What I read in 2025 (part 3)

Part 1 is here & Part 2 (which is just Shakespeare's history plays) is here.

As You Like It
Shakespeare

the lovely green & golden world

The Comedy of Errors

Shakespeare

This reads surprisingly well, unlike most farces

The Faerie Queene

Edmund Spenser

I re-read this last year, & loved it so much all over again that when I finished the last page I turned back to the beginning & read it all again. This time I switched from my battered Yale University Press paperback to a lovely copy the Heritage Press issued in 1953 to mark the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. It has lovely woodcuts by Agnes Miller Parker. It does not have any annotations, but at this point I'm not so reliant on them & if a usage stumped me I could always refer back to the Yale paperback. Spenser is one of the most rich & sensuous of English poets. His subject matter – knights, sorceresses, dragons, quests – will probably always go in & out of favor & fashion, but I think we are definitely in a Spenserian moment (dragons!). Last year in conjunction with the Faerie Queene I read Catherine Nicholson's Reading & Not Reading the Faerie Queene: Spenser and the Making of Literary Criticism, which I strongly recommend if you're interested in Spenser's epic. The subtitle suggests the book is more limited than it really is; it uses each Book of the epic as a springboard for a reception history of the work. The chapter on why The Faeries Queene is still printed with something like the original spelling, rather than the modernizing usually applied to early modern texts, is particularly fascinating (I used to work as a typesetter, albeit an electronic one).

The Merry Wives of Windsor

Shakespeare

Well, OK. It's a bit slapdash; enjoyable enough, though the wives strike me as a bit too smug ("wives may be merry & yet be honest too": whatever). Its main contribution to the world is in serving as the inspiration for Verdi's Falstaff; Shakespeare, like Plump Jack, is not only witty in himself, but the cause of wit in others. Somewhere I have a volume of Auden's lectures on Shakespeare (bought years ago, still not read) & apparently for his lecture on this play he walked into the classroom, put Verdi's opera on, & had nothing more to say.

Sodom & Gomorrah

Marcel Proust

Volume 4 of In Search of Lost Time. This is the one in which the secret, mostly queer, sexual engine of this world is opened up for the Narrator, who by chance is made a voyeur at an encounter between the formidable Baron de Charlus & the tailor Jupien. It's the key that unlocks the adult world, foreshadowed in the first volume when the Narrator, as a child, is unintentionally a witness to a lesbian scene between Vinteuil's daughter & her "friend". Voyeurism, unintentional & otherwise, is one of the recurring themes of this series. It's a bit fashionable now for people to roll their eyes at how everyone in this novel turns out to be gay except the Narrator (though the term queer is both capacious & flexible enough to incorporate him; I now people nowadays who call themselves queer with less justification). I think such a reaction is mostly an attempt to be sophisticated at the cost of historical awareness. It's only recently (very recently) that same-sex relations were accorded any kind of respect, & even now that is not a universal attitude.  (And there have been other periods that were relatively open in various ways about same-sex attraction; there's no guarantee that our somewhat positive moment will last.)

Narrative Poems

Shakespeare

I hadn't read these in a while. Venus & Adonis is quite saucy & delightful, with lots of amusing gender-flipping (Adonis is the coy beauty who isn't interested in love, while Venus is the aggressor; in one rather comic scene, she pulls him off his horse in her eagerness). The Rape of Lucrece is, as is only suitable, more ponderous going. 

The Bravest Voices

Ida Cook

One of my sisters told me about this memoir; I had never heard of it, which, in retrospect, kind of surprises me. Ida Cook was a British woman who, under the pseudonym Mary Burchell, wrote romance novels. She did some other things, too: she & her sister Louise were passionate opera fans, & anyone with an interest in the art form will swoon at not only the performances they heard but the friends they made, among them Amelita Galli-Curci &, in particular, Rosa Ponselle (& later, towards the beginning of her career, Maria Callas). There must have been something special about them; Cook is too modest (too mid-century British, perhaps) to say this, but to become friends with such a series of renowned singers says a lot about their appeal, even beyond the joy in seeing two plucky young women determined to scrimp & save until they could afford to travel to New York & the Metropolitan Opera to hear their favorites (Galli-Curci hosted them & gave them tickets when they arrived). It's like reading a real-life version of James McCourt's Mawrdew Czgowchwz, in which opera is the center of the world. But in the middle of that story is another one: during the 1930s, thanks to their friendship with some European musicians, the sisters used their opera-centered trips to continental Europe to help smuggle out possessions (sometimes wearing the jewels & telling the border patrols that they were paste from Woolworth's) & information for the increasingly threatened Jewish artists. They also helped a number of Jews get out, sponsoring them in England. After the war they resumed their opera-centered lives. An amazing story.

Michelangelo & the Pope's Ceiling

Ross King

 An impulsive grab from the library (there are more of those coming, lots more). Interesting & detailed account of the painting of the Sistine Ceiling, which Michelangelo didn't want to do, of course.

Mrs Reynolds & Five Earlier Novelettes

Gertrude Stein

Stein wrote Mrs Reynolds during World War II, when she & Alice B Toklas were, as Jewish lesbian Americans, in extreme danger. It is an indirect account of living under such constant tension. The war is happening, & two frightening characters, Angel Harper (Adolf Hitler) & Joseph Lane (Stalin) float overhead. Mrs Reynolds helps control her anxiety by, among other methods, relying on the prophecies of Saint Odile (of Alsace), an eighth-century nun whose ambiguous words pointed towards the ultimate defeat of the Germans. The atmosphere of anxiety is so well captured. The novel would not be improved if it were a more straightforward historical rendering; it is an eternally relevant evocation of living under tension. The name Angel Harper is ingenious. It sounds seraphic & poetic: angels! harps! But the menace is palpable.

Twelfth Night

Shakespeare

One of my all-time favorites. I seldom see it done right, though. There is an underlying melancholy, a poetic wistfulness, a twilight mood, that is often shoved out of the way in favor of a more farcical approach to staging. The Merry Wives of Windsor supposedly was written because Elizabeth I wanted to see Falstaff in love; the "romance" of Toby Belch & Maria is closer to that than the Merry Wives.

The Taming of the Shrew

Shakespeare

I hadn't read this one in a while. It's still staged frequently, which is somewhat surprising. But audiences seem to love it & I think many directors see it as a puzzle to be solved: how to make the gender politics less regressive? I have probably mentioned this before, but not recently so here goes: I saw a production in Boston that for me really nailed a lot about the play. I can't remember the name of the theater; it was in the 1980s, in a small space on Beacon Hill (I still have the program somewhere, I'm sure) It was set in a vaudeville house; Kate started as one of the baggy-pants comedians & ended up as one of the soubrettes; she delivered the long final speech in mincing tones & it was, honestly, one of the most genuinely terrifying things I've ever seen on stage. It stayed true to the play but was thought-provoking. That is my way of stating I loathe The Wink. You know what I'm talking about: Kate delivers her long final speech & then, when Petruchio isn't looking, winks at the audience. What I hate about it is that it turns Kate into Biance: someone who pays lip service to "the patriarchy" but then goes her own way. I think that's untrue to the character. Kate is an extremist: at the start, she is not only a shrew, she is the most notorious, violent-tongued shrew around. When she is "tamed" (using techniques – sleep deprivation, starvation, arbitrary & absurd pronouncements & orders – that are regularly used to break prisoners) she turns into a true believer in a husband' supremacy. Whatever she believes, she is fully committed to. No winking for her! A problem with the play is that the script has not survived in complete form: it's often forgotten (& usually omitted in performance) that there is a framing story, in which a rambunctious drunk (a male Kate, in a way) named Christopher Sly is, in fairy-tale fashion & for the amusement of some aristocrats, fooled into thinking that he is a great lord who has been ill. The Taming story is a play within a play, meant to entertain him. As such, it is not meant as a realistic picture of the world, but a farcical view, almost a parody, of that world's social assumptions. When Bianca & the Widow at the end show that, once they're married, they aren't going to continue to acquiesce in male supremacy, it's an echo of Sly's forthcoming return to his powerless state of drunken obscurity. But sadly that ending was not preserved, & the framing story just hangs in mid-air.

Absolute Monarchs

John Julius Norwich

This is a history of the papacy; though that is obviously an immense & comp0licated story, this is a relatively concise & extremely entertaining history; in fact, a wild ride. I enjoyed it so much I could overlook Norwich's dismissive comments about Robert Browning's The Ring & the Book, which I think is one of the great Victorian novels (which I wrote about here). He also suggests the possibility that Julius II had an affair with Michelangelo! It's a tribute to Norwich that this suggestion seems plausible rather than salacious or sensationalistic (but also: wow).

The Captive

Marcel Proust

Just as his characters change through time in the course of the novel (or novels), so do our perceptions of his characters change in our times, as we read &/or re-read & as our world changes around us. That's one way of saying I had misremembered a major point from the end of Sodom & Gomorrah, even though I've read In Search about every ten years since I was a teenager (long ago, for those keeping score at home): my recollection, or perhaps what I wanted to have happen, was that when the Narrator's affair with Albertine is re-ignited by the discovery of her long-time friendship (but how intimate a frienship?) with the lesbian Mlle Vinteuil & her girlfriend, it's because he sees the intimacy between two women as an emotional territory to which he has no access; possessing Albertine is an attempt to possess an emotional life he, as a man, can have no part in. It's actually more regressive than that: he wants to "protect" her from this "vice". He does so by, as the title suggests, keeping her virtually a prisoner. This control is not something most current readers are going to sympathize with. The novel doesn't, though, suggest that we should, or need to: this is one of the varieties of love. I said earlier that the Narrator could be described as "queer", & I stick by that: his openness to same-sex lovers is, in the context of his world, enough of a variation from the straight & narrow. He does refer often to homosexuality as a "vice" but inevitably dances it back, with phrases such as "if it be a vice". Albertine is a slippery character; we (or I) can't help sympathizing with her wish to live her own life, but she also willingly plays along with the Narrator's control of her; she remains just a touch out of reach of the Narrator & of us, which lends some strength to my thought that the Narrator's desire to control her is related to his wish to possess that which ultimately can't  be possessed.

Antony & Cleopatra

Shakespeare

Every time I read this one it strikes me as more & more astonishing: the rapid, almost cinematic scenes; the astute analysis of power, erotic & political; the analysis of gender (the fluid, sophisticated Egyptians versus the forthrightly male Romans); the flashes of great poetry; the whole exotic love-death at the end. . .  Cleopatra is such a great role. Maybe some day I'll get to see it on stage.

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Shakespeare

One of the greatest & most universally beloved of the plays. This is probably the one I've seen staged most often. I will admit that Bottom, to me, is not the great role it is often presented as, but that doesn't really matter. An endlessly rich play, with its mixture of worlds: the fairy world, the Athenians, the workers. It's often overlooked how sophisticated the humor often is. The burlesque of Pyramus & Thisby, for example, often presented as crude farce, is in fact an extremely cultured parody of Elizabethan dramatic poetry & dramatic tropes as well as of Arthur Golding's celebrated translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses.

Titus Andronicus

Shakespeare

I've always had a soft spot for this play. It used to be standard to describe it as Shakespeare's worst play, or even to deny that The Master had any hand in it. On the contrary, it's a very strong play, & works well on stage (as anyone can attest who has seen the Julie Taymor film). It foreshadows King Lear in its analysis of self-willed power destroying itself & its country. The notorious violence plays better for an audience that is used to Tarantino films.

Marcel Proust: A Life

Edmund White

This brief volume is the only thing I've read by White. It was from the library; I think I spotted it when I checked out (last year) a biography of Proust's mother. Its a good brief life; as you might expect, given the author, he's very interested in his subject's sexuality. There is an odd moment when he describes the recessive, scrupulous musician Vinteuil as "a wimp" which seems weird & hardly le mot juste, & not only because "wimp" has, thankfully, fallen a bit out of use.

Romeo & Juliet

Shakespeare

An interesting thing that adaptations of this play often miss is its lightness & fantasy. The intensity of the young lovers seems to take place in a world different from the one they live in (hence their frequent use of the sky, the heavens, the stars, as descriptors for their love). But stories of young love are not really my thing, & maybe that's one of the reasons that, though I've seen adaptations (operas, ballets) of R&J performed live, I've never seen the play itself on stage. Maybe that's OK. Directors frequently stage some obvious "reason" for the family feud (one family is White & one Black! one is Catholic & one Protestant – & we're in Northern Ireland! one family is the Hatfields & the others the McCoys!) but that's West Side Story, not Romeo & Juliet. It's right there in the first line: "Two households, both alike in dignity. . . " There's mention of an "ancient grudge", but no cause for the grudge is ever given. It would have been the easiest thing in the world for Shakespeare to slip in a few lines about some specific origin of the feud, so his failure to do so must be a deliberate choice: there is no reason for the state of enmity; it just has long been so, & so it continues. (Let me also note that in the Pyramus & Thisbe episode of the Metamorphoses, often cited as one of the inspirations for this play, Ovid also does not give a reason for the enmity between the families of the lovers.) Making the families specific antagonistic factions gives substantial historical & political precedence for the enmity that is not meant to be there. The "ancient grudge" between the Capulets & the Montagues is merely a habit, & an absurd one.

The Fugitive

Marcel Proust

Our Narrator deals with the consequences of his actions, once Albertine breaks free. Again, multiple perspectives, through time & through different, incomplete & arbitrary, bits of information unsettle where we thought we were.

Wars I Have Seen

Gertrude Stein

It was sort of by chance that this was the Stein book I picked up after Mrs Reynolds, but it turned out to be an excellent choice, as it is the real-life version of that fictionalized account of living through the fascist occupation of France. Written secretly, it is a fascinating account of what it's like to live under the constant downward pressure of the occupation. Stein opens with remembered wars from the rest of her life, including stories told her about the American Civil War.

Troilus & Cressida

Shakespeare

Such a great play, so much anger & corruption amid the official heroism, & such a short, slender tale of love running through it.

I Heard Her Call My Name

Lucy Sante

This is Sante's memoir of her times & her gender transition. Her times sort of overlap mine, so that's one fascinating aspect: a memoir of the intellectual & cultural currents of the time; she was involved in the NY Review of Books, which I was reading at the time, & am still reading. She explores her relations with women both admirable & not so admirable (wives, girlfriends, her mother) as well as with the woman she eventually felt or admitted was inside her. Those of us who have never felt comfortable in our bodies will relate to her discomfort, even if hers takes a different form. I have to say, though, that once or twice she mentions that as a man she had never experienced being dismissed or ignored because of her gender, & . . .  I accept her version of her life, but: really? I am absolutely flabbergasted when men say things like that. Is their experience of being a man in our world really so different from mine? I am frequently ignored, dismissed, or targeted because of my gender, & I'm not even talking about the times when I'm being attacked for my many failures to live up to assumptions about how men are, I'm talking about people who just see me as a generic Man & react (negatively) accordingly. That claim was a minor moment in an interesting read, but obviously it's one of those minor things that resonated with a particular reader (in this case, me).

Othello

Shakespeare

This is one of the most psychologically & verbally subtle of Shakespeare's plays, which is saying a lot, of course.

Sonnets

Shakespeare

I hadn't read these in quite a while. They are even stranger & more beautiful than I had remembered.

Joan of Arc: Maid, Myth, & History

Timothy Wilson Smith

I find Saint Joan endlessly fascinating. What I particularly liked about this book was that it continues past her life into a reception history, exploring her changing image & the different ways she was understood & used down the centuries.

Tender Buttons

Gertrude Stein

Echt Stein. I've read this before. People often wince when I mention Stein; my theory is that if you connect with her rhythms on a deep level, you're all in. If you don't you don't. What is meaning? what does meaning mean? As Stein said, if you enjoy it, you understand it.

Love's Labors Lost

Shakespeare

This is a gorgeous iridescent bubble of a play, but I have to admit I'm not always in the mood for it. It is an early example of Shakespeare's fascination with lovers who fight a battle of wits that both conceals & reveals their feelings (see: Beatrice & Benedick). I have to confess that I am, as they say, triggered by scenes in which people talk during a performance; in this one, while the allegedly witty lords & ladies mock the best efforts of the lower orders to put on a pageant, one of the performers stands up for himself by pointing out, "This is not just, my lord; not generous" & YES.

These Fevered Days: Ten Pivotal Moments in the Making of Emily Dickinson

Martha Ackmann

This is an example of the trend in biographies on taking isolated moments & using that as a way of telling a life (rather than a chronological procession from birth to death). I find this an excellent approach, as it plunges us right into what we're there, & earlier & somewhat extraneous information can be fit in where suitable. This book gives a lively sense of what Dickinson was doing & feeling.

OK, I think that's enough for this entry. More to come. . . .

San Francisco Performances: Davóne Tines & Ruckus

Last Saturday I was back in Herbst Theater to hear bass-baritone Davóne Tines & Ruckus (who were joined by the Concert Choir of the Ruth Asawa School of the Arts, directed by Michael Desnoyers), presented by San Francisco Performances, performing What Is Your Hand in This?, a program (to paraphrase the program notes) celebrating the tradition of dissent in American music, particularly as expressed through questioning this country's treatment of Blacks, from enslavement to Jim Crow apartheid to on-going racist attacks. So the program is a counter-narrative to the more jingoistic (& much more limited & historically blinkered, not to say blind) current celebrations of the founding 250 years ago of the USA. That the irony of the land of liberty holding (certain types of) humans as slaves has long been noted, even before the colonies broke away to form the United States (Samuel Johnson in 1775: "How is it we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?") does not make it less urgent to keep pointing out this irony; it seems in fact more pressing than ever, given our corrupt government's attempts to ignore long-time American realities. I had been looking forward to this concert. But what I experienced Saturday struck me as a mixed bag, & left me disappointed.

To start with more positive notes: Ruckus combines modern electric & early instruments, & I liked their free-wheeling approach to baroque music, which highlighted its connections with what is often called Roots music; they can switch easily from Handel to eighteenth-century hymns to Julius Eastman. Tines is always a commanding performer; he was elegantly dressed in a subtly mismatched suit of reddish brown, with a double-breasted jacket (with a very understated pattern of stripes formed by bouclé lozenges; not sure I'm describing this correctly, but the effect was very fine) worn in place of a shirt. He has an extremely expressive voice, & if there were a few rough patches, they passed quickly (he did seem to drink a lot of water during a performance that lasted only a little over one intermissionless hour, with no encore, despite enthusiastic applause; & a cold seemed to be afflicting members of Ruckus: one violinist in particular dropped a few tissues & had to cough into his sleeve a few times). The young chorus sang admirably.

The material was insightfully chosen, & I was delighted to attend a program that was entirely in English, allowing me to set aside (except for one or two brief moments) the printed words. The opening number, Stephen Foster's Beautiful Dreamer, was a particularly astute choice, nodding to the long-standing minstrel tradition exemplified by many of Foster's songs as well as to the dreamers of the beautiful dream of liberty & equality for all that floats, tantalizingly out of reach, over the American project. Tines sold the pretty & somewhat sentimental Victorian ornateness with smoothness & convincing conviction. Another superb choice, for me perhaps the highlight of the concert, was Handel's setting from Messiah of Why Do the Nations So Furiously Rage Together? It was a choice open to multiple interpretations, & I loved the way Tines & Ruckus stretched & played with the lines, varying from baroque ornaments to modern vocal techniques, devolving into emotionally convincing sonic ruptures that caught the never-ending historical cycles of the nations dissolving, changing, & continuing to rage furiously.

So what went wrong, at least for me? To start with, the performers were all amplified. That amplification is an increasingly common & even unquestioned occurrence doesn't make it any better as an experience. Herbst is a small enough theater so that I always have to wonder why amplification is necessary: if your voice or your playing can't fill that space, you probably shouldn't be performing professionally, & if you're drowning out (or drowned by) other performers, you as a group need to work on balances. Ruckus did have some electric instruments, but I've heard those incorporated into ensembles without the need to jack up everyone & everything else (& if that can't happen, maybe just drop the electric instruments?)

Amplification flattens the sound & removes its spatial sense, distortions which, even when or if they're subtle, undercut the experience of live music, those elements of the chance & the human. I sit in the first row for my SF Performances concerts, & usually there's an immediacy & intimacy that comes from such proximity that makes it worth the trouble & expense of buying a ticket & going out, rather than just staying in & listening to a recording. On Saturday I felt the electronic pulpit raised above my head, the music & the words talking down to me.

But I've been to other amplified concerts at Herbst, & generally I can adjust. On Saturday, though, there was also a lot of the sort of obligatory audience participation that I – I'll go with dislike. After his opening song, Tines said Good evening & paused, then repeated a bit more firmly Good evening. Evidently we were supposed to respond, as if at a party. Enough did so that he gave a little smile & said he just wanted to see if we were alive. Is enforced participation genuine participation? Intent, silent listening is, I would think, all the sign of life a performer can really want (& more than many of them get). We were told, at times, to clap in rhythm. We were told to sing a chorus, then to sing it again. We were told to raise our hands if we thought we were living in – I think he said odd times? whatever the exact term, it struck me as a bit cutesy & entirely inadequate to the perilous times burning around us. It's been about a decade since the corruptions of American culture suppurated into our current President; did Tines think we hadn't noticed? that we weren't distressed? that we had never expressed our complicated feelings before we were asked to raise our hands? Why do performers so frequently use these coy evasions ("these days", "our times") instead of directly naming the fascist Republican Party? What was the point of making us literally raise our hands, as if most of us aren't thinking night & day about the rotten state of things? What does it accomplish if we raise our hands? We then just put them back down, & continue doing what we were doing before.

The clapping, the singing, the hand-raising: maybe that sort of group activity works more effectively on other people than on me. (I'm not implying that this makes me superior in any way; it may well be a drawback of mine). I do not identify with groups, maybe in particular with other members of an audience. (This audience was actually better than many, but as usual, a woman sitting near me created dazzling amounts of noise shuffling her program during the performance, & a trio of annoying children not only rustled & whispered during the show, they got up, walked out, & then returned disruptively.)

I'd say I have an instinctive aversion to this sort of forced audience participation, but on Saturday I realized that maybe it is learned, as the on-going instructions from stage flashed me back to school days, particularly to the cheerful coercion of post-1968 high-school civics teachers, expecting us, as students & therefore idealists, to produce the correct, high-minded answers to whatever social question was posed. And I basically agree with all those high-minded liberal pieties. But I couldn't help noticing, as a student, that many of my fellow students who were readiest to produce the acceptable answers (the loudest yelps for liberty. . . ) were the same ones who, an hour later during lunch or recess, were going to continue to ridicule & pick on me. I was given frequent reminders of the disjunction between what people feel they need to say to please their teachers & how they actually treat others when the teachers are away. The appropriate & bien-pensant & regurgitated replies seldom connected with anyone's actual actions.

I felt that again on Saturday, the sense that we are there to hear information & to react in a certain way as if we'd never heard it all before, repeatedly, & that this is all sort of a ceremony that we go through that is set apart from what we mostly do in our lives. Tines introduced some songs with a bit of a lecture about the conditions of slaves & slave-owners (as a side note, I was mildly surprised he said "slaves" rather than the more nuanced & nowadays more frequently encountered term "enslaved people"). Of course we've all heard this before. It doesn't get less horrifying, & the ironies don't lessen. As I said at the beginning of this post, these things still need to be said. Repetition is emphasis, & some things need to be emphasized. Are the people who need to hear these reminders, though, the ones who go to art-song recitals in San Francisco?

As a thoughtful & sensitive Black artist, Tines is almost obliged to say these things. And we, as an audience (mixed, but mostly white) attempting to be thoughtful & sensitive, are almost obliged (&, let me add, also often sincerely willing to) react in a certain way. But it all ends up feeling a bit . . . comme il faut? ceremonial? performative? ritualistic? a Dantean whirlwind we can never escape? a Beckett scene of rote statements & standard responses that will play out endlessly in an unchanging landscape? What was new here? (Did anything need to be new here?) Was I just put off by the amplification, & the silly attempts to get the audience "involved" in a way other than by paying attention? Was I just having an off day for some unrelated reason? Had my anticipation been high enough so that disappointment was inevitable?

Another highlight was the song that provided the program's title: What Is My Hand in This? Tines wrote the lyrics, & before the performance started I had read the program note (the notes in general were attributed to Tines & Ruckus) on this song:

"The idea for the song 'What is My Hand in This' came from an invitation to be part of the entertainment at a Christmas party in one of New York City's wealthiest neighborhoods. Davóne took this as an opportunity not to entertain, but to speak directly and imploringly to a room of the 1% with the subtext 'You in this room have the power to affect great change, so what is your hand in contributing?'. The tune borrows from Black American folk tradition." 

With that context in mind, I was surprised at how effective the song was. Because while it was bold of Tines to add this questioning number to his Christmas program, it was perhaps part of the effect, to be expected, if you are the sort of extremely wealthy person who can hire professional singers for your holiday parties, & you choose to hire a Black singer celebrated for his unconventional, thoughtful & often politically conscious choices, that he is going to bring some of the fire next time directly to your hearth. After all, a reminder no matter how subtle that you should, as they say, check your privilege is a reminder that not only are you, compared to most, incredibly privileged, you might even be the gold standard for privilege. There's a subtle, if unintended, form of flattery there. I thought the song might land a little differently at a public concert of miscellaneous schlubs, some of whom had made a financial sacrifice to buy a ticket.

So, as I said, I was surprised at how effective the song turned out to be. In its simple, direct words, it asks us to consider, as we go about our business, what part we play in what's going on around us: what is our responsibility, or our role, or our connection? Questions, not answers, about our individual share in our collective existence. Unlike the clapping in rhythm, the singing along, & other mandatory fun-type activities imposed on us, the audience, as an undifferentiated group, this song asked us to examine, as individuals – the only way in which such questions can be seriously considered, as the answers will be different, often profoundly different, for each of us – how we are linked to our world & our times, & what can we do about it. I think about this topic a lot, & have come up with little in the way of a satisfactory response. Perhaps there is no satisfactory response, & the continuing questioning is the best we can do (or is that just another excuse?)

Was that the sort of direct, individual, thought-provoking moment I needed more of? Was I just a bit burnt out by the burning dumpster fire of our moment? Did the gimmicky participation stuff & the distancing amplification undercut the good moments too much for me? My reaction to this concert bothered me. I feel I should have liked it more, if only out of solidarity & respect with what the artists were trying to do. Did it just hit me at a certain point of information overload? I have struggled with finding & expressing the sources of my disappointment. I can't say Saturday's concert, despite my anticipation, really brought anything new to my thoughts or feelings. I emerged neither energized nor inspired, but exhausted & (more) depressed.  The fault may, of course, be mine.

Museum Monday 2026/6

 

detail of Two Women by Natalia Goncharova, which I saw at the Legion of Honor as part of the special exhibit Drawing the Line: Michelangelo to Asawa

(this is not actually a portrait of Gertrude Stein & Alice B Toklas, but every time I see it I'm reminded of them: that's the vibe I'm getting from it)

Friday Photo 2026/6

 

a mysterious assemblage of shoes on a sidewalk in San Leandro, California

Museum Monday 2026/5

 

detail of a nineteenth-century sampler, currently on view at the de Young Museum as part of the special exhibit Embroidered Histories

Friday Photo 2026/5

 

the Bay Bridge from the Embarcadero

Another Opening, Another Show: February 2026

 Shortest month, but still a lot going on (particularly, for some reason, on the 22nd). Plus there's the anticipation of things to come: the San Francisco Opera will announce its next season on 3 February. Our plates are (potentially) full, but we still look forward to more & more. . . .

Theatrical

San Francisco Playhouse presents David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly, directed by Bridgette Loriaux, from 5 February to 14 March.

From 5 to 15 February, the Oakland Theater Project presents The Mountaintop, Katori Hall's play about Dr Martin Luther King Jr on the night before his assassination, directed by Michael Socrates Moran & James Mercer II.

BroadwaySF presents the musical version of The Notebook at the Orpheum from 10 February to 1 March.

On 14 February at the Curran Theater, BroadwaySF presents Richard Thomas in Mark Twain Tonight!, which was written & originally performed by Hal Holbrook.

ACT presents Paranormal Activity by Levi Holloway, directed by Felix Barrett & restaged by Holloway, an "original story set in the world of the terrifying Paranormal Activity film franchise", at the Toni Rembe Theater from 19 February through 15 March

The Berkeley Playhouse presents the musical Once (book by Enda Walsh, music & lyrics by Glen Hansard & Markéta Irglová), directed by Josh Marx & with music direction by Michael Patrick Wiles, from 20 February to 15 March.

Berkeley Rep presents Arthur Miller's All My Sons, directed by David Mendizábal & starring Jimmy Smits, from 20 February through 29 March.

On 20 & 21 February at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music's Hume Concert Hall, the SFCM Musical Theater Department will present The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (music & lyrics by William Finn, book by Rachel Sheinkin), directed by Michael Mohammed, with musical direction by Michael Horsley.

Poetry for the People: The June Jordan Experience, by Adrienne Torf & Raymond O Caldwell, an exploration of the poet & activist's life & works by the Fountain Theater of Los Angeles, including musical settings by Torf, John Adams, & Bernice Johnson Reagon, will play at Freight & Salvage in Berkeley on 24 February.

The African-American Shakespeare Company presents The Brothers Size by Tarell Alvin McCraney, directed by James Mercer II, from 25 February to 29 March at the Phoenix Theater in downtown San Francisco.

On 28 February at the Curran Theater, BroadwaySF presents All Things Equal: The Life & Trials of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a one-person show by Rupert Holmes, starring Michelle Azar as Ruth Bader Ginsburg, & directed by Laley Lippard.

Operatic

West Bay Opera presents Richard Strauss's Salome, conducted by José Luis Moscovich & directed by Richard Harrell, with cast TBA, at the Lucie Stern Theater in Palo Alto, on 13, 15, 21, & 22 February; there will be a free preview with piano on 5 February at the Holt Building in Palo Alto.

Pocket Opera presents Puccini's Madame [sic] Butterfly, with Music Director Temirzhan Yerzhanov & Stage Director Melody Tachibana King, featuring Hannah Cho as Cio Cio San, Chester Pidduck as Pinkerton, Anders Fröhlich as Sharpless, & HaYoung Jung as Suzuki, & that's 20 February at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 22 February at the Gunn Theater at The Legion of Honor in San Francisco, & 1 March at the Hillside Club in Berkeley.

Opera San José presents the classic double-bill of Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana & Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, conducted by Alma Deutscher & directed by Shawna Lucey, at the California Theater from 15 February to 1 March.

West Edge Opera presents Snapshot, its preview of four operas in process: Case Closed (composer Martin Rokeach, librettist Steven Blum), in which a TV news reporter covers a crime she was responsible for (a car accident after which she fled the scene); Cry Wolf (composer JL Marlor, librettist Clare Fuyuko Bierman), in which a trio of young men get caught up in on-line "ideological rabbit holes"; Threshold of Brightness (composer Niloufar Nourbakhsh, librettist Lisa Flanagan), about Iranian poet Forugh Farrokhzad, who insisted on writing "as freely as a man would"; & The Joining (composer Issac lo Schankler, librettist Aiden K Feltkeamp), about a futurist world in which golems play a prominent & ambiguous role, & you can experience it all on 28 February at First Congregational in Berkeley & 1 March at the Taube Atrium Theater in San Francisco's War Memorial Complex.

Choral

Sacred & Profane performs Fire in My Heart: Songs of Love, a program ranging from the Renaissance to our own perhaps less distinguished day, featuring works by Thomas Morley, Morten Lauridsen, Dominick DiOrio, Reena Esmail, Darita Seth, Edna Yeh, & others, & that's 14 February at Saint Mark's Episcopal in Berkeley & 15 February at Noe Valley Ministry in San Francisco.

On 22 February at Mission Dolores Basilica, the Nebula Consort concert will include Warum ist das Licht gegeben, opus 74 by Brahms & Three Shakespeare Songs by Vaughan Williams.

The San Francisco Early Music Society presents women's vocal ensemble Vajra Voices in Aquitania to Appalachia: Our Ancient Belonging, a program ranging from 11th-century polyphony to American traditions of devotional singing; the group will be joined for these performances by special guest Shira Kammen, playing vielle & medieval harp, & you can hear them 27 February at First Presbyterian in Palo Alto, 28 February at First Congregational in Berkeley, & 1 March at Saint Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal in San Francisco.

Nate Widelitz leads the California Bach Society in On Leaving: Music for Parting and Passage, a "contemplative program centered on loss, longing, and transcendence", featuring works by Bach, Galina Grigorjeva, & "multiple settings of a plaintive Tenebrae text", & you can hear it 27 February at Saint Mark's Lutheran in San Francisco, 28 February at All Saints' Episcopal in Palo Alto, & 1 March at Saint Mark's Episcopal in Berkeley.

Vocalists

On 2 February at the Caroline Hume Concert Hall, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music presents baritone Lester Lynch with pianist John Wilson, performing Samuel Barber's Dover Beach (with René Mandel & Wyatt Underhill, violins; Kaya Bryla, viola; Anne Richardson, cello), Gerald Finzi's Let Us Garlands Bring, Wagner's Abendlich strahlt der Sonne Auge from Das Rheingold. his Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde as arranged by Liszt, Giordano's Nemico della patria from Andrea Chénier, Mussorgsky's Songs and Dances of Death, a selection of Spirituals (Hold Out Your Light, Sweet Home, & Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho), Gershwin's A Foggy Day, Cole Porter's Were thine that special face, & Irving Berlin's I Love a Piano.

On 5 February at Zellerbach Hall, Cal Performances presents Cécile McLorin Salvant, joined by the ensemble of Sullivan Fortner (piano), Yasushi Nakamura (bass), & Kyle Poole (drums), performing selection from her new album, Oh Snap, as well as other pieces.

On 5 February at the Henry J Kaiser Center for the Arts in Oakland, Mandy Patinkin, with Adam Ben-David on piano, will perform a "hand-picked collection of classic numbers".

On 7 February at Herbst Theater, San Francisco Performances presents baritone Davóne Tines with performance ensemble Ruckus in What Is Your Hand in This?, a program including works by Stephen Foster, Handel, Douglas Adam August Balliett, Joshua McCarter Simpson, John Dickinson, Benjamin Carr, Julius Eastman, Clyde Otis, George W Clark, William Billings, & Sam Cooke, as well as traditional tunes.

On 21 February at Zellerbach Playhouse, Cal Performances presents jazz vocalist & composer Somi, performing recent works based on her roots in Rwanda, Uganda, & the United States.

Dianne Reeves appears at the SF Jazz Center on 20 - 22 February.

Madeleine Peyroux appears at the SF Jazz Center on 24 - 25 Feburary.

Orchestral

This month's San Francisco Symphony concerts lean heavily on Mozart & Beethoven: on 5 - 7 February, Harry Bicket leads an all-Mozart concert, with vocal soloists Golda Schultz (soprano) & Samuel White (tenor), featuring the Serenade #6 in D major, Serenata notturna; the Symphony 34 in C major; Giunse alfin il momento...Deh vieni, non tardar, from The Marriage of Figaro, Temerari…Come scoglio, from Così fan tutte, Don Ottavio, son morta!…Or sai chi l’onore, from Don Giovanni, & the Symphony 38, the Prague; on 19 - 21 February, Jaap van Zweden leads the Beethoven 2 & the Beethoven 7; & on 26 - 27 February & 1 March, Manfred Honeck conducts Beethoven's Coriolan Overture, the Haydn 93, & Mozart's Requiem, in a "dramatic production conceived by Manfred Honeck", which includes "dramatic readings, choral interpolations, and other enhancements [that] bring new insights to the score"; the vocal soloists are Ying Fang (soprano), Sasha Cooke (mezzo-soprano), David Portillo (tenor), Stephano Park (bass), & Adrian Roberts (narrator).

On 1 February at Herbst Theater, John Kendall Bailey leads the San Francisco Civic Music Association in The Ballad of Revolt by Harald Sæverud, Finlandia by Sibelius, & the Beethoven 3, the Eroica; the concert is free but RSVPs & donations are appreciated.

On 7 February at Heron Arts in San Francisco, One Found Sound presents Supernatural, a program "inspired by the natural and otherworldly that push the boundaries of the observable universe", featuring Stravinksy's Dumbarton Oaks, Wings by Darian Donovan Thomas, Violent, Violent Sea by Missy Mazzoli, & the Mendelssohn 4, the Italian.

On 14 February in the San Francisco Conservatory of Music's Hume Concert Hall, Edwin Outwater leads the SFCM Orchestra in Steven Mackey's Urban Ocean, Gershwin's An American In Paris (this piece will be conducted by Chih-Yao Chang), & the Brahms 1.

On 20 February at the Paramount, Kedrick Armstrong (with Tracy Silverman as violin soloist) leads the Oakland Symphony in the world premiere of Daniel Bernard Roumain's America, To US (an Oakland Symphony commission), as well as Chen Yi's Introduction, Andante, and Allegro, the Adagio from the Mahler 10, Reena Esmail's She Will Transform You

On 20 & 21 February at Hertz Hall, David Milnes leads the UC Berkeley Symphony Orchestra in Varèse's Amériques & the Shostakovich 7.

Jory Fankuchen leads the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra in Seeing Double, a program featuring Jens Ibsen's Scene Symphony (an SFCO Commission with support from the NEA), the Concerto for Harpsichord and Orchestra by Philip Glass (Jory Vinikour on harpsichord), & the Haydn 49, La Passione, & that's 27 February at the Taube Atrium Theater in San Francisco, 28 February at First United Methodist in Palo Alto, & 1 March at First Congregational in Berkeley; concerts are free but RSVPs are appreciated.

On 28 February at Davies Hall, the San Francisco Symphony celebrates the Lunar New Year: Year of the Horse with a concert led by Mei-Ann Chen, with soloists George Gao on erhu & Yuhsin Galaxy Su on clarinet joining the band to perform music by Huan-Zhi Li, Che-Yi Lee, Tyzen Hsiao, Huang Ruo, George Gao, An-Lun Huang, Chen Ge Xin, & the ever-beloved Traditional.

Chamber Music

On 1 February at Davies Hall, a chamber group of San Francisco Symphony musicians will play Boccherini's String Quintet in D major, Opus 37, Arthur Foote's Quartet #1 in C major, Opus 23, & Enescu's String Octet in C major, Opus 7.

On 8 February at the Hillside Club in Berkeley, the Berkelium String Quartet, a new local chamber group (Dan Flanagan, violin; Jacob Hansen-Joseph, viola; Michael Graham & Karen Shinozaki Sor, cellos), will perform as-yet unannounced pieces.

On 8 & 15 February at the Valley Center for Performing Arts in Oakland, the Oakland Symphony Youth Orchestra will presents chamber concerts (the program has not been announced for either date).

On 13 & 15 February at Old First Concerts, Sixth Station Trio (Katelyn Tan, piano; Anju Goto, violin; Federico Strand Ramirez, cello), will perform music by Joe Hisaishi from the Studio Ghibli classic Howl’s Moving Castle.

On 17 February at the Barbro Osher Recital Hall, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music presents its monthly Chamber Music Tuesday, this month featuring violinist Stella Chen, who will perform, joined by SFCM faculty & students, Mozart's Piano Quartet in E-flat Major, & Brahms's String Sextet #2 in G Major, Opus 36; on 16 February, in the SFCM's Sol Joseph Recital Hall, Chen will offer a Master Class.

On 20 February at Old First Concerts, Ensemble Les Six (for this concert, Catalina Barraza, violin; Katie Youn, cello; & Ihang Lin, piano) will perform Chopin's Études, Opus 10, #3, #4, & #5; Jessie Montgomery's Duo for Violin and Cello; the Handel/Halvorsen Passacaglia; & Debussy's Piano Trio in G major.

On 21 February at Noe Valley Ministry, the San Francisco Civic Music Association presents Juego de Ladrones by Oscar Navarro, Paul Taffanel's Quintet for Winds in G minor, & Elgar's Piano Quintet in A minor, Opus 84; the concert is free but RSVPs & donations are appreciated.

On 22 February at the Piedmont Center for the Arts, the Berkeley Symphony offers Roots and Resonances, a chamber program curated by composer Samuel Adams that will include Salina Fisher's Komorebi, Osvaldo Golijov's Mariel, Michio Kitazume's Side By Side, Haruka Fujii's Divisions, & Sundial by Adams.

On 22 February at Noe Valley Ministry, Noe Music presents the Junction Trio (Stefan Jackiw, violin; Jay Campbell, cello; Conrad Tao, piano), performing John Cage's Melodies 1 - 3, Beethoven's Piano Trio in D major, Opus 70 #1, the Ghost, John Zorn's Ghosts (interspersed after Beethoven’s Largo assai movement), Cage's Melodies 4 - 6, & Schubert's Piano Trio in B-flat major.

On 22 February at Herbst Theater, Chamber Music San Francisco presents the Aris Quartet (Anna Katharina Wildermuth & Noëmi Zipperling, violins; Caspar Vinzens, viola; Lukas Sieber, cello), who will perform the Beethoven String Quartet in G Major, Opus18, #2; the Shostakovich String Quartet in C minor, Opus 110; & the Brahms String Quartet in A minor, Opus 51, #2.

On 22 February the Hillside Club in Berkeley, as part of its Chamber Music Sundaes series, will present the CMS Wind Quintet (Laura Griffiths, oboe; Mike Gamburg, bassoon; Jeremy Simas, bass clarinet; Kevin Rivard, French horn; Britton Day, piano) performing Poulenc's Trio for Oboe, Bassoon and Piano & Mozart's Quintet for piano and winds.

On 22 February at Hertz Hall, Cal Performances presents the Takács Quartet (Edward Dusinberre & Harumi Rhodes, violins; Richard O’Neill, viola, András Fejér, cello; please note that Fejér, the last remaining member of the original 1975 Takács Quartet, will step down at the end of this season, making this performance his final Berkeley appearance with the ensemble), who will perform the Bay Area premiere of NEXUS by Clarice Assad as well as Haydn's String Quartet in G minor, the Rider & Debussy's String Quartet.

On 28 February at Hertz Hall, Matthew Sadowski leads the UC Berkeley Wind Ensemble in Gustav Holst's Second Suite in F, Zhou Tian's Nocturne, & Mark Camphouse's A Movement for Rosa.

Here's what's going on at Noontime Concerts this month, if you're near Old Saint Mary's in San Francisco on a Tuesday at 12:30: on 3 February, pianist Cristiana Pegoraro will perform pieces (some adapted for solo piano) by Rossini, Bach, Schubert, Schumann, Beethoven, Vivaldi, Mozart, Andrew Lloyd Webber, & herself; on 10 February, pianist Mark Valenti will perform works by Debussy, Barber, & Brahms; on 17 February, the Bridge Players (Amy Zanrosso, piano; Randall Weiss, violin; Natalia Vershilova, viola; Victoria Ehrlich, cello) will perform works by Fauré & Schumann; & on 24 February, flutist William Underwood III & pianist Carl Blake will perform together.

Instrumental

On 1 February at Hertz Hall, Cal Performances presents Steven Banks on baritone saxophone with pianist Xak Bjerken performing Golden Silhouettes, a program of new pieces composed for the duo by Carlos Simon (hear them) & John Musto (Shadow of the Blues) as well as the Saint-Saëns Bassoon Sonata, Beethoven's 7 Variations on “Bei Männern, welche Liebe fühlen”, & Barber's Cello Sonata, all re-imagined for saxophone & piano.

On 1 February at Davies Hall, the San Francisco Symphony presents An Evening with Nicola Benedetti; violinist Benedetti will be joined by Plínio Fernandes on guitar, Hanzhi Wang on accordion, & Adrian Daurov on cello to perform works, or arrangements of works, by Maria Theresia von Paradis, Henryk Wieniawski, Manuel Ponce, Paganini, Sarasate, Vittorio Monti, Ernest Bloch, & Debussy, as well as traditional tunes.

On 1 February at the Piedmont Piano Company in Oakland, pianist Mira T Sundara Rajan will perform Finding Jazz in the Classics: Improvisation, Harmony, Spirituality, a program including works by Bach, Brahms, Scriabin, & Ginastera.

On 8 February at Davies Hall, the San Francisco Symphony presents in solo recital pianist Yefim Bronfman, who will perform Schumann's Arabesque in C major for Piano, Opus 18, the Brahms Piano Sonata #3 in F minor, Opus 5, Debussy's Images for Piano, Set 2, & Beethoven's Piano Sonata #23 in F minor, Opus 57, the Appassionata.

On 9 February at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music's Barbro Osher Recital Hall, pianist Sarah Cahill performs No Ordinary Light, "a new project combining classical and new compositions on the theme of homage and loss", featuring Ravel's Tombeau de Couperin, Prelude: Hammer the Sky Bright by Samuel Adams, Hommage a Fauré by Robert Helps, Homage to William Dawson by Zenobia Powell Perry, Fugue to David Tudor & Hommage à Milhaud by Lou Harrison, Holding Pattern by Maggie Payne, & Circle Songs by Danny Clay (the project title comes from Jawaharalal Nehru’s eulogy after the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi: “The light has gone out, I said, and yet I was wrong. For the light that shone in this country was no ordinary light").

On 10 February at Zellerbach Hall, Cal Performances presents pianist Bruce Liu playing Ligeti's Fanfares, Beethoven's Piano Sonata in C-sharp minor, the Moonlight & his Sonata in C major, the Waldstein, Chopin's Nocturnes, Opus 27, Ravel's Alborada del gracioso, Mompou's Au clair de la lune, Albéniz's El Puerto, & Liszt's Rhapsodie espagnole.

On 20 February at Herbst Theater, San Francisco Performances presents violinist Jennifer Koh with pianist Thomas Sauer performing Lili Boulanger's D’un matin de printemps, her Nocturne, & her Cortège), Tania León's Para Violin y Piano, Ravel's Violin Sonata #2 in G Major, Saariaho's Tocar, & Fauré's Violin Sonata #1 in A Major, Opus 13.

On 20 February at Freight & Salvage in Berkeley, mandolinist Avi Avital leads Philharmonia Baroque in works by Vivaldi, Bach, Giovanni Sollima, & Bartók.

On 25 February at Davies Hall, the San Francisco Symphony presents pianist Mao Fujita in solo recital, performing as-yet-unannounced music.

On 27 February in Zellerbach Hall, Cal Performances presents Chris Thile on mandolin & vocals, performing "an eclectic program, including selections from his new recording of Bach sonatas and partitas".

On 28 February at the Berkeley Piano Club on Haste Street, Four Seasons Arts presents pianist Awadagin Pratt performing the Brahms Ballades, Opus 10, his Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Handel, Franck's Prelude, Chorale and Fugue, & selections from Couperin's 16th Order.

Early / Baroque Music

Nicholas McGegan returns to Philharmonia Baroque to conduct Baroque Garlands, a program featuring Handel's Dixit Dominus & Rameau's La Guirlande, with vocal soloists Nola Richardson (soprano) & Aaron Sheehan (tenor), & that's 6 February at Herbst Theater in San Francisco, 7 February at First Congregational in Berkeley, & 8 February at Bing Concert Hall at Stanford.

Voices of Music will perform Valentine's Day: Love Songs from the 17th Century, featuring soprano Amanda Forsythe & a small instrumental ensemble performing English & Italian songs, & that's 13 February at First Congregational in Palo Alto, 14 February at Old First in San Francisco, & 15 February at First Congregational in Berkeley.

Jeffrey Thomas leads the American Bach Soloists in The Harmonic Labyrinth, a program featuring Pergolesi's Stabat Mater, Locatelli's Violin Concerto in D Major, the Harmonic Labyrinth, Bach's Non sa che sia dolore, Cantata 209, & Scarlatti's Salve Regina, with soloists Maya Kherani (soprano), Sarah Coit (mezzo-soprano), YuEun Gemma Kim (violin), & Bethanne Walker (flute), & you can hear them 27 February at Saint Stephen's in Belvedere, 28 February at Saint Mark's Episcopal in Berkeley, 1 March at Saint Mark's Lutheran in San Francisco, & 2 March at Davis Community Church in Davis.

Modern / Contemporary Music

Left Coast Chamber Ensemble presents Metamorphosen, a program featuring Metamorphosen by Richard Strauss (for septet), Luciano Berio's Sequenza XIVb for double bass, Tounen for solo flute by Hendel Almetus, & Sonitudes by Robert Hughes, on 31January at the First Church of Christ, Scientist in Berkeley & on 1 February at Noe Valley Ministry in San Francisco.

On 6 - 7 February, the San Francisco Symphony presents SoundBox: Dream Awake, curated by violinist Alexi Kenney, in an unspecified program that "leads us into a realm infused with nocturnal energy and psychedelic fantasy".

On 7 February at Hertz Hall, Cal Performances presents the Eco Ensemble, directed by David Milnes, in a program featuring works from two new members of UC Berkeley's composition department, Matthew Evan Taylor & Mu-Xuan Lin.

On 7 February at Zellerbach Hall, Cal Performances presents mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato with Time for Three (Nicolas Kendall & Charles Yang, violin & vocals, & Ranaan Meyer, bass & vocals) in Emily – No Prisoner Be, a setting by Kevin Puts of 24 poems  by Emily Dickinson.

On 22 February at Zellerbach Playhouse, Cal Performances presents Sandbox Percussion (Jonathan Allen, Victor Caccese, Ian Rosenbaum, Terry Sweeney) & pianists Conor Hanick & Matthew Aucoin from AMOC (American Modern Opera Company) in Canto Ostinato by Simeon ten Holt, a "layered, shimmering minimalist work from the 1970s that has earned a dedicated following in ten Holt’s native Netherlands".

On 27 February at Herbst Theater, San Francisco Performances presents the Attacca Quartet (Amy Schroeder & Domenic Salerni, violins; Nathan Schram, viola; Andrew Yee, cello) & vocalist Theo Bleckmann in the West Coast premiere of David Lang's note to a friend.

On 27 February at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music's Barbro Osher Recital Hall, Nicole Paiement leads the SFCM's New Music Ensemble in the world premiere of Inbal Segev's Postcards to Jerusalem, Missy Mazzoli's Ecstatic Science, Billy Childs's A Day in the Forest of Dreams, & the world premiere of the chamber orchestra version of Jake Heggie's "From the Book of Nightmares"  (with soprano Lisa Delan & cellist Evan Kahn).

Jazz

On 13 February at Herbst Theater, SF Jazz presents the New York Voices (Kim Nazarian, Darmon Meader, Lauren Kinhan, Peter Eldridge) as part of their farewell tour.

On 21 February at the Piedmont Piano Company in Oakland, the Marcus Shelby Sextet will perform Conversation: The Language of Charles Mingus, a program exploring the legacy of the great bassist; in addition to Shelby on bass, the Sextet includes Darren Johnston (trumpet), Tony Peebles (alto sax), Danny Lubin-Laden (trombone), Greg Jacobs (piano), & Jemal Ramirez (drums).  

On 28 February, there will be An Evening With Sun Ra Arkestra at The Chapel on Valencia Street in San Francisco.

Dance

From 10 to 15 February, San Francisco Ballet presents Program 2: Balanchine, Father of American Ballet, featuring Diamonds (music by Tchaikovsky), Serenade (music by Tchaikovsky), & Stars and Stripes (music by John Philip Sousa, arranged by Hershy Kay); & from 27 February to 8 March, Program 3: The Blake Works, a trilogy of dances with scenic & costume design as well as choreography by William Forsythe & music by James Blake.

From 13 to 15 February at the ODC Theater, Smuin Contemporary Ballet presents Spring Point, a program featuring new works by choreographers Maggie Carey, Cassidy Isaacson, Julia Feldman, & Babatunji.

On 14 February at the Golden Gate Theater, BroadwaySF presents the World Ballet Company (based in Los Angeles, led by Sasha Gorskaya & Gulya Hartwick) in Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake.

On 14 February at the Brava Theater Center, Fever presents Ballet of Lights: Sleeping Beauty.

On 21 - 22 February at Zellerbach Hall, Cal Performances presents choreographer Kyle Abraham's troupe, A.I.M (Abraham.In.Motion), performing three of his works: The Gettin’ (music from Max Roach, with arrangements & original compositions by Robert Glasper), If We Were a Love Song (music from Nina Simone), & 2 X 4 (music by Shelley Washington); the music will be performed live by Charenée Wade & Crystal Monee Hall, vocals; Liany Mateo, bass; Luther Allison, piano; Otis Brown III, drums; Guy Dellecave, saxophone; & other musicians to be announced.

From 27 February to 1 March at Zellerbach Playhouse, Cal Performances presents the Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre in Gathering; "[c]onceived, written, and directed by choreographer Samar Haddad King", the work "explores themes of love, loss, trauma, and dislocation. Through movement, text, song, and puppetry"; be warned, though, that audience participation will apparently be requested (or required).

Mostly Museums

City Arts and Lectures presents photographer Sally Mann in conversation with Ted Orland at the Sydney Goldstein Theater on 11 February.

Cinematic

Here are the series launching at BAM/PFA this month: Documentary Voices, which is self-explanatory, begins 4 February, & Climate Journalism on Screen, which is also self-explanatory, runs from 7 to 22 February.

The Mostly British Film Festival runs 5 to 12 February at the Vogue Theater in San Francisco; see the full schedule here.

The 28th San Francisco Independent Film Festival (SF Indie Fest) will take place at the Roxie Theater from 5 to 15 February; check out the schedule here.

On 14 - 15 February, you can check out Nippon Vibes: Japanese Cinema Weekend at New People; in "collaboration with The Roxie, New People Cinema reopens in historic San Francisco Japantown with a special weekend celebrating Japanese cinema. This pop-up event highlights the theme of awakening—a moment of return, renewal, and rediscovery through cinema across genres and generations"; there's a great line-up of movies, including your name, Kokuho (set in the world of kabuki theater), the OG Godzilla, & Kurosawa's Throne of Blood.

This month's Classic Movie Matinee at the Orinda Theater is Blonde Venus, the Josef von Sternberg / Marlene Dietrich film from 1932, so yes, it's pre-Code, & that's on 24 February.

Museum Monday 2026/4

 

detail of The March to Sagesse (The March to Wisdom), a fiber sculpture  by Sheila Hicks, on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) as part of the exhibit New Work: Sheila Hicks

Friday Photo 2026/4

 

towels

What I read in 2025 (part 2)

 Part 1 is here.

King John

Shakespeare

So now we get into the history plays. This one is unrelated to the main series, but covers similar themes (chiefly, where does power come from & how does it operate & maintain itself). I'm surprised this play doesn't get staged more often; it has a lot going for it, including many characters any actor would find a gold mine.

Richard II

Shakespeare

As they say in the movies, it begins. That is, the arc of royal history as seen by the Tudors, from Richard II losing out to Henry IV, the kingdom descending into the chaos of the War of the Roses & the final triumph of the youthful Henry VII (I am deliberately omitting Henry V, as I'll have more to say about him & his play in a bit). But this first spectacularly inappropriate king is foreshadowed for us by the vacillating King John, who is weak in a different way from Richard. It can be difficult at first to realize just how weak Richard is, as he is an endless fountain of whirling words. But it's his creation of himself through histrionic speeches, his over-reactions, his theatrical self-representation, that occupies his attention, not governing a kingdom that is slipping away from him. (He provide an interesting contrast with Henry V, another theatrical, self-created king, as I discuss below. Interesting that Richard captures my sympathies in a way Henry does not.) I love the abdication scene, where Richard displays the dazzling bounce of wordplay so beloved of Elizabethans (& me, though not everyone responds to it) to such an extent that one exasperated noble interrupts to ask if he's actually going to, you know, do something, meaning abdicate. The wonderful thing about Shakespeare is that the dizzying puns carry psychological weight: 

Ay, no; no, ay; for I must nothing be.

Therefore no “no,” for I resign to thee.

Now, mark me how I will undo myself. . . . 

"No [I]": exactly. He's fascinating, but would you really want to have to rely on him as ruler?

Henry IV, Part One

Henry IV, Part Two

Henry V

Shakespeare

The Henry IV plays are of course endlessly rich, but I've always found Henry V a bit of a slog. The first Henry IV play was apparently so popular it required a sequel, & the characters (particularly, of course, Falstaff, but we shouldn't underestimate the depth of the others) are so rich that the story could easily continue, even though the basic psychological dilemma – Prince Hal's insistence on acting the wild man, to his father's dismay – is, if not actually solved in Part One, mitigated enough so that Henry IV & Hal can enact the same process of transgression then forgiveness at the end of Part Two. But then that's the beauty of Hal's behavior: he sets it up so that he will only be what his father wants him to be once the father is safely dead, & therefore can never know that his son did not disgrace him. Henry IV may be a master of realpolitik, but Hal's cynicism puts him to shame: at the end of his very first scene, he announces to us via soliloquy that his wildness is all an act, a deliberate choice so that, in a PR coup, he can suddenly, upon accession to the throne, become dignified & stately. It's almost just a side benefit that his behavior until then will cause pain to his usurping father.

Causing pain to father figures is just part of who Hal ineluctably is: witness his treatment of Falstaff, who shows genuine, if self-interested, affection for the heir to the throne, whereas there's often an edge to Hal's rejoinders, most particularly in the scene in which he & Falstaff act out Hal's reception by his royal father (again, note the theatricality of what they do; it's all playacting with Hal). the one ending with Falstaff exclaiming "Banish plump Jack, and banish all the world!" to which Hal, his mask slipping a bit, gives the chilling response, "I do, I will." Other characters rush in with news, breaking the moment.  One wonders where they would have gone from there without the interruption.

Banish all the world is pretty much what Henry V has done; he is a hollow man, one who has played a part for so long that all he can do is play parts. The play Henry V is often described as Shakespeare's portrait of a model King. I raise an eyebrow sky-high at this. For one thing, that's just not how Shakespeare operates. His characteristic mode is excess, & that includes multiple angles on his characters. He's not really in the business of setting up paragons & ideals. There's just too much in the play that works against the view that it's some sort of handbook for royal governance.

The play opens with a Chorus, meaning a single narrator, who cries out "O for a muse of fire!" I remember my Shakespeare professor at Cal, Janet Adelman, pointing out what an odd line this is: "Shakespeare had a muse of fire" were her words, & surely by this pint in his career he knew it. Later, the Chorus will decry the inadequacies of the theater to portray the mighty events & royal splendors it's representing. I think what we have here is Brecht's alienation effect avant la lettre: we are constantly made aware of the staged, theatrical quality of what we're seeing. It's all constructed, like Hal/Henry V's persona, only with enough nails & sutures & taping shown to raise doubts for those paying attention.

Look at the whole invasion of France, which forms the major action of the play: at the end of Henry IV Part Two, the dying king gives his son classic advice on what to do when your hold on power is shaky & you need a distraction from looming troubles: "Be it thy course to busy giddy minds / With foreign quarrels . . . . " (You know, like invading Venezuela, or claiming Greenland.) Henry V opens, once the Chorus bounds off, with the bishop of Ely & the archbishop of Canterbury essentially saying that in order to forestall a bill that would take some of the riches of the Church, they will give Henry a huge sum (that is, a bribe) to conduct wars in France. It's never, ever a good thing in Shakespeare when the Catholic hierarchy gets together to try to control things (or protect their own interests, which amounts to the same thing).

And this claim to France is apparently vague enough so that Henry has to have it explained to him, which is done in a very lengthy speech of dazzling obscurity, based on whether women can inherit & where Pharamond (you know: Pharamond!) thought the "Salic land" was & blah blah blah. I assume even people more adept at genealogies than I am find this forest too thick for easy traveling. How could this not be intentionally ironic on some level? And at the end, it turns out Henry had already decided: the ambassador from France is waiting outside. He'd already decided, but he needed the cover story. It's a consistent pattern with Henry that he avoids responsibility: if, during the invasion, he threatens to destroy a town, giving them gruesome details about how they're going to suffer, then it's their fault, not his, because they didn't surrender. Even when the outcome is good, in his mind, he disclaims responsibility: after his victory at Agincourt, he repeatedly announces that the credit goes to God. That's because Henry himself doesn't quite exist, except as a performative gesture that seems suited to the moment.

He's this way with his own people to, as witness his whiny "Upon the king!" soliloquy, when he, in disguise (again), essentially tricks a common soldier into giving his opinion of the King & his wars. The soldier feels that if he's killed in a foreign land, without having the chance to say goodbye to his family or to receive the last rites, the King has responsibility for his end. Henry, of course, doesn't like this, but Henry, of course, is incorrect. He brought this war on, he uprooted the common soldiers from their towns, & he does bear responsibility for what happens to them there. 

That scene with the soldier also results in a mean trick played upon both the soldier & Fluellen, the Welsh captain who is possibly the only truly boring character Shakespeare ever created (but even he deserves better than this sub-frat-boy-style prank). It's a bit of tomfoolery about striking someone who is wearing a glove given as a pledge. The predictable ensues, & Henry buys them off with money (which is pretty insulting, & so much for that sentimental touch of Harry in the night). This happens after God wins for him at Agincourt. The bathos of the descent from a great military victory to stupid pranks, again, has to be intentionally pointed at some level. (Incidentally, people often mention that Magna Carta is never mentioned in King John, but the real sin of historical omission is the failure to mention the English longbows & their role in Agincourt in Henry V.)

By now, it's clear to those paying attention that Henry V has no real core to his being, but shifts guises (& evades responsibility for his actions) at all times. This brings us to the scene in which he "courts" Princess Katherine of France. She's listed as an article in the peace agreements, & it's clearly a dynasty-driven choice of spouse, but Henry pretends he's just a bluff soldier unskilled at wooing the pretty girl, even though we've seen him, as Prince Hal, slinging wit & woo like a pro with Doll Tearsheet & Mistress Quckly. After saying he's just no good at this kind of thing, gosh darn it, he them proceeds to talk her (& our) ears off, pirouetting prettily among the puns like the daintiest sonneteer at the most refined court.

And what is all this for? For a stake in France that is meltingly brief but will distort & haunt British history for years after. And the audience was aware of this: the Henry VI plays had been hugely successful, & there is a constant theme in them of the loss of France. In fact, at the end of Henry V, the Chorus shows up for a farewell appearance, & spends the final half of his/her last speech reminding us that what we've just seen won is going to be quickly lost, very quickly lost, with tragic results, as we all know from seeing the earlier plays. So Henry's brief victory was not only pointless & unnecessary, but an on-going cause of grief: a model King? Really?

Henry VI, Part One

Henry VI, Part Two

Henry VI, Part Three

Shakespeare

I really love these plays, & though the Henry IV plays are obviously superior in many ways, I might even have greater affection for these plays than for their betters. There's something about the descent into chaos, through heedlessness, selfishness, & cruelty, that, to state the obvious, seems very resonant with our times. I would love to see a staging of the trilogy, & I mean pretty much as written, not some War of the Roses mash-up done so that people can put on Richard III without having the audience spend the whole play going "Who is Queen Margaret, & why is she so upset?" Henry VI is another in Shakespeare's portrait gallery of Inappropriate Kings; he strikes me as an interesting prefiguration of Hamlet: both men are thrust by fate & chance into an active role for which they are temperamentally ill-suited.

Richard III

Shakespeare

Shaw gave the perfect summary: the greatest Punch & Judy show ever written. Richard is one of those Elizabethan villains so zestful in their scheming that they become almost lovable. But even here, with an official Tudor villain, Shakespeare humanizes him: his night terrors, his complex attitude to his body.

Henry VIII

Shakespeare (& John Fletcher)

A bit removed from the series, but it serves as a capstone. I find this play, like Henry V, a bit of a slog, but for different reasons: it seems a bit diffuse, a bit on-the-surface, a bit pageant-like, with plenty of colorful processions & suchlike separated by set-piece moments of pathos, exemplary stories of the fall of the great. I have heard it's very effective on stage; I've never had the chance to test this proposition in person, but it makes sense, as pageants are, by their nature, things better seen than read about. There's an interesting dance going on in this play; there's sympathy for Katherine, but not too much, as where would that leave Elizabeth I, the daughter of her successor; Anne Boleyn's fate is not mentioned; Henry is presented with "plausible deniability:" his roving eye is caught by Anne, but we're also supposed to think he's genuinely troubled by the validity of his marriage to his brother's widow. The characterization of him is not too probing, mostly limited to his tendency to exclaim Ha! I guess it's appropriate for Shakespeare to end his examination of British royalty with a slightly dull, noncommittal pageant: a foreshadowing of royalty in our own time.

OK, I guess that's enough for now. More 2025 reading to come!