knight Ruggiero; even at the end, when it is clear he is leaving her, are her warnings to him motivated by sincere concern, or jealousy, or vindictiveness, or some combination of all those things?

Ruggiero has been rescued (or "rescued") from Alcina's pleasure island by his mentor & tutor, Melisso, & his once & future beloved, the Woman Warrior Bradamante (disguised for protection from hostile magic as her brother Ricciardo). There are further complications involving Alcina's sister Morgante, her general Oronte, & Oberto, a pageboy searching for his father, who has been transformed by Alcina into a lion. I will reiterate my usual advice on the plots of baroque operas, which is never read the plot summary, which will, inevitably, leave you hopelessly confused, with X in disguise as Y the beloved of Z & girls playing boys & boys who sound like girls playing military heroes: it will all make perfect sense on stage. And I don't think of these plots as fluff, or as some convoluted excuse for lots of pretty arias. There is a great deal of psychological insight & truthful dramatic strength in how life is portrayed in such operas. I find a more accurate reflection of the confusions & vagaries of love in baroque opera, with its gender-bent confusions & longing for love & uncertainties about what is real & lasting, than in any sweeping verismo statement of grand passions.

I've never understood why people who claim that they just want beautiful memorable tunes out of opera aren't clamoring for more baroque opera, which is basically a string of beautiful, memorable (&, let me emphasize, dramatically & emotionally appropriate) tunes – I mean, I'm sure there are some such who do love baroque opera, but people who make such statements usually mean they want overly familiar things done in an old-fashioned romantic style. You need terrific singers for baroque opera, & we certainly had them on Saturday night; let me run through the list, starting with the pageboy Oberto, sung by Nina Jones: it's a small part, but she brought pathos & power to it. Isaiah Musik-Ayala as Melisso was appropriately virile for someone trying to redirect his wayward pupil from love to duty – not, in the eyes of many of us, a very sympathetic position, but it's Melisso's position, & Musik-Ayala sold it. As Oronte, the general of Alcina's army & hopeful lover of the fickle Morgana, Spencer Greene was almost surprisingly memorable; this character can come across as a weakling, a mere cog in the wheels of lovely & lustful complications, but here he was a convincing frustrated lover.

To move on to the main quartet: Sarah Couden, well known as a commanding yet often whimsical presence in local productions of baroque operas, brought sincerity & pathos to Bradamante. As Morgana, Alcina's sister, another well-known local singer, Shawnette Sulker, was kittenish & hilarious but also, when the character expressed what is (possibly?) sincere regret over her straying love, genuinely moving. You couldn't blame Oronte for being won over, even if neither he nor we could be quite certain how sincere Morgana is. There was an unaccustomed bit of roughness, I thought, in Sulker's first aria, but she very soon righted herself & her voice was sweet & insinuating thereafter & her acting was reliably funny & on point. Courtney Miller as Ruggiero was elegantly assertive both as a lover & then as a warrior (though, for a concert performance, she maybe should have considered butching up her outfit or appearance a bit; I think some audience members were a bit confused by the femme looks of the valiant hero). And anyone who has heard Nikola Printz knows that they are brilliantly cast as the sorceress Alcina, commanding the stage with physical presence (even though Printz does not seem to be a very tall person) & vocal splendor; you truly believe that Alcina has magic powers & can control both her lovers & her magic island. Printz's interestingly androgynous face (they would be excellent casting as Joan of Arc) & clothing (a combination of soldier-like boots & flowing sheer tops in different colors for each of the three acts & necktied shirts) helped dramatize the erotic & subversive lure that captured so many supposedly strong men. Using not just sheer vocal volume but nuance, Printz held the center of the romantic & political complications of the plot. After Alcina's first aria, Printz delicately raised a finger & wiped first one side of her lips & then the other: the sort of understated but telling gesture that reveals a character in all her decisive & certain power. Festival Opera head Zachary Gordin directed the staging & Derek Tam led the ensemble from the harpsichord; the contributions of both were valuable parts of a memorable production.

One of the blessings of our musical moment is the revival of baroque opera, once thought an exotic blossom forever extinct, but in our time we have seen powerful & revelatory stagings of these formerly forgotten works. This year is a particularly good one for Handel operas in the Bay Area; not only did we have this Alcina, as well as the one in April at the Conservatory, but next month Philharmonia Baroque will be performing Tolomeo & in August West Edge is doing Rinaldo. All is not yet lost.

Museum Monday 2026/24

 

detail of a plate attributed to the Rosoni Painter, active circa 580 - 550 BCE, seen at the Legion of Honor as part of the special exhibit The Etruscans: From the Heart of Ancient Italy

San Francisco Opera: Elektra

The other day I was at the second of the six performances of San Francisco Opera's Elektra, a revival of Keith Warner's 2017 "museum" production of the Richard Strauss / Hugo von Hoffmannsthal setting of Sophocles. I saw the production the first time around & thought it was brilliant, even beyond my gratitude that someone thought to do something with Elektra besides drape the cast in sheets (to indicate Classical Times) & set them amid a few pillars, preferably broken (to indicate the unwholesome state of the House of Atreus).

There is a whole backstory to the setting, centered on a museum visitor who is accidentally locked in at night & relives her own past traumas through vitrined artifacts of Elektra's story, but honestly the staging works even if you don't pick up on that framing, or some of the setting's other particulars (& honestly many of them did not come through to me the other night, possibly a combination of my location in the house & my troubled vision). But the museum is such a vivid, fruitful metaphor, not only for the way we view the operatic repertory (exhibits from the past, the dust blown off for our continued amusement) but our own emotional lives: the Memory Palace converted into a series of labeled exhibits of our grief, our pain, our occasional glimpse of glory, which sometimes means just (in every sense of the word) revenge.

What keeps this conceit from becoming self-consciously arty? Part of it is the inherent horror of the plot, the long-awaited matricide of a woman who was herself wronged, with horror-film touches as we approach the end: Orest (to give Orestes his Teutonic name) suddenly sitting bolt upright in bed to surprise his next victim (beds & what happens in them are really the crux of the drama), or carrying out his mother's severed head after he kills her, a bit of Grand Guignol I did not remember from the earlier production (which doesn't mean of course that it wasn't part of the original staging; it was nearly 10 years ago, & since then there have been a lot of heads that should be severed).

The other element is of course Strauss's call for & expert handling of enormous instrumental resources, the largest pit orchestra (95 players) in SF Opera's history (pit orchestra, because Messiaen's Saint François d'Assise calls for 97 players but 8 of them are on stage, according to the Opera's press department). Eun Sun Kim led this massive force with aplomb, giving clarity & searing forward thrust to the angsty strains. There were a few moments (one of the early statements of the final dance theme) where the volume seemed as high as it could go maybe a bit earlier than it should go there, but then climaxing early is not necessarily a misjudgment in this opera. Richard Strauss, even when dealing with the great figures of Greek mythology, is a bit of a carnival barker, with something lubricious & seedy about his music, at least when it's at its best (or perhaps what I'm saying is that that is when & how I prefer him). This may explain some of the discomfort with this composer (is he quite top drawer?) but there's certainly precedent for treating Greek mythology this way: Euripides also cast an eye both cynical & compassionate on these mythological doings. (Treating Sophocles in this way, though, is more of a piquant disjunction, which is not a bad thing.)

We heard Elena Pankratova in the title role, Michaela Schuster as Klytemnestra, Elza van den Heever as Chrysothemis, Kyle Ketelsen as Orest, & William Burden as Aegisth; all were splendid in the face of this work's extensive & almost excessive dramatic & musical demands; I particularly admired van den Heever as a more forceful than usual sister, Ketelsen as the implacable avenger, & Burden in the thankless role of Aegisth. When the opera ends in this staging, we do not have Elektra's triumphant, ritualistic dance of death; instead, while the murder of her father in the tub replays overhead on video, she collapses under the weight of recurrent grief & remembered trauma: a psychologically acute moment with which to send us back out into our world.

Friday Photo 2026/24

 

on Market Street, San Francisco

Museum Monday 2026/23

 

detail of the Portrait of Bianca degli Utili Maselli and Her Children by Lavinia Fontana, now at the Legion of Honor

San Francisco Opera: The Barber of Seville

Il barbiere di Siviglia has a long first act, so the intermission line at the lower-level men's room was even longer than usual. The man in front of me, probably late 30s / early 40s, said he had never seen Barber before & he was enjoying it a lot.

"But I'll bet you knew a lot of the music, didn't you?" I asked.

"Yes," he said.

"Bugs Bunny, right?" I responded. He laughed & said he had been surprised to realize when the music started that nine-year-old him was being prepped for the opera by Chuck Jones. And here he thought it was just Saturday morning cartoons!

Not only are snatches of the music mainstays of the more sophisticated & perennially popular mid-century cartoons, but this opera has not only held but been a mainstay of the operatic stage since its premiere in Rome in 1816. All this makes it easy to take Barbiere for granted. I had skipped its last few appearances in San Francisco; in fact, I realized when I glanced at my Opera List that I had not seen it live in 20 years. This stylish & witty production by Emilio Sagi, with a powerhouse & mellifluous cast of singers, reminded me why Barbiere is an evergreen.

The staging is evocative enough of an appropriate time & place without being burdened with cumbersome "realism" or pointed updating. Generous use is made of a troupe of Spanish dancers, who set a stylish flamenco-tinged tone. There are lovely surreal touches throughout, such as the chorus crawling out from under the buildings that dominates the right side of the stage, or instruments (a guitar for a serenade, for example) being handed out from that crawl space. The buildings, which are both the  outdoors &, with some adaptations, indoors of Doctor Bartolo's residence, resemble those toy-like structures you see in the backgrounds of early Italian Renaissance paintings, only here instead of pastels, the buildings are all white. The sets & costumes are mostly whites & tans, with touches of color added as the story progresses, until we end with bright splashes of pink & red & a video of colorful fireworks exploding as Almaviva & Rosina drive off in a cherry-red car.

The production is genuinely funny, which is always a bit of a surprise & relief for a work as old & well-known as this one. There was lots of appropriate & appreciative laughter from the audience. Clever use is made of props, but it's not overdone: Rosina, very much in vixen mode, jabs at her surroundings with a pair of garden shears; streamers shoot out of Don Basilio's sleeves at the climax of La Calunnia. It's easy to do too much of this sort of thing – for me, Berta's business with sneaking cigarettes didn't work, mostly because I find smoking repellant – but the balance was on the right side here, & the funniest moments actually came from the material: after Basilio winds up his extravagant paean to Calumnia, Bartolo's decisive, "No, we'll do it my way" got a hearty & well-deserved laugh from me as well as the rest of the audience, & other than the man in front of me in the restroom line who was seeing his first Barbiere, I suspect most of us knew it was coming.

Benjamin Manis led a well-paced & stylish orchestra. There are two casts in this revival; here's the one I heard last Friday: Joshua Hopkins as Figaro, Maria Kataeva as Rosina, Levy Sekgapane as Count Almaviva, Renato Girolami as Doctor Bartolo; then, in all performances, Riccardo Fassi plays Don Basilio, Catherine Cook plays Berta, Olivier Zerouali is Fiorello, Gabriel Natal-Báez is Ambrogio, Thomas Kinch an officer, & Andrew Truett a notary. There was outstanding work from all of them. Sekgapane tossed off & held high notes with deceptive & charming ease; he was given his long final aria, & it was a pleasure to hear, though I did wonder why Rossini hadn't given equal time to Rosina & Figaro. It would have been delightful to hear even more of Hopkins & Kataeva. Girolami manages to make Bartolo amusingly pompous & calculating without overdoing it. The cast radiates a sense of fun; even Ambrogio's silent dance with Berta is joyous. Scenes that are often sort of a trial (like Almaviva disguised as a music instructor wishing peace & joy on an increasingly aggravated Bartolo) are genuinely bright & funny.

If I sound slightly surprised at how fresh & fun the show was, & how much I enjoyed it, that's probably because I am. I had seen the Met livecast of Barbiere last year, & though I found it on the whole quite entertaining, I also felt that at a number of points the plot machinery was showing its age: cranking & creaking rustily (always a hazard with works rooted in the commedia tradition). There are comedies whose every production – whose every performance even – reveals new angles & insights & flashes of color; Così fan tutte is my go-to example of these opalescent operas. Barbiere is not one of these. It gleams like a shiny, even brilliant machine, reliably producing an entirely respectable & to varying degrees enjoyable product. I thought this production was as good as Barbiere is going to get, making this old work, so alien to us in many of its rooted assumptions, into something fresh, funny, stylish, invigorating. This was the right way to break my drought with this particular war-horse.