Another Opening, Another Show: November 2023

As a reminder, COVID is still out there –I had a forcible reminder myself in the form of a fortunately fairly mild case; even so, I had to miss two of the performances I had most been looking forward to this year – Ian Bostridge singing Winterreise & Olympia Vendicata, the latest Ars Minerva revival. Low energy levels also meant I wasn't sure I was going to get this preview done before November started. So get your shots & mask up as necessary! The California Festival, a statewide celebration of new music, runs this month, & one problem I had pulling this list together is that I was assuming their website would allow you to sort performances by location. Nope! You can sort by date or organization, but there doesn't seem to be a way to pull out events in a particular city or area. I find this a puzzling omission for a festival that covers most of a very large state. So some of the events below are technically part of the California Festival, even if they're not noted as such. It does look like a good month for those interested in Bach, particularly the cantatas, & Stravinsky. Enjoy & be healthy.

Theatrical

Alan Cumming brings his one-man cabaret act, Alan Cumming Is Not Acting His Age, to the Curran on 2 November.

Berkeley Playhouse presents Cinderella Enchanted, based on the musical by Rodgers & Hammerstein, directed & choreographed by Khalia Davis & conducted by Jessica Igarashi, from 3 November through 22 December.

On 4 November at Zellerbach Hall, Cal Performances presents John Cameron Mitchell & Amber Martin, backed by their band, playing Cassette Roulette, "songs, stories, and characters, all chosen by you and the hand of fate on the magical ‘cassette roulette.’"

Theater Rhinoceros presents the world premiere of Group Therapy by Kheven LaGrone, directed by Tanika Baptiste, about a group of queer people of color confronting middle age, their pasts, & each other; that starts 9 November & runs through 3 December.

​On 10 - 11 November at the Great Star Theater, John C. Reilly plays Mister Romantic, "a mysterious man who emerges from a steamer trunk to entertain and delight audiences"; there are love songs & audience participation.

Aurora Theater presents George Orwell's 1984 as adapted by Michael Gene Sullivan & directed by Barbara Damashek from 10 November through 10 December.

Berkeley Rep presents the west coast premiere of David Cale's Harry Clarke, directed by Leigh Silverman, a one-man show starring Billy Crudup about an awkward Midwesterner who decides to lead a double life as a brash Londoner; that opens 15 November & runs through 23 December.

The UC Berkeley Drama Department presents Wintertime by Charles L Mee, directed by Christopher Herold, from 16 to 19 November at the Zellerbach Playhouse.

San Francisco Playhouse gives us Guys & Dolls, directed by Bill English, from 16 November through 13 January 2024.

BroadwaySF brings us Julie Taymor's Disney's The Lion King at the Orpheum from 22 November through 30 December.

Talking

City Arts & Lectures has some interesting speakers this month (all at the Sydney Goldstein Theater): cartoonist Roz Chast appears on 2 November; novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen, in conversation with Shereen Marisol Meraji, on 9 November; poet Tracy K Smith, in conversation with john a powell, on 10 November; & journalist Michael Lewis, in conversation with Indre Viskontas, on 13 November.

Amateur Music Network presents a new series at Old First Concerts, starting 20 November: Sarah Cahill’s Backstage Pass, in which pianist Cahill will discuss the how & why of their music with guests (in this case, bass player Lisa Mezzacappa).

BroadwaySF presents An Evening with David Sedaris on 20 November at the Opera House.

As part of its Unscripted series, on 27 November the Curran presents Henry Winkler discussing his new memoir, Being Henry: The Fonz . . . and Beyond (a copy of the book is included with each ticket).

Operatic

This month at San Francisco Opera you can catch the final Lohengrin on 1 November, after which they offer the two final productions of the fall season: Omar, the Pulitzer-Prize winning opera by Rhiannon Giddens & Michael Abels, conducted by John Kennedy & directed by Kaneza Schaal, featuring Jamez McCorkle in the title role as well as Brittany Renee, Taylor Raven, Daniel Okulitch, Norman Garrett, Laura Krumm, Rehanna Thelwell, & Barry Banks, & that's on 5, 7, 11, 15, 17, & 21 November; & then Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore, conducted by Ramón Tebar & directed by Daniel Slater, featuring Pene Pati as Nemorino (Jonah Hoskins takes the role for the 29 November performance), Slávka Zámečníková as Adina, Renato Girolami as Dulcamara, & David Bižić as Sergeant Belcore, & that's on 19, 24, 26, & 29 November & 5 & 9 December.

The San Francisco Conservatory of Music presents its fall opera on 16 - 17 November: a double-bill of one-acts, Mascagni's Zanetto & Puccini's Gianni Schicchi, directed by Heather Matthew & conducted by Curt Pajer.

Cal Performances presents Harry Bicket & The English Concert in Handel’s Rodelinda with Lucy Crowe, Iestyn Davies, Eric Ferring, Christine Rice, Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen, & Brandon Cedel at Zellerbach Hall on 19 November.

Choral

Bob Geary & Volti begin their 45th season with contemporary choral music by Marcos Balter, Yu-Hui Chang, Mark Winges, LJ White, & Emily Koh, on 3 November at Saint Paul's Episcopal in Oakland, 4 November at Noe Valley Ministry in San Francisco, & 5 November at The 222, Paul Mahder Gallery, in Healdsburg.

Clerestory explores Love as A Many Splendored Thing on 11 November at the David Brower Center in Berkeley & 12 November at Saint Gregory of Nyssa in San Francisco.

Vocalists

Lieder Alive! presents baritone Simon Barrad & pianist Kseniia Polstainkina Barrad performing works by Schumann, Wolf, & "an Odyssey of Ukrainian songs" on 5 November at the Noe Valley Ministry.

On 15 November in Zellerbach Hall, Cal Performances presents Kristin Chenoweth in For the Girls, a cabaret-style entertainment centered on songs made famous by women singers she loves.

Brazilian-born Bay Area-based singer, pianist, & composer Claudia Villela plays the SF Jazz Center from 9 to 12 November.

Audra McDonald spends a musical evening with the San Francisco Symphony, conducted by Andy Einhorn, on 29 November at Davies Hall.

Orchestral

Daniel Hope & the New Century Chamber Orchestra join with mezzo-soprano Kelley O’Connor & a small chorus to present Visitations, a program of haunted music that includes the world premiere of an NCCO commission, Doña Sebastiana (Lady Death) by Nicolás Lell Benavides, along with Rachmaninoff's Bogoroditse devo (Rejoice, O Virgin) from the All-Night Vigil, Fólk fær andlit (People Get Faces) by Hildur Guðnadóttir, the Ária (Cantilena) from Bachianas Brasileiras #5 by Villa-Lobos, Peter Lieberson's Amor mío, si muero y tú no mueres (My love, if I die and you don’t) from Neruda Songs, Schubert's Erlkönig (The Elf King), Dukas's The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Carlos Simon's Elegy: A Cry from the Grave, Arvo Pärt's Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten, & Ariel Ramirez's Misa Criolla (arranged by Paul Bateman), & that's 2 November at First Congregational in Berkeley, 3 - 4 November at the Cowell Theater at Fort Mason in San Francisco, & 5 November at Saint Stephen's Episcopal in Tiburon.

On 2 - 4 November, Ludovic Morlot will lead the San Francisco Symphony in the American premiere of an SFS Commission, Latest by Betsy Jolas, along with the Dvořák Violin Concerto (with soloist Augustin Hadelich) & the Mussorgsky/Ravel Pictures at an Exhibition, which will be accompanied by new artworks by Liz Hernández & Fernando Escartiz.

David Milnes leads the UC Berkeley Symphony Orchestra in Bartók's Dance Suite, Britten's The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra (with Chancellor Carol Christ), & the Beethoven 7 on 3 & 4 November at Hertz Hall.

The San Francisco Symphony will hold its annual celebration of Día de los Muertos on 4 November in Davies Hall, where Miguel Harth-Bedoya, joined by vocalist Edna Vázquez, the Casa Círculo Cultural, & the Canción de Obsidiana, will perform music by Revueltas, Arturo Márquez, Alfonso Leng, Clarice Assad, & Arturo Rodríguez; the lobby will feature installations by local artists.

On 5 November at Herbst Theater, Urs Leonhardt Steiner leads the Golden Gate Symphony in the Dvořák 9, From the New World, Victor Ullman's Piano Concerto (with soloist Allison Lovejoy), & Morton Gould's Tap Dance Concerto (with tap dance soloist Sam Weber).

Jeri Lynne Johnson will lead the Oakland Symphony on 10 November at the Paramount Theater in Beethoven's Fidelio Overture, Anthony Davis's You Have The Right To Remain Silent, selections from Montgomery Variations by Margaret Bonds, & Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms.

Donato Cabrera leads the California Symphony in the world premiere of Viet Cuong's Chance of Rain, Handel's Water Music, & the Schumann 3, the Rhenish, at the Lesher Center in Walnut Creek on 11 - 12 November.

Dawn Harms leads the Bay Area Rainbow Symphony's fall concert on 18 November at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where they will perform Lili Boulanger's D’un matin de printemps, David Conte's Cello Concerto (with soloist Emil Miland), Copland's Billy the Kid Suite, Seth Grosshandler's Mountain Festival Overture, & Stravinsky's Firebird Suite.

Daniel Stewart leads the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra in Bernstein's Symphonic Dances from West Side Story, Anna Thorvaldsdottir's Metacosmos, & Wagner's Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde in Davies Hall on 19 November.

Gustavo Dudamel conducts the San Francisco Symphony in Kauyumari by Gabriela Ortiz, the first SFS performance of Odisea: Concerto for Venezuelan Cuatro and Orchestra by Gonzalo Grau (with soloist Jorge Glem), & the Brahms 2, & that's 24 - 26 November.

Chamber Music

The Left Coast Chamber Ensemble gives us the premiere of a new piece by Sarah Gibson, for which they are joined by the San Francisco Girls Chorus, as well as music by Ursula Kwong-Brown, Gabriela Lena Frank, Lisa Bielawa, Nicolás Lell Benavides, Gabriella Smith, Pauline Oliveros, Caroline Shaw, Hildegard of Bingen, & Reena Esmail, & that's 4 November at First Presbyterian in Berkeley & 5 November at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

The San Francisco Symphony chamber group will perform music by Jason Hainsworth, Reena Esmail, Sarn Oliver, & Brahms in Davies Hall on 5 November.

On 7 November at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Trio L'Arc will give the world premiere of Vivian Fung's Ominous Machine for piano trio (a work the Trio commissioned), then will be joined by SFCM students for Jonathan Bingham's Pareidolia for string quartet, Block's Piano Quintet #1, & more.

San Francisco Performances gives us the Dublin Guitar Quartet on 10 November at Herbst Theater, where they will perform music by Philip Glass, Wojciech Kilar, Rachel Grimes, Marc Mellits, & Arvo Pärt.

San Francisco Performances continues its Saturday morning lecture series at Herbst Theater, with musicologist Robert Greenberg as host & lecturer & the Alexander String Quartet providing the musical examples; the theme this time is Music as a Mirror of Our World: The String Quartet from 1905 to 1946 & this second lecture, on 11 November, covers Russia & includes performances of Stravinsky's Three Pieces for String Quartet, his Concertino for String Quartet, & Prokofiev's String Quartet #1 in B Minor, Opus 50.

Cal Performances presents the Takács Quartet with the world premiere of Nokuthula Ngwenyama's Flow (a Cal Perf co-commission), along with Haydn's Sunrise quartet & Beethoven's String Quartet #8 in E minor, on 12 November at Hertz Hall.

San Francisco Performances presents the Castalian String Quartet at Herbst Theater on 15 November, when they will play Awake, composed by Mark-Anthony Turnage for the Quartet, along with Janáček's String Quartet #1 Kreutzer Sonata & Beethoven's String Quartet in B-Flat, Opus 130, with the Grosse Fuge ending, Opus 133

Instrumentalists

On 1 November, cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason returns to Cal Performances & Zellerbach Hall to play music by Bach, Gwilym Simcock, Britten, Leo Brouwer, Edmund Finnis, & Gaspar Cassadó.

On 2 November, San Francisco Performances presents violinist Miranda Cuckson & pianist Blair McMillen performing works by Janáček, Beethoven, Prokofiev, & Ross Lee Finney.

Pianist Kevin Lee Sun will perform at Old First Concerts on 5 November, when he will play selections from Rzewski's The People United Will Never Be Defeated!, Hanns Eisler's Piano Sonata #3, & two works by Hyo-shin Na, including a west coast premiere.

Cal Performances presents harpsichordist Jean Rondeau playing works by Fux, Haydn, Clementi, Beethoven, & Mozart on 5 November at Hertz Hall.

San Francisco Performances presents cellist Jay Campbell & pianist Conor Hanick at Herbst Theater on 8 November, where they will perform pieces by Eric Wubbels, Schubert, Ligeti, & Poulenc.

Pianist Matthew Bengtson will perform at Old First Concerts on 10 November; his program includes the world premiere of Roberto Sierra's Piano Sonata #13, which is dedicated to him, along with other pieces by Sierra as well as by Pinchas (Paul) Schoenfeld, Ingrid Arauco, Curt Cacioppo, Luke Carlson, & William Bolcom.

Old First Concerts presents violinist Nato on 12 November, when he will perform music by Bartók, Grażyna Bacewicz, Prokofiev, & Ysaÿe.

Pianist Stephen Hough comes to Herbst Theater on 14 November under the auspices of San Francisco Performances, with a program including pieces by Mompou, Scriabin, Debussy, Liszt, & Hough himself. In addition, Hough will be leading a master class at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music on 13 November.

The San Francisco Symphony presents pianist Daniil Trifonov in recital at Davies Hall on 19 November, when he will perform pieces by Rameau, Mozart, Mendelssohn, & Beethoven (the Hammerklavier).

Early / Baroque Music

See Handel's Rodelinda at Cal Performances above under Operatic.

See Dido & Aeneas from Philharmonia Baroque below under Modern / Contemporary Music.

The San Francisco Early Music Society presents Vox Luminis performing early cantatas by Bach (Weinen, Klagen, Soren, Zagen (BWV 12); Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit (BWV 106); Aus der Tiefen rufe ich, Herr, zu dir (BWV 131); & Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich (BWV 150)) at Saint Mark's Lutheran in San Francisco on 2 November.

Countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen joins Jeffrey Thomas & the American Bach Soloists to perform Bach's Ich habe genug, Cantata 82 & his Widerstehe doch der Sünde, Cantata 54; along with instrumental works by Bach, Biber, & Schmelzer (featuring Stephen Hammer on oboe & Tomà Iliev & YuEun Gemma Kim on violin), & that's 3 November at Saint Stephen's in Belvedere, 4 November at Saint Mark's Episcopal in Berkeley, 5 November at Saint Mark's Lutheran in San Francisco, & 6 November at the Davis Community Church in Davis.

On 8 November at First Congregational, Cal Performances presents A Journey through Baroque Europe with the young French group Le Consort; "Europe" in this case means  Italy, England, Germany, & France, as seen through the music of Vivaldi, Reali, Corelli, Rameau, Dandrieu, Veracini, Eccles, Purcell, & Bach.

Guest Conductor Derek Tam will lead Chora Nova in Bach's Magnificat in D Major & the Credo from the Mass in B Minor on 18 November at First Church in Berkeley; soloists are Victoria Fraser & Theresa Nelson, sopranos; Gabriela Estephanie Solís, mezzo-soprano; Michael Desnoyers, tenor; & Ben Kazez, baritone.

On 19 November the Cantata Collective continues its series of free performances at Saint Mary Magdalen's in Berkeley with Liebster Gott, wenn werd ich sterben, BWV 8, & Herr Jesu Christ, du höchstes Gut, BWV 113, featuring Jennifer Paulino (soprano), Christine Brandes (alto), Steven Caldicott Wilson (tenor), & Edward Vogel (bass).

Modern / Contemporary Music

The California Festival, a state-wide celebration of new music, runs from 3 to 19 November; you can check out their website here, though as noted above, the site allows you to filter by date or organization, but not by location, so good luck with that.

In what seems to be an annual visit across the Bay, Cal Performances presents Esa-Pekka Salonen & the San Francisco Symphony in Zellerbach Hall on 10 November, where they will perform the world premiere of Drowned in Light by Jens Ibsen, along with Salonen's Kínēma (featuring clarinetist Carey Bell) & Stravinsky's Symphony in Three Movements.

On 11 November in Grace Cathedral, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, joined by guest artist mezzo-soprano Tonia D’Amelio, will open its 53rd season with RE:Voicing, a program including Messiaen's Apparition de l’Église éternelle, Chinary Ung's Luminous Spirals, & the Bay Area premiere of Raven Chacon's Pulitzer-Prize winning Voiceless Mass, followed by George Crumb's Ancient Voices of Children; before the performance, Raven Chacon will be the guest for a How Music Is Made interview.

Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen leads two sets of concerts at the San Francisco Symphony as part of the California Festival of New Music: on 11 - 12 November, there is To the Edge, a program made up of the SFS premiere of Salonen's kínēma (with clarinetist Carey Bell as soloist), the world premiere of an SFS commission, Drowned in Light by Jens Ibsen, & Stravinsky's Symphony in Three Movements (this is the program they are performing at Cal on 10 November); on 17 - 18 November, there is From the Edge, featuring the first SFS performance of Gabriella Smith's Breathing Forests, along with Stravinsky's Octet for Winds and Brass & his Les Noces (orchestrated by Steven Stucky & featuring soprano Lauren Snouffer, mezzo-soprano Kayleigh Decker, tenor Paul Appleby, & bass David Soar, along with organist James McVinnie & animation by Hillary Leben).

Other Minds presents its 27th Festival, featuring composers from five countries, from 14 to 19 November, mostly at the Taube Atrium Theater in the War Memorial Complex in San Francisco but also opening & closing at the Gray Area on Mission Street; check out the entire schedule here.

John Butt will lead the forces of Philharmonia Baroque in Dido's Ghost (music by Errollyn Wallen, libretto by Wesley Stace), an original work incorporating in its entirety, if I'm understanding correctly, Purcell's Dido & Aeneas; Frederic Wake-Walker directs, Nicole Heaston is Dido, Matthew Brook, Aeneas, Nardus Williams, Belinda, & Allison Cook, Sorceress; Valérie Sainte-Agathe directs the PBO Chorale; & all that is 29 - 30 November at Herbst Theater in San Francisco; PBO will also perform Purcell's Dido & Aeneas on its own for two performances with the same forces on 2 December at First Congregational in Berkeley.

Jazz, Folk, Roots, & Blues

Cal Performances presents the Brad Mehldau Trio (Mehldau on piano, Larry Grenadier on bass, & Jeff Ballard on drums) at Zellerbach Hall on 11 November.

The San Francisco International Boogie Woogie Festival will take place at SF Jazz on 12 November.

In Zellerbach Hall on 17 November, under the auspices of Cal Performances, Rhiannon Giddens & the Silk Road Ensemble present American Railroad, looking at the music of Black, Chinese, Irish, Indigenous, & other cultures through the lens of the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad; there is also a pre-performance panel discussion.

Dance

The Oakland Ballet celebrates Día de los Muertos on 28 October at the Hammer Theater in San Jose & 3 - 4 November at the Paramount in Oakland with Luna Mexicana, a program featuring Viva la Vida, a ballet inspired by "the life and spirit of Frida Kahlo" (co-choreographed by Martín Romero of Ballet Folklórico México Danza & Oakland Ballet Artistic Director Graham Lustig), Ballet Folklórico México Danza presenting traditional Mexican Folkloric dance, music from Mariachi Mexicanisimo, & Oakland Ballet in Luna Mexicana.

Art Means Painting

Wolfgang Tillmans: To look without fear, a comprehensive exhibit of the photographer's work, opens at SFMOMA on 11 November & runs through 3 March 2024.

The Asian Art Museum presents The Heart of Zen, featuring "two extraordinary ink paintings, Persimmons (popularly known as Six Persimmons) and Chestnuts, on view in the United States for the first time. Attributed to the 13th-century monk Muqi, these exquisitely subtle compositions were painted in China and then crossed the ocean to Japan, where they have been designated Important Cultural Properties and treasured for centuries at Daitokuji Ryokoin Zen temple in Kyoto"; the two paintings will be displayed mostly separately, Six Persimmons from 17 November to 10 December & Chestnuts from 8 to 31 December (there are a couple of days of overlap from 8 to 10 December when both will be on view).

The much anticipated, at least by me, exhibit Botticelli Drawings, which the museum says is the first exhibition ever dedicated to the artist's drawings, opens at the Legion of Honor on 19 November & runs through 11 February 2024.

Cinematic

Infinite Horizons: The Films of Werner Herzog will open at BAMPFA on 9 November & run through February 2024; the director will be there in person for the opening week, but it looks as if those performances are sold out already.

Museum Monday 2023/44

 

Selene & Endymion, a bronze by Corneille van Cleve, now at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco

Friday Photo 2023/43

 

Goethe & Schiller in Golden Gate Park

Museum Monday 2023/43

 

Rodin, The Age of Bronze, in the Legion of Honor

Friday Photo 2023/42

 

San Francisco City Hall from the steps of the Asian Art Museum

Museum Monday 2023/42

 

Torso of Hermes After Polykleitos, now at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco (I had been looking at this sculpture for years before I noticed the label says it was the gift of Vincent Price – I assume that is THE Vincent Price)

Friday Photo 2023/41

 

flowers on a morning walk

San Francisco Opera: The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs

Postponed when the pandemic hit, the Mason Bates (music) & Mark Campbell (libretto) opera The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs recently had its Bay Area premiere at the San Francisco Opera; I saw the second-to-the-last performance. The cast is very good & the music is appealing, but the opera as a whole I found a repetitive, trite, & frankly dull hagiography. It's possible you need to have more interest in, & probably also sympathy for, the titular asshole than I do in order for the opera to hold your interest. But I have never been a fan of either Richard Nixon or the Chinese Communist Party, yet I love Nixon in China, so it's possible to create an absorbing, thought-provoking, & memorable work out of people one doesn't, outside of their aesthetic representation, like or respect.

The opera gestures towards criticism of Jobs, but nothing really sticks or runs deep. For one thing, the entire bent of the piece is towards showing us, in 18 time-jumping scenes (plus a prologue & epilogue), that between his Zen spiritual guide & his second wife Jobs evolved into . . . more of a decent person, I guess? Less of a relentless piece of shit? It's as if A Christmas Carol were told entirely through the eyes of the post-Ghosts Scrooge. The stage Jobs sees moments of his past jerkdom & lowers his head appealingly, shakes his head a bit, & smiles ruefully. (This action, like pretty much everything else in the opera, gets repeated. A lot.) It is suggested that growing business pressures, rather than anything internal, had changed him into a ruthless executive, that's he's lost his way, rather than that the business & his growing reputation have enabled him to flower into the manipulative, condescending tyrant he always was inside.

There is a scene set in his office in which he berates people over & over with "wrong, wrong, wrong" no matter what they've done. This is presented as his need for perfection, a search for an elusive, difficult to attain goal. It reminds me of those standard job interview answers that were popular a few years ago: "What do you see as your faults?" "I guess I'd say my major fault is that I care too much because of my passion for excellence." It is physically impossible for me to roll my eyes hard enough at this sort of thing. I have worked for people like this, though they didn't have Jobs's wealth or reputation, so it was easier for people to call them, accurately, horrible. They often truly were the outstanding employees, but that's because everyone else was so debilitated from dealing with them, or so desperately searching for a new job, that there really was no competition. For the record, if everyone who works for you is doing things "wrong, wrong, wrong", then the problem is you. You're not hiring the right people, or not explaining things well, or changing your mind without communicating that adequately. . .  One of the few useful sayings I've ever heard about leadership is that you can get pretty much anything done if you don't care who gets the credit. I think Jobs cared very much that he get all the credit.

The opera is not strictly factual, though the basics seems accurate enough. The names of products & companies are not explicitly mentioned; we hear about "the device" & "the company". The opera opens & closes with a sentimental little scene of Jobs's father, who has made him a table so he (Steve) can "make things"; the father kept singing this over & over. Every scene is like that. A point is made, then repeated, then said again. Right from the start, this work buys into that Silicon Valley nonsense about the wonders wrought by plucky outsiders in their garages. (You won't hear anything about government contracts or the Defense Department or even venture capitalists here. & you most definitely will not hear about the "device" being produced by child/non-Union labor in poor countries, or about the mountains of toxic waste generated by the "devices" & their frequent & costly upgrades.)

Jobs & Wozniak figure out a way to hack the phone company. They dance around, in a way both endearingly & embarrassingly clumsy, celebrating how rebellious they are, bringing Ma Bell down. What's unspoken, & ignored, though the audience knows this, as it's the only reason we're sitting there in the opera house, is that they will end up building another powerful entity themselves (& the phone company, by the way, is still very much standing). Yet we're supposed to accept their view that they actually are, & will always remain, outsiders & rebels. When Wozniak confronts Jobs after all the "wrong, wrong, wrong" snapping, it's framed as "you've changed, you've become what you hated": but of course he has, You can't stay a start-up forever, nor should you. It's naïve to think otherwise. But everything here is presented through the lens of Jobs, so the point isn't that as a company grows, it needs to be run differently; it's that Our Steve has lost his earlier . . . what, exactly? Rebellious spirit, I guess? He never seemed particularly kind or considerate, or even like an average good person. There is an interesting story to be told about how Jobs commodified & sold conformity under the guise of "rebellion" & "independent thought" (his "think different" slogan still makes me cringe). That story will not be told in this work.

Even the computers are seen through the lens of Jobs; the point is made that his machines are smooth & elegant on the outside, but sealed off, inaccessible to outsiders . . . could this be a metaphor for Jobs himself?!? You will have many, many opportunities to ponder that question (spoiler!: yes, it is!) I recall a long profile in The New Yorker a few years ago about a designer at Apple who pretty much came up with the look; here the famous design style of "the devices" seems to be purely Jobs-driven. I will say the opera made me think that Jobs did actually have an abiding interest in Japanese culture, or at least in the Zen Buddhist side of it; dubious comments are made about the "simplicity" of all Japanese design – I take it he never saw Kabuki theater – & of course no mention is made of Wabi-Sabi or Kintsugi; you can't justify your abusive behavior as part of your "quest for perfection" unless you are, in fact, questing for (what you deem) perfection.

Jobs could have gotten his "simplify, simplify" ethos from Thoreau or the Desert Fathers, but they also have inconvenient things to say about the dangers of having too much money. Perhaps Zen Buddhism does as well, in which case not knowing that is purely my ignorance, but I doubt it would be mentioned in this opera anyway; aside from a couple of remarks from his wife (affectionately, gently sarcastic little asides in the vein of "sure, because we need more money", such as you might say to any moderately well-off executive who was working too hard), the truly obscene amounts of money that Jobs accumulated are not mentioned at all (when we see his house, it is bare, except for an Ansel Adams print that, for all we know, is a poster & not an original).

The money should be mentioned because it does make a difference (for one thing, it's the main reason people take Jobs seriously). Actions that are understandable under less gilded circumstances are inexcusable when God is asking you for payday loans. One example: he refuses to give money (according to the program synopsis, a pension – but aren't those controlled by laws? Can a tycoon really just arbitrarily strip an employee of the pension he earned?) to an employee who is leaving. That's one thing if you're part of a struggling company, it's another (a selfish, mean-spirited other thing) if the company has plentiful profits.

Of course the major issue with money is Jobs's steady refusal for a very long time to acknowledge his daughter by Chrisann, his first partner. Despite his repeated & insulting statements that this child, Lisa, could have been fathered by some sizable portion of the male population, he also names one of his operating systems LISA. I think this is meant to make him seem "interesting" & "complex" instead of merely horrible. Again, if he's struggling to make ends meet, you can understand why he'd have, you know, feelings about sending child support her way (though I believe that's a legal, as well as moral, obligation). But when the spare change from your couch could set someone up for life . . . why even try to excuse this behavior? As with Trump, Jobs's selfishness & cruelty are a prime source of his appeal to the cult; there are, to some degrees, attempts to pretend it isn't so, but – & the mountains of money also enter into this – I think it's central to the appeal: here is a man lifted above our mundane, inconvenient realities, untrammeled by convention, & such petty concerns as decency or the law or other people – you know, a visionary! If you had a dollar for every time Jobs was called that, you'd have, if not a mountain, at least a hill of money yourself. Of course the label is ridiculous. Isaiah & Ezekiel are visionaries. William Blake & Rimbaud are visionaries. Steve Jobs was a skilled marketing executive whose most successful product was his own image. There are extended attempts (again, a softening of his image) to give him aesthetic cred, both on & off acid, by comparing what he's trying to do to music, specifically Bach. Yes, I'm sure the Saint Matthew Passion is behind the electronic leash that is the iPhone (excuse me, I mean "the device").

Back to the opera: it's difficult to tell if Jobs is justified in his anger at Chrisann, because she has basically no personality. Everything she says is about him, or in relation to him. First we see her taking acid with him, telling him that he "might be a genius" (it is unclear why she thinks this) & that she "thinks she's falling in love with him"; then we hear that he's "shutting her out" (that gets said a lot, &, once again, it is the mildest, most favorable interpretation possible of his emotionally manipulative & self-centered behavior). Then she's gone. She is replaced by Laurene, who also has no personality except to be generally good. She too tells him that he's "shutting her out" but this time he listens to her &, in some unspecified way, lets her in. Since the two women, as portrayed here, seem interchangeable, I don't really know why one woman is effective when the other isn't, except we're given to understand that The Love of a Good Woman can save even the troubled genius who occupies center stage. &, you know, maybe it can! I for one will not speak ill of the Love of a Good Woman. I will just point out that the possibility of it doesn't make it any less trite as a dramatic device. You also should probably dramatize rather than merely mentioning the goodness. We do get a eulogy for Jobs (he attends his own funeral, like Tom Sawyer & Huck Finn) delivered by Laurene in which she gently suggests that we put down our "devices" & look up at the world around us. Lady Bountiful from the Big House is certainly gracious! &, of course, when you have the amount of money that makes many people think you're wise, you're always at least one step ahead of the sheeple, aren't you?

(That's an amount of money that also, needless to say, provides plenty of high-powered legal representation if you don't like how you're being portrayed. But if you do, maybe a donation could come forth? There was a lot of mockery about pandering when the Opera staged Gordon Getty's Fall of the House of Usher – I saw it, it was solid & respectable, & yes, those words are also meant to convey "very dull" – but at least Getty had a track record of being extremely generous to local arts institutions; what have Jobs & his ilk, & that includes his cult, ever done for the arts?)

Besides the Good Woman, there is a Good Guru: Kōbun Chino Otogawa from the Zen Center. I don't know why he doesn't simply tell Jobs, "Look, you're wasting my time: just stop being an egregious asshole." Instead he mostly stands around delivering the sort of wryly wise bromides you would expect. As I mentioned above, the opera made me realize Jobs did have a serious interest in Zen; otherwise, as with being saved by the love of a Good Woman, the presence of the guru would just be another tired trope (you know, "kooky Californians get fancy spiritual talk from their gaseous gurus, straight from the Mysterious Orient!"). We are told, in a passing line, that Otogawa died before Jobs, in an accident while trying to rescue his (Otogawa's) child from drowning. The whole opera is so Jobs-centered that I was stunned to hear about something that happened to someone who wasn't Steve Jobs – it was as if a window had been flung open. Why doesn't someone write an opera about Otogawa?

Any personality Laurene Powell Jobs has in this opera is thanks to the reliably radiant Sasha Cooke. It is a tribute to her skill & artistry that she really does manage to come across as a genuinely good & appealing person – sort of a tech world Billy Budd. This is not the first time at the War Memorial Opera House that Cooke has brought life to a plaster saint; she's very good at it, but I wish someone would write her a role that is worthier of her talents.  Wei Wu is immensely appealing & authoritative as Otogowa, & Olivia Smith as Chrisann & Bille Bruley as Wozniak also bring what they can to their tissue-thin characters. John Moore as Jobs is almost heroic; he is on stage for almost all of the one hour & 40 intermissionless minutes (I've been to Ring Cycles that didn't seem to last as long). Like the others, he does what he can. & the music is often quite pretty (maybe too much so). I was relieved there wasn't as much electronica as I had feared. But the whole subject needs much deeper treatment than it gets here.

In the program, as always when the subject is Jobs, there are acolytes explaining away his abusive behavior by saying they felt they were "changing the world" (or that they actually did "change the world"). This raises questions (besides You're kidding, right?): What world has been changed, & how has it changed? What do you mean by "change" anyway? You do realize "change" & "improve" are not the same thing, right? In retrospect, do you (O Acolyte) regret having your youthful optimism & energy co-opted to make an elite (possibly including you yourself) obscenely wealthy? I mean, how long do you cling to the Syndrome after you've left Stockholm? The major criticism of Jobs in the opera, the moral crux of the drama, seems to be that he turned away from his daughter. But the real problem there is that we have created a society in which a plutocrat's whim can condemn a child to the bitter, frustrating struggle of average American life, or elevate her to a serene & graceful level. What about the many who didn't win when the genetic/financial lottery wheel was spun? Did Jobs & his "devices" & his minions do anything to change that situation? Billionaires should not exist, & they mostly don't warrant the level of adulation given in this work; why not give everyone, or at least a greater portion of the population, just some of the opportunities the Jobs family has because of his money? Do something to change that situation before you yap at me about how you "changed the world".

Museum Monday 2023/41

 

detail of Marc Chagall's America Windows at the Art Institute of Chicago

from my 2019 trip

Burn Baby Burn: Il Trovatore at the San Francisco Opera

Once the opening concert was out of the way (I did not attend; I never go to such things) the San Francisco Opera launched its 101st season with Verdi's ever-popular Il Trovatore. I saw the fourth of its six performances.

Ever-popular, yet ever-mocked: certain opinions inevitably get brought up with certain works, & Trovatore is, inevitably, described as having a one of the most absurd plots in opera (this despite my repeated defense of its brilliance!). So let me ask this about the plot's alleged absurdity: why do people assume that's not intentional?

I think this is not a case of a previous era's plots looking silly to a later generation; for every Mysteries of Udolpho there is a Northanger Abbey, & where would Gilbert & Sullivan have been without parodic variations on the baby-snatching & -swapping plot? (But if the story is so ridiculous, why does the opera continue to hold the stage? Weber's Oberon is, inevitably, described as an opera with wonderful music that is sunk by its libretto; why hasn't this happened to the allegedly ridiculous Trovatore?)

I think the absurdity – a word I keep using here because of its connections with Theater of the Absurd – is in service of a philosophical point about the nature of the Universe that holds us captive: it is arbitrary, cruel (or is it indifferent?), &, yes, absurd. Trovatore, with its malleability of identity, its obsessive, fragmentary narratives, & its dreamlike suddenness, is where high Romanticism meets the high Modern. I find this opera much more powerful & convincing, philosophically, than Iago's Credo from Verdi's Otello, which I generally hear spoken of with respect & even awe as a powerful statement of belief in a nihilistic universe. To me that aria seems, whatever its musical power, a crudely reductive explication of meanings & motives that Shakespeare left more profoundly hidden. It is also only one person's (one twisted, miserable person's) view of things. Trovatore, by contrast, gives us that meaningless world brought to vivid life, the trap in which is held our main quartet of characters, who, guided by love, honor, duty, & all sorts of noble human constructs, struggle in vain against the vast & ridiculous twists of life, trapped in their attempts to find meaning, or at least some contentment, in this whirling world.

Sir David McVicar's production relies heavily on a rotating set, which helps keep the action moving, which is important in this work (though there are always some moments when the physical requirements of opera mean actions don't take place as quickly as they really would; I think it would be interesting to see a Robert Wilson-style production, in which the character's trapped existence is personified by their regulated, controlled movements). The action is set in the nineteenth century, so we get some suitable Goyaesque tableaux. There are moments when McVicar overdoes things: I think a Spanish aristocrat like the Count di Luna would not manhandle a court lady, particularly one he's in love with, the way he does Leonora (a Roma woman & accused witch like Azucena is a different matter); & when Manrico is lamenting at the end that Leonora has betrayed him, she should not already be lying on the ground clutching her stomach due to the poison she's taken – you'd think he'd notice that & react, instead of repeating his lines about how she's betrayed him.

The musical side of things is where this performance really shone. Music Director Eun Sun Kim is launching her Verdi/Wagner project with Trovatore & the upcoming Lohengrin; & I think her fluid, propulsive guidance got things off to a great start. Company Director Matthew Shilvock had come out before the opera started to tell us that our Manrico, Arturo Chacón Cruz, was suffering from the effects of the wild-fire smoke that had been dirtying the air for days, & he would perform but begged our indulgence. There were some moments when he was holding back a bit, or marshalling his forces more than maybe he normally would, but on the whole he gave a convincing & impassioned portrayal of our troubadour; not much indulgence needed to be extended. Ekaterina Semanchuk as Azucena & George Petean as the Count di Luna both were powerful. But the star was Angel Blue as Leonora, giving a sumptuous & surprisingly warm portrayal of the trapped Leonora; there were moments when she smiled & floated a tone & you could imagine, or hope for, a very different life for this woman.

Friday Photo 2023/40

 

the War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco

Museum Monday 2023/40

 

detail of a Chinese altar frontal depicting Wang Zhaojun's departure to the nomadic borderland, now at the Asian Art Museum on San Francisco