Friday Photo

 

in the Mission District, San Francisco

San Francisco Opera: Manon

Years ago I read Manon Lescaut, the novel by Abbé Prévost that launched the charmer on her notorious career; it struck me as more of a parody of a certain type of sensibility-infused romance rather than the thing itself (if you've read early Austen up through Northanger Abbey you know how it struck me), which maybe indicates a basic disjunction between my gestalt and that of the novel & its ensuing dramatic adaptations. I have nonetheless heard multiple recordings & heard the opera live in three other productions, including the last run-through at San Francisco Opera of this Vincent Boussard production, which had fine turns by Elllie Dehn & Michael Fabiano as the lovers. So it's an opera I've heard a surprising number of times, given the basic indifference I felt about it. (I'm talking here about the version by Massenet, though I feel a similar way about Puccini's version.) But during this latest revival of Manon at the Opera I started to feel, to my great surprise, that it was a much better work than I had ever given it credit for.

As with rivers, stepping into, we never hear the same opera twice, but I doubt that anything I've gone through since my last Manon has made me more simpatico with the tale. And this isn't a case in which the production made all the difference, because as mentioned I've seen this production before. And I liked & continue to like it quite a lot, with its gently applied surrealism, its striking tableau, even its metaphorical balloons (at least they're an apt metaphor, being festive, fragile, & ultimately environmentally toxic). Even when the production verges on silliness (or crosses over, depending on your tolerance), as when Manon floats down from above, Mary Poppins-like, clutching a bunch of balloons, it's a thematically appropriate silliness, capturing the frivolous world of Parisian luxury she's temporarily inhabiting.

So what happened to me this time? I think I have to give credit to conductor Eun Sun Kim & to the two leads, Amina Edris as Manon & Pene Pati as the infatuated Chevalier des Grieux (in the off-stage world, Edris & Pati are married to each other). The extra dimensions all three brought to their roles eased my way towards revelation; from the moment the overture started under Kim's direction, I felt an authority & richness in the music that had never really registered with me before. There is a prejudiced tendency to think of French opera, with a few notable exceptions (Carmen, Pelleas, anything by Berlioz) as fairly wispy, but the vitality of this score sprang alive this time under Kim's baton.

Pati has a gorgeous, expressive voice, & there's a certain sunniness that comes through in his performances, joined with a certain level of joyful innocence, that makes him dream casting for the role of an idealistic young man besotted with his first love. But it was what Edris brought to the title role that was the real revelation for me. I remembered finding her voice, strictly as a voice, more gorgeous in the John Adams Antony & Cleopatra, though she certainly sang Manon with great beauty & distinction. But she also brought to her an intelligence & an emotional complexity I haven't seen before in this role.

I've always heard the character of Manon described as "charming", which only goes so far; to me, it's like saying "emotionally trivial but attractive & she knows it" – not necessarily a winning combination, beyond a superficial acquaintance, & you do really have to go beyond the superficial in a performance that lasts close to three & a half hours. Edris captured the passing iridescence of such a character, the lightness & frivolity that convinces the smitten that life & love can always float beautifully on, & that gave a poignancy to her portrayal when it edged into darker moments. Her rendition of the famous Act 2 aria, Adieu notre petite table, was genuinely wistful & moving; I felt sincere love behind her regret that she had to wake up, alone, from their beautiful dream. And when she seduces the clerical Chevalier in Act 4, her motives are complex: yes, she's displaying her sexual power over a former lover (& a vowed celibate), but you also sense her genuine feelings for the man, & her regret that their time of idyllic youth has so quickly passed away.

Because it turns out this opera is pretty hard-headed about the economic basis of society & of marriage. Even when Manon foolishly, fatefully urges the Chevalier to the gaming tables, it's because she is aware that their life together cannot continue with the means they have (she is aware of him, but also of money; he is aware only of her). It takes a lot of cash to pay for elegant frivolity, & unless you're born wealthy, the accumulation of capital is not elegant, or frivolous, or really anything but life-draining drudgery. The final tragedy is brought about by a spurned & vindictive older man. who accuses the lovers of cheating at cards. This man had earlier rented the entire ballet to perform privately, as his way seducing Manon by impressing her with his willingness to squander money on her whims. Unfortunately that's when she's decided to go to Saint-Sulpice to seduce her former love, the Chevalier. The incident is brilliantly shown in this production: something that looks like a large gilded cage slowly descends, but we, like Manon, see no dancers; like her, we are distracted. The rich man is distraught, & eventually takes his revenge.

The attitude towards wealth is one of the many ways in which this opera contrasts with La Bohème. In Puccini's opera, the rich old men are mostly foolish dupes; it's part of the youthful magic of that opera that we don't see their ultimate social power the way we do in Manon. A golden nostalgic glow lies over Bohème, even though it also ends tragically (but the nostalgic glow softens the blow). But to me it always feels very much like a retrospective tragedy, a remembered loss rather than a raw wound caused by the set-up of society. (We tend to associate Mimi's death with her poverty, but tuberculosis was I think for the original audience linked more to la vie de bohème rather than lack of adequate nutrition &c – that other famous victim of tuberculosis, Violetta, was not only financially successful as a courtesan, she supported Alfredo during their rural interlude). Does anyone ever watch Bohème & feel that the characters are trapped in poverty for the rest of their lives? I'd be surprised. Poverty, like youthful love, is seen in a fond backward glance. These things are picturesque, once you know they're temporary.

Look at Act 2 of Manon, by contrast: first Manon, aware that her lover is about to be snatched from her (by his father's underlings), sings a warm, loving – & private – farewell to their little table, the beloved furnishings of their simple, but adored because shared, apartment: a farewell to their whole life together. (But we already know that the humble & simple things of life can't hold her for long.) Then she goes off stage & he has a solo, a dreamy aria with gently undulating music underneath, fantasizing about a lovely cottage for the two of them, somewhere off in the (presumably somehow affordable) countryside, where they can pass the rest of their lives in blissful peace & contented happiness (an aria sung with oneiric elegance by Pati). When they come together at the end of the act, they have a brief exchange, each lover knowing what the other one doesn't, or can't; she aware that their time together is ending, he dreaming implausible dreams that it will float on forever. We see them suddenly & dramatically pulled apart, as we & Manon have been expecting, but the Chevalier is blindsided; not even halfway through the opera, he is plunged into grief, a grief that will return, in a deeper way, at the end, when he loses her to death.

Contrast that with Mimi & Rodolfo in their Act 1: they each have their big solos, each describing themselves to the other; then, after telling each other who they are, they unite for a rapturous duet that signals the two lives are now linked, a duet of such never-failing voluptuous intensity that it inevitably draws tears even from those lukewarm about their opera (in other words, from me). One opera gives us the delirium of mutual love (that is, what many people like to imagine love is, or at least a past love was), while the other shows two passionately entangled people who are ultimately at cross purposes & not saying to each other what really needs to be said. I suppose it's a matter of personal choice, or history, or memory, which of those the listener finds more convincing as a picture of life.

All in all, as I said, the performance was a bit of a revelation for me, a surprise which I received gratefully. Experiencing Manon again fell into the "why not?" category for me, but I came out with new respect for the work. It was not only on stage that the Opera went all out; even the lobby was decorated suitably. The place was bedecked with beads & feathers & lots of pink lighting & a shop for bespoke corsets & other suitably frivolous decor. I do regret that they missed the chance to pay homage to Act 4 by constructing a side chapel in which, under a bare-bodied Jesus, you could make out with an ex. But if even operatic lovers can't have everything, neither can we, I guess.

 

detail of Laternenfest Bauhaus 1922 by Paul Klee, seen at SFMOMA

any day now, again

 

(Douglas Tilden's The Tired Boxer: you & me both, bro)

Wow, the new computer set-up is all much, much more time-consuming & irritating than even I thought it would be! I'm still having troubles: the mouse doesn't work (is it another faulty piece of equipment, like the first laptop they sent me, or did I misread the inexplicable stick figures that pass for "instructions"), the photography set-up is, um, odd, the screen is too small for me to see (yes, I know I can enlarge the font), but an on-going theme here is that you have to hunt & peck & guess at these things, & anything you touch could turn out to be the very thing you did not want to touch. Feh! I won't even start on the tech companies; my generalized loathing of them has not been eased by my recent experiences. They keep wanting to sell me more products & services that I don't need when I really just want the ones I've already overpaid for to work. Big Tech now has the annoying tendency to insist that I can only operate under various "accounts", even if it means taking over an identity I've already created & giving me a new ID that requires new passcodes &c which I don't have because I didn't set them up. And no, I don't want to receive texts from you, faceless tech company,for the rest of my life. And you can't just block them, as someday you may need to hear from them, with more of those codes &c to get access. Underlying all this, of course, is the classic trope of "cranky old person who doesn't understand technology". It's inaccurate: I'm a cranky old person who has enough experience with technology to figure things out, eventually, but to be wary & annoyed while I do so. Arguably, in fact, people my age are more adept at tech than younger people: anyone starting out now in computers knows he/she/they should learn the MS Office Suite, & a few other things. When I was starting my working life, it was the Wild Wild West & I had to learn multiple systems quickly, & unlike today's systems they did not have a basic set-up in place (so that for instance someone now looking for a copy function has a pretty good idea of where to look). In fact for about half of the 1980s I worked at a publishing house where they would throw me on to various desktop publishing systems, have me learn them ASAP (let me revert to office lingo), & then teach them to others, & assist them, all while also having to meet actual deadlines on real projects, often ones that had been messed up by people paid more than I was This would have been great if they had made it clear what was going on; instead I had the feeling I was thrown into systems & then yanked off them just as soon as I was beginning to figure them out, while my manager sniped at me for . .  . well, anything that came into his mind. But complaints about terrible managers, especially ones long ago & far away, are not really the path I want to travel down here. I plan to start posting again soon, though possibly without photographs. I can always go back & add some later. In fact I always go back & tweak my posts anyway.

In short: new opinions, or old ones repurposed, coming soon; deepest thanks to those who have been checking in. Some day I'll get all this figured out, just like life.

any day now

My computer died on Labor Day weekend. It was sudden but not unexpected. It was showing signs, warning signs, but of course I put off dealing with it because of a general lack of time, energy, & money; also, I hate hate HATE dealing with things like this. I just want things to work, & to keep on working. The obvious & inevitable result of my ostrich-with-his-head-in-the-sand behavior was that I was forced to deal with it, on an inconvenient timeline that was not one I picked. And the whole thing has not gone well! Obviously nothing can be simple or easy or even work the way it's supposed to. I bought a replacement, then had to send it back as it was defective, then . . . well, look, I'm not interested in this stuff, why should you be?

People of course have been offering advice, which is mostly even more useless than most advice, &, what's worse, reactions of envy, as I've been freed from the suffocating embrace of our current world, &, well, NO. I still have to do the same things, they're just more difficult to get done. Yes, I survived for decades without a computer, but the infrastructure that was in place – the newspapers, magazines, phone directories, maps, box offices, &c, that could answer questions such as "when does the show start?" or "where is the venue?" – have all mostly migrated online. I've been staying abreast, at least of email, just barely, with a public-use computer, & I'm glad I have that resource, but there are drawbacks, such as other people: there is a regular user of these computers who can turn a single lozenge into an entire percussion section. I've never heard anything like it. Then there's the person who comes in to watch Fox, whom I have to remind, every single time, that he's supposed to use headphones. Not an atmosphere conducive to writing up performances, or doing much of anything else but catching up with email & then getting out.

Presumably my new system will be up & running in a few days (of course, I've been thinking that for days now. . . ). Then I have to figure out how to do the things I was used to do on my old system. We have our little shortcuts, we fall into our grooves, & now I have to re-plough those grooves in my digital earth.

Anyway: back soon with the usual fare, I hope. Thanks to those who have been checking; much love to you! And I hope to see you soon in our usual digital realms.

Museum Monday 2026/39

 

detail of Saint Luke writing the Gospel by Miguel Ximénez, seen at BAM/PFA as part of the special exhibit Some Particular Heaven: Ideas of Utopia in the BAMPFA Collection

Friday Photo 2026/39

 

downtown San Francisco, the soon-to-be former site of the CJM

Museum Monday 2026/38

 

detail of Saint Mary Magdalene by Gaetano Gandolfi, seen at BAM/PFA as part of the special exhibit Some Particular Heaven: Ideas of Utopia in the BAMPFA Collection

Friday Photo 2026/38

 

Minnesota Street, San Francisco

Museum Monday 2026/37

 

detail of The Fish, also known as The Fish and Flowering Branch, a stained-glass window by John La Farge, now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Friday Photo 2026/37

 

23rd Street, San Francisco

Museum Monday 2026/36

 

detail of a self-portrait by Jeanne Hébuterne, seen at SFMOMA as part of the exhibit Matisse's Femme au chapeau: A Modern Scandal

Friday Photo 2026/36

 

hubcap reflections, late afternoon

Museum Monday 2026/35

 

from the 2022 exhibit Guo Pei: Couture Fantasy at the Legion of Honor

West Edge Opera: Claude & Marcel preview concert

As an addition to its summer festival, West Edge Opera headed over to the Wattis Theater at SFMOMA to present a preview concert, minimally staged but with singers & orchestra, of next season's world premiere, Claude & Marcel, based on the lives of Claude Cahun & Marcel Moore, two (not necessarily in this order): stepsisters, best friends, lesbian lovers, Jews, surrealists, poets, anti-Fascist resistance fighters, & general shapeshifters. For more information on their lives, check here (or buy a ticket next summer to the finished opera); in this space I will be talking about last Sunday's performance.

The preview lasted about an hour & though there was no official announcement of what portion we were seeing, I think, based on a closing surtitle saying it was the end of Act 1, that we were seeing the first half of the opera. Of course what we heard is contingent & in process & incomplete, but I found it powerfully persuasive & am very excited to experience the completed work next summer. Alyssa Weinberg is the composer, Stephanie Fleischmann the librettist, Jonathan Khuner the music director, Elkhanah Pulitzer the stage director, & Chris Steele the dramaturg; Nikola Printz is Claude, Laura Bohn is Marcel, Angela Yam is Charlotte, their maidservant, & there is a chorus made up of Samuel Faustine, Glenn Healy, Laurel Semerdijian, Kyle Tingzon, & Matthew Worth.

When I entered the nondescript grey & black of the Wattis Theater, I was a bit alarmed to note an amplifier on stage, but it is used mostly for what I'll call, for lack of a better term, sound effects used as music, which would not otherwise carry into even a small space: breathing, for example. We open with rhythmic breathing, which summons up not only (obviously) breath, but the sound of a heart beating (the basic things of life) & merges into natural sounds, the breeze & in particular the ocean. In the spirit of its protagonists, anything can be appropriated & turned into art, into music & drama. Even the conventional orchestral instruments take on new colors, often being played in extreme ways, with a skittering & flittering effect that sounds like the frayed edges of music & the natural world; it is a beautiful, liminal world, in an unworldly light – like Debussy on acid. You hear traditional forms being bent, stretched, transformed, making the music a mirror to the surrealist view of the world, & as such, this is the sound world of Claude & Marcel.

Charlotte has music that is much more flowing & melodic; I don't mean it to sound condescending or dismissive when I say her music is more conventional. It's quite beautiful, & mirrors Charlotte's attempts to understand the two strange mesdames who have hired her for a job she desperately needs. The class & social differences between the two artist-outsiders, both from wealthy backgrounds (which is why they can afford a big house on the Isle of Jersey), & their farmgirl helper are examined with subtlety & care. Charlotte clearly is a bit nonplussed by these odd birds, but willing to accept what might even be their scandalous ways (are they just stepsisters? who are very close? or something more?) & to defend them to overly curious villagers, sometimes by dismissing their accurate guesses as to what the two ladies are. The ladies in turn can be, with the authority of their class, peremptory towards servants, though there's also the defensive fear of revealing themselves too far to possibly traitorous outsiders, even if the outsiders are economically dependent subordinates.

The chorus is sometimes villagers, sometimes occupying soldiers from the German (Nazi) Army. The two blend together. The villagers are curious about the very strange women who have moved in. The Germans are as well. There is no sentimentality, either positive towards the villagers or negative towards the soldiers; both groups are shown convincingly as a mixed bag of ordinary people. The extended sound-effects continue, with stamping feet as one of the musical effects, & also much laughter among the soldiers, as another interesting musical effect. The soldiers are not overdone villains: they are bullies who can threaten & sneer & cause serious harm, but they're also boys far from home, in a place that isn't going to feed them the propaganda they grew up on. I'm not suggesting that the presentation of the Germans is sympathetic, but it is nuanced, which is a good thing. Given their presentation as in many ways ordinary young people, you can see why & how Claude & Marcel's subversive acts could sway them; these are not convinced members of an alleged Master Race, but ignorant boys forced into positions of power they aren't suited for.

The relationship between Claude & Marcel is deftly handled: their low-level squabbles, their uncertainty in the face of the looming Nazi threat, their abiding love of each other & commitment to each other & their mutually-made art. I listed the singers above, & if you are familiar with those names, you know the very high level of singing & acting & commitment we were given. There were indications in the surtitles that the staging will involve some surrealist-dream-style dissolves between locations, & as I mentioned earlier the music flows between the natural world (particularly the sea) & the psychological / social reality of the characters. This was a preview performance, so the piece is in flux, & more no doubt can & will be said about the finished product. What I say here is even more provisional than usual. But I found the hour quite absorbing, with many intriguing possibilities; it will be very exciting to see how they play out in the completed work.

Friday Photo 2026/35

 

Art Deco birds from inside the Paramount Theater, Oakland, California

Museum Monday 2026/34

 

detail of a six-armed demon with flaming hair, now at the Asian Art Museum

Another Opening, Another Show: September 2026

September is the traditional start of the "performance season", as it used to be of the school year; now most students are back to school in August, & I start receiving back-to-school ads in early July. The seasons all blur together these days. Two weeks ago I wandered into the drugstore, looking for soft-bristle toothbrushes, in my usual summer attire of shorts & a tank top, only to see the shelves being stocked with ghoulish Halloween supplies ("ghoulish" would include the mega-packs of candy that will, if they're any good, though they probably are not, undoubtedly be stale by the end of October). It was around the time of that visit that I received my first ad this year that mentioned "pumpkin spice" on . . . something. Does it matter? (I've never actually had "pumpkin spice", outside of pumpkin pie; I assume it's basically cinnamon with a dash of clove?) So Autumn (season of mists & mellow fruitfulness, thank you John Keats) is bringing its salutary chill to our thresholds. Or would be, except climate change means that we're entering the hottest months in the Bay Area, though the snowmen & sleigh bells of Christmas will soon no doubt be making their improbable California appearance. The world is a mixed-up place, as we all know, but at least the Opera & the Symphony have stuck to their traditional schedules, opening this month, so off we go. One thing that never changes is the need of the performing arts for financial support & attentive, respectful audiences, so let's all do what we can in that regard (end of sermon, at least for today: go in peace to love & serve the Muses).

Theatrical

On 27 August at SFMOMA, in conjunction with their exhibition Matisse’s Femme au chapeau: A Modern Scandal, Laura Sheppard of the Yiddish Theater Ensemble will present a staged dramatic reading from Harriet Levy's Paris Portraits: Stories of Picasso, Matisse, Gertrude Stein, and Their Circle; the show is directed by Suzanne Stassevitch with piano accompaniment by Dale Tsang & is free with RSVP.

From 4 September to 11 October at their Peet’s Theatre, Berkeley Rep presents The Cook by Eduardo Machado, directed by David Mendizábal, about an aristocratic Cuban family's cook, Gladys, who vows to protect their mansion when they flee Castro's Revolution – and then, forty years later, the family's daughter returns.

From 5 to 26 September at the Potrero Stage, Crowded Fire presents Manning by Benjamin Benne, directed by Adin Walker, about a Latin family (a father & his two sons) mourning the loss of their wife/mother.

From 10 to 12 September at the Strand Theater, ACT presents Crushing, created by Carly Steyer & Megan Calfas, executive produced by Rosario Dawson, co-produced by Natachi Onwuamaegbu, in which "multidisciplinary artists—playwrights, actors, novelists, poets, comedians—perform true stories from their love lives onstage" (thanks, but I'd rather attend the rebuttal show).

From 10 to 27 September at Fort Mason's Magic Theatre, the Lorraine Hansberry Theater presents the world premiere of African Stew by Lisa B Thompson, directed by Edris Cooper-Anifowoshe, about what happens when the families of a newly engaged African American woman & a Nigerian man meet for the first time.

From 11 September to 11 October, Berkeley Playhouse presents Legally Blonde: The Musical, directed by No’Eau Kahalekulu with music direction by Camden Daly & choreography by Cat Delos Santos Reyes.

From 12 September to 18 October, the New Conservatory Theater Center presents Little Shop of Horrors, the beloved musical by Howard Ashman & Alan Menken, directed by Ben Villegas Randle, with musical direction by Jad Bernardo & choreography by Leslie Waggoner.

From 15 to 19 September at their Roda Theater, Berkeley Rep presents Choligarchy, written & performed by Margaret Cho.

On 18 - 20 September at the Douglas Morrisson Theatre in Hayward, SPARC Theater presents Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie, directed by Gary Armagnac.

From 22 September to 18 October at the Toni Rembe Theater, ACT presents Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest as adapted & directed by Emma Rice.

From 25 September to 11 October at Z Space, the Oakland Theater Project & New Performance present King Lear, directed by Michael Socrates Moran.

Starting 26 September at the Ashby Stage, Shotgun Players presents The Fall Show, created by Erika Chong Shuch & Charles Mee, about "an older couple’s unexpected romance".

From 26 September to 28 November, San Francisco Playhouse presents Peter Pan Goes Wrong by Henry Lewis, Henry Shields & Jonathan Sayer, the creators of The Play That Goes Wrong, so this one is pretty self-explanatory.

Talking

On 9 September at the Goldman Theater in the David Brower Center in Berkeley, Other Minds presents The Nature of Music 21: Listening With, featuring "musician, anthropologist, and philosopher of sound" Marina Peterson discussing "How does one listen with rather than listen to? And how might listening with allow the listener to more fruitfully conceptualize climate change?"

On 15 September at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, Isabel Allende will discuss her new book, Story Telling: A Writing Life.

Operatic

The San Francisco Opera opens its season with Verdi's magnificent Simon Boccanegra, conducted by Eun Sun Kim & directed by Claus Guth (revival direction by Katherine M Carter), with Amartuvshin Enkhbat in the title role, Eleonora Buratto as Amelia/Maria (Toni Marie Palmertree takes the role on the 27 September performance), Christian Van Horn as Jacopo Fiesco, Joshua Guerrero as Gabriele Adorno, Aleksey Bogdanov as Paolo Albiani, & Gabriel Natal-Báez as Pietro; performances are 12, 16, 19, 22, 25, & 27 September; please note that 12 September is Opening Night for the season, & you are the best judge if that is the sort of scene that appeals to you.

The second opera in San Francisco Opera's season is a rarity, Mary, Queen of Scots, with music & libretto by Thea Musgrave, conducted by Clelia Cafiero & directed by Stewart Laing, the opera stars Heidi Stober in the title role, Thomas Mole as James Stewart, Earl of Moray, Thomas Kinch as the Earl of Bothwell, Christopher Sokolowski as Lord Darnley, Hadleigh Adams as David Riccio, David Soar as Cardinal Beaton, Philip Skinner as Lord Gordon, Olivier Zerouali as the Earl of Morton, Chance Jonas-O'Toole as the Earl of Ruthven, Sadie Cheslak as Mary Seton, Sofia Gotch as Mary Beaton, Mary Hoskins as Mary Livingston, & Alexa Frankian as Mary Fleming; performances are 20, 24, 26, 29 September & 2 & 4 October.

On 13 September at Robin Williams Meadow in Golden Gate Park, the San Francisco Opera presents its annual Opera in the Park concert, with Music Director Eun Sun Kim leading the San Francisco Opera Orchestra in "an afternoon of duets, arias, and more", performed by as yet unannounced singers from the current season. I find the idea of outdoor concerts more pleasing than the actual experience, but as with the Opening Night shenanigans, you are the best judge of whether this will appeal to you.

From 13 to 27 September, Opera San José presents Mozart's Don Giovanni, conducted by Joseph Marcheso & directed by Alek Shrader, with Wm. Clay Thompson in the title role, Kenneth Kellogg as the Commendatore, Yulan Piao as Donna Anna, Jonghyun Park as Don Ottavio, Maria Brea as Donna Elvira, Phillip Lopez as Leporello, Joseph Park as Masetto, & Nicole Koh as Zerlina.

Opera Day in the Bay will take place on 20 September in the Redwood Park at the Transamerica Pyramid Center; produced by Céline Ricci, hosted by Carla Lucero, & dedicated to the memory of Erie Mills, this event brings together Ars Minerva, Festival Opera, Lamplighters Music Theatre, Livermore Valley Opera, Mercury Opera Theater, Opera Parallèle, Opera San José, Pocket Opera, Sacramento Philharmonic & Opera, San Francisco Opera Guild, Upspark Productions, & West Edge Opera in a celebration of what opera is & can be (specific performers & musical selections will be announced in early September); the event is free but advance registration via Eventbrite is required

On 27 September at the Piedmont Center for the Arts, Festival Opera opens its Salon Series with a Resident Artist Showcase, celebrating its new resident artist program & featuring ​Marielle Leiboff & Rachel Nelson (sopranos), Phoebe Dinga (mezzo-soprano), Spencer Greene (tenor), Liam Daley (baritone) with pianist Daniel Lockert performing operatic scenes & arias by Verdi, Handel, Mozart, Leoncavallo, Richard Strauss, Bizet, Rachmaninoff, Lehar, Massenet, Jeanine Tesori, & Bernstein.

On 26 September at the Unitarian Universalist Church of San Francisco, the Wagner Society of Northern California will present Wagner and Clam Fritters – a Talk by Joseph Horowitz, about Anton Seidl & the early days of Wagnerism in America.

Vocalists

On 8 September in Davies Hall, Anthony Parnther leads the San Francisco Symphony as they accompany jazz singer Samara Joy.

On 27 September in Hertz Hall, Cal Performances presents baritone Lester Lynch with pianist Kevin Korth in a program "exploring love, loss, and mortality" in the form of Samuel Barber's Dover Beach (with string quartet: René Mandel & Wyatt Underhill, violins; Kaya Bryla, viola; Anne Richardson, cello), Mahler's Rückert Lieder, & lieder by Schubert & Mussorgsky, songs by Hahn & Tosti, & traditional songs as arranged by Gordon Getty,

Orchestral

On 12 September at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Robert Mollicone leads the Bay Area Rainbow Symphony in Dance, Drama, and Desire, a program including Barber's Overture to The School for Scandal, Respighi's Ancient Airs and Dances, Suite #2, Korngold's Cello Concerto (with soloist Hans Brightbill), & Chausson's Symphony in B-flat Major.

On 18- 19 September, David Afkham leads the San Francisco Symphony in Unsuk Chin's subito con forza, the Schumann 4, & the Brahms Piano Concerto #1 (with soloist Garrick Ohlsson).

On 24 September, the San Francisco Symphony holds its Opening Gala; Giancarlo Guerrero will lead the band in The Chairman Dances by John Adams, the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto (with soloist Hilary Hahn), & the Capriccio espagnol by Rimsky-Korsakov.

On 26 September in the Caroline H Hume Concert Hall of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Edwin Outwater will lead the SFCM Orchestra in To Decipher Birdsong by Brayden Meng (winner of the Conservatory's Highsmith Orchestra Composition Prize), Jennifer Higdon's blue cathedral (this piece will be conducted by Conservatory student Grace Whalen), & the Prokofiev 5.

 

On 26 - 27 September at the Lesher Center in Walnut Creek, Donato Cabrera leads the California Symphony in The Oceanides by Sibelius, Jennifer Higdon's Cello Concerto (with soloist Julian Schwarz), & Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra.

On 27 September in Herbst Theater, the San Francisco Pride Band will hold its Fall Community Concert; details have not yet been announced.

Chamber Music

The Friction Quartet (Otis Harriel & Kevin Rogers, violins; Mitso Floor, viola; Doug Machiz, cello) will perform Transformation, a program curated by Rogers featuring Julia Wolfe's Blue Dress, György Ligeti's String Quartet #1 (Métamorphoses nocturnes), & Haydn's String Quartet opus 76 #6 in E flat Major, & that's 18 September at the SF Community Music Center & 20 September at the Crowden School in Berkeley.

On 20 September in Davies Hall, pianist Garrick Ohlsson joins San Francisco Symphony musicians in an afternoon of chamber music, featuring the Brahms Piano Trio #2 in C major, Opus 87, Impulso Suite by Ramiro Boero, La muerte del ángel & Decarísimo by Astor Piazzolla, & the Piano Quintet, Opus 67 by Amy Beach.

Noontime Concerts hasn't released its full performance calendar for this month yet, but if you're in the vicinity of Old Saint Mary's in San Francisco around 12:30 on a Tuesday, you might want to check here to see what's on offer.

Instrumental

On 6 September at Grace Cathedral, Raymond Hawkins will perform an organ recital featuring dance & dance-inspired music by Bach, Couperin, Haydn, Vierne, Boëllmann, Edward German (as arranged by Edwin Lemare), Calvin Hampton, & Naji Hakim.

On 20 September at Old First Concerts, harpist Noël Wan will perform Les fleurs du mal, a program featuring music (some transcribed for her instrument) by Rachmaninoff, Gabriel Jenks Stalk, Gabriel Fauré, Clifton Callender, Puccini, Per Nørgård Consolazione, & Wagner.

On 20 September at Noe Valley Ministry, Noe Music presents the San Francisco recital debut of pianist Janice Carissa, who will perform two Philip Glass Études, Bach's French Suite #5,  Frederic Rzewski's Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues. a piece composed for Carissa by Eunike Tanzil, & Prokofiev's Sonata #8.

On 27 September, percussionists Allen Biggs & Tommy Kesecker will perform at the First Unitarian Universality Society of San Francisco, as part of their Starr King Way Performance Series.

Early / Baroque Music

Chanticleer presents The Machaut Project, an exploration (staged by Elkhanah Pulitzer) of the 

world of Guillaume de Machaut, a "realm of devotion and desire, where courtly love becomes a meditation on the human heart", & you can experience it on 13, 17, 19, & 20 September at the ODC Theater in San Francisco.

On 27 September the Cantata Collective resumes its traversal of Bach's cantatas at Saint Mary Magdalen in Berkeley; this time they present Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir, BWV 38, Ach, lieben Christen, seid getrost, BWV 114, & Warum betrübst du dich, mein Herz, BWV 138, with vocal soloists Nola Richardson (soprano), Heidi Waterman (alto), Brian Thorsett (tenor), Edward Vogel (bass); the concerts are free & open to the public.

On 27 September at the First Church of Christ Scientist in Berkeley (the Maybeck Church), the Handel Opera Project presents Unbuttoned Bach & Vivacious Vivaldi, featuring Vivaldi's Piccolo Concerto in C Major (with soloist Susanne Rublein) & Bach's Cantate Burlesque BWV 212,  the “Peasant Cantata” (with vocal soloists Kristen Campbell, soprano, & Wayne Wong, baritone); the concert is free but there is a suggested donation.

Modernist / Contemporary Music

On 8 September at Brava Theater, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players & the ARTZenter Institute present the first of this season's free ARTZenter Institute Emerging Composer World Premiere Concerts; this one features flotsam by Ella Kaale, Witchcraft II: Sacrificial Ritual by Matthew Lam, One Thousand Self Portraits by James Larkins, & Crosshair Offset by Xingyue Song.

On 9 September, 836M presents a Creative Lab in partnership with the Kronos Performing Arts Association; the Kronos Quartet (David Harrington & Gabriela Díaz, violins; Ayane Kozasa, viola; Paul Wiancko, cello) will hold a public rehearsal of Philip Glass's String Quartet #5 & Yevgeniy Sharlat’s Pencil Sketch (the Quartet will be performing the Glass in several concerts in 2027, celebrating the composer's 90th birthday); you can make a reservation here.

On 12 September at BAM/PFA, cellist / composer Theresa Wong will perform her 2011 song cycle The Unlearning, "a reflection on Francisco Goya’s 1810 series of etchings Los desastres de la guerra (The Disasters of War) and their resonance with our contemporary world", as a duo with violinist / vocalist Carla Kihlstedt, along with projections by Daria Martin & Mao Mollona.

On 13 September at Old First Concerts, pianist Kevin Lee Sun & Friends will perform Look to This Day, a program that "presents music by two living composers—Hyo-shin Na and Daniel De Togni—centered around the difficulty, ephemerality, and cherishment of life. Sun performs two solo works by Na, and is joined by composer De Togni on shakuhachi for his own Death Poems, and soprano Wallis Lucas joins for De Togni’s Songs of Becoming, both West Coast Premieres."

On 19 September at the Noe Valley Ministry in San Francisco & on 20 September at the Berkeley Piano Club, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble presents Impossible Inventions, a program featuring Thea Musgrave's In the Still of the Night, Paul Novak's impossible inventions (their 2025 Composition Contest Winner), Mendelssohn's String Quartet #1 in E-flat major, Opus 12, & world premieres from LCCE's Pathways Program.

On 25 September at the Curran Theater, Laurie Anderson performs The Republic of Love featuring Sexmob.

On 25 September in the Jeannik Méquet Littlefield Concert Hall at Northeastern University (formerly Mills College) in Oakland, pianist Sarah Cahill, with guest pianist Regina Myers, will perform the annual Darius Milhaud Concert, featuring works by Milhaud as well as Germaine Tailleferre, Pauline Oliveros, Elinor Armer, William Bolcom, Tom Constanten, Lou Harrison, Maggi Payne, Terry Riley, Theresa Wong, James Tenney, & Annea Lockwood; the event is free but reservations are suggested.

Jazz

On 6 September at Old First Concerts, Mike Greensill & Friends will celebrate pianist / arranger /accompanist Greensill’s 80th birthday & his 40th anniversary of performing at Old First Concerts; the friends will include Roberta Donnay, Kellie Fuller, & Gale Terminello, vocals; Noel Jewkes, saxes; Bill Klingelhoffer, French horn; Ruth Davies, bass; & Brad Buethe, guitar.

Pianist / composer Paul Cornish brings his eponymous Trio to the SF Jazz Center on 10 - 11 September.

On 10 -11 September at the SF Jazz Center, Christian McBride pays a centennial tribute to Ray Brown, joined by with an all-star trio of Ray Brown Trio alumni — pianist Benny Green & drummer Gregory Hutchinson, both alums of the Ray Brown Trio.

On 12 - 13 September at the SF Jazz Center, pianist Nduduzo Makhathini will make his venue debut, bringing his trio & music from his latest release, The Myth We Choose.

On 12 - 13 September, bassist Christian McBride brings his Quintet (also featuring Nicole Glover, tenor saxophone; Ely Perlman, guitar; Mike King, piano; & Savannah Harris, drums) to the SF Jazz Center.

From 17 to 20 September at the SF Jazz Center, Branford Marsalis & the rest of his quartet (Marsalis on tenor saxophone, Joey Calderazzo on piano, Eric Revis on bass, & Justin Faulkner on drums will be joined by vocalist Dianne Reeves to pay centennial tribute to John Coltrane.

On 19 September at the UC Theater in Berkeley, the SF Jazz Center presents saxophonist Ravi Coltrane (joined by Jonathan Finlayson on trumpet, Gadi Lehavi on piano, Elé Howell on drums, & a bass player TBA) paying centennial tribute to his father, John Coltrane.

USAF The Commanders Jazz Ensemble will perform a free concert (first come, first seated) at the Presidio Theater on 19 September.

On 19 - 20 September at the SF Jazz Center, pianist / composer Myra Melford brings her Trio (Medford, Michael Formanek on bass, Ches Smith on drums & vibraphone) will perform music from her latest release, SPLASH.

On 21 September at the SF Jazz Center, the Branford Marsalis Quartet (Marsalis on tenor saxophone, Joey Calderazzo on piano, Eric Revis on bass, Justin Faulkner on drums) will perform.

On 22 September, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra will perform at the SF Jazz Center.

Dance

On 6 September at the East Meadow of Presidio Park in San Francisco, World Arts West will hold the third & final weekend (the other two were in July & August) of its 2026 festival, Legacy of Liberation, with free public performances to "celebrate diverse communities through the art of dance" by Academy of Danse Libre, Amazed by Grace Dance Ministry, Los Lupeños de San José, & Uzumaru.

On 11 - 12 September at Z Space, the Natasha Carlitz Dance Ensemble will celebrate its 20th Anniversary with a sampler of their repertory.

The Parsons Dance Company performs at the Presidio Theater on 12 - 13 September.

RAWdance will be in residence at 836M this fall, developing a new full-length work based on the myth of Echo & Narcissus which will premiere in December at ZSpace; the residency kicks off on 17 September with an opening receiption at 835M (free but reservations are required).

On 20 September, the Chitresh Das Dance Company will perform Invoking the River at the Presidio Theater.

From 25 to 27 September in Zellerbach Hall, Cal Performances presents the Australian Ballet in Oscar, based on the life of Oscar Wilde, with choreography by Christopher Wheeldon & music by Joby Talbot (performed live by the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra).

Mostly Museums

GaHee Park: Behind the Curtain, the surrealist painter's first solo institutional exhibition in the USA, opened at the Yerba Buena Center on 7 August & runs through 3 January 2027.

Eternal Paris: Photographing the City of Light opens at the Legion of Honor on 5 September.

You have until 13 September to see Matisse's Femme au chapeau: A Modern Scandal, an excellent small exhibit at SFMOMA.

BeHere / 1942: A New Lens on the Japanese American Incarceration opens in the Great Hall of the Oakland Museum of California on 18 September & runs through 27 December.

You have until 20 September to take in the superb exhibit The Etruscans: From the Heart of Ancient Italy at the Legion of Honor.

On 20 September, Maren Hassinger will restage her 1982 performance piece Pink Trash, on UC Berkeley’s Crescent Lawn (this is in conjunction with BAM/PFA's current exhibit Maren Hassinger: Living Moving Growing).

Ha Chong-Hyun: Retrospective, opening at the Asian Art Museum on 25 September & running through 25 January 2027, offers the first North American museum exhibition of the career of the Korean abstract artist.

Cinematic

On 29 August & 1 September, the Roxie will be showing a new 4K restoration of Center Stage, Stanley Kwan's unconventional biopic of Chinese silent film star Ruan Lingyu, played by Maggie Cheung (Kwan also directed one of my all-time favorite films, Rouge).

The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts is running Through an Open Window, co-curated by filmmaker Michael Vass & artist GaHee Park, described as a "weekly film series exploring voyeurism and theatricality, cocktail charm and social taboos"; check here for upcoming titles.

BAM/PFA is launching many of their fall film series this month, beginning with Alice Diop in Person from 3 to 18 September, in conjunction with the French filmmaker's residence at UC Berkeley; Jean-Luc Godard’s Early Films opens 5 September & runs through 19 November; an extensive retrospective of Martin Scorsese Pictures opens 5 September & runs through next June; Alternative Visions, the Archive's "long-running annual series of historical and contemporary experimental film" starts 9 September & runs through 18 November; Georgian Cinema Now: Part 1 (Georgia as in the country, not the southern state) opens 23 September & runs through 2 October; & the Special Screenings series this month includes Chaplin's Modern Times on 12 September.

On 17 September at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, Loren Means will present a lecture with film clips on Jewish Directors: Film Noir & the Femme Fatale.

From 17 to 20 September at the 4-Star Theater in San Francisco, you can check out SFCritterFest, a series of films exploring the relations between humans & the animal world.

On 19 September at the Roxie, the Neon Speaks Festival presents SF Lost Neon Landscapes: Chinatown, a compilation of short films featuring the iconic (yes, I'm using the word) SF neighborhood.

On 19 September, the Orinda Theater & the San Francisco Silent Film Festival present a centennial screening of Buster Keaton’s The General, with Timothy Brock conducting the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Orchestra in his original score; though I've always regretted that Keaton chose to make a Confederate soldier his hero, this is truly one of the great films of the silent era.

From 24 to 27 September at the Roxie Theater, the San Francisco Film Preserve presents Re:Vision, their "inaugural film festival, celebrating the work of archives and archivists. Over four days at the Roxie, we're spotlighting astounding works of cinema across decades, borders, and genres"; check out the full schedule here.

The first annual San Francisco Brazilian Film Festival will be held at the Vogue Theater on 24 - 27 September; click here for more information.

This month's classic movie matinee at the Orinda Theater, on 29 September, is 1933's Footlight Parade, with musical numbers staged by Busby Berkeley, & what more do you need to know than that?

West Edge Opera: American Apollo

The third & final opera of the 2026 West Edge Opera Festival was American Apollo, a new opera with music by Damian Geter to a libretto by Lila Palmer, offering & examining the relationship between John Singer Sargent & Thomas Eugene McKeller, a young Black man employed at Sargent's hotel in Boston, who served as a model for the painter for a set of murals in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. McKeller's body served for various Greek gods & heroes, though his skin, his face, & sometimes his gender were switched, which is not unusual for models, of course, but Sargent also left a radiant portrait of a naked McKeller as himself, a portrait that he kept in his own possession & passed on to close friends. It did not surface into the "official" story of Sargent until the 1980s, when it was acquired by the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the same museum whose sub rosa renditions of McKeller still greet visitors on the grand main staircase.

The 1980s were the years I spent in Boston; this story resonated with me on several levels, as I was familiar with the splendid Sargents in the MFA's collection as well as the work of another major character in the opera, Isabella Stewart Gardner, whose eponymous museum, located just a few blocks from the MFA (& not that far from my last apartments) is one of my favorite places on earth. (Many a reverie of mine has been if not resolved then ended as I thump down to earth on the thought, Goddammit, why don't I have a Veronese Room?) Sargent gave Gardner an album of sketches of McKeller (signed, unlike many of his sketches: what might that signify?), which she did not display publicly but kept in her Museum. The rediscovery of these sketches led to the exhibit Boston's Apollo, which I missed seeing because of the pandemic; the catalogue is an in-depth look at Sargent & McKeller & worth reading for anyone intrigued by the subject. That exhibit brought new prominence to the relationship between artist & model.

I found the opera a subtle & layered work, & I'm glad I saw it twice. Nobody knows for sure what the relationship was between the painter & his favored model; even bohemian & wealthy artistic circles could be discreet, & passing time always erases life in its wake (a number of scholars have done heroic work piecing together what can still be known about McKeller's life). Time may erase life, but art can linger; there is, above all, the now celebrated nude portrait of the model not as a god or hero but as a man (who radiates godliness & heroism in his joyful nakedness). Probably drawing inspiration from that painting, & its history of being kept privately by the artist, this work tells a definite & probable story of a romantic relationship between the two men. It's not the only possible story from what hints remain to us, but it's convincing & compelling.

The music is lovely & sometimes approaches the perfumed & languishing air of salon music; I assume this is a re-creation of the sophisticated artistic atmosphere of Sargent's & Gardner's wealthy, cultured, Euro-American milieu (I don't know any of the composer's other music, so I don't know if this is his sound or the particular sound he chose for the particular period he is dramatizing). The scenes involving interactions among the Black characters are subtly different, with echoes of a jazz bass & horns (it's lightly done, though, without a gross distinction between the worlds, which interact & flow together). There's quite a lot of harp in the score. The harp is an interesting instrument. It has a fairly ethereal reputation – society girls plucking it as they hunt for husbands, chubby cherubim plinking away around the celestial throne, that sort of thing – but its sound has a surprising amount of tensile strength, & it can sound both glittery & strong, like sequins made out of steel. The final sound of the opera is one last spritz from the harp, vanishing into the silence.

Geter also insets Reynaldo Hahn's song À Chloris. It's a bold move, incorporating another composer's work, but it not only strengthens the period feel, it also resonates thematically here, in an opera about taking from different sources, different cultures, different ways, & shaping what you've taken into something of your own (even as you're adding to, being subsumed in, another tradition). It's worth looking at the lyrics & music of the song: setting a fairly banal celebration of triumphant & reciprocated love by the Renaissance poet Théophile de Viau (you can find the words here), Hahn transforms the text into something new & deeper with his music (a sound which is simpatico with the aura summoned by Geter's for this opera), providing an exquisitely melancholy Bach-like tune, adding a deeper dimension to the words, as if even in the moment of wild first joy the speaker knows that his love, this nacreous bubble, will soon vanish, its momentary beauty gone except for memory & concomitant regrets. Sargent sits down at the piano during a modeling session & starts playing & singing the song. He explicitly compares what Hahn is doing to what he (& McKeller) are creating: a new twist on old, very old, themes. McKeller doesn't know the song, but he knows enough French & enough music to pick up the score & sing the rest of it. Sargent tells him he's full of surprises. The wistful song, with its sense of a blissful love lost, will ripple through the orchestra as the work proceeds.

The opera itself works with surprises & indirection. The story plays out on stage, but the more you know about the situation the more implications you see. McKeller has moved up north from Wilmington, North Carolina, a city which, when McKeller lived there, was the site of a White Supremacist coup against the elected local government. You don't have to know this to know about the racial prejudices & pressures that would cause a young Black man to move away, but it is one of those things that opens out the world of the opera, which begins with a group of Black men lamenting (angrily, despairingly, stubbornly, resignedly, factually: a lot is being conveyed) their racial status in the United States.

The racial difference is a running theme, & how could it not be, but so are differences in age & class & background & worldly experience between the two men. There is a real connection there, as we see when McKeller collaborates with Sargent during their sessions, which become like a director & an actor puzzling out a drama together, but how much of a chance would these two really have together, in their world or ours? A former valet / model (&, presumably, lover) of Sargent's shows up & threatens him & McKeller. He makes dismissive references to Sargent's taste for "exotics" (meaning men of color), as if the jaded aging man needed increasingly spicy dishes for his palate to taste anything, & as if this young American Black man were some sort of fancy foreign import instead of a refugee from North Carolina.

Given all the complicating factors, Sargent & McKeller do not have a steady affair. Reality intervenes, as reality does. Sometimes the intervention is tragic, as when the First World War convulses the globe; German bombs kill relatives of Sargent's; McKeller enlists in the American army. Sometimes the intervention is positive, as when Isabella Stewart Gardner brings the men back together, as she sees how powerfully McKeller has inspired her friend's art. (Even her commitment to art, though, has sadness underpinning it; she sings of how she dedicated herself to beauty after her little son, barely two years old, died.) With her keen eye & abundant spirit, she does with artist & model what she did with artworks in her museum: she arranges, she juxtaposes sometimes unlikely elements, creating out of existing objects something new, a vivid spark of the memorably gorgeous.

And don't artists always have the last, or at least the lasting, word? As the painter & his model go from "Mr Sargent" & "Mr McKeller" to "John" & "Tom", the model wants to be seen as himself: that is, not as a model. A model has an artistic function that often involves metamorphosis & erasure. McKeller knows what the deal is, of course; it's a wish to be in a different world, a different relation to Mr Sargent / John. In the very moving final scene, McKeller hears of the painter's death (by then he's left the hotel for a job as a postal carrier, & his close friend Ida Mae shows him the newspaper when he stops by on his route). He goes by his studio to pay his respects. That part is historical fact. What is perhaps speculative, but certainly compelling, even overwhelming, is that it's only then that McKeller discovers the portrait of him that Sargent did. He is overcome by this proof that the artist's transforming eye had in fact seen him for who & as he was.

This was a rich work. Like the Gardner museum, or Sargent's paintings, it would repay repeated visits. On the surface, it's a conventional story of an artist & his model. (Is the relationship exploitation or celebration? or both & something else besides?) But, as in the scene in which McKeller starts singing Hahn's art song, it's full of surprises. Sargent is now a celebrated figure, but his reputation has dipped & swooped over the years (too many portraits of rich society ladies, perhaps). But it's worth remembering that painting murals featuring Greek gods & heroes was a strangely, stubbornly outmoded artistic choice in the years between 1916 & 1925, when Sargent dedicated himself to what he saw as the capstone of his career. Matisse had painted Femme au Chapeau in 1905. Picasso had painted Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (a work openly, assertively, famously influenced by African art) in 1907. The western tradition was twisting & splintering under Sargent's feet (& in fact, the Gardner museum was the first American museum to own & display a work by Matisse). The ground is always shifting under us. Nothing here is as it seems.

You can't present a rich & subtle work without rich & subtle artistry. If artists have the last word, as Sargent did viewing McKeller, here are some of the artists who had the last, or at least latest, word with their viewing of Sargent viewing McKeller: Kedrick Armstrong led a gorgeous performance of the gorgeous score, & Nataki Garrett molded it all on stage. Baritone Markel Reed performed Thomas McKeller; he doesn't particularly look like McKeller, outside of both being Black men, but he has a commanding stage presence & a rich, resonant, honeyed voice; this must be a really taxing role, given the length of the opera & the demands it places on him, but he had the strength & power to make his ending liebestod, in which he sees Sargent's portrait of him & realizes its implications, deeply moving. Tenor John Bellemer performs John Singer Sargent, with great beauty of tone & delicacy of touch. He makes the famous man both surprisingly tentative around his models & authoritative in his artistic vision. Isabella Stewart Gardner is not an easy role – there's always the danger of slipping into a caricatured Eccentric Rich Lady mode, sort of a haute monde Auntie Mame (I hate Auntie Mame, by the way), but soprano Marnie Breckenridge brought warmth, wit, & understanding to the performance. Alexandra Armantrading creates a warm, compassionate Ida Mae McDonald, indelible in her few appearances, as does Leberta Lorál as Thomas's mother (as well as another minor role). Matt Hidalgo brings cynical anger & some floating high notes to Nicola D’Inverno (the former valet / model / lover); he also portrays Mr Sparhawk.  Philip Harris, Wilford Kelly, Michael Belle, & Alex Taite are all memorable in small roles. Outstanding work all around.

Friday Photo 2026/34

reflections on Market Street, San Francisco

West Edge Opera: Rinaldo

I cannot gush enough about West Edge Opera's witty & astute production of Handel's Rinaldo. I have been going to Handel operas for over 40 years (I saw baroque operas before I saw any of the mainstream repertory) & this is one of the all-around best productions I have seen; everything – concept, costumes, sets & lighting, acting, singing, playing, dancing – worked at a remarkable level.

I was reminded of one of the first operas I saw, the Peter Sellars production of Handel's Orlando at ART in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1982. His idea was to set the work in Cape Canaveral, saying that the contemporary marvels of moon flight were an apt equivalent to the fanciful machinery of baroque opera. The result, propelled as was this production by a cast of superb singers, was so clear & persuasive that a year or so later a co-worker of mine swore it had been performed in English. As those were the days before surtitles, I had thought long & hard, in my opera-going infancy, about whether I wanted to sit through three hours of a drama in a language I basically did not understand. So I told her that I was "pretty sure" (meaning dead certain) it was performed in Italian. She kept telling me I was wrong. A few days later, though, she did grudgingly admit that she thought "perhaps" I "might have been" right about the language. I gave my usual response in such situations, a bland smile, but insert internal eye-roll.

I mention this because there is no real "performance tradition" of these operas; they sank out of sight, mostly, after the eighteenth century & have only been revived in our day. I've seen productions that range from powdered wigs & period-appropriate stage machinery to high-concept modernist shenanigans. One of the many advantages of baroque opera is exactly that there is no performance tradition; the works are flexible & sturdy enough to take on all kinds of approaches.

Just as Sellars set Orlando in Cape Canaveral, so this production, devised, directed, & choreographed by Keturah Stickann, transfers the action of Rinaldo to a comic-book / graphic novel world in which evil (but sexy) villains fight the Police Commissioner & the local superhero for control of the Big City. The original (the libretto by Giacomo Rossi is loosely based on an episode in Tasso's epic Gerusalemme liberata) is set during the Crusades, which feels a bit awkward these days. It's not that the original audience of 1711 really cared about the Crusades, but they would have a pretty clear general sense of who were the good guys & who the bad & whom they should support. Today's audience, by & large, if it feels anything about the Crusades, feels the opposite of the original audience. (I realize I am simplifying a great deal here, as we have contemporaries who care passionately about the Crusades, & are very certain of the right side, & would like to resume the fight, but those people are unlikely to be attending baroque operas in Oakland California.) Setting the action in a comic-book world clarifies which side is which. Most comic books & superhero movies are all about titanic & deeply felt clashes between Good & Evil. And they're very serious about it.

And that's the most astute thing about this choice: it doesn't diminish or mock the material. Just as Mark Morris in The Hard Nut used the graphic style of Charles Burns to shed fresh & illuminating light on Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker, so the comic-book setting here not only clarifies the drama but gives it a contemporary intensity it might lack in a less considered new setting. The vivid colors (lots of dark purple among the wicked, a peacock-blue body suit for our hero) & the bold graphic backgrounds (handled by shifting & skillful projections, designed by Yuki Izumihara), with fights illustrated as in the 1960s Batman TV series with Pow! & Blam! in graphic bubbles, all lie easily on the sumptuous & varied music of Handel's rich score (conducted with verve & authority by Emily Senturia).

The entire ensemble is superb, starting with the dancers, playing various policemen, furies, & suchlike attendants & background personnel; they had a verve & precision that brought all their roles to vivid life, & their Keystone Kop antics were, rather surprisingly (& unlike many of the antics of the original Sennett Kops) very funny. The dancers were Ellis Broderick, Eden Magana, Elena Martins, Devon Martirez y McFarland, Christopher Nachtrab, Max van der Sterre, & Livanna Maislen. Their sense of being vividly, actively present in each moment was shared by the singers: to the splendid singing was added deft characterization, with subtle touches throughout.

As our massively strong & righteous titular superhero, countertenor Kyle Tingzon, clear & pure & true of voice & person, justified the baroque preference for high-voiced heroes. As with many heroes noted for physical strength – Hercules, Samson, Ajax – there's a comic angle to the treatment of him, & a bit of obtuseness in his make-up (both are amusingly illustrated in his battle with the little birds during his picnic with Almirena). He is constantly flexing, grinning, standing with hands fisted on hips Superman-style, striking poses. What you see is what you get, mostly, though he does have his suffering arias, which Tingzon delivers as movingly as you could wish, piercing through the heroic exterior to display a genuine heart within. The posing is actually pretty remarkable; I've seen dramas in which someone playing a boxer has clearly studied his pugilistic choreography but in between those moments lets himself go slack. Tingzon was alert & on point throughout, while also delivering fountains of glittering vocals, a remarkable feat of physical & mental concentration.

Contralto Sara Couden plays Goffredo, here recast as a Commissioner Gordon type, head of the metropolitan police, with an impressively bushy walrus moustache & even more impressive low notes. There's an amusing running gag in which Rinaldo, unaware of his strength, obliviously crushes the Commissioner's hands during a handshake, or unsettles him with the heartiness of a backslap. The Commissioner tries gamely to keep up. He's also a bit appalled by some of Rinaldo's more crotch-centric poses, but that's what you get with superheroes. Shawnette Sulker plays Almirena, the Commissioner's adorable daughter & Rinaldo's love, with pert & appealling comedy, though she also can pluck heart strings with her rendition of what is possibly this opera's most famous aria, Lascia ch'io pianga. (Funny how often in comedies it's the moment of sadness that stands out; to take an obvious operatic example Una furtiva lagrima from the otherwise lightly comic L'Elisir d'amore.) To complete the roster of good guys, we have Gabi Esquinazi in a couple of striking smaller roles, as a Siren & a Magician who helps Goffredo & Rinaldo defeat the forces of evil, transporting them to their magic lair (their supervillain hideaway) on a magical craft: a tandem bicycle. As the Magician, Esquinazi was in a glowing pink ensemble & seemed to be making a play for the Commissioner in various subtle ways, hints the Commissioner decided not to take.

To these forces of righteousness we have opposed the villains: Nikki Einfeld as the enchantress Armida & Efraín Solís as Argante, here the head of a syndicate aimed at eradicating superheroes & otherwise generally being bad guys. Armida, her dark hair swirling high above her head & dark purple flounces cascading down her hips, with a shiny black leather corset & shiny thigh-high black leather boots, surrounded by demons in matching shades of purple literally dancing attendance, is a cross between a dominatrix & a drag queen. Argante wears the classic gangster's dark pin-striped suit, with the surreal touch of rose-pink petals covering the shoulders & the trouser legs. (These petals are a running motif in the costumes; Rinaldo has them as well, though in a shade of blue that matches his outfit, & here I will mention that Bethany Deal did the striking & witty costumes.) Argante has an arrogant & precise formality, at least when dealing with his secretary, or the Commissioner, but he also has a puppy-dog horniness. While embracing Armida he waggles his butt against her, when thinking about her while alone he slides his hands down to his midsection, he is immediately smitten by the charming Almirena. Both Einfeld & Solís command the stage effortlessly; their scenes have a real spark.

I could rave on & one, with details that instead will be stored in memory, to be replayed over & over. this performance (which, as with all the West Edge productions, I saw twice) was pure joy from beginning to end: even the somber moments are done with such talent, such conviction, such brio that they contribute to the overall sense of joy. I have seldom left a theater with quite this level of exhilaration. If only they could bottle this essence & sell it. Would I restrict myself to a few sips a day. or just heedlessly down the heady elixir?