Favorites of 2010-2019: Live performances
When listing my favorite live performances of 2010-2019 I wanted to focus on the performing arts organizations that have immeasurably enriched our lives over the past decade. So in alphabetical
order, the organizations to which we are grateful together with a favorite live performance sponsored by each:
Rebecca Myers Hoke (Sémélé) and Sara LeMesh (Junon) in Sémélé. Photo: Gas Lamp Productions
American Bach Soloists: Under the leadership of founder Jeffrey Thomas, each year ABS produces a full season plus a summer festival showcasing young artists from the ABS Academy.
- Favorite performance: Marin Marais: Sémélé
Caroline H. Hume Concert Hall, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, August 14, 2015.
After its initial 1709 run Marais' Sémélé remained unperformed for nearly 300 years. To have the opportunity to hear this magnificent and unjustly neglected score was truly a privilege, and Thomas and his musicians and singers performed it beautifully.
Kindra Scharich as Rosaura in Ermelinda. Photo: Teresa Tam/Ars Minerva
Ars Minerva: Astonishingly creative productions of forgotten Baroque operas rediscovered, edited, and restaged by indefatigable Artistic Director Céline Ricci.
- Favorite performance: Ermelinda
Nikola Printz (Ermelinda), Sara Couden (Ormondo/Clorindo), Kindra Scharich (Rosaura), Justin Montigne (Aristeo), Deborah Rosengaus (Armidoro). Period-instrument orchestra conducted by Jory Vinikour; stage direction by Céline Ricci. ODC Theater, San Francisco, seen November 24, 2019.
The success of Ars Minerva's Ermelinda was due not only to Ricci's painstaking archival research, but to her unerring eye and ear, her highly imaginative staging, and her ability to pull together singers, musicians and a creative team who were wholly committed to her vision. Ermelinda was a triumph.
David Hansen (Nerone) and Amanda Forsythe (Poppea) in L'Incoronazione di Poppea. Photo: BEMF.
Boston Early Music Festival: This venerable biennial festival (founded in 1980) brings the best early music performers to the Boston area for concerts and exhibitions, and to international audiences through their excellent recording series.
- Favorite performance: The Monteverdi Trilogy
Paul O'Dette and Stephen Stubbs, musical directors; Gilbert Blin, stage director and set designer; seen June 12-14, 2015.
In 2015 the Boston Early Music Festival staged of all of Monteverdi's extant operas: L'Orfeo, (Orpheus, 1607), Il Ritorno di Ulisse in Patria (The return of Ulysses to his homeland, 1640), and L'incoronazione di Poppea (The coronation of Poppea, 1642). The musical and vocal performances were exceptional, and the stagings ranged from good (Orfeo, Ulisse) to excellent (Poppea); for details please click the links to my original posts. It was a privilege to be able to see these three masterpieces performed on successive days.
- Favorite performance: Layla and Majnun
Mark Morris Dance Company, with Alim Qasimov (Majnun), Fargana Qasimova (Layla), and the Silk Road Ensemble, commissioned by Cal Performances. Seen in its world premiere performance at Zellerbach Hall, Berkeley, Friday, September 30, 2016.
This was a very tough call because Cal Performances sponsors so many wonderful concerts each year. Layla and Majnun, like Juliet and Romeo, are lovers tragically separated by their families and united only in death. Azerbaijani composer Uzeyir Hajibeyli's 1908 opera was adapted and condensed into an hour-long work for two singers accompanied by a chamber orchestra mixing Western, Azerbaijani and Asian instruments; Mark Morris choreographed the accompanying dances. But it was the music—particularly the melismatic microtonal mugham singing of Alim Qasimov and Faragana Qasimova—that was especially stunning.
Shreya Ghoshal
Friends of the San Francisco Public Library sponsors programs at every branch throughout the year and is a leading advocate for sustainable funding for the library.
- Favorite program: Shreya Ghoshal
Bollywood Song and Dance with Dhaval and Gunjan and friends, Koret Auditorium, San Francisco Public Library main branch, March 3, 2018.
In a basement auditorium at my local public library one spring afternoon I happened across a performance by the playback singer Shreya Ghoshal. If you aren't a Bollywood fan, perhaps you don't realize how improbable that is. Shreya Ghoshal has performed on the soundtracks of something like 500 films, including E & I favorites Vivah (2006), Godavari (2006), Dor (2006), Lage Raho Munna Bhai (2006, one of my Favorite Bollywood Films from the 2000s), Aaja Nachle (2007), 3 Idiots (2009), Band Baaja Baaraat (2010), Love U...Mr. Kalakaar! (2011), PK (2014), and four of my Top Ten Shah Rukh Khan movies: Devdas (2002, for which she won the RD Burman Award for New Music Talent and the Filmfare Award for Best Female Playback Singer), Paheli (2005), Om Shanti Om (2007), and Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi (2009). What a privilege to be able to see her in such an intimate setting.
Cesare (Sarah Connolly), Cleopatra (Joélle Harvey), and members of the Glyndebourne Chorus in Giulio Cesare. Photo: Glyndebourne.com
Glyndebourne Festival Opera: The original country house opera festival, Glyndebourne (begun in 1934) continues to present great singers in striking productions.
- Favorite performance: Giulio Cesare
Sarah Connolly (Giulio Cesare), Joélle Harvey (Cleopatra), Christophe Dumaux (Tolomeo), Patricia Bardon (Cornelia), and Anna Stéphany (Sesto), John Moore (Achilla), the Glyndebourne Chorus and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment conducted by William Christie, seen June 20, 2018.
Director David McVicar's production of Cesare comments on the lengthy history of British imperialism in the Middle East and India. It's also very funny and moving, and with a cast of committed performers and Handel's great music the evening was, in a word, sublime.
Sylvestris Quartet performing at SF Music Day 2017. Image: Sylvestris Quartet
InterMusic SF: Sponsor of the annual free musical cornucopia SF Music Day, as well as grants and programs throughout the year.
- Favorite performance: Sylvestris Quartet
SF Music Day, Education Studio, War Memorial Veterans Building, San Francisco, September 24, 2017.
SF Music Day is an astonishing event. Each year over the course of a single day in four different venues around the vast Veterans Building, InterMusic SF presents more than 30 groups playing jazz, international, classical and/or contemporary music. On SF Music Day 2017 I was most impressed by the program of the period-instrument Sylvestris Quartet performing "250 years of French string music in 30 minutes." The pieces ranged from Marc-Antoine Charpentier's 17th-century Concert pour 4 parties de violes to a meltingly beautiful rendition of the slow movement from Camille Saint-Saëns' String Quartet No. 1 from 1899.
Kindra Scharich with the Alexander String Quartet.
Lieder Alive! supports the teaching, performance and appreciation of art songs.
- Favorite performance: The Mahler Song Cycles
Kindra Scharich with the Alexander String Quartet, Noe Valley Ministry, San Francisco, September 10, 2017.
To open Lieder Alive's 2017/18 Liederabend Series rich-voiced mezzo-soprano Kindra Scharich, accompanied by the Alexander String Quartet, presented a program of three song cycles by Gustav Mahler arranged by Zakarias Grafilo, first violin of the ASQ. The quartet versions offered both intimacy and fullness, and Scharich's voice floated beautifully over the strings. Their recording of these works was one of my Favorites of 2010-2019: Music.
Andreas Scholl, Anne Sofie von Otter and conductor Nicholas McGegan (rear center). Image: Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra.
Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra: North America's premier period-instrument orchestra, directed for the past 35 years by Nicholas McGegan.
- Favorite performance: Anne Sofie von Otter and Andreas Scholl
Weill Hall/Green Music Center, Sonoma State University, May 14, 2016.
We drove 60 miles north to the Green Music Center on the campus of Sonoma State University to see two of the greatest singers of our era perform arias by Handel. But it was the second half of the program, featuring hauntingly performed contemplative songs by Arvo Pärt and Caroline Shaw, that made this one of the most memorable concerts of the past decade.
Dajeong Song (Unulfo) and Molly Boggess (Bertarido) in Rodelinda at SFCM.
San Francisco Conservatory of Music: This renowned conservatory, founded in 1917, presents an almost daily series of concerts from the next generation of musicians and singers; most are free.
- Favorite performance: Rodelinda, Regina de' Longobardi
Karen Notovitz (Rodelinda), Matheus Coura (Bertarido), James Hogan (Grimoaldo), with the SFCM Baroque Ensemble conducted by Corey Jamason. Caroline H. Hume Concert Hall, SF Conservatory of Music, seen March 11, 2018.
With both Historical Performance and Opera & Musical Theatre programs, SFCM presents (at low or no cost to the audience) fully staged operas rarely produced elsewhere. Rodelinda is the widowed queen of Lombardy, who is sexually blackmailed by Grimoaldo, her husband Bertarido's usurper and murderer. But is her husband really dead. . .? Karen Notovitz gave a lovely, moving performance as Rodelinda, with excellent support by Matheus Coura, James Hogan and the other members of the cast.
San Francisco Early Music Society: Sponsors of the biennial Berkeley Festival and Exhibition of early music, plus an annual series of concerts and workshops.
- Favorite performance: England's Orpheus: Iestyn Davies & Thomas Dunford
Iestyn Davies' sweet-toned countertenor was ideal for this program of songs by John Dowland, Henry Purcell, and George Frideric Handel, accompanied by Thomas Dunford's lute. Davies' performance as David on DVD in Handel's Saul from Glyndebourne was one of my Favorites of 2018: Recordings.
San Francisco Opera: Founded in 1923 by Gaetano Merola, SF Opera approaches its 100th birthday with the difficult dual mission of remaining both artistically vital and financially viable.
- Favorite performance: Les Contes d'Hoffmann (Tales of Hoffmann)
Matthew Polenzani (Hoffmann), Christian Van Horn (Councillor Lindorf, Coppélius, Dr. Miracle, Dapertutto), Hye Jung Lee (Olympia), Natalie Dessay (Antonia), Irene Roberts (Giulietta), SF Opera Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Patrick Fournillier, stage direction and costume designs by Laurent Pelly, SF War Memorial Opera House, seen June 5, 2013.
Exactly what we'd love to see more of at the San Francisco Opera: a striking production of an uncommon opera with a superb cast. Laurent Pelly's visually arresting staging of Jacques Offenbach's late masterwork employed a virtually flawless cast featuring tenor Matthew Polenzani as an ardent Hoffmann, thrillingly sinister bass-baritone Christian Van Horn as the four villains, the lovely (and lovely-voiced) mezzo Angela Brower as the Muse/Nicklausse, the (almost literally) stratospheric Hye Jung Lee as the doll Olympia, and Natalie Dessay as the tragic Antonia. It's difficult to imagine a more compelling production of this dark, eerie, and beautiful work.
It's easy to complain about the company's sometimes unadventurous repertory choices—and I haven't resisted the temptation. But amid the diminishing-return revivals of Tosca and Madama Butterfly in the past decade the company has mounted strongly cast and often brilliantly conceived productions of Handel's Partenope (2014 & 2019), Berlioz's Les Troyens (2015), Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro (2010, 2015 & 2019), Richard Strauss's Arabella (2018), and Dvořák's Rusalka (2019). We're looking forward to the new season announcement next month.
Image: San Francisco Girls Chorus
Voices of Music: The San Francisco early music ensemble has increased the audiences for its excellent concert series by posting professionally filmed and recorded videos to its YouTube channel.
- Favorite performance: Dido and Aeneas
Mindy Ella Chu (Dido), Jesse Blumberg (Aeneas), San Francisco Girls Chorus, Voices of Music conducted by Hanneke van Proosdij, produced by the San Francisco Early Music Society 2018 Berkeley Festival and Exhibition, First Congregational Church, Berkeley, seen June 7, 2018.
Henry Purcell's great tragic opera Dido and Aeneas (1688?) was written to be "perform'd at Mr. Josias Priest's boarding-school at Chelsey. By young gentlewomen." There is strong evidence that in the original performances at Priest's school the young gentlewomen took all of the roles, including that of the Trojan hero Aeneas; for a debate on this question between yours truly and Voices of Music co-director and lutenist David Tayler, please see The Mysteries of Dido and Aeneas and its comments thread.
For the San Francisco Early Music Society's 2018 Berkeley Festival and Exhibition, Voices of Music joined forces with the SF Girls Chorus to offer a hint of what such a performance might have sounded like. Members of the Girls Chorus took on all except the title roles, which were sung by soprano Mindy Ella Chu and baritone Jesse Blumberg. Especially delightful was Allegra Kelly's boozy Sailor, but all of the chorus members performed with exceptional skill and assurance. How closely Voices of Music and the SF Girls Chorus re-created Dido's original performances is ultimately immaterial; this production succeeded wonderfully on its own terms.
Ryan Belongie (Arsamene) and Angela Cadelago (Romilda) in Xerxes (Serse) at Berkeley West Edge Opera. Photo: Ching Chang
West Edge Opera: An adventurous company producing underperformed and contemporary operas under the artistic direction of Mark Streshinsky.
- Favorite performance: Xerxes (Serse)
Paula Rasmussen (Serse), Angela Cadelago (Romilda), Ryan Belongie (Arsamene), Anna Slate (Atalanta), Berkeley West Edge Opera Orchestra conducted by Alan Curtis, El Cerrito High School Performing Arts Theater, seen November 21, 2010.
WEO Artistic Director Mark Streshinsky's bold, campy production effectively emphasized the farcical elements of Handel's opera. And with internationally-acclaimed conductor Alan Curtis in the pit and a strong cast of new and established singers—Rasmussen also took the title role in what remains the best version of this opera on DVD, and newcomer Anna Slate almost stole the show—the musical quality of this production was extremely high (a standard the company has maintained since).
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