29 May 2010

fun stuff I may or may not get to: June

San Francisco Opera closes out its season with La Fanciulla del West, Die Walkure, and Faust. Voigt and Licitra are in Fanciulla, with Luisotti conducting; Racette and Relyea are in Faust (I’m not familiar either with the Faust, Stefano Secco, or the conductors, Maurizio Benini and Giuseppe Finzi); and Stemme and Delavan are in Walkure, with Runnicles conducting. Walkure is of course the second part of Zambello’s American Ring, and though I had some reservations about the Rheingold, I’m curious to see how the “American” qualities are worked out. It will help me decide what to do about the Ring next year. In fact I’m still trying to figure out what to do about the rest of the Opera’s respectable but not particularly interesting season (not particularly interesting with the major exception of The Makropulos Case, with Mattila). But I ended up getting tickets to all three of these operas. I’m even mixing it up by sitting in the balcony for Faust. Make it new, children! as Wagner told us.

San Francisco Performances officially ended its season in May, but Yuja Wang’s recital was postponed for health reasons, so now that she is, I hope, fully recovered, she will be playing her previously announced program (Schubert/Liszt, Schumann, Scriabin, and Prokofiev) on the evening of Sunday, June 20.

Wang also appears with the San Francisco Symphony that same week, in a program including Poulenc’s Sonata for Piano Four Hands (the other set of hands will belong to Michael Tilson Thomas, who is also conducting the program), the Villa-Lobos Bachianas Brazileiras No. 9, Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand, and two pieces by Stravinsky: the Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra and The Rite of Spring. Sounds meaty!

June 10-13 the Symphony has the overture to the Flying Dutchman, Beethoven’s Violin Concerto with soloist James Ehnes, and Berg’s Lulu Suite with Erin Wall as the soprano soloist. The website notes on the concert bizarrely state that “Beethoven’s Violin Concerto proves there’s never too much of a good thing” and I have absolutely no idea what they mean by that in this context. Dada lives.

June 23-26 Tilson Thomas conducts an all-Berlioz evening, with the Roman Carnival Overture, Les Nuits d’Ete (with soloist Sasha Cooke), and Harold in Italy (featuring violist Jonathan Vinocour). This takes the place of the originally scheduled season closer, Berlioz’s Romeo et Juliette.

The Berkeley Early Music Festival & Exhibition takes place June 6 to 13. Click here for the program listing; the Tenebrae Responsoria by Carlo Gesualdo performed by AVE and the Motets by Chiara Margarita Cozzolani performed by Magnificat look particularly tempting.

Cutting Ball Theater is reviving its production of Krapp’s Last Tape from last season. They also have two plays scheduled in their Hidden Classics Reading Series: Strindberg’s Storm, in a new translation by Paul Walsh, on June 13, and Goldoni’s The Antiquarian’s Family, in a new translation by Beatrice Basso on June 20.

So there you have the season coming to a close. Feel free to drop me a line if I’ve forgotten something.

No comments: