Shotgun Players: A Midsummer Night's Dream

Last Sunday I was at the Shotgun Players production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, directed by William Thomas Hodgson, the opening play of the theater's 2024 season. Midsummer Night's Dream is probably the Shakespeare play I have seen staged most often, & I've read it many times (I re-read it just a few weeks ago). & this production made me laugh out loud several times. That's really high praise.

The whole look (scenic design by Sarah Phykitt, costume designs by Ashley Renee as realized by Madeline Berger, if I'm reading the program correctly) is both hodge-podge & sophisticated. The set is a unit, with alcoves & cubbyholes built in, & passageway ramps going up & across, leading down to enough bare space in the front of the stage for fights (sword & verbal) & chases & sweet meet-ups. There are enough natural touches – tufts of foliage, tree trunks with rough bark – to make it plausible as the forest, but enough formal structure to let it pass for an interior in Athens. The costumes are a wild mélange of bright colors & wild patterns, harmonious in their dissonance.

The text is trimmed reasonably, with a few words thrown in to hilarious effect; not to give anything away, but one character starts off her speech with "Bitch, . . ." It was unexpectedly funny, as was the way they riffed on Bottom's inability to get the names of Pyramus & Thisbe correct. The "bergomask" at the end of the mechanicals' play, given in lieu of an epilogue, was a song from Twelfth Night; this journey also ended in lovers' meeting, so it did slide right into context. Egeus is now Hermia's mother instead of father, a change I am all in favor of; the authority there is generational & parental, not necessarily patriarchal. Titania's attendant fairies were, for I think the first time in the stagings I have seen, given distinct personalities, & some had comically negative reactions to the strange ass-headed commoner their mistress is inexplicably enamoured of, whom she had them serving.

Another noteworthy thing about this production, though I feel funny about mentioning it, as it always sounds so patronizing to say it, but clearly it's a point with this production, so here goes: they have a wonderfully open & diverse approach to casting, going beyond race- & gender-blind casting; some of the male characters are androgynous, some of the women are large; nothing is made of this (except for Helena's being taller than Hermia, which is canon), & nothing should be; they're all beautiful embodiments of their characters. Again, it seems condescending to talk about how wonderful that young lovers & heroic warriors look like ordinary people, & making a point of saying it even contributes, in subtle, indirect ways, to reinforcing the traditional standards of casting that are being ignored (in that it makes you conscious of those standards), but it's a good direction to go in, so . . . I mention it.

Such casting wouldn't be much good without strong performers, & the cast is by & large excellent. I was particularly impressed with Rolanda D Bell as Helena; often with productions of Shakespeare you feel they've learned the lines but not in a deep level, but Bell not only read the verse musically, but she spoke it as if it was very naturally the way this character would speak; you could see the shifting psychology underneath the pentameter. I don't know if she's done much Shakespeare (if not, this was particularly impressive) but I hope she continues. I also really liked Oscar Woodrow Harper III as Bottom, who is a character I can easily get enough of, but Harper, who had an inexplicable Southern twang & a bit of Elvis-like swagger, made him quite charming as well as hilarious – you really understood why the other mechanicals felt Bottom was the one man in Athens necessary for their play.

Mentioning those two isn't to slight the rest of the cast, many of whom play multiple roles. All of them give the audience giddy moments. Egeus, mentioned earlier, is played by Susannah Martin, who also plays Quince & Peaseblossom. Her attempts as Quince to rein in the rambunctious Bottom are an amusing echo of her attempts as Egeus to rein in Hermia; this is one of the serendipitous insights you get with such casting (she's also very funny as a Peaseblossom dragooned into serving Bottom, another, more distant, echo of her role as Quince). Aside from Bell as Helena, the quartet of lovers is rounded out with Celeste Kamiya, a lively powerhouse as Hermia (she also plays one of the fairies); she & Helena share some sweet sisterly moments amid the madness. Fenner Merlick is an insinuating Demetrius, just on the right side of shady. At my performance, Lysander was performed by Devin A Cunningham, who was apparently pulled in at something like the last minute, as he had to have a script with him – but he handled that so unobtrusively, & gave such a lively & physical characterization, that not being offbook was not intrusive. So Kudos to him.

Jamin Jollo filled the minor role of Philostrate & the major role of Puck, to which he brought an impish physicality, just on the right side of malicious. Radhika Rao has the traditionally doubled roles of Hippolyta & Titania, & Veronica Renner doubles as Theseus & Oberon, both authoritative in their spheres. Kevin Rebultan (Moth, a different unnamed Fairy, & Flute) was especially good as Thisbe, & Matt Standley (as Snug & Snout) gets more laughs out of less material than I would have thought possible.

My performance was a mask-mandatory matinee. I wonder how long those can continue, given that the majority of the audience was pretty careless about masking. With a few exceptions, they had them on, but often were wearing them incorrectly, were removing them to eat & drink in the theater, took them off during the performance (the young woman next to me had hers entirely off for most of the second act; she may have forgotten to put it back on when she finished her drink). & honestly, I don't see people getting more careful about masking. Either the theater is going to have to start enforcing the rule in a way that will . . . ruffle some feathers? annoy people? not sit well with them? be a burden all around? – or they're going to have to lift the "mandatory" part. I know some people deliberately choose the mask-mandatory performances, but others choose the performance based on date or time or some other factor. Personally, I am fine either way (despite the weird harassment I was subjected to at Shotgun's last play of last season), but I do think that people who are uncomfortable around people who aren't wearing masks are probably, at this point, just not going out at all. But the rule should be either enforced or modified.

Anyway: this season at Shotgun is off to an excellent start with this fresh, inventive, & very funny production. It's been extended to 27 April; go if you can.

(The photograph above is from the outside wall of the Ashby Stage; as usual, the mural changes with each play, & again as usual, it is by graphic artist R.Black)

Live from the Met: Roméo et Juliette

My Opera List tells me I have seen Gounod's Roméo et Juliette twice on stage, but the first performance I don't remember at all & the second was deeply flawed (for one thing, they decided to replace a lot of the non-aria parts with Shakespeare's dialogue, even though they had a cast of young singers for most of whom English was a second language – R&J is not an easy play to perform & it was just asking too much of the singers), so I headed out to the Met livecast last Saturday. It was touch-&-go for me until the last minute, as the local rain was heavier than expected, but I did make it to the theater in time – I, normally panicked at the thought of not being in my seat at least 20 minutes before the show starts, was even hoping I would cut it so close I wouldn't have to listen to the ridiculous pre-livecast promos from Rolex & other luxury brands, but there I was, & there they were.

The rain had mostly cleared up by the time I left for the theater, but in New York they were, as Peter Gelb described them during intermission, "torrential", which led to some transmission problems. This was unfortunate & annoying, but also something to take in stride. You know what was really irritating? Listening to the reactions of the audience around me. Much stirring about, loud talking, slow claps (I wonder what that woman thought she was accomplishing), huffing & puffing . . . I had the impression most of my audience thought there was someone in a booth running a projector who could fix things. I don't bother too much with tech stuff but . . . I thought it was generally known the livecasts use satellite transmissions? Which are sometimes interrupted by natural causes? Nothing like an opera audience to make even an aging Luddite feel youthful & tech-savvy.

Irritations aside, I found the show thoroughly enjoyable. It brought to mind last autumn's L'Elisir d'Amore at San Francisco Opera (my write-up is here), in that I can't imagine this opera being given a better presentation. I know people for whom Gounod is a non-starter but I don't have a problem with him. I do have a problem with most Shakespeare operas, but though this one does not capture the strange atmosphere & wild poetry of Shakespeare's play (neither, to my mind, does Verdi's Otello), it does an excellent job of conveying what most people remember or think they know of the play, which is the heightened passion of two youthful lovers, doomed by family hatreds. The plot (& there's a lot of plot machinery in R&J) is pared down: Romeo has poison, but no apothecary who sells it to him.

An adaptation of this sort is going to hang on the two performers in the title role, & here's where the Met came up strong; physically & dramatically & vocally, Nadine Sierra & Benjamin Bernheim were ideal. Both are attractive & youthful looking (they're not going to pass for teenagers, but then R&J seldom do). Sierra has such joy in the role & such commitment to it; as she progresses from a somewhat shy girl, eager for & hesitant about love (at least until she sights Romeo), she sang with splendor & controlled abandon. I had heard her before, but Bernheim was new to me, though years ago I heard a recording of his, I think. He can have a touch of goofiness (as does Romeo) but he is handsome & has great hair; the costumes by Catherine Zuber highlighted his sexiness, with a plunging neckline (his was much lower than Sierra's) & high black leather boots (he could probably use the same costume if he ever sings Hamlet, maybe minus the ruffles on the shirt). He sang with elegant virility & he & Sierra clearly have excellent chemistry together. He is scheduled for the title role in next season's first livecast, Offenbach's Tales of Hoffmann, an opera I much prefer to this one, so I'm looking forward to that.

The secondary roles were also very strong, even though the characters themselves are diminished from their Shakespearean originals; even Mercutio seems subsidiary. He was sung (very nicely!) by Will Liverman, last seen by me in the title role of the livecast of Anthony Davis's X. Frederick Ballentine was an appropriately snarling presence as Tybalt, Samantha Hankey lively in the trouser role of Stéphano (a role built up from the play, actually, in a reverse of the usual cutting-down), Alfred Walker an imposing Frère Laurent. I was glad to see so many Black singers, & very glad to see that there was no attempt to separate the Capulets & the Montagues racially; you see this frequently with productions of Shakespeare's play (one family is white & the other black! or, we're in Ireland & one family is Catholic & the other Protestant! & so forth) & it drives me nuts, as that is not Romeo & Juliet, it is West Side Story. Dividing the families like that gives a cultural/social/political/religious dimension (or even justification) to the quarrel that isn't supposed to be there. The whole point is that there is no reason for the quarrel: it just is, & has been for so long that no one questions it. No origin for the animosity is ever given. It's right there in the first line of the play: "Two households, both alike in state & dignity. . . " The pointlessness is part of the tragedy.

Anyway, no need to ride that hobbyhorse right now. The production is, to borrow the Met's own word, sumptuous, & Yannick Nézet-Séguin was certainly a convincing advocate for the work, for which he had assembled a dazzling cast – almost too dazzling, with too much artistic power, some might think, for the work in question, but, as I said, they were making the best case for this opera that could be made.

Friday Photo 2024/13

 

two pigeons, San Leandro BART station

San Francisco Performances: Ilker Arcayürek & Simon Lepper

Last Thursday I was back at Herbst Theater for tenor Ilker Arcayürek's all-Schubert recital for San Francisco Performances, with pianist Simon Lepper accompanying him. The repertory was similar to his recent recording The Path of Life, & as explained by the singer, the songs were chosen to illustrate the arc of a life: from Love to Longing (I appreciate that that is the order there) to The Quest for Inner Peace to Resignation to, as a final touch, Redemption. In the Before Time I heard a number of recitals by women that traced the arc of a woman's life & I wanted a man to do something similar, & that was the tenor's plan here.

Arcayürek did an excellent job darkening his voice as the arc progressed, starting with the lively initial numbers, several of which centered around fishing, for some reason (I suppose it is a bucolic & sporty activity; the songs certainly sounded youthful & optimistic), then moving on to the more spiritually searching numbers as well as the emotionally wrenching discovery that one is not loved. There was an intermission, but I wish there hadn't been, as it would have been wonderful to experience the emotional journey straight through. Redemption was a single song, sort of an afterlife lagniappe, Des Fischers Liebesglück, which neatly ties back to the theme of fishing, as well as love & transcendence; the song leaves us "up above / on another shore".

The first song of The Quest for Inner Peace, Die Sterne (The Stars), was particularly touching in its serenity. Of course someone in the audience had to intrude on the moment by applauding (even though the program clearly asked us to hold our applause until the end) & whoever it was didn't even have the respect or taste to wait until the last notes of the song had died away. The one encore, Nacht und Träume, was another inward & contemplative number; as Arcayürek said to the audience while introducing it, the end of The Path of Life is . . . the end (meaning, of course, death) so he wanted to leave us on a more uplifting note.

A very satisfying recital! It was interesting to note that for the second performance in a row (I was at Herbst a week earlier for Jonathan Biss's Schubert concert), a lot of the intermission talk I overheard concerned the SF Symphony's failure to sign Esa-Pekka Salonen for another term. It was understandable the first time, as the news had broken just a day or two before, so it was interesting that it continued into another week. It is a mistake on the Symphony's part that is going to keep on rippling outward for quite some time, I fear.

Poem of the Week 2024/13

The Pitcher

His art is eccentricity, his aim

How not to hit the mark he seems to aim at,

His passion how to avoid the obvious,

His technique how to vary the avoidance.

The others throw to be comprehended. He

Throws to be a moment misunderstood.

Yet not too much. Not errant, arrant, wild,

But every seeming aberration willed.

Not to, yet still, still to communicate

Making the batter understand too late.

– Robert Francis

Here's a poem for this week's opening of the 2024 baseball season.

As the poet analyzes the skills involved in throwing a baseball towards a hitter, it's implicit (the second word of the poem is art) that he's describing not just a particular skill in a particular sport, but the requirements for a poet, or indeed anyone involved in some sort of creative work, even creative works that aren't always seen as such, like cooking. He's avoiding the obvious, while still moving towards a particular point; he wants to be misunderstood (or obscure) but only with the goal of ultimate clarity.

I particularly like the line breaks in this poem. In the first one, aim / aim at, the words echo, with a slight variation: the at gives focus to the aim, as we move from aim in the sense of his goal to aim in the sense of the particular point in space at which he is aiming – a subtle redirection that exemplifies the technique the poet is describing.

In the second couplet, we have passion balanced & supplemented in the next line by technique. The second word, technique, is how the first word is enacted. The end words (obvious / avoidance) reinforce each other; avoidance of the obvious is the aim, & it's important that he varies the methods, before they too become expected & obvious.

In the third couplet, the others who throw to be comprehended would be the other players on the pitcher's team; if you're playing outfield or on one of the bases, you want your throw to your teammates to be perfectly clear, so that you can get the all-important out of the opposing player. Comprehended usually refers to take something in & fully understanding it mentally, so beyond just realizing where the ball is headed, it includes understanding why the ball is headed there & where it needs to happen, & of course the word suggests also the skills involved in reading a poem, or appreciating any other work of artistry. He (the pitcher) teeters at the end of the first line, separated from the others even though they are his teammates; perhaps this isolation leads him to be, in his own mind, misunderstood, even though that is his aim (but misunderstood only for a moment).

The fourth couplet describes the limits within the pitcher's artistic misdirection must work. The errant / arrant combo is a bit of flashy wordplay, part of the music & play of language that makes poetry appealing. The words are linked in origin & were used interchangeably until the past few centuries, when their paths split, with errant meaning "behaving wrongly, straying outside the proper path or bounds, or moving about aimlessly or irregularly" & arrant meaning "being notoriously without moderation" (definitions come from Merriam-Webster's on-line dictionary). Both words are a bit antique (like the sport of baseball), & tend to be used in literary contexts more than everyday speech. (Errant even has a medieval whiff to it, as it brings to mind a knight-errant.) Any such throw is to be avoided in this context, along with anything else too wild; & the wild / willed line ends, with their close verbal echo & adjustment, move from what the throw should not be (wild) to what it should be (willed, that is, controlled by the pitcher / artist).

The final couplet, with its halting, complicated syntax, throws us a bit of a curveball. Not to communicate while communicating: this is the indirection of a great pitcher, or a poet, who speaks deeper or evanescent truths through metaphor (as Dickinson noted, "Tell all the truth, but tell it slant"). In the middle of the line still is repeated. Still is a powerful word. It moves in both time & space: time as it indicates continuing on-going action & space as it indicates a state of being motionless. It also indicates a sort of quiet & calm – an oasis in the middle of the physical & psychological & technical battle between pitcher & hitter. It's a freighted word, one with ambiguous meanings. The final line clarifies the first line in the couplet, & indeed sums up the point of the poem: the batter will understand the pitcher's intent, but only when it's too late for him to parry it with a successful hit. So far the end words have played off each other, but in the penultimate couplet, wild / willed, we have our first example of lines ending with a slant rhyme. The poem culminates with the end words communicate / too late, giving us as the finale, for the first time in this poem, the satisfying verbal chime of an exact rhyme.

I took this poem from Heart of the Order: Baseball Poems, edited by Gabriel Fried.

Another Opening, Another Show: April 2024

By the end of this month, nearly all of the local performing arts groups will have announced their line-up for the next season (which, weirdly, still runs on the same track as the school year, as if all of us are heading off to our mountain villas or beach houses for the summer). Suitably for the spring-time weather, it's a time of renewed hope & excitement, though maybe less so this year: first we had the SF Opera's shrunken season (down to six operas & some specialty concerts; they've also, for reasons I do not understand, reverted to having an actual opera as the sacrificial victim for the Opening Night ceremonies, rather than the highlights concert more suitable to the occasion that they've been presenting the past few years) & then that was followed by the overwhelming disappointment of hearing that Esa-Pekka Salonen is not renewing his contract with the SF Symphony, as he & the Board do not agree on the future of the Symphony. Usually "artistic differences" is a euphemism, but here it seems to be the heart of the matter. Salonen, of course, is a world-renowned composer & conductor, with many contacts among today's artists (it's difficult to describe him & them without falling into horrible PR/Management speak like "visionary", "bold", exciting & innovative", but . . . those are the suitable words). The Board is . . . a lot of rich people? who, like most rich people, think they're smarter than they really are? I don't know what the Board thinks they're doing. Presumably at some point they will try to let the rest of us know. For now, we're left with the departure of one of our time's leading musical artists, & our local scene diminishes correspondingly (though, in the spirit of springtime hopefulness, I will mention that while the SF Opera & the SF Symphony are both pillars of the local performing-arts world, there are plenty of smaller groups that continue to produce interesting works). "So quick bright things come to confusion" as Shakespeare tells us. & speaking of him, to continue in the spirit of happier notes, here is your reminder that 23 April is, among other things, the traditional date given as Shakespeare's birthday. There are no specific commemorations of that momentous day listed below, but I'm sure you can think of something suitable, & there's plenty of other stuff to keep you going until May.

Theatrical

ACT presents Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Overlord, a one-person show written & performed by Kristina Wong, directed by Chay Yew; she started sewing masks in the early days of the pandemic & the project grew. . . . ; the show is at the Strand Theater from 30 March to 5 May.

BroadwaySF presents John Cleese: Last Time to See Me Before I Die, featuring comedy & conversation from the celebrated Mr Cleese, at the Orpheum Theater on 5 April.

From 5 April to 12 May, the New Conservatory Theater Center, in association with Golden Thread Productions, presents The Tutor, a world premiere commission by Torange Yeghiazarian, directed by Sahar Assaf, about a Bay Area man just married to an Iranian woman who hires a lifelong female friend to tutor her, only to have the two women fall in love.

On 6 April at the Alcazar Theater, you can experience Toxic, a one-person comedy show by Abhishek Upmanyu; how could I not list someone who describes himself as a "haiku enthusiast"?

On 6 - 7 April the Oakland Theater Project presents a world premiere workshop performance of Dan Hoyle's Takes All Kinds, a one-person show exploring the political divisions in America.

Brian Copeland’s popular one-person show, Not a Genuine Black Man, returns for a limited engagement (Saturdays only, between 6 April & 4 May) at The Marsh San Francisco.

Axis, written & directed by Dirk Alphin, exploring the last family left in a town sinking into the earth during the American bicentennial year, plays The Marsh San Francisco from 7 to 28 April.

Golden Thread Productions presents Returning to Haifa, based on the short novel by Ghassan Kanafani (about a Palestinian couple after the Six Days' War returning to the home in Haifa they were forced out of in 1948), adapted for the stage by Naomi Wallace and Ismail Khalidi & directed by Samer Al-Saber, running at the Potrero Stage from 12 April to 4 May.

While their mainstage continues with A Midsummer Night's Dream, the Shotgun Players Champagne Staged Reading Series will take over on 15 - 16 April with The Motion by Christopher Chen, directed by Patrick Dooley, about something that starts as a scholarly debate about animal rights & ends up as something else.

BroadwaySF presents the touring company of the musical Hairspray! at the Orpheum Theater from 16 to 21 April.

ACT presents the Tony- & Pulitzer-winning musical A Strange Loop, with book, music, & lyrics by Michael R Jackson, choreography by Raja Feather Kelly, directed by Stephen Brackett, about a queer Black writer writing a musical about a queer Black writer writing a musical about a queer Black writer, at the Toni Rembe Theater from 18 April to 12 May.

42nd Street Moon presents the popular jukebox musical Forever Plaid, directed by Daniel Thomas, from 18 April to 5 May.

Aurora Theater presents Tanya Barfield's Blue Door, directed by Darryl V Jones, about a Black professor of mathematics who spends a fevered night (or dreams during that night) with three generations of his ancestors; the show runs from 19 April to 19 May.

The UC Berkeley Drama Department (not their official name, I believe, but you know what I mean) presents The Wednesday Club, with book, lyrics, & direction by Joe Goode & music & music direction by Ben Juodvalkis, runs at Zellerbach Playhouse from 25 to 28 April & explores collaboration among a group of "LGBTQ+ drama nerds (and their allies)".

The Oakland Theater Project presents the world premiere of Red Red Red by Amelio Garcia, directed by William Thomas Hodgson, based on Anne Carson's Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse, a riff on the Greek mythological tale of Geryon & Herakles, & that runs from 26 April to 19 May.

BroadwaySF presents Funny Girl, the classic musical from Jule Styne & Bob Merrill with an updated book by Harvey Fierstein, directed by Michael Mayer, at the Orpheum Theater from 30 April to 26 May.

Talking

Ocean Vuong will appear in conversation with Cathy Park Hong on 4 April at BAM/PFA & on 5 April, at the same venue, he will read from his latest poetry collection, Time Is a Mother.

Joan Nathan, celebrated for her books on Jewish food traditions, will discuss her latest, My Life in Recipes: Food, Family, and Memories, with chefs Charles Phan (of The Slanted Door) & Mourad Lahlou (of Aziza & Mourad) at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco on 30 April.

Operatic

Opera Parallèle presents Birds & Balls, a double-bill of Vinkensport (The Finch Opera) with music by David T Little & text by Royce Vavrek, about the Flemish sport of Finch Sitting, & Balls, a world premiere with music by Laura Karpman & text by Gail Collins, about the 1973 "Battle of the Sexes" tennis match between Billie Jean King & Bobby Riggs, & that's 5 - 7 April at the SF Jazz Center.

The San Francisco Conservatory of Music Historical Studies Department presents Handel's Serse on 6 & 7 April.

On 7 April at Hertz Hall at UC Berkeley, you can see the Musical Theater Prize Concert, featuring the world premiere of The Little Prince, an opera by Cal student Chengrui “Tom” Pan.

The San Francisco Conservatory of Music's Opera and Musical Theatre program presents Pauline Viardot's chamber opera Cendrillon on 20 & 21 April.

Pocket Opera presents Janáček's Cunning Little Vixen, in a Donald Pippin translation they found in their archives, on 14 April at the Hillside Club in Berkeley, 21 April at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, & 28 April at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco; music direction is by Jonathan Khuner, stage direction by Nicolas A Garcia, & choreography by Lissa Resnick.

Choral

21V, a chorus for alto & soprano singers of all genders, performs Reclaiming Radical, a program including a world premiere from Chris Castro celebrating César Chavez & Dolores Huerta, Trevor Weston's Truth Tones in honor of Dr Martin Luther King Jr, Stacy Garrop's setting of the last letter written to Ruth Bader Ginsburg by her husband (this is a new work composed for 21V), & Jerod Impichchaachaaha' Tate's We Are the Storm; you can hear it all on 5 April at Mission Dolores (the old church, not the basilica) & 6 April at the Berkeley Hillside Club.

On 6 April at Saint Mark's Lutheran in San Francisco, Pacific Edge Voices will present The Sound Garden of Love (the title plays off Blake's poem The Garden of Love), & the program will include Elgar’s Lux Aeterna, Meredith Monk’s Panda Chant, Dahlgren’s God’s Great Dust Storm, Dylan Tran’s If Music Be the Food of Love, & the group's first live performance of Vienna Teng’s Hymn of Acxiom, which they recorded during the lockdown; the chorus will be joined for this concert by Soul Beatz, Oakland’s community drum circle; selections from the program will be performed on 7 April as part of a free outdoor concert at the Pergola on Lake Merritt in Oakland.

On 20 - 21 April at Calvary Presbyterian in San Francisco, Bob Geary leads the San Francisco Choral Society in Dvořák's Mass in D Major, in Goin’ Home, a song arrangement attributed to William Arms Fisher based on the celebrated theme from Dvořák's 9th Symphony, From the New World, & Margaret Bond’s Credo; featured are soloists Benjamin Bachmann on organ, soprano Shawnette Sulker, mezzo-soprano Kindra Scharich, tenor Lee Steward, & bass-baritone Wilford Kelly.

Vocalists

The Schwabacher Recital Series presents mezzo-soprano Samantha Hankey with pianist Carrie-Ann Matheson on 3 April at the Taube Atrium Theater; repertory to be announced.

On 9 April at the Century Club in San Francisco, Taste of Talent presents Dayenu: A Passover Celebration, with the launch of JIVE (Jewish Innovative Voices & Experiences), led by producer Ronny Michael Greenberg, the cantor of Sherith Israel baritone Simon Barrad, countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen, & violinist Elizabeth Castro Greenberg; they plan to "bring together the themes of freedom, bondage, and resilience through new perspectives, new works and creative arrangements representing the rich and diverse Jewish musical traditions"; this concert will feature music from the Hans Zimmer / Stephen Schwartz soundtrack to Prince of Egypt, as well as pieces by Simon & Garfunkel, Gerald Cohen, Samuel Barber, Robert Owens, Tom Cipullo, Ernest Bloch, & Yiddish songs, Jazz, Cabaret, & Operetta arias composed by Jews imprisoned during the Holocaust, such as Viktor Ullmann, Ilse Weber, & Joseph Beer.

The San Francisco Symphony presents Patti LuPone: A Life in Notes at Davies Hall on 14 April.

In Zellerbach Hall on 23 April, Cal Performances presents soprano Amina Edris & tenor Pene Pati, accompanied by pianist Robert Mollicone, in Voyages, a program including songs by Duparc, Ravel, Saint-Saëns, Quilter, & Vaughan Williams, as well as traditional songs from Egypt (where she's from) & Samoa (where he's from).

Cal Performances presents Angélique Kidjo at Zellerbach Hall on 26 April.

Orchestral

The San Francisco Symphony presents the Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields, led by & featuring on solo violin Joshua Bell, at Davies Hall on 7 April, when they will perform Flight of Moving Days by Vince Mendoza, featuring percussionist Douglas Marriner (a new composition marking the centenary of Academy founder Sir Neville Marriner) along with the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto & the Schumann 2

Richard Egarr leads the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra in Romantic Radiance, a program featuring Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto (with soloist Shunske Sato) & the Beethoven 3, the Eroica, on 11 April at Herbst Theater in San Francisco, 12 April at Bing Concert Hall at Stanford in Palo Alto, & 13 April at First Congregational in Berkeley.

On 13 April at the Taube Atrium Theater, guest conductor Paul Phillips leads the Bay Area Rainbow Symphony in Britten's Sinfonietta opus 1, the Saint-Saens Violin Concerto #3 in B minor (featuring soloist Michael Long), Wang Lu's Surge, & William Dawson's Negro Folk Symphony (the program will be repeated on 14 April at Stanford University's Dinkelspiel Auditorium).

Karina Canellakis leads the San Francisco Symphony in Richard Strauss's Don Juan & his Death and Transfiguration & Ravel's Piano Concerto for the Left Hand (featuring soloist Cédric Tiberghien) & his La Valse on 18 - 20 April.

Jory Fankuchen leads the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra in the world premiere of Trevor Weston's Aqua as well as Respighi's Ancient Airs and Dances, Suite #3 & the Mozart 40, & you can hear it 19 April at Saint Mark's Lutheran in San Francisco, 20 April at First United Methodist in Palo Alto, & 21 April at First Congregational in Berkeley.

Gustavo Gimeno leads the San Francisco Symphony in Funeral March from The Great Citizen, Opus 55 by Shostakovich, William Walton's Viola Concerto (with soloist Jonathan Vinocour), & the Prokofiev 3 on 25 - 27 April.

On 27 April at the Swedish American Hall in San Francisco, One Found Sound will perform the west coast premiere of Sam Wu's Hydrosphere (the winner of One Found Sound's 2023 Emerging Composer Award), Ruth Gipps's Seascape, & the Beethoven 3, the Eroica.

On 27 April at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Edwin Outwater leads the SFCM Orchestra in the world premiere of Acequia by Nicolás Lell Benavides, as well as Peter Lieberson's Neruda Songs (featuring mezzo-soprano Nikola Printz), & Ravel's Rhapsodie Espagnole & his La Valse.

On 27 April at Hertz Hall, the UC Berkeley Philharmonia Orchestra will be led by Thomas Green & Noam Elisha in Ravel's orchestration of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition.

Chamber Music

On 2 April, for Chamber Music Tuesday at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the Jupiter Quartet will play Anton Arensky's String Quartet #2 in A Minor, Nathan Shields's Medusa, & Max Bruch's String Octet in B-flat Major.

Noontime Concerts at Old Saint Mary's in downtown San Francisco offers violinist Florin Parvulescu & pianist Samantha Cho performing Beethoven's Violin Sonata #1 in D Major, Fauré's Violin Sonata #1 in A Major, & Earl Wild's setting of the Gershwins' Embraceable You on 2 April; & violinist Yip Wai-Chow, cellist Ayoun Alexandra Kim, & pianist Jon Lee performing Haydn's Piano Trio in E-flat major, Clara Schumann's 3 Romances for Cello and Piano, Schubert's Rondo for Violin and Piano, & Debussy's Piano Trio in G major on 9 April; the rest of the month's schedule hasn't been released yet, but you can check for it here.

On 13 April in Zellerbach Hall, the Danish String Quartet, joined by cellist Johannes Rostamo, returns to Cal Performances, bringing Schubert's String Quintet in C major, a new work for string quintet by Thomas Adès, & some Schubert lieder, as arranged by the Quartet.

On 14 April at the Piedmont Center for the Arts, the Berkeley Symphony presents Play on Words, a program featuring Korngold's Suite from Much Ado About Nothing for Violin and Piano, Gordon Getty's Four Dickinson Songs for Soprano and Piano, Jake Heggie's Shed No Tear (from a poem by John Keats) for Soprano and Piano, & Schubert's Trio in E-flat major, Opus 100 for Piano, Violin, Cello; the musicians featured are soprano Lisa Delan, violinist René Mandel, cellist Evan Kahn, & pianist Kevin Korth (with Jake Heggie as special guest pianist for Shed No Tear).

Chamber Music San Francisco presents cellist Steven Isserlis & pianist Connie Shih at Herbst Theater on 14 April, where they will perform Busoni's Variations on a Finnish folk song, Kultaselle, Schubert's Arpeggione Sonata, Bloch's Pieces from Jewish Life, Fauré's Sonata #1, & Poulenc's Sonata.

Cal Performances presents the Quatuor Ébène at First Congregational on 16 April, where they will perform Mozart's String Quartet #21 in D major, the Prussian, Schnittke's String Quartet #3, & Grieg's String Quartet #1 in G minor.

A chamber group of San Francisco Symphony musicians will perform Danzas de Panama by William Grant Still, Sextet in C major by Ernst von Dohnányi, & the String Quartet #3 in F major by Shostakovich at Davies Hall on 21 April.

On 25 April at Herbst Theater, San Francisco Performances presents the Dover Quartet & pianist Leif Ove Andsnes, performing Joaquín Turina's La oración del torero (The Bullfighter’s Prayer), the Dohnányi Piano Quintet #. 2 in E-flat Minor, & the Brahms Piano Quintet in F Minor.

This season's Saturday morning lecture/concert series from San Francisco Performances, Music as a Mirror of Our World: The String Quartet from 1905 to 1946, with host/lecturer Robert Greenberg & music from the Alexander String Quartet, concludes on 27 April at Herbst Theater with a session devoted to the United Kingdom, featuring the Britten String Quartet #2 in C Major, Opus 36 & William Walton's String Quartet #2 in A Minor.

On 30 April at Herbst Theater, Chamber Music San Francisco presents violinist Daniel Hope with pianist Simon Crawford-Phillips, performing Enescu's Impromptu Concertante, Ravel's Sonata Opus Posthumous, the American premiere of Jake Heggie's Fantasy Suite 1803, & Franck's Sonata in A Major.

Instrumental

On 2 April at Davies Hall, the San Francisco Symphony presents cellist Yo-Yo Ma & pianist Kathryn Stott performing the Berceuse, Opus 16 by Fauré, Songs My Mother Taught Me by Dvořák, Menino by Sérgio Assad, Cantique by Nadia Boulanger, Papillon, Opus 77 by Fauré, the Cello Sonata in D minor, Opus 40 by Shostakovich, Spiegel im Spiegel by Arvo Pärt, & César Franck's Violin Sonata in A major (transcribed for cello).

Cal Performances brings Japanese troupe Drum Tao & its 30th anniversary tour to Zellerbach Hall on 11 - 12 April.

The Dewing Piano Recital Series concert will take place at the Jeannik Méquet Littlefield Concert Hall at Mills College on 14 April, & will feature Varvara Tarasova playing solo works by Brahms & Schumann (the concert is free but you must register to attend).

San Francisco Performances presents the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain at Herbst Theater on 16 April; the program will be announced from the stage.

The San Francisco Symphony presents pianist Yefim Bronfman at Davies Hall on 21 April, when he will perform Schubert's Piano Sonata in A minor, Opus 143, Schumann's Faschingsschwank aus Wien, Opus 26, Esa-Pekka Salonen's Sisar, & Chopin's Piano Sonata #3 in B minor, Opus 58.

San Francisco Performances presents cellist Camille Thomas at Herbst Theater on 23 April, where she will perform works by Chopin as arranged by Auguste Franchomme & Mischa Maisky, a Nocturne & Air Russe Varié by Franchomme, & David Popper's Hungarian Rhapsody, Opus 68.

Early / Baroque Music

The San Francisco Early Music Society presents violinist Rachel Barton Pine & harpsichordist Jory Vinikour in a program of sonatas & partitas by Bach on 5 April at First Presbyterian in Palo Alto, 6 April at First Congregational in Berkeley, & 7 April at Saint Mark's Lutheran in San Francisco.

Cal Performances brings countertenor Jakub Józef Orliński & Il Pomo d’Oro to Zellerbach Hall on 9 April, where they will perform a program of baroque rarities by Monteverdi, Marini, Caccini, Frescobaldi, Kerll, Strozzi, Cavalli, Pallavicino, Netti, Sartorio, Jarzębski, & Moratelli.

Paul Flight leads the California Bach Society in a program of North German Masters, featuring music by Buxtehude, Schop, Tunder, & Bach, on 26 April at Saint Mark's Lutheran in San Francisco, 27 April at All Saints' Episcopal in Palo Alto, & 28 April at Saint Mark's Episcopal in Berkeley.

Under the heading Bach's Favorite Instruments, Jeffrey Thomas will lead the American Bach Soloists in Bach's Concerto in A Minor for Violin, his Concerto in D Major for Harpsichord, his Concerto in A Major for Oboe d’amore, & his Sonata in G Major for Two Flutes, as well as Telemann's Concerto in G Major for Viola & his Concerto in A Major for Flute, Violin, and 'Cello (with featured soloists YuEun Kim & Tomà Iliev on violin, Corey Jamason on harpsichord, Stephen Hammer on oboe d'amore, Bethanne Walker & Vincent Canciello on flute, Joseph Howe on violoncello, & Yvonne Smith on viola, & you can hear them 26 April at Saint Stephen's in Belvedere, 27 April at Saint Mark's Episcopal in Berkeley, 28 April at Saint Mark's Lutheran in San Francisco, & 29 April at Davis Community Church in Davis.

See also Handel's Serse at the SF Conservatory of Music, listed under Operatic.

Modern / Contemporary Music

On 1 April at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music there will be a composer portrait concert for David Conte, featuring his Elegy for Violin and Piano, selections from his one-act ballet Brokeback Mountain, the aria Willow from his opera East of Eden, Aria and Fugue for Viola and Piano, & Piano Trio #2.

On 5 April, Ensemble for These Times will collaborate with the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (at the Conservatory's Barbro Osher Recital Hall) in a multimedia exploration of Expressionist music from the Second Viennese School & new music inspired by it, featuring the world premieres of a new chamber arrangement by TJ Martin of Berg's Sieben Frühe Lieder & two trios by David Garner & Valerie Liu, as well as music by Schoenberg, Webern, & Adam Schoenberg, & the winner of the SFCM TAC Department's student composition competition.

Celebrating the 100th anniversary of the American premiere of Pierrot Lunaire & the 150th birthday of its composer, the great Arnold Schoenberg, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players will host a two-day mini festival on 20 - 21 April at the Taube Atrium Theater: on 20 April, Pierrot RE:imagined gives us Kevin Day's un(ravel)ed, Katherine Balch's Musica Spolia, the American premiere of Massimo Lauricella's E Piove in Petto una Dolcezza Inquieta (with featured soloist soprano Winnie Nieh), Andrew Norman's Mine Mime Meme, & Mason Bates's Difficult Bamboo (before the concert Bates will be interviewed by SFCMP Artistic Director Eric Dudley); & on 21 April, Pierrot RE:encountered gives us Joan Tower's Petroushskates, selections from Schoenberg's Cabaret Songs, Jessie Montgomery's Lunar Songs: I. and III, & Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire, which will be accompanied by a newly commissioned animated video by Simona Fitcal; mezzo-soprano Rachel Calloway will be the vocal soloist for the Montgomery & the Schoenberg selections.

Sarah Cahill’s Backstage Pass, presented by Amateur Music Network at Old First Concerts on 22 April, will feature Theresa Wong performing music from her album Practicing Sands & talking about composing & improvising on cello & other instruments.

On 25 April at the Center for New Music, the Nathan Clevenger Trio (which also includes Jordan Glenn & Cory Wright) will be joined by Phillip Greenlief & Marié Abe to celebrate the release of the Trio's new album, Unsettled by the Ocean, with an evening of improved & composed material..

On 26 April at the Center for New Music, violinist & composer Concetta Abbate will perform a program of her music for solo violin & voice to "showcase her new music and arts organization Sound & Memory", which seeks to "incorporate music into contemporary rituals for both grief and death."

Other Musical Traditions

The San Francisco Conservatory of Music will offer an evening of Jewish Music on 5 April; the program is yet to be announced.

The Ali Akbar College of Music will host a 15th Annual Birthday Tribute to Maestro Ali Akbar Khan. featuring vocalist Pandit Uday Bhawalkar as well as Alam Khan & Manik Khan on sarod & Pandit Swapan Chaudhuri on tabla performing Indian classical music, at Old First Concerts on 13 April.

On 26 April, Old First Concerts will present ZOFO (pianists Eva-Maria Zimmermann & Keisuke Nakagoshi) in Echoes of Gamelan, a program examining the influence of gamelan music on western composers, including Debussy, Godwosky, Gustav Holst, George Crumb, Brian Baumbusch, Ni Nyoman Srayamurtikanti, as well as transcriptions by Colin McPhee of Balinese ceremonial music.

The Berkeley Bluegrass Festival will take place 26 - 28 April at Freight & Salvage.

In celebration of the 25th anniversary of 69 Love Songs, the Magnetic Fields will perform the entire album live over two nights (26 - 27 April are sold out, but shows have been added on 28 - 29 April) at the Curran Theater.

Dance

The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater makes its annual springtime return to Zellerbach Hall & Cal Performances from 2 to 7 April, with five different programs: Program A (on 2 & 6 April), contains Dancing Spirit (Ronald K Brown, to music by Duke Ellington, Wynton Marsalis, Radiohead, War), Me, Myself and You (Elizabeth Roxas-Dobrish, to music by Duke Ellington, arranged by Damien Sneed & performed by Brandie Sutton), Solo (Hans van Manen to music by Bach), & Revelations (Alvin Ailey, to traditional spirituals); Program B (3 April) contains Following the Subtle Current Upstream (Alonzo King, to music by Zakir Hussain, Miguel Frasconi, & Miriam Makeba), CENTURY (Amy Hall Garner, to music by various artists), & Are You in Your Feelings? (Kyle Abraham, to music by various artists); Program C (4 April) contains Following the Subtle Current Upstream (Alonzo King, to music by Zakir Hussain, Miguel Frasconi, & Miriam Makeba), Me, Myself and You (Elizabeth Roxas-Dobrish, to music by Duke Ellington, arranged by Damien Sneed & performed by Brandie Sutton), & Revelations (Alvin Ailey to traditional spirituals, performed live at this performance by vocalists Chenee Campbell, Nia Drummond, Sean Holland II, & Marvin Lowe; The Revelations Choir and Band, comprised of Bay Area musicians; conducted by Damien Sneed); Program D (5 & 6 (matinee) April), contains Ailey Classics, featuring Reflections in D & excerpts from Memoria, Night Creature, Pas de Duke, Masekela Langage, Opus McShann, Love Songs, & For ‘Bird’ – With Love, & Revelations (Alvin Ailey, to traditional spirituals); Program 3 (7 April, matinee) contains Following the Subtle Current Upstream (Alonzo King, to music by Zakir Hussain, Miguel Frasconi, & Miriam Makeba), CENTURY (Amy Hall Garner, to music by various artists), & Revelations (Alvin Ailey, to traditional spirituals).

Vertical.Show, a combination of pole & aerial sports with modern choreography, plays the Great Star Theater in SF's Chinatown from 4 to 21 April.

The San Francisco Ballet starts the month with Next@90 Curtain Call, a program repeating some of the hits from last year's festival – Gateway to the Sun (choreography by Nicolas Blanc, to music by Anna Clyne), Violin Concerto (choreography by Yuri Possokhov, to music by Stravinsky), & Madcap (choreography by Danielle Rowe, to music by Pär Hagström) – & that runs between 2 & 13 April.

From 4 to 14 April, the San Francisco Ballet presents Dos Mujeres, a program featuring the world premiere of Carmen, with choreography by Arielle Smith to music by, no, not Bizet, but Arturo O’Farrill; &, for  those who feel they just haven't heard enough about Frida Kahlo lately, the SF Ballet premiere of Broken Wings, with choreography by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa to music by Peter Salem.

If you missed the Oakland Ballet Company's Dancing Moons Festival 2024 performance in March at the Oakland Asian Cultural Center, you can catch the same program (a reprise of Layer Upon Layer by Caili Quan, Ballet de Porcelaines by Phil Chan, & highlights from Exquisite Corpse by Elaine Kudo, Seyong Kim, & Phil Chan, & excerpts from the work-in-progress Angel Island, based on Huang Ruo’s composition inspired by poems carved into the walls of the west coast immigration detention center) at ODC in San Francisco on 5 - 6 April.

Nancy Karp + Dancers collaborate with the Friction Quartet & Haruka Fujii (percussion) & David A Jaffe (mandolin & mandocello) in Eppur si muove, a world premiere set to Sundial by Samuel Adams & fly through the night, and land near dawn, set to music by David A Jaffe, & that's at the Taube Atrium Theater on 6 - 7 April.

From 18 to 24 April, San Francisco Ballet will present an encore of the popular world premiere season opener, Mere Mortals, with choreography by Aszure Barton & music by Floating Points; the story is, as I understand it, a mash-up between Artificial Intelligence & the legends of Orpheus; the performance will be followed by an after-party.

Alonzo King LINES Ballet's spring program, featuring three works by King – a world premiere, a reimagined version of The Collective Agreement (in collaboration with jazz pianist Jason Moran & light-installation artist Jim Campbell), & Concerto for Two Violins (to music by Bach) – will be performed at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts on 5, 7, & 10 - 14 April (the performance on the 11th will include a Q&A with King).

Cal Performances presents the Mark Morris Dance Group in Socrates, to the score by Erik Satie, & the world premiere of Via Dolorosa, set to Nico Muhly's The Street, using texts by Alice Goodman; as usual with MMDG, the music is live; you can experience it all at Zellerbach Hall on 19 - 21 April.

Art Means Painting

MOAD is opening its next round of exhibits on 27 March: we have !!!!!, the first solo museum show for British artist Rachel Jones; Unruly Navigations, which "testifies to the urgent, disorderly, rebellious, and nonlinear movements of people, cultures, ideas, religions, and aesthetics that define diaspora"; Value Test: Brown Paper featuring Mary Brown's "portraits depicting fictional Black women rendered in oil on brown paper bags. The eponymous “paper bag tests” were historically conducted amongst the Black upper classes to gauge entry into elite spaces, granting access only to those lighter than the brown paper" (Value Test runs through 19 May & the other two exhibits through 1 September).

Creative Growth: The House That Art Built, celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of Creative Growth, "the first organization in the United States dedicated to supporting artists with developmental disabilities", opens at SFMOMA on 6 April & runs through 6 October.

Two exhibits are opening at the Legion of Honor on 6 April: Japanese Prints in Transition: From the Floating World to the Modern World, examines the modernizing, westernizing Meiji-era changes in the ukiyo-e tradition, & Zuan-cho: Kimono Design in Modern Japan (1868 – 1912) examines kimono design books (zuan-cho means “design idea books”) from the same period.

A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration opens at BAM/PFA on 13 April & runs through 22 September, the exhibit "features newly commissioned works across media by twelve artists, including Akea Brionne, Mark Bradford, Zoë Charlton, Larry W. Cook, Torkwase Dyson, Theaster Gates Jr., Allison Janae Hamilton, Leslie Hewitt, Steffani Jemison, Robert Pruitt, Jamea Richmond-Edwards, and Carrie Mae Weems", all examining the experience & legacy of the Great Migration.

Phoenix Kingdoms: The Last Splendor of China’s Bronze Age, highlighting recent archaeological discoveries from the Zeng & Chu states conquered by the First Emperor, opens at the Asian Art Museum on 19 April & runs through 22 July.

Cinematic

Berkeley & the Movies, an exhibit at the Berkeley Historical Society, opens on 7 April.

The good news is that the San Francisco Silent Film Festival's annual extravaganza is back; the bad news, at least for those of us who are nondrivers in the East Bay, is that due to the renovation/ruination of the Castro Theater, it is being held this year at the Palace of Fine Arts, a much less transit-friendly venue; nonetheless, the 10 - 14 April schedule holds many treasures, all with the SFF's signature live accompaniment.

As usual the Roxie in San Francisco has a lot going on, including the new documentary Carol Doda Topless at the Condor, 40th anniversary screenings of Hayao Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli release Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, & more in the series Taipei Tales: The Cinema of Edward Yang.

As part of its Unscripted series, the Curran Theater presents two evenings with John Cusack: on 18 April they will screen High Fidelity & on 19 April Being John Malkovich; both shows are followed by a discussion with Cusack that will include audience questions.

The San Francisco International Film Festival runs 24 - 28 April this year in various Bay Area locations; the programs have not yet been announced but when they are you can find them here.

Museum Monday 2024/13

 

detail of The Annunciation by Jan van Eyck, now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

today, 25 March, is the feast of the Annunciation

Friday Photo 2024/12

 

pear blossoms

Poem of the Week 2024/12

Provide, Provide

The witch that came (the withered hag)

To wash the steps with pail and rag,

Was once the beauty Abishag,

The picture pride of Hollywood.

Too many fall from great and good

For you to doubt the likelihood.

Die early and avoid the fate,

Or if predestined to die late,

Make up your mind to die in state.

Make the whole stock exchange your own!

If need be occupy a throne,

Where nobody can call you crone.

Some have relied on what they knew;

Others on being simply true.

What worked for them might work for you.

No memory of having starred

Atones for later disregard,

Or keeps the end from being hard.

Better to go down dignified

With boughten friendship at your side

Than none at all. Provide, provide!

– Robert Frost

Is this a comic poem, or a tragic one? On the one hand, the sharp & steady rhyming is a style we tend to associate, in English-language verse, with cleverness & wit. There's an epigrammatic worldly wisdom here. & there is the colorful & striking opening warning: a glamorous movie queen, now a decrepit old charwoman! Shades of Norma Desmond, the delusional has-been star of that acerbic tragicomedy, Sunset Boulevard.

But on the other hand, the view of life here is unrelentingly cynical & bleak: can anyone read the words Better to go down dignified / With boughten friendship at your side without a little heartbreak? The poem seems to exclude the possibility of friendship that isn't boughten. The use of the unusual dialect word helps emphasize the thought. When I did some quick research on boughten, I found this usage note from Merriam-Webster: The adjective 'boughten' means "the opposite of homemade," or "bought." It can also suggest that something that should have been freely given was paid for, as in "a boughten endorsement." So the sadness is underlined: friendship, something that should have been freely & mutually given, must be purchased. One thinks of old novels & movies with imperious dowagers & their humble, & humbly paid, companions. Friendship, love, family, faith, society: none of them come through in the absence of cash.

Abishag as a Hollywood star's name is meant to suggest the vanished days of silent cinema, when they were still seen as a quaint & extravagant & somewhat ludicrous interlude (before the distance of time & the increased availability of the actual films led to the period's reassessment). It's the very early days of Hollywood that are evoked, when Griffith was filming Judith of Bethulia & Theda Bara was the reigning vamp. Abishag here is not even a real queen, but one invented by a Hollywood studio, destined to reign only as long as her pictures made the studio money. Abishag is undoubtedly not her real name (Theda Bara was Theodosia Goodman from Cincinnati); we never find out her real name, which clearly is no longer important to the world. (There are, or recently were, attempts to reclaim terms like witch & crone & reframe them as powerful titles for wise & experienced older women; their usage in this poem predates these efforts.)

But there also is an Abishag in the Bible: in the First Book of Kings, first chapter, we are told that Abishag the Shunammite was brought to King David as, basically, a bedwarmer for the aged & enfeebled king, who could not get warm. We are told that David, presumably impotent through age, did not have sex with her. Nonetheless, as she was considered a concubine of the great king, she became a passive player in the struggle for succession, as Adonijah, brother of Solomon, asks to marry her (which would implicitly make Adonijah, if not king, then close to it). Solomon sees the threat, has his brother killed, & we hear no more of Abishag. It turns out the original Abishag's moment of glory was as fleeting & frail as her movie-star namesake's.

Between the rise & fall of Abishag & the grim picture of boughten friendship, the speaker expands & explores possible ways of escaping this harsh reality: only there really is no escape. The most hopeful suggestion is to die early, & it's made in a flip sort of way, not as a serious argument urging suicide. Or perhaps you are predestined to die late. Predestined is an interesting word here, a theologically freighted word; it conjures up salvation or damnation by an arbitrary God, one regardless of good works (see Saint Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians). This is one of several Biblical/theological echoes that remind us that although Frost was born in San Francisco, he spent much of his life in New England, & assumed the flinty persona of an old-school New England farmer.

More advice follows, equally high-flown & not really useful: make yourself master of the stock market! Ascend a throne! Abishag, both Biblical & cinematic, tell us how difficult it is to attain & retain any sort of throne. As for the stock market, it is significant that the money-making method the poet cites is one of the least stable (the memory of the great crash of 1929 haunted several generations), & one that, at the time, would have been inaccessible to most citizens. This sort of thing is typical of the advice most people give, in that it's not really practical, or even possible, for most people (after all, there can only be one person on a throne at a time, & only so many thrones are available). In this world, even sound advice is uncertain, illusory, almost mocking in its ease of presentation & its difficulty of attainment.

Even the consolations of memory are denied us. The hard end is upon us. Recalling our past glories does not atone (another theologically loaded term; there are theological echoes throughout this poem, but no presence of God or any other spiritual force) for the disregard coming our way (we may remember, but others do not; the world is fickle & constantly moving on). We are admonished to provide, provide for ourselves, presumably by laying up what money we can: a thrifty & scrimping (& so perhaps also a narrow & joyless) life. It's an amusing but also harsh twist on the familiar poetic adjurations to gather rosebuds while we may or to seize the day. So is this a comic poem, or a tragic one? I can't answer my own question, rather than to say it contains both perspectives. At least the poem, unlike life as presented in the poem, offers us more than one possibility.

I took this poem from the Library of America edition of Robert Frost: Collected Poems, Prose, & Plays, edited by Richard Poirier & Mark Richardson.

Museum Monday 2024/12

 

detail of Laocoön by El Greco, his only surviving painting of a mythological subject, now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Live from the Met: La Forza del Destino

La Forza del Destino is one of my favorites by Verdi (or maybe just one of my favorites), so I went out last Saturday for the Metropolitan Opera livecast. I had forgotten, perhaps out of self-preservation, the ads that precede the show, in which ridiculously earnest yet very, very posh voices assure us that the arts "inspire us" & bring "us" together (once again, who is we?), meanwhile touting luxury products (like Rolex watches) that I have no interest in, even if I could afford them. I object to considering art, no matter how costly or specialized, a luxury-lifestyle accessory, so I slouch in my seat, simmering with proletarian rage, while they hit their beats.

Forza used to be done more often & is now something of a rarity. When asked about this during one of the intermission features, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Music Director of the Met & other places & our afternoon's conductor, first mentioned what he called the "convoluted" plot, followed by the need for a certain type of singer. I suspect it's more about the singers, though the plot is one of those that regularly get sneered at. As with Trovatore, ridiculing the plot misses the point, I think. It's meant to be convoluted & coincidental & far-fetched; how else are you going to illustrate the forza of destino? Again, as with Trovatore, a plot teetering on the edge of absurdity is meant to make the point that the universe is, in fact, absurd. The Forza personages frequently call on the mercy of God & His (Catholic) Mother, but ultimately (though only implicitly), these are shown to be fictions powerless against the pointless cruelty of existence.

This was a new production, by Mariusz Treliński with sets by Boris Kudlička. Paradoxically, I liked the production while finding moment after moment wrongheaded or, in my view, just wrong. The idea is that this is a contemporary fascistic military state (similar to Franco's Spain, perhaps) that devolves into internecine chaos after the leader, the Marquis of Calatrava, is killed. The overture has a dumb-show acted out throughout, & though it's nicely timed timed to the moods & suggestions of the music, it all seems . . . a bit unnecessary, perhaps? What are we learning here that we can't see in the first scene? Is it so difficult, even in our very visually oriented society, to sit & just listen to some instrumental music? We are at the swank hotel Calatrava, for a celebration of the Marquis's birthday. The agitated Leonora enters (or exits, as she is walking out of the party; the set keeps rotating, showing us interior & exterior). She is smoking a cigarette (such a trashy & banal directorial touch), which she stubs out – agitation! We see her lover, Don Alvaro, costumed like a rock-band roadie. They are preparing to run off. He has to hide as she gets pulled back into the party. Her father wants her. It's intimated that he wants her in more than one way. Most of this information, of course, is conveyed in the first scene – only the Marquis is portrayed as pretty much a creep; he drinks too much & is a lech & has a weird thing with his daughter: so why is she so reluctant to run away from him? If he isn't a kind & generous father, though one who is limited by his sense of social status & propriety, why should she hesitate to escape from his control?

Padre Guardiano is played by the same performer (Solomon Howard), &, weirdly, instead of a contrast with the Marquis, he seems to be the same type: when Leonora comes to his monastery seeking protection, he is strangely handsy with her, & she with him, in a way that seems implausible for an older man who is an austere but kind spiritual director & a completely distraught woman trying to escape the world. At one point I think he slaps her, though I actually doubted by eyes, given how bizarre & unnecessary that would be. At a few later points, when the Marquis is long dead, & we expect the Abbot, he shows up in his military Marquis outfit. It's a bit confusing, though the metaphorical intention is clear (perhaps all too clear). Another weirdness: Leonora arrives at the convent after a car crash, so her raincoat & face & hands are covered with blood. At no point does either of the priests she speaks to, first Fra Melitone & then Padre Guardino, offer her a towel or something so she can wipe off the blood. They just . . . carry on a long conversation. With a woman covered in blood. Really?

And when Guardiano agrees that she can take the place of the hermit, & he summons the friars to let them know, she is, again weirdly, visible to them – not even a veil covers her face. Isn't it obvious they're not supposed to know who she is, or even that she's a she? Otherwise, why, at the end, would the wounded Alvaro think she was a priest who could give him the last rites? The friars also form two lines & strike her with switches as she passes through on her way to the hermitage. Why? What penance is this?

That scene is, of course, the famous invocation to La Vergine Degli Angeli, & the music, both hushed & soaring, pleading yet serene, carries an emotional power that overrides any questions about the staging. Musically, the performance is at a suitably high level. Lisa Davidsen as Leonora is strong yet touching. Her voice has what seemed to me a core of gleaming steel (personally, my touchstone for the role is the core of gleaming gold in Leontyne Price's interpretations). As Alvaro, Brian Jagde has power & pathos. (I thought he was more nuanced here than in some of the live performances I've head at San Francisco Opera). Igor Golovatenko, Leonora's vengeful brother Don Carlo, is so persuasive as a man in the grip of an obsessive vendetta that I was really surprised to hear this was his role debut. Judit Kutasi is a surprisingly elegant & fluid Preziosilla. That's one character who really benefits from the staging; instead of a stereotypical stage Roma, she is sort of a glam entertainer/hanger-on associated first with the Hotel Calatrava & then as sort of a USO performer for the troops. Like Mother Courage, she profits off of & sees through war, & ultimately is another of its victims.

The whole mixed-race plot, with Alvaro a descendant of Inca royalty & the Spaniards looking down on him as a half-breed, is pretty much abandoned here. No great loss, though it renders some lines (which were very generically translated in the subtitles) a bit incomprehensible. (It's unclear now why Alvaro, as Padre Rafael, should take offense at being told he looks like "a wild Indian".) A loss that is a bit more important is the underlying sense of very formal aristocratic honor (& entitlement), associated particularly with Spain. If the Marquis of Calatrava is staggering around stage in a semi-drunken state, leering at & fondling showgirls . . . well, you kind of lose that sense of punctilio & propriety that motivates the worldview, & therefore the behavior, of the Vargas family. When Don Carlo di Vargas (in disguise) realizes that his new blood brother in arms is the hated Don Alvaro (also in disguise), & takes care to help him recover from his wounds so that he can kill him in a fair fight, it is both noble & a bit absurd. But if you remove any sense of the manly honor that motivates him to behave this way, the action becomes wholly absurd.

Yet I found the production powerful. It seemed clear that the director, who is from Poland, had the brutal & barbaric invasion of Ukraine very much on his mind in trying to portray what war does to a nation & the people living there. He honors the seriousness of it (Preziosilla's rataplan, rataplan, war is glorious stuff is given with incisive irony). So despite what seemed to me missteps on a detailed level, the production as a whole is – I'll go with honorable. & of course the music, & the committed performers, carry us over any bumps in this long & twisty road.

San Francisco Performances: Jonathan Biss & Echoes of Schubert #2

Last night at Herbst Theater, Jonathan Biss returned for the second of his three-concert series for San Francisco Performances, each coupling an Impromptu & one of the final three piano sonatas by Schubert with a newly commissioned work for solo piano. The series is turning out to be a very rich experience.

The opening was the Impromptu in A-flat Major, #2, played with Biss's characteristic poetic attention & intensity. Biss writes his own program notes, which do exactly what program notes should do: make us aware of what the artists are doing in & with the music, & give us signposts to listen for. The program notes for the second piece, a newly commissioned work from Alvin Singleton titled Bed-Stuy Sonata, were spoken from the stage by the pianist. In accordance with the composer's reluctance to impose interpretation, Biss invited us to listen for ourselves; even the title, which is apparently unusually specific for Singleton – it is a nickname for the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, where the composer grew up – is not meant to trigger any sort of association, nostalgic, pictorial, or biographical; when asked by Biss about the title, Singleton replied that his titles were mostly meant for himself & not the performer or the audience.

It is a wonderful, striking piece, clearly virtuosic without empty flash. Solemn, pillar-like notes move forward in a stately procession, their sounds reverberating to the border of silence, to be followed by glittering, muscular but somehow tender, cascades of notes. This dense complexity alternates with the slower pillar-like moments (the piece is all in one movement). The sonata ends with a little uptick in the sound which seems like a question, left unanswered & dying away in the air. The whole thing is redolent of an urban setting, with tall buildings & tumult & grace notes of calm & near-silence. It could also, though, describe a purely interior landscape. Last night was only the second public performance of the piece. I know I keep saying of new music I wish they had played it twice, but, you know, somebody really needs to do that. For this piece Biss used a tablet with the music, which he could forward with a pedal, which audibly amazed the old woman with clanging "artistic" bracelets a few rows behind me.

After the intermission we had the Sonata in A Major D 959. Aside from the obvious beauty of the rolling & swirling currents of sound, I appreciate Biss's emphasis on the psychological & moral complexity of this music; framing it as Schubert's way of processing his impending & very early death, he emphasizes the struggle & the strangeness of what's going on; the silences are as telling as the sounds. The moments of near-breakdown emerge with clarity from the formal structures trying to contain & process them. As with the first concert in the series, the encore was another short piece by Schubert.

The audience was mostly well-behaved, though the first piece was disturbed by a person on the left who kept "whispering" loudly "I can't sit here!" Before the performance some people in that section had been complaining about a high-pitched hum or beep; I didn't hear it so I wasn't sure, but one of them kept saying that high-pitched sounds weren't audible to old people but he could hear it, so maybe there was something. I don't know why the other person couldn't just quietly move to an empty seat during the first piece instead of letting us all know he couldn't sit there. & I've mentioned the woman with clanging bracelets. I will self-righteously note that I was wearing several bracelets, only mine didn't clang, clash, or chime. At least this time there wasn't an idiot who brought his goddamn lapdog in, as happened at the Lawrence Brownlee concert.

The next & final concert in the series, which I am very much looking forward to, will be on 2 May. My write-up of the first concert is here.

Friday Photo 2024/11

 

a goose near the Gardner Museum, from my 2019 trip to Boston; I wonder if this bird is still alive

Poem of the Week 2024/11

In the Darkness, Someone Is Playing Guitar

In the darkness, someone is playing guitar

singing of red roses

or swaying poppies in the countryside

or maybe some other nameless flower

A courtyard with pines, at first light

filled with fallen pinecones, sparrows hopping

a black umbrella and a hat

lying submerged at the bottom of the pond

Midnight snowflakes billow up from the bridge

rising above my head, into the starry sky

They look down on the town from on high

like El Greco

The countryside blooms with blood-red flowers

Someone is playing guitar in the dark

The pearl earrings you took off

roll around the tabletop

Bumping into each other, the pearls make

the faintest of sounds – it's the poppies

swaying open – it's someone

strumming a guitar again in the dark

    

                                                    May 19, 2015

– Wang Yin, translated by Andrea Lingenfelter

I don't know if Yin intended this, but this poem seems to me like a tribute to Lorca: the (apparently) Spanish setting, the beautiful but unsettling & somewhat surreal images, the intimations of love & death.

People are here, but at a remove: someone is playing a guitar,  but the person is unseen in the darkness, & perhaps their language is unknown to the poet: the roses & poppies, so vividly present in the first stanza, are merely guesses by the speaker as to what the song sounds like: red roses (associated with romantic love), beautifully swaying poppies (associated with drugs, dreams, & death), or, he admits, maybe some other nameless flower; the anonymous flower has its own mystery. Whatever the song, it brings these floral intimations, with their suggestions of a deeper world, manifested in these noises in the dark.

In the second stanza, we are suddenly in a courtyard with pines; again, there must be people who built & live in the courtyard, but they are not presented; the darkness is just beginning to recede, & we see fallen pinecones & little birds. The pine trees are present only in the form of their fallen seeds (the pinecones). Did someone plant these trees, or is this courtyard a rural retreat? A more direct intimation of human inhabitants comes in the third line, with a black umbrella & a hat, which we are told are submerged at the bottom of the pond. The effect is not startling; the phrasing is too calm for that, but it is unsettling. How long have these items been there? Long enough to be submerged. But how did they get there? Blown off in a storm, or intentionally abandoned? What happened to whoever carried the umbrella & wore the hat: did the person (we don't know the gender) die in the pond? Accidental death, or maybe suicide? You can't rule out murder; it's one of the darker implications underlying the gorgeous images of this poem.

Images & setting change again in the third stanza. Although the transition is abrupt, it doesn't seem so; there is an underlying harmony, a dream- & image-logic, to the very strong visuals here that unites disparate places & times. We are back to the darkness: it is midnight, & though it is snowing, the sky is clear enough for the speaker to see the stars are visible & shining. In another subtly unexpected divergence from normal nature, the snowflakes are whirling up rather than down. Is this related to the way winds play around the bridge? Why is the speaker under a bridge at midnight? 

Is the bridge related to the pond, with its hidden umbrella & hat? We receive another intimation of mortality in the mention of El Greco: his elongated Mannerist saints & angels give a celestial touch to the scene, but there is no direct mention of Heaven or God; instead, we have the divine represented by an artist, with an aesthetic & comprehensive gaze on whatever is happening on earth. (& who is the they looking down like El Greco? the stars, the ascending snowflakes?)

In the fourth stanza, the flowers return. This time, they unite the sensuous roses & the death-tinged poppies; the flowers are blood-red. We are back in the darkness, so is the speaker just projecting this color, this union of life & death, onto the flowers? Or are these blooms, like the ones in the first stanza, not in the ground but the air, summoned by the singer's art into the speaker's listening imagination? As with the second stanza, we have a person appearing indirectly, in the form of items she was wearing & has removed: her pearl earrings. Why did she remove the earrings? Getting ready for bed, because it's night, & preparing to sleep, or to sleep with someone? The lovely iridescence of pearls is not mentioned, though the word carries the image into our minds; instead, the adornments are evoked by the sound they make (this is a poem of strongly visual images, many of which are actually present only as sounds or suggestions).

The final stanza flows directly from the preceding one; it is the only stanza in this poem that seems to relate directly to the one that precedes it, creating a sort of culminating image, one that is surprisingly vivid, given how delicate & distant it really is: the faint sound of pearls bumping together as they roll on a tabletop (why are they rolling? were they taken off in haste & tossed down, despite their value? if they were removed abruptly, then why?) This sound, barely there, ties together other image-strands of the poem: the sound of the pearls is also the sound of the poppies opening is also the sound of someone strumming a guitar in the dark – someone strumming a guitar again in the dark; this moment of beauty & apprehension is not unique, but one that is recreated over & over.

The images here are detached, in several ways: separated from each other, & a step or two removed from people. Some of them are only imaginary. Yet together they create a complex of strong images & feelings, vivid & beautiful yet also uncertain & unsettling.

I took this poem from the wonderfully titled collection A Summer Day in the Company of Ghosts by Wang Yin, translated by Andrea Lingenfelter, issued by New York Review Books.