detail of Bacchus & Ariadne by Corneille Van Clève, an early eighteenth-century French bronze now in the Legion of Honor
29 September 2025
27 September 2025
Another Opening, Another Show: October 2025
Usually I would launch this preview with some wit & wisdom for you, but I seem to have developed a new thing where I go to a performance & come down with a terrible headache, & I've been to several performances lately (write-ups to follow, once headaches subside), so you will have to supply your own wit & wisdom this time, possibly with help from one of these events:
Potpourri
Intermusic SF presents the 18th SF Music Day on 19 October at the War Memorial venue (Herbst Theater, the Green Room, the Taube Atrium Theater); as usual, there will be a smorgasbord of local musicians ("20 local ensembles, with over 85 artists performing for 6+ hours of continuous music . . . including blues, chamber-folk, classical, early, experimental, jazz, new, tango, world music – and everything in between"); unlike previous editions, there is a (minimal) admission charge for this one, due to unrelenting cutbacks for arts funding, particularly on the federal level.
Theatrical
From 8 October to 2 November at Z Below, Word for Word and Z Space present Hard Times: Appalachian Stories by Ron Rash, featuring The Night the New Jesus Fell to Earth, Sad Man in the Sky, & Hard Times, directed by Jim Cave & Amy Kossow.
The Oakland Theater Project presents The Courtroom: A Reenactment of One Woman’s Deportation Proceedings (transcripts arranged by Arian Moyad), based on the case of a Filipina married to a US citizen who accidentally checked the wrong box on her driver's license form & fell into the Kafka-esque world of the US immigration system, & that runs 9 - 19 October at the Flax Theater in Oakland.
Ray of Light Theater presents its annual immersive production of Richard O'Brien's The Rocky Horror Show, with D'Arcy Drollinger as Frank N Furter, from 9 to 31 October at the Oasis in San Francisco (as this venue is a nightclub selling alcohol, audience members must show proof that they are at least 21 years old).
From 10 - 12 October at the Potrero Stage, Modest Miracle Productions presents In Our Own Words, a found text play by Jackie B; this is the first show by this group, a collective of theater professionals who want to use the medium to explore 12-step programs & recovery.
From 11 October to 2 November, Theater Lunatico at La Val's Subterranean presents Frankenstein, adapted by Tina Taylor & directed by Lauri Smith; the production highlights the female characters in Mary Shelley's original novel.
From 16 to 19 October at Zellerbach Playhouse, UC Berkeley's Department of Theater, Dance, & Performance Studies presents The Trials by Dawn King, directed by Daniel Larlham, a "dystopian courtroom drama set in a near future devastated by climate change" in which "a jury of twelve teenagers deliberates, argues, and passes judgment on the adults who failed to act while there was still time".
New Conservatory Theater Center presents the world premiere of Spanish Stew by Marga Gomez, directed by Richard A Mosqueda, about a young Latina lesbian who moves to 1970s San Francisco & recreates a family recipe while creating a family of choice, & that runs 17 October to 23 November.
From 22 October to 9 November at the Orpheum, BroadwaySF presents Suffs, the Broadway musical created by Shaina Taub about the American women's suffrage movement.
From 23 October through 23 November, the San Leandro Players present Thunder Rock by Robert Ardrey, directed by Daniel Dickinson; "On the eve of WWII, a man seeks solace in a lighthouse on Lake Michigan as he flees the world and its problems. When all looks darkest, a collection of ghostly figures help him find the strength and courage to rejoin the world of the living."
From 25 October through 10 November at ZSpace's Steindler Stage, Golden Thread Productions & Z Space present the world premiere of Pilgrimage by Humaira Ghilzai & Bridgette Dutta Portman, directed by Michelle Talgarow, about five women, friends & relatives, who make a pilgrimage to Mecca.
ACT in association with BroadwaySF present Stereophonic by David Adjmi, with original music by Will Butler, directed by Daniel Aukin, the much-praised show about a rising 1970s rock band recording their new album, amid increasing expectations & tensions, & that will be at the Curran Theater from 28 October to 23 November.
Berkeley Rep presents the west coast premiere of The Hills of California by Jez Butterworth, directed by Loretta Greco, about four sisters, intended by their mother to be a singing group, returning as adults o their childhood home in England, & that plays from 31 October to 7 December.
Operatic
Livermore Valley Opera presents Verdi's La Traviata, conducted by Alexander Katsman & directed by Candace Evans, with Avery Boettcher as Violetta, Brad Bickhardt as Alfredo, & Krassen Karagiozov as Father Germont, & that's 27 - 28 September & 4 - 5 October at the Bankhead Theater in Livermore.
West Bay Opera presents Samson et Dalila by Camille Saint-Saëns, conducted & directed by José Luis Moscovich & featuring John Kun Park as Samson, Kim Stanish as Dalila, & Kellen Schrimper as the High Priest of Dagon, on 10, 12, 18, & 19 October at the Lucie Stern Theater in Palo Alto.
October is strangely quiet at San Francisco Opera, but the month ends with something big: their first production in 25 years of Parsifal; Eun Sun Kim conducts, continuing her traversal of Wagner's works; Matthew Ozawa directs, & the cast includes Brandon Jovanovich in the title role, Kwangchul Youn as Gurnemanz, Brian Mulligan as Amfortas, Tanja Ariane Baumgartner as Kundry, & Falk Struckmann as Klingsor, & you can experience it all on 25 & 28 October & 2, 7, & 13 November. In conjunction with these performances, the Wagner Society of Northern California is presenting two lectures: on 18 October, via Zoom, Paul Schofield will discuss his book The Redeemer Reborn, Parsifal as the Fifth Opera of Wagner’s Ring, & on 1 November at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, Thomas Grey will discuss Outside/Inside: Sacred Spaces in Parsifal.
On 24 & 26 October at the Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek, Festival Opera joins with the Diablo Symphony Orchestra in a concert presentation of Verdi's La Traviata, conducted by Matilda Hofman & staged by Richard Harrell, with Jamie Chamberlin as Violetta, Nathan Granner as Alfredo, & Zachary Gordin as his father.
Opera Parallèle presents the world premiere of Hello, Star, with music by Carla Lucero & a libretto by Jarrod Lee (based on the book by Stephanie V. Lucianovic celebrating the contributions of Black women to science); this "family friendly" opera will play 25 - 26 October at the Creativity Theater in the Children’s Creativity Museum at Yerba Buena Gardens.
Choral
On 28 October at Freight & Salvage in Berkeley, Kitka Women's Vocal Ensemble will join with Kurbasy (from L'viv, Ukraine) in Songs from the Ukrainian Forest. a celebration of eastern European vocal folk traditions as well as "democracy, peace, and justice".
Vocalists
On 4 October at the SF Jazz Center, vocalist Kurt Elling, joined by pianist Christian Sands, will perform music from his recent album Wildflowers.
On 5 October in Hertz Hall, Cal Performances presents mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter with Kristian Bezuidenhout on fortepiano performing Schubert's Schwanengesang along with some of his keyboard works.
On 5 October at Freight & Salvage in Berkeley, you can spend An Afternoon with Holly Near: Songs, Stories and Breathe! with pianist Jan Martinelli accompanying Near.
On 6 October at Davies Hall, the SF Jazz Center presents Ledisi in For Dinah, her tribute to blues great Dinah Washington.
Jazz / cabaret singer Paula West performs two shows of her signature mix of the Great American Songbook & classic American pop (Dylan, Bowie, &c) at the Piedmont Piano Company on 11 October.
On 12 October at the SF Jazz Center, Martha Redbone & her sextet will celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day.
On 24 October at Herbst Theater, San Francisco Performances presents baritone Benjamin Appl with pianist James Baillie performing their Homage to Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, a program featuring lieder by Schubert, Albert Fischer-Dieskau, Klaus Fischer-Dieskau, Brahms, Hugo Wolf, Reimann, Tchaikovsky, Eduard Künneke, Hanns Eisler, Grieg, Carl Loewe, Clara Schubert, & Carl Maria von Weber.
Lila Downs returns to Cal Performances & Zellerbach Hall on 25 October with her annual celebration of Día de los Muertos.
On 25 October, at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music's Barbro Osher Recital Hall on Van Ness Avenue, pianist Craig Terry, as the culmination of his Voice Department residency, will lead Beyond the Aria, a program featuring Terry, soprano Christine Goerke, & baritone Hugh Russell, as well as Conservatory voice students, performing an as-yet unannounced program.
Orchestral
On 3 October at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music's Hume Concert Hall, Kedrick Armstrong leads the Conservatory Orchestra in the Concerto Competition Winners Program, featuring Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's The Bamboula, Berlioz's Les nuits d'été (with competition winner Cristina Villalobos, soprano), & Bartók's Viola Concerto (with competition winner Zoe Yost).
On 4 October at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Donald Lee III leads the Bay Area Rainbow Symphony in the California premieres of Damien Geter's Sinfonia Americana & Joel Thompson's To Awaken the Sleeper (to a text from James Baldwin) along with the Beethoven 5.
On 4 October at Herbst Theater, Jessica Bejarano leads the San Francisco Philharmonic in an all-Beethoven program, featuring the Fidelio Overture, the Triple Concerto (more formally, the Concerto for Violin, Cello, and Piano in C major, Opus 56, with respective soloists Cordula Merks, Amos Yang, & John Wilson), & the Fifth Symphony.
On 5 October at First Congregational in Berkeley, Edwin Outwater leads the Berkeley Symphony in Refracted Light, a program consisting of Samuel Adams’s Chamber Concerto (with violin soloist Helen Kim), Yaz Lancaster's Gender Envy, & the Haydn 100, the Military (First Congregational is much smaller than the Berkeley Symphony's former hall, Zellerbach, & I notice their September concert is sold out, so if this program look interesting to you, you might want to buy tickets sooner rather than later).
Here's what's happening orchestrally at the San Francisco Symphony this month: on 3 - 5 October, Gustavo Gimeno leads the band in the world premiere of an SFS commission, Market Street, 1920s by Timothy Higgins, along with Grieg's Piano Concerto (with soloist Javier Perianes), & the Tchaikovsky 5; on 16 - 18 October, Jun Märkl makes his SFS debut leading the band in Bartók's Violin Concerto #2 (with soloist Leonidas Kavakos) & Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé (full score, not the suite); & on 24 - 26 October, David Afkham makes his SFS debut leading the band in Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto (with soloist Sergey Khachatryan) & the Shostakovich 8.
On 17 October at the Paramount Theater, Kedrick Armstrong leads the Oakland Symphony in Anna Clyne's This Midnight Hour, Ravel's Piano Concerto in G (with soloist Sara Davis Buechner), Adolphus Hailstork's Symphony #1, & Stravinsky's Firebird Suite (1919 version).
Jory Fankuchen leads the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra in Beethoven's Egmont Overture, selections from Jennifer Higdon's Dance Card, & Max Bruch's Violin Concerto #1 (with soloist Robin Sharp,), & you can hear it all on 17 October at Saint Mark's Lutheran in San Francisco, 18 October at First United Methodist in Palo Alto, & 19 October at First Presbyterian in Berkeley; admission is always free & RSVPs are not required but appreciated.
Cal Performances brings London's Philharmonia Orchestra & conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali to Zellerbach Hall on 18 - 19 October for two different programs: on the 18th you can hear Beethoven's Piano Concerto #5, the Emperor (with soloist Víkingur Ólafsson), Gabriela Ortiz's Si el oxígeno fuera verde, & the Sibelius 5; & on the 19th you can hear Sibelius's Finlandia, Ravel's Piano Concerto in G major (again with soloist Víkingur Ólafsson), & the Shostakovich 5.
Chamber Music
If you're free & in Berkeley on Wednesdays at noon, the UC Berkeley Music Department has free concerts at Hertz Hall: this month, on 15 October you can hear the University Baroque Ensemble, directed by David Miller, performing works by Telemann, & on 22 October you can hear violinist Phoebe Wu & pianist Vanness Yu performing an all-Beethoven program. If you're free at noonish on Tuesdays & in the Financial District, you can go to Old Saint Mary's for the Noontime Concerts series (the October concerts have not been announced yet – I believe they release the schedule quarter by quarter , but you can check here to see what's coming up).
On 5 October at Noe Valley Ministry, Noe Music presents James Austin Smith & his group American Wind Soloists in a program that includes works by Mozart, Ruth Gipps, & Smetana.
On 5 October at the Berkeley Hillside Club, as part of their series Chamber Music Sundaes, the Tomodachi Quartet (Cordula Merks & Mayumi Wyrick, violins; Amy Hiraga, viola; Peter Wyrick, cello), joined by pianist Anton Nel, will perform Amy Beach's Piano Quintet F minor Opus 67& Robert Schumann's Piano Quintet E-flat Major Opus 44; & on 28 October at the Berkeley City Club, Berkeley Chamber Performances presents the Quartet in a program of Ravel, Debussy, Caroline Shaw, & Piazzola.
On 10 October at Hertz Hall, the UC Berkeley Wind Ensemble, led by Matthew Sadowski, will perform Third Suite by Alfred Reed, Crescent Moon Dance by Akito Matsuda, & Eric Whitacre's Godzilla Eats Las Vegas.
On 11 October in Herbst Theater, San Francisco Performances presents the Attacca Quartet (Amy Schroeder & Domenic Salerni, violins; Nathan Schram, viola; Andrew Yee, cello) performing Haydn's String Quartet, Opus 50, #5, The Dream, David Lang's daisy (arranged by the Attacca), & Bartók's String Quartet #4.
On 12 October in Hertz Hall, Cal Performances presents the Isidore Quartet (Adrian Steele & Phoenix Avalon, violin; Devin Moore, viola; Joshua McClendon, cello), who will perform Haydn's String Quartet in B-flat major, Sunrise, Gabriella Smith's Carrot Revolution, & Dvořák's String Quartet in G major.
On 14 October, at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music's Barbro Osher Recital Hall on Van Ness Avenue, the Conservatory presents its monthly Chamber Music Tuesday, this time featuring flutist Demarre McGill, who will be joined by SFCM faculty & students to perform Allison Loggins-Hull's Hammers for Flute and Percussion Trio, Alyssa Morris's Motion for Woodwind Quartet, John Corigliano's Three Irish Song Settings for Soprano and Flute, Miguel Del Aguila's Submerged for Flute, Viola, and Harp, Valerie Coleman's Maombi Asante for Flute, Violin, and Cello, Amy Beach's Theme and Variations for Flute and String Quartet, & Erberk Eryılmaz's Raki Havasi for Woodwind Quintet and Duval.
San Francisco Performances continues its popular Saturday morning Herbst Hall lecture / concert series, with host / lecturer Robert Greenberg & the Esmé Quartet (Wonhee Bae & Yuna Ha, violins; Dimitri Murrath, viola; Yeeun Heo, cello) exploring the quartets of Schubert; on 18 October, the centerpiece will be his String Quartet #13 in A Minor, Rosamunde.
On 19 October at Davies Hall, a chamber group of musicians from the San Francisco Symphony will perform Andy Akiho's 21, Martinů's Quartet for Clarinet, Horn, Cello, and Snare Drum, Richard Strauss's Till Eulenspiegel einmal anders! (as arranged by Hasenöhrl), & Janáček's String Quartet #2, Intimate Letters.
On 24 October at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music's Hume Concert Hall, Brad Hogarth leads SFCM’s Wind Ensemble, joined by SF Symphony trumpeter Aaron Schuman, to perform Shuying Liu's In this Breath (this piece will be conducted by Jason Gluck), Oskar Böhme:'s Concerto for Trumpet & Wind Ensemble, Michael Gilbertson's Usonian Dwellings, & Percy Grainger's Lincolnshire Posy.
On 31 October at Herbst Theater, San Francisco Performances presents Spooky, a Halloween-appropriate program with the Kronos Quartet (David Harrington & Gabriela Díaz, violins; Ayane Kozasa, viola; Paul Wiancko, cello) & pianist Timo Andres, performing music from Philip Glass's score for Dracula, selections from Bernard Herrmann's score for Psycho, selections from George Crumb's Black Angels, works by Nicole Lizée, Penderecki, Oswald (no first name given, & an Internet search reveals several composers with that surname, so adventure ahoy!), as well as the world premiere of an Edward Gorey-inspired work by Gabriel Kahane.
Instrumental
On 10 October in Herbst Theater, San Francisco Performances presents Jeffrey & Gabriel Kahane performing Heirloom for two pianos, which Gabriel wrote for his father Jeffrey; they will also perform other works for two pianos.
On 11 October at Saint John's Presbyterian in Berkeley, Four Seasons Arts presents pianist Rochelle Sennet playing Bach's Overture in the French Style, BWV 831, the African Sketches for Piano by Nkeiru Okoye, the Adagio in F minor by Joseph Bolone, Chevalier de Sant-Georges, Carnaval: Suite of Five Dances by Montague Ring, & Souls of Alkebulan by James Lee III.
On 17 October in Herbst Theater, San Francisco Performances presents pianist Conrad Tao exploring the relationship between Rachmaninoff & popular music in a program featuring pieces by, of course, Rachmaninoff, as well as Billy Strayhorn, Sondheim, Schumann, Irving Berlin, & Harold Arlen.
On 18 October at Saint Mark's Lutheran, San Francisco Performances in association with the OMNI Foundation for the Performing Arts present guitarist Meng Su, performing the world premiere of Where the Echo Sings by Viet Cuong, as well as pieces by Bach (arranged by Koonce), Agustín Barrios Mangoré, Francisco Tárrega, & Sergio Assad.
On 19 October at Davies Hall, the San Francisco Symphony presents a solo recital by pianist Marc-André Hamelin, who will perform Beethoven's Hammerklavier sonata, Schumann's Waldszenen, Opus 82, & Ravel's Gaspard de la nuit.
On 25 October at the Berkeley Piano Club, Four Seasons Arts presents violinist Nathan Amaral performing Debussy's Violin Sonata, the Violin Sonata Opus 14 by Leopoldo Americo Miguez, Mozart's Violin Sonata In B-flat Major, Francisco Paulo Mignone's Valsa de Esquina #2, & Elgar's Violin Sonata in E minor, Opus 29.
On 30 October in Zellerbach Hall, Cal Performances presents pianist Nobuyuki Tsujii, also known as Nobu, performing Beethoven's An die ferne Geliebte (as arranged by Liszt), his Appassionata sonata, Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker Suite (as arranged by Pletnev), & Prokofiev's Piano Sonata #7.
Early / Baroque Music
The California Bach Society, led by new Artistic Director Nate Widelitz, performs Cori Spezzati: The Spatial Art of Split-Choir Sound, as exemplified in works by Bach (including his double-choir motet Singet dem Herrn), Schütz, Willaert, Phinot, & others, & you can hear them on 3 October at Saint Mark's Lutheran in San Francisco, 4 October at First Congregational in Palo Alto, & 5 October at Saint Mark's Episcopal in Berkeley.
The San Francisco Early Music Society presents Tasto Solo in La Flor en Paradis—The New Musical Art in Europe, 1250-1350, a program "exploring motets, liturgical music, devotional songs, and Medieval secular dances and monodies from major historical sources such as the Codex Las Huelgas and the Montpellier Manuscript;"; Tasto Solo consists of Guillermo Pérez, organetto & direction; Anne-Kathryn Olsen, soprano; Natalie Carducci, medieval fiddle; & David Mayoral, percussion; & you can hear them 10 October at First Presbyterian in Palo Alto, 11 October at First Congregational in Berkeley, & 12 October at Saint Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal in San Francisco.
On 12 October at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music's Hume Concert Hall, the SFCM Baroque Orchestra will celebrate the music of Venice with performances of Vivaldi's Concerto for Strings and Continuo in C Major, Giuseppe Torelli's Concerto in D Minor, Opus 6 #10, & a suite of dance music from Andrè Campra's delightful opera Le Carnaval de Venise (yes, I've seen this opera: Boston Early Music Festival, 2017).
Václav Luks leads Philharmonia Baroque, joined by soprano Maya Kherani, in Fury & Heartbreak, a program exploring music of the Italian baroque through Galuppi's Concerto for Strings #4 in C minor, Benedetto Marcello's Ariadne Abandoned, Handel's Armida Abandoned, Francesco Durante's Concerto for Strings #2 in G minor, & Vivaldi's In the Fury of Most Righteous Wrath, & you can experience it all on 16 October at Herbst Theater in San Francisco, 18 October at First Congregational in Berkeley, & 19 October at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts.
On 19 October at Calvary Presbyterian in San Francisco, the San Francisco Bach Choir under Artistic Director Magen Solomon performs the program Viva Vivaldi: Magnificat, Gloria, and Dixit Dominus.
Jeffrey Thomas leads the American Bach Soloists, as well as guest vocalists Mary Wilson & Morgan Balfour (sopranos), Ágnes Vojtkó (contralto), Kyle Tingzon (countertenor), Jon Lee Keenan (tenor ), & Jesse Blumberg (baritone) in a musical re-creation of A Grand Tour, featuring Handel's Eternal Source of Light Divine, Bach's Orchestral Suite #1 in C Major, Vivaldi's Gloria, & Handel's Dixit Dominus, & you can take the trip on 24 October at Saint Stephen's in Belvedere, 25 October at Saint Mark's Episcopal in Berkeley, 26 October at Saint Mark's Lutheran in San Francisco, & 27 October at the Davis Community Church in Davis.
Modern / Contemporary Music
On 11 October in Zellerbach Hall, Cal Performances presents the Kronos Quartet (David Harrington & Gabriela Díaz, violins; Ayane Kozasa, viola; Paul Wiancko, cello) performing world premieres by Victoria Shen & Dai Wei, as well as Nicole Lizée's Death to Kosmische, Angélica Negrón's Marejada, & Jonathan Berger's arrangement of the traditional song Ya Taali’een ‘ala el-Jabal (inspired by Rim Banna); the performance also includes "Beyond the Golden Gate, a hybrid performance-discussion-screening with Bay Area community activist David Lei that explores the impact of Chinese Americans on American culture".
The Friction Quartet (Otis Harriel & Kevin Rogers, violins; Mitso Floor, viola; Doug Machiz, cello) performs Giant Tiny Steps, a program curated by Machiz of works from the last decade – Juri Seo's Just Intonation Etudes, the world premiere arrangement (for string quartet and bassoon, with Jamael Smith on bassoon) of Rui’s Tango by Marcelo Nisinman, selections from Taylor Joshua Rankin's Sun, Will Grow, & the String Quartet #3 by Samuel Adams – & you can hear it all 18 October at the Berkeley Piano Club & 19 October at the Noe Valley Ministry in San Francisco.
The Other Minds Festival 29 will be held 16 - 19 October at Brava Theater in San Francisco; there are panel discussions as well as concerts, & you can buy a festival pass or tickets for individual sessions:
* the first night features Pamela Z performing Simultaneous, "an intermedia composition for voice, electronic processing, chamber ensemble, speech samples, gesture control, and projected video."; the program also features Peter Garland's Songs of Exile and Wine, performed by singer Maria Tegzes & pianist Geoffrey Burleson;
* on the second night, the Friction Quartet, violinist Helen Kim, percussionist Haruka Fujii, & pianists Conor Hanick & Sarah Cahill will perform works by Samuel Adams (including a world premiere, commissioned by Cahill, writtenas a tribute to Ingram Marshall); the program also includes a performance by Libby Van Cleve on English horn of Marshall's Dark Waters;
* on the third night, you can see the world premiere of a choreographed work by Nancy Karp set to James Tenney's Three Pieces for Drum Quartet, as well as Kristine Tjøgersen's Piano Piece (for piano, electronics, & live camera), performed by pianist Ellen Ugelvik & visual artist Evelina Dembacke, as well as composer/harpist Zeena Parkinss & percussionist William Winant's performance of Parkins' Modesty of the Magic Thing, based on the drawings of Jay DeFeo, & on Lou Harrison’s American Gamelan tuning;
* & on the fourth & final night, Putu Septa, leader of the ensemble Nata Swara, will "perform an intercultural set of music for gamelan instruments and piano with fellow Balinese musician I Kadek Janurangga and ZOFO, the Bay Area piano duo of Eva-Maria Zimmermann and Keisuke Nakagoshi, including music by Ni Nyoman Srayamurtikanti, Brian Baumbusch, and Colin McPhee".
Jazz / Blues
See also a number of jazz/blues singers listed above under Vocalists.
The Paul Cornish Trio (Cornish on piano, Jonathan Pinson on drums, Jermaine Paul on bass) perform in support of Cornish's new recording, You’re Exaggerating, at the Piedmont Piano Company on 4 October.
As usual, the SF Jazz Center has some concerts lined up to celebrate the 10 October birthday of Thelonious Monk (& if you're looking for an excellent biography of the jazz master, let me recommend Robin DG Kelley's Thelonious Monk: The Life & Times of an American Original): on 3 October, drummer Jaz Sawyer, joined by bassist Gary Brown & pianist Grant Levin, along with guests Mike Olmos (trumpet) & James Mahone (tenor sax), will perform music from the Art Blakey / Monk collaboration Jazz Messengers; on 10 October, pianist Sean Mason will perform a solo set dedicated to Monk's music; also on 10 October, the Danilo Pérez, John Patitucci, Adam Cruz Trio (Pérez on piano, Patitucci on bass Cruz on drums) will honor Monk with an evening of "reimagined classics"; on 11 October, Mason returns with his Trio (Mason on piano, Felix Moseholm on bass, Domo Branch on drums) to perform (not sure how much of this concert will be dedicated to Monk, but I'm sure it will be good); & on 12 October Mason will be back, this timed with trumpeter Anthony Hervey, to perform music by Monk as well as some of their own original compositions.
On 18 - 19 October at the SF Jazz Center, Aki Kumar (harmonica & vocals, with other players to be announced later) celebrates Diwali with his blend of Chicago blues & traditional Indian music.
From 23 to 26 October at the SF Jazz Center, the Branford Marsalis Quartet (Marsalis on saxophones, Joey Calderazzo on piano, Eric Reevis on bass, & Justin Faulkner on drums) perform music, including a sizable helping of Keith Jarrett compositions.
Akira Tana and Otonowa, led by Tana on drums, along with Masaru Koga (reeds & shakuhachi), Art Hirahara (piano), Ken Okada (bass), & special guest Jimi Nakagawa (taiko), will present traditional & pop Japanese songs done in an American jazz style at the Piedmont Piano Company on 25 October.
On 30 October at the SF Jazz Center, you can hear some high-powered Latin Jazz with Tito Puente Jr & Néstor Torres (Fuente on percussion, Torres on flute, with other players to be announced).
Dance
On 2 - 4 October at Zellerbach Hall, Cal Performances presents the Paris Opera Ballet in the North American premiere of Red Carpet, choreographed by Hofesh Shechter; the Cal Performances website notes that there will be live music, but if it says what the music is, or who it's by, they have hidden the information, but the cornucopia that is the Interwebs tells me that "True to his characteristic style, Hofesh Shechter has also created the soundtrack for Red Carpet, a haunting music with folkloric overtones that matches his “glamorous” and “punk” choreography."
The Grand Kyiv Ballet performs Swan Lake at the Palace of Fine Arts Theater on 3 October.
Mostly Museums
The Berkeley Historical Society's latest show, Berkeley's Latino Community, opens on 21 September.
The Museum of the African Diaspora (MOAD) celebrates its 20th anniversary with Continuum: MoAD Over Time, opening on 1 October & running through 16 August 2026, an exhibit exploring the Museum's art & influence, including works by Cheryl Patrice Derricotte, Chester Higgins Jr, JoeSam, Richard Mayhew, Ramekon O’Arwisters, Gordon Parks, Lava Thomas, & Sam Vernon.
Manet & Morisot opens at the Legion of Honor on 11 October & runs through 1 March 2026.
Boom and Bust: Photographing Northern California opens at the de Young on 18 October & runs through 7 June 2026.
Rave into the Future: Art in Motion opens at the Asian Art Museum on 24 October & runs through 12 January 2026.
Cinematic
Here's what's happening at BAM/PFA this month: the Mill Valley Film Festival screens at the Archive from 3 to 12 October; & Frederick Wiseman: America at Work, the much-praised retrospective of the documentarian's films, opens on 18 October with Ex Libris: The New York Public Library & closes on 19 February 2026 with Meat.
3rd i SF International South Asian Film Festival runs at the Roxie in San Francisco from 10 to 12 October.
On 19 October at the Marina Theater in San Francisco, the Grand Feature Film Orchestra will provide live musical accompaniment to Chaplin's The Rink & Keaton's The Scarecrow & his One Week.
On 23 October at the Curran Theater, BroadwaySF presents the "50th Anniversary Spectacular Tour" of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, hosted by Nell Campbell (Columbia in the film); expect hijinks a-plenty.
This month's Classic Movie Matinee at the Orinda Movie Theater, held as usual on the last Tuesday of the month (28 October), will be 1958's Bell, Book, and Candle with Kim Novak & Jimmy Stewart.
On 30 October at Davies Hall, Conner Gray Covington leads the San Francisco Symphony in a live performance of Bernard Herrmann's score for a showing of Hitchcock's Vertigo.
The SF Jazz Center usually sponsors an appropriate silent film for Halloween, but this year they are treating us to two, both at Grace Cathedral & both with live musical accompaniment by organist Dorothy Papadakos: on 30 October, you can see Lon Chaney in The Phantom of the Opera, & on 31 October, you can see FW Murnau's "Symphony of Horror", Nosferatu.
26 September 2025
22 September 2025
Museum Monday 2025/38
detail of Legend by Lee ShinJa, currently on view at BAM/PFA as part of Lee ShinJa: Drawing with Thread
(the label gives the title as Legend, but this tapestry is hung so that the back is visible, exposing a label giving the title as Myth, so I guess the viewer can make the call)
20 September 2025
San Francisco Opera: Rigoletto
Yesterday was my first visit to the San Francisco Opera this season, midway through the run of Rigoletto, a magnificent production of this magnificent opera. It's wonderful to see a standard war-horse of an opera (meaning one considered sure-fire at the box office) not being taken for granted but instead lavished with care & consideration, reminding us why it became a classic in the first place. Conductor Eun Sun Kim produced sounds that were lush yet propulsive; the soloists & chorus were fully committed to their roles, & included sharp stage business I didn't remember from previous productions; the singers held notes just a bit longer, pianissimos floated just a bit more ethereally, than expected; so much beauty & skill to examine the complexities & highlight the sordid tragedies of this work.
This production uses the de Chirico-inspired sets (designed by Michael Yeargan) familiar from previous stagings here of Rigoletto; this was a good as well as probably economical decision, as the sets are striking & effective, setting the stage, literally, for this world that is beautiful & empty. The buildings, often an undifferentiated black, lean in at odd angles, like a German Expressionist film set; the windows glow with strange bright colors: acid greens, icy deep blues, a burning red (the interior of Rigoletto's house, where he hides his beloved daughter Gilda, glows with this red, the color of passion &, since this is Catholic Italy, martyrdom). The buildings are crowded in, leaning over the action, but empty of human life (the action all takes place in front of them, or in the one large room off to the side which converts from Rigoletto's house to the "inn" of Sparafucile & his sister Maddalena, the hired killer & his sex worker/accomplice sister representing a grotesque inversion of the loving family represented by the jester & his daughter). The buildings of the se are omnipresent, looming, a bit threatening beneath the aesthetic veneer, but ultimately empty of human life or warmth: in short, an apt summation of the swirling & glittering world of the Duke's cruel & superficial court.
The slight air of unreality, of representation poised right above the "realistic", helps propel us into the very foreign world of this opera, a world in which family honor is a matter of utmost importance & in which a curse can have actual meaning. (Who these days, coming in off the street, really believes in either of those things?) Rigoletto is unnerved by the thunderous curse of Count Monterone, &, of course, ultimately the curse does land on his head. But Monterone has also, simultaneously, cursed the Duke, who blithely escapes all punishment – vengeance does not alight on the strong & powerful, or perhaps it's really the seductive & charming, the sexy, who escape (it's the Duke's handsome figure & winning ways that lead Maddalena to plead with her brother to kill a substitute instead).
The substitute, of course, is Gilda, seduced & abandoned by the Duke, who nonetheless acts to save his life by giving up her own (apparently agreeing with the poet that Love is not Love that alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove). I know a lot of people who have problems with her. I find her an original & even unsettling character; raised in isolation, she knows little of the world she is naively eager to join, but isolation has not left her fearful, & has given her some startlingly bold ideas: here we are, in conservative Catholic Italy, in a world where family honor & prestige count for everything, in which women are seen mostly in relation to the men who protect or possess them, & yet she has sex outside marriage with the Duke, chooses him over her family, commits what is essentially suicide (a grave sin), & while dying not only doesn't repent: she (with breath-taking audacity) assures her father that she is going right up to Heaven. Her isolation may be what protected her from the conventional social pieties, but she clearly has worked through to some original ideas of her own; her idealism, & her generous (& wasted) love ultimately seem both innocent & perverse. She removes herself from the constrictions of her world, landing simultaneously below & above them, & this is what makes her the epitome of a certain style of the High Romantic: alone & superior, the bold individual outcast against a corrupt & superficial world, a rebuke, by the purity of her soiled existence, to the the humdrum tawdriness of the life around her.
And here I will look at Rigoletto in the light of The Music Man, which I think, probably vainly, might be a first. I first saw the classic 1962 film just a few years ago (I have never seen it on stage), & contrary to what I had heard & assumed, Marian the Librarian was not a naïve, hopeful young woman whose very innocence is what converts con man Harold Hill to honesty: she was, instead, a restless, intelligent woman who understood perfectly well that Hill was very likely a con man who would bring her heartache instead of happiness: but to her the risk was worth it, to have a life that expanded beyond the narrow confines she was trapped in, even if the expansion led to grief & not joy.
Similarly, Gilda ultimately understands what the Duke is worth. Even his brief moment of genuine feeling for her at the beginning of Act 2 (Ella mi fu rapita!) is self-deluding, though sincere: even if we didn't have the little shock of finding out shortly, via a page sent to look for him, that there is, in fact, already a Duchess married to him, it is inconceivable that a Duke would marry the daughter of his jester. But Gilda chooses an impossible love. She chooses to choose, for herself. I think a lot of contemporary audiences end up angry with the social system that led to this situation, & I would agree with their anger, but they also often seem angry with Gilda for making this decision, & I guess that's where I would disagree: what is the freedom to love if it does not include the freedom to be perverse & self-defeating? As with Cio-Cio San, another woman who chooses to reject her family & create her own identity, we may not approve (for whatever our approval is worth) of the identify she has chosen, but it's the essence of her self-creation that she is free to choose what she thinks is right, not what we'd like her to choose, in some ideal world.
That's a lot to lay on one soprano, but Adela Zaharia carries it off. A tall, striking woman with a strong presence, she conveyed Gilda's strength as well as her sorrow. When she is kidnapped, & then when she is re-united with her father, she is wearing a long, angelically floating white robe. As Rigoletto orders the courtiers out & tries to comfort her, he picks up the nearest cloak to wrap her in, meaning to cover & protect her. It is a deep red (again, the color of passion, of sexual shame, & of martyrdom). She soon lets it drop, reverting to her angelic white: she feels she has done no real wrong. The father/daughter duets in this work (& in Verdi's works in general) are justly famous, & the melting Gilda was matched by the volcanic Rigoletto of Amartuvshin Enkhbat. Depths of gorgeous sound issued from him when he was alone with his beloved daughter, but his scorn for the courtiers came from a different place. He constantly prowled around the court, gesturing rudely with his bauble, actively engaged in his satirical (& therefore judgmental) role. Even when he is pleading for help from a courtier who he hopes is sympathetic, he can't resist an alienating, self-defeating jab, noting that it would "cost nothing" for the courtier to help him. Perhaps the daughter inherited some of the father's perversity.
Yongzhao Yu as the Duke floated through his court, projecting the character's easy heedless charm, tossing off his famous aria on the fickleness of women with aplomb. Aleksey Bogdanov thundered authoritatively as Monterone; Peixin Chen made a foreboding Sparafucile (I love the character's flat refusal to cheat a customer by killing him & just taking the money, like a common thief; you can see the bones of Hugo's romantic drama beneath the libretto). J'Nai Bridges is an enticing, complex Maddalena, & I think this is where phrases like "luxury casting" come to mind. All the performers are at a very high level, & that includes the chorus, singing with point & passion. There were staging moments with them that I don't remember from earlier productions: a campy, rather catty re-enactment for the Duke of the kidnapping of Gilda, some coordinated, dance-like movements that looked frivolous & decadent.
I'm kind of sorry to bring down the tone here by mentioning some audience giggles at some of the plot mechanisms – yes, nineteenth century opera / Romantic drama have conventions that now seem outdated to us! Who knew! It's always seemed to me that openness to theatrical conventions, even outmoded ones – openness to the artificial, to the foreign – is the true sign of sophistication, not giggling at plot devices from an obviously different time & place. On the train after the performance, I ended up talking with two young women who asked about Rigoletto. (They were coming from Ray of Light's production of the musical Nine to Five, which they said was really good.) One of them mentioned a man I've often seen around Civic Center after opera performances (he was there again last night). He clearly has a trained operatic voice. He also clearly has fallen on hard times, for the usual reasons, & is now trying to create an acceptable life for himself. The woman who brought up this man said she wished someone would write an opera about him & his struggles, titling it with whatever the masculine equivalent of La Traviata would be. She saw the connection between the world of Romantic opera & the streets around us: beyond the theatrical styles of another time, beyond the outdated concerns for family honor & suchlike, those are our contemporaries on stage: the bitter joker, the heedless, privileged man of power, the young woman who loves not wisely but too well, the sneering, shallow crowds the circulate around the powerful, mocking the weak, the person whose anger ends up destroying himself: this is news from our own time. With this production, San Francisco Opera has done justice to the truth of Verdi[s vision.
19 September 2025
15 September 2025
12 September 2025
08 September 2025
05 September 2025
01 September 2025
Museum Monday 2025/35
detail of American Nude Series (Woman with Elbow on Raised Knee) by Viola Frey, now at the Oakland Museum of California
29 August 2025
25 August 2025
Museum Monday 2025/34
detail of The Crowning of Mirtillo by Ferdinand Bol, now in the Legion of Honor
Mirtillo is a young shepherd disguised as a woman so he can be near his beloved Amarillis; he has won the kissing contest she suggested & she is crowning him/her victor
22 August 2025
West Edge Opera: Wozzeck
The final opera in this year's West Edge Opera Festival was Alban Berg's Wozzeck, with Hadleigh Adams in the title role & Emma McNairy as Marie, conducted by Jonathan Khuner & directed by Elkanah Pulitzer. I am always glad for a chance to hear anything by the Second Viennese School composers, & this powerful, rich, & resonant score is always welcome, & though I had some reservations about some aspects of the production, on the whole this was a strong performance of a modernist classic.
My reservations mostly had to do with some aspects of the staging. The single set is a bank of chairs, with a clinical greenish look, as if we were in an operating theater or a lecture hall. You get a sense of surveillance, often with an educational veneer, & pedagogic techniques made omnipresent & intrusive – all very well, but the seats weren't actually used much. People rarely sat in them or watched from them, so it was more of a potential metaphor than an actual piece of stagecraft. There was a large drain in the center of the stage that was used for a number of things (the site of experiments on Wozzeck, when water is poured on him; the site of Marie's murder, when buckets of symbolic blood are emptied on her; the site of the pond in which Wozzeck dies) & it is, again, suggestive of lives going down the drain, of wasted resources & abilities, but it wasn't quite the centerpiece of the staging that I was expecting.
This brings us to the topic of what we've heard about a production before we see it & how it influences our viewing; I had been told that the drain was absolutely essential & that the use of it was the reason the opera was, against usual practice, performed with an intermission. Maybe I'm missing something (I say that sincerely) but I didn't see how its use made the intermission necessary, & though I was grateful for said intermission (the first time so I could move away from the people next to me – seriously, who brings a bag of crinkly snacks to Wozzeck? – & the second time so I could relieve the ache in my arthritic knees by standing & walking), it really does lower the dramatic temperature to have a break after only about half an hour.
We open of course with Wozzeck shaving his Captain (Spencer Hamlin), who berates him for pretty much anything he does, because he can, being a Captain & all, & then Wozzeck goes to the Doctor (Philip Skinner) who pays him pennies (to Wozzeck, essential income) for participating in bizarre experiments, such as not urinating (the need to urinate is purely mental!). Both the Captain & the Doctor, strongly sung, very present, are absurdly, cruelly funny in their limited vision & their way of berating & controlling their social inferior. Then the Drum Major (C Michael Belle), with whom Marie will have an affair, comes on. He is plump & preening & very very pleased with himself. The absurdist, cruel-edged humor should continue. Instead, this staging has the Drum Major smack Marie around & then sexually assault her. It's a shame they went for this generic, not to say cliched, approach to this character, as it removes one element of the strange acerbic comedy of the piece by making the Drum Major just another violent abuser instead of a self-satisfied Maker of Cuckolds. Someone like him wouldn't feel that he has to abuse a woman to win her over. And why is Marie attracted to him if he treats her so brutally? Yes, that could & does happen, but that's a different story, not the one the music tells here. (I'm guessing this is a directorial choice & Belle could have provided a different vision of the character.)
The staging, though often evocative & poetic – I particularly liked having the chorus of children coming in on all fours, backs arched, like the feral animals children are, before straightening up & doing their thing – is, as I realized when discussing it with some audience members who maybe hadn't seen the opera as often as I have, perhaps a production that works best if you're already very familiar with the action. The staging of Marie's murder & the discovery of her body is particularly confusing, as she gets moved away from the drain/lake but is still supposed to be in the forest so the children can go gawp at the dead woman – you really have to know the appropriate action already for the staging here to make sense.
McNairy is a commanding presence as Marie (making it even more puzzling that she would just continue accepting the Drum Major after he assaulted her), though it's believable that her life is so emotionally impoverished that the pompous Drum Major could win her with a few earrings. The handsome Hadleigh Adams is an affecting & unusually elegant Wozzeck, though perhaps a bit recessive. That's not an inappropriate choice for a character who is so dominated & beaten down by the world around him & its cagework of social systems, but when he breaks out in violence towards Marie at the climax it's undercut because we've already seen the Drum Major behaving the same way. It becomes just more of the same.
All that aside, any chance to hear this score (led with strength by Khuner) & to see these superb performers is a pleasure. Obviously I didn't agree with all the staging, but better a production that makes you ponder why you don't like something rather than one that makes you sit back & see just what you expect to see.
West Edge Opera: David & Jonathan
For those who love baroque opera as I do this is a bit of a golden age, but even so works of the French baroque are still a bit rare, despite their great beauty, & I assume it's because staging works originally financed by an absolute monarchy are more demanding on modern budgets than those paid for by the fickle audiences of London, so I was excited to have the opportunity to see Marc-Antoine Charpentier's David & Jonathan at West Edge Opera, directed by company director Mark Streshinsky & led musically by Adam Perl.
I decided to prep by listening to the recording I was sure I had, though as I dug through the boxes & boxes & piles of CDs (if you saw the quantity you would understand why I was so sure I had a recording already) I realized that somehow I had missed this one. Of course I forthwith bought a couple of recordings, one of which came with a blu-ray of a production done in Versailles, which is musically beautiful & gorgeous to look at but frankly incoherent even for someone familiar with the Bible & Handel's Saul. So let me say right off that Streshinsky & Pearl have shaped the work into something that made sense, had dramatic & emotional flow, & was extremely moving, so well done West Edge.
The work's potential incoherence lies not only in the original libretto by the Jesuit priest François Bretonneau – as a work written by a priest for a Jesuit college, he doesn't need to spell out certain plot elements, such as the reason the Witch of Endor is startled & angry when she discovers Saul's identity – but also in its original performance circumstances, as it interlarded a spoken drama in Latin on the same subject that presumably clarified identities & relationships. To add to the confusion, Jonathan in our day is often played by a soprano, & though cross-gender casting is frequent in baroque opera, & even one of its appealing characteristics, it makes more sense to have a tenor play the role, as was done at West Edge (Aaron Sheehan was Jonathan & Derek Chester was David, & both performed with sweet sincerity & plangent beauty).
This version opens at the court of Saul, King of Israel (as everyone who knows the story knows, Saul is a plum dramatic role, intensely sung here by Matthew Worth). There is a celebration of David's victories; we start by seeing his defeat of Goliath re-enacted, to the delight of the court, by a giant puppet of the Philistine champion &, playing David, one of the four agile dancers prominently featured in this production (Marcos Vedoveto, Christopher Nachtrab, Max van der Sterre, & James Jared, & unfortunately I do not know which danced David; the choreography is by Benjamin Freedman & the puppet design by Paul Hayes). There is some initial comic by-play between the two combatants, including puppet Goliath literally knocking David over with his Big Swinging Dick, until the famous slingshot is produced & David beheads the puppet foe, to the delight of the court of Israel (& that of the West Edge audience).
This is a striking & clever opening, as it sets the tone for what we're going to see: a theatrical representation of a story that is already well known, played in a dramatic, stylish way in front of a court that is also theatrical & on display, with a cheerfully explicit sexuality. As David & Jonathan watch the battle, it is clear that they are in love with each other. This production is what would nowadays be termed joyfully queer. There is a certain element of fantasy to this approach – any dynastic power is going to demand at some point that its heir get together with someone who can produce a succeeding legitimate heir, & never in the history of royal favorites has any favorite, male or female, been greeted with the simple, clear, & genuine joy with which the court, as represented by the chorus, greets this pairing. But the approach makes basic emotional & dramatic sense & I went with it. (I heard some in the audience later criticizing what they felt were overly explicit moments in the staging but there was nothing that we haven't seen staged plenty of times with male/female couples.)
David & Jonathan go through a coupling ceremony, but David soon has to flee the court, as Saul's jealousy, suspicions, & instability grow. He goes incognito to see the Witch of Endor, who gives him an oracular & striking session (sung with smooth power by Laurel Semerdjian). I know this scene is supposed to take place at night, hidden away, but this was one of several moments when I wished the lighting had been a little brighter, if only so I could fully appreciate the wild black loops & Spanish-moss-like hangings of the Witch's outfit (Marina Polakoff designed the costumes). The Ghost of Samuel (Richard Mix) shows up in white, & gravely gives Saul the news he guesses & we already know: he has been jettisoned by Jehovah.
The helpful titles let us know that time has passed; David & Jonathan have been forced by circumstances to separate, & David has found refuge with the Philistines, now fighting for them & their king Achis (sung with easy presence by Wilford Kelly, & the queering of the story continues, as Achis is usually accompanied by handsome young men, in the shape of our dancers). Joabel (a strong Benjamin Pattison) of the Philistine court doesn't like or trust the arrangement with David, & works to incite a war that will end with the deaths of Jonathan & Saul. From there the story unfolds with grace & sorrow, & many of the gorgeous laments beloved of the baroque period; as David is crowned King of Israel, he sobs over the loss of the man he has loved. The story & its ending are both known, but reframed here in a powerfully emotional way.
A little re-arranging, a little re-visioning, & we have a dramatically successful work, beautifully staged. This year's West Edge Festival really went from strength to strength. I'm already looking forward to next season, which will include Handel's Rinaldo.
21 August 2025
West Edge Opera: Dolores
I went to all three operas at this year's West Edge Opera festival, seeing each one twice. First up is Dolores, centered on labor leader Dolores Huerta, with music by Nicolás Lell Benavides & libretto by Marella Martin Koch. I heard West Edge's preview of part of the opera two years ago (my post on that event is here, &, while I have your attention, here is my post on a New Century Chamber Orchestra concert with a different premiere from Benavides). I was very enthusiastic about the work then & after seeing it complete & fully staged I am even more enthusiastic; a few elements that gave me (minor) pause in the preview, particularly the extended victory speech for Senator Robert Kennedy. made sense to me once I saw the whole design. I go to as many new operas as I can & few of them have struck me as so musically & dramatically complete as Dolores. This is a meaty work that audiences will be pondering for quite a while.
I won't repeat (most of) the points I made in my earlier post, so I'll start by discussing the attention given to RFK in the second half of the opera. The day after the premiere, before the first performance of the festival's second opera, I ended up discussing this aspect of the work with someone who objected to the RFK material, wanting more Dolores. First, it's a tribute to the character that the audience wants more of her – much better than wanting less. It's in the spirit of Huerta to be collaborative & to share the spotlight with others, so the opera, by shifting focus, is enacting her personality. And the focus on RFK is necessary because you can't understand why his assassination was such a blow to the farmworkers' movement & to Huerta herself unless you understand the hope he offered: the sincerity, the compassion, the charisma. Though many in the audience clearly remembered the historical events, we are far enough from them so that you can't take for granted that people will grasp who RFK was & what he meant (especially when the name is now associated with the idiot destroying America's public health). When RFK is first mentioned, I heard in the brass subtle echoes of that Virgil Thomson / Aaron Copland "Americana" sound, giving an aural democratic halo to his arrival (though at the first performance – at this point, do I only hear with ironic ears? – I thought I detected a very subtle criticism in this music of the whole concept of "Americana" & political heroes).
References to RFK increase during the first half, but we need to see, hear, & feel him in person, & that's why we need the extended victory speech, in which, along with random little jokes & banalities, you hear him reaching out to what we'd now call marginalized groups (the immigrant farmworkers, mainly Mexican & Filipino; the Black populace) with charm, grace, & inclusiveness. I'm old enough to remember the grape boycott that is a major feature of the opera (my family boycotted grapes, as my mother was a long-time subscriber to Dorothy Day's Catholic Worker paper), but I do not remember RFK & his assassination, or many of the participants in the story other than Cesar Chavez & Nixon. Before the audience can weigh the magnitude of the loss, we have to feel the weight of RFK's presence.
But there is some irony in the treatment of RFK & what is now called the mainstream media. We, attending an opera titled Dolores, know that she is the story here: Huerta, & Itliong, & Chavez, & the workers they fight for. We learn that they've been struggling for years, getting traction only slowly. When does the press show up? When a glamorous politician, a handsome man from a powerful family, shows up & teases running for the Presidency. That's the story the press cares about: the top levels of power, who's in, who's out, & not those toiling anonymously at the bottom of the pyramid. (There was a bit of this going on at the second performance, when State Attorney General Rob Bonta made an appearance, to much buzzing.)
So the events around the grape strike & the RFK assassination are clearly laid out, as prior knowledge cannot be assumed, but there is a certain memory-play aspect to the opera which works powerfully, freeing it from a documentary / straight narrative style into something more suggestively dreamlike, even, at moments, surreal. The dead RFK will appear to Huerta. There are elliptical suggestions of the lives going on out of view while the work gets done. The repeated choruses of No grapes / strike (in both English & Spanish) are a powerful way of suggesting the passage of time. And the on-goingnesss of any lengthy effort – the boycott has been underway for three years when the opera opens – is a difficult thing to convey theatrically, where activities that last for years, whose essence is their grinding, relentless dailiness, must necessarily be compressed into the two hours' traffic of the stage (this is a problem with pretty much every work-related drama I've seen). These chants rise fluidly from the music & action, from the emotions at play, rather than from specific situations; they echo throughout the action.
A good example of what I mean by the almost dreamlike aspect is the treatment of Tricky Dick. His scenes arrive like great slabs of weirdness in between the scenes of the union struggles. Initially he doesn't directly attack the Union or the boycott. Instead, he sings, in sinuous, insinuating tones, about the lovely tastiness of grapes. As he sings, the projection screens behind him show gloriously lit, sparkling, nearly erotic shots of green grapes. Maybe because of that imagery I kept picturing Tricky Dick as the snake in the garden. His music is sprightly, appealing, with a little touch of Weimar cabaret, & a bit of a lounge singer's louche seductiveness. It is indicative of what a powerful, disturbing creation he is that both times I saw the opera the audience, though clearly all-in for Huerta & the farmworkers, burst into applause at the end of his first scene.
Tricky Dick is on a platform, raised above the action. With each reappearance, his message gets a little more sardonic, a little more direct in attacking the Union, though he remains physically above the fray (he does have one appearance on "the floor" during the first act, but he is alone, spotlit on a darkened stage). By the end of the first act, he has grown more direct; he practically snarls in support of "the squares" & the "silent majority" & speaks with increasing stridency about the need for Order & Discipline. So when there is a moment in the second act, after RFK's assassination, when Tricky Dick & Huerta finally confront each other, face to face, down on the floor of the stage & we see what the opera has been building up to, the moment is breathtaking. She defies him with continued calls for a strike. And though we see him go on to become President, we see that she will continue to fight. As she says, the fight isn't over until we win.
The irony, of course, is that Tricky Dick uses words like Order & Discipline as code words for keeping down the people who are already down. They are, in fact, the ones who live lives of discipline & order: we've seen Huerta, a single mother of a large brood, struggling to support her family, pinching pennies, stretching dollars, continuing to work hard every day in the face of injustice & cruelty. That's real discipline, of a kind the politically scheming climber Tricky Dick doesn't understand, or appreciate despite his political success.
Calling the character Tricky Dick rather than Richard Nixon emphasizes the archetypal, recurring nature of the character: he's practically a trickster god, though on the side of complacency & evil. No matter what he does, the ultimate beneficiary is always meant to be himself (I've read Paradise Lost, I recognize the type.) The naming also allows for the freedom to add some Trumpery touches to the characterization: he holds a Bible, but upside down, as in the infamous Bible photo-op, & along with documentary photographs from 1968 we see video from recent No Kings rallies (just in case anyone was missing the sad fact that this opera, set in 1968, is frighteningly relevant now, in 2025).
Let me spring back to the beginning of the opera to look at the character of Dolores. The opera opens with quiet but tense music, as she is being driven (her car is in the shop & she can't afford to get it out until payday) by fellow labor leader Larry Itliong. She refers to her children, & says that her divorce has been hard on them. It's a normal, workaday conversation, & the only other (possible) reference we hear to the divorce is her passing comment later that her children have seen the effects of farm work, & the way farmworkers are treated, on their father. The opera does not give a Wikipedia-style bio of Huerta, but you will get a clear sense of who she is as a person: strong, resourceful, resilient. And very much a person who is about "people power": the power of unions, of uniting, of forming alliances & coalitions.
Her approach is subtly contrasted with that of her fellow leaders, Itliong & Chavez. Itliong is very much about his own ethnic group (the Filipino workers) & has a short fuse, which is sometimes amusing & satirical (as in his sarcastically chipper number about the politicians who talk-talk-talk, while on the screens behind him the jaws of various politicians waggle back & forth in time) & sometimes short-sighted (as in his angry explosions at Huerta & Chavez when things don't go the way he thinks they should). Chavez is a bit messianic, a bit of a loner (he decides on his hunger strike without consulting the others), very much immersed in Catholic ideas of redemption through self-sacrifice (there is an interesting Catholic undercurrent in the opera: as a link between Kennedy & Chavez, as the source of understanding & strength – Huerta calls on Our Lady of Guadalupe as well as Our Lady of Sorrows, for whom she is named).
Huerta is the one who sees the need to keep the workers going with something more light-hearted than self-sacrifice & righteous anger. She suggests a mariachi band, which leads to some lively music & a contrast in dramatic mood, as well as to a lilting & extremely catchy setting of "Are you registered to vote?" It's very danceable; in face we see the three labor leaders dancing to it. It's so catchy that some political group ought to license the rights before the next election.
But there are also drawbacks to Huerta's collaborative approach: is it wise to put all the eggs in the Kennedy basket? There is a bleak chorus before RFK appears warning her not to count on him, that he will be killed the way his brother was. We hear the news of Dr Martin Luther King Jr's assassination, with a somber chorus to Aeschylus's words from Agamemnon about suffering into wisdom through the grace of God. This chorus will be repeated to powerful effect when RFK is shot (the reference to the great Greek tragedian deepens the sense of world-historical suffering & sorrow here).. After he has been shot but is not yet officially dead, Itliong already wants to come up with a new strategy. This is the sort of cold-blooded calculation politicians need. Huerta, though, cannot bring herself to recalibrate so soon. She is dealing with a deep personal as well as political blow – the loss of the first major politician who seemed genuinely willing to listen to them, include them, & help them with actions as well as words.
We get the social / political / community view of things, but there is also a powerful scene of Huerta's inward reckoning. As she prepares for bed, praying, she reflects, thinking of her children, wishing she were with them, knowing that she needs to keep fighting for them & others. The brass instruments have been commenting throughout the opera, sometimes inspirationally, sometimes satirically. But for this scene, they recede, & we have a string-heavy section, interior & searching, with a lovely solo violin floating above. Then as Huerta sleeps, the music changes as Tricky Dick appears again, looming on the platform directly above her, as in an evil dream.
There is another string-heavy scene with violin solo: the aria of the busboy Juan Romero, who cradled RFK right after the shooting. He sings of his recent arrival in America, & of how rare it was for him to be treated with the respect with which Kennedy had treated him the night before, when he delivered room service to him & his wife. This scene shows us the genuine empathy of RFK, the ability to connect with people (or just to notice people) that most others ignore. As with Dolores's nighttime reverie, it is meditative, complex, beautiful: the real life of people, as opposed to what the politicians say or the media report. It is in a generous spirit that this moving aria is given to someone who could be seen in the wider sweep of things as a minor character.
The entire cast is strong & deserved the enthusiastic cheers they received; I'm just going to list names (I discuss the main performers more specifically in the preview post mentioned above): Kelly Guerra as Dolores Huerta, Phillip Lopez as Cesar Chavez, Rolfe Dauz as Larry Itliong, Alex Boyer as Senator Kennedy, Sam Faustine as Tricky Dick, Chelsea Hollow as Helen Chavez / Ethel Kennedy, Sergio Gonzalez as Juan / a Journalist, Caleb Alexander as Paul Schrade of the United Auto Workers: all superb, all memorable. The staging by Octavio Cardenas was masterly & Mary Chun conducted the score with power & tenderness. Dolores Huerta herself was there in person, & spoke after the two performances I saw. She is still powerful, still fighting; the opera ends with her resolution to continue fighting despite the loss of their great ally RFK, & the communal cries of Sí ,se puede ring out so bravely that I felt sure the audience was about to join in (maybe they did, it was hard to tell); the cries end somewhat suddenly, but with the feeling that they are actually still sounding around us. What a memorable event this was! Congratulations to all involved, to West Edge Opera for midwifing, & to Benavides & Martin Koch for producing such a powerful work.
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