Béla Bartók’s “Duke Bluebeard’s Castle” is yet another modern opera filling The City’s performance halls this summer.
Directed by Michael Tilson Thomas, the San Francisco Symphony is presenting a semi-staged version of the challenging, rewarding work at Davies Symphony Hall this week in a program also featuring Jeremy Denk performing Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1.
While John Adams’ “Nixon in China,” onstage next door at the War Memorial Opera House in a San Francisco Opera production, is 25 years old, “Bluebeard” was written a century ago.
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San Francisco Opera’s unusual and impressive new production of Mozart's "The Magic Flute" melds music, art and technology in a delightful mix.
Instead of a conventional set, it features 3,000 tempera-and-chalk paintings by Jun Kaneko projected over the stage.
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At the conclusion of the San Francisco Opera’s opening of Giuseppe Verdi’s 1846 “Attila” Tuesday, general director David Gockley presented chorus director Ian Robertson with the San Francisco Opera Medal. The timing was excellent. Robertson’s chorus shined just as brightly as it did in last week’s premiere of John Adams’ “Nixon in China” and provided the opera’s highlights.
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At the conclusion of San Francisco Opera’s opening of Giuseppe Verdi's 1846 “Attila” Tuesday, general director David Gockley presented chorus director Ian Robertson with the San Francisco Opera Medal.
The timing was excellent. Robertson's chorus shined just as brightly as it did in last week's premiere of John Adams' "Nixon in China” and provided the opera’s highlights.
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Fascinating memorabilia from 132 years of the Bay Area’s film history comes to the Old Mint this week in “The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of: San Francisco and the Movies.”
The San Francisco Museum and Historical Society made great efforts to pull together reels, photographs, posters, vintage cameras and props — many from private collections — for a brief exhibit period, just nine days.
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When John Adams’ “Nixon in China” was first heard at a Herbst Theatre workshop 25 years ago, the repetitive, pulsing music seemed similar to the worst of Philip Glass and Steve Reich; audience and critical response to the subsequent world premiere was similar to mine.
Mea culpa: At the long-delayed San Francisco Opera premiere of “Nixon in China” Friday at the War Memorial Opera House, the orchestra played an exciting, rich, memorable score with thrilling harmonic resolutions — invoking, but not copying, Wagner, Massenet and Puccini.
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“The Magic Flute” may be the most familiar offering in San Francisco Opera’s summer season, but a high-tech production opening this week at the War Memorial Opera House promises to live up to the challenge of presenting an old favorite in a new setting, while remaining faithful to the music. Three thousand tempera-and-chalk paintings created by Jun Kaneko — being projected with pioneering Autodesk Inventor 3D software — are the backdrop to Mozart’s 1791 masterwork, which has received memorable productions in The City featuring designs by Gerald Scarfe and David Hockney.
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Back in 1987, a workshop presentation of “Nixon in China” at The City’s Herbst Theatre was astonishing. Even in an unstaged, work-in-progress form, librettist Alice Goodman and Berkeley composer John Adams’ opera — the first of Adams’ “CNN operas” dealing with contemporary world events — boasted innovation, both in style and subject.
After a quarter century, and on the 40th anniversary of President Richard Nixon’s trip to China, the opera is moving to the War Memorial Opera House, adjacent to Herbst, for its long-anticipated local premiere Friday.
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“Earthquake” — luckily without an exclamation mark — is the new exhibition and planetarium show at the California Academy of Sciences.
The 8,000-square-foot exhibit, which opened Saturday, includes fossils, maps, useful instructional material, adorable ostrich chicks and “shakehouse” simulations, in a mock Victorian, of the 1906 San Francisco and 1989 Loma Prieta quakes.
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The always colorful, month-long San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival opens Saturday at Fort Mason Center with a particularly spectacular Balinese-themed world premiere. “Bayangan Jiwa” (“The Spirit’s Image”), which combines dance, shadow puppets and two gamelan orchestras, boasts an ensemble of 70 performers, many in elaborate costumes and headdresses.
The piece features Berkeley’s Gamelan Sekar Jaya, San Jose’s Pusaka Sunda, dancer Luh Andarawati and instrumental soloists.
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A list of events and exhibits happening in the San Francisco art scene.
‘Partners in Surrealism’
“Man Ray-Lee Miller: Partners in Surrealism” features more than 100 photographs, paintings, drawings and manuscripts that explore the creative interaction between the prominent 20th-century surrealists. This exhibition, the first to focus exclusively on the pair’s artistic relationship, also includes paintings by Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst, Roland Penrose and Dora Maar, artists who traveled in their circle in Paris from 1929-32.
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The arts don’t go on vacation in summer. The San Francisco Opera is in session, the S.F. Symphony winds up its centennial season and begins its seasonal pops series — and here come the summer festivals!
Joe Goode
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A big, pioneering exhibition is turning the Asian Art Museum inside out and upside down.Opening Friday, “Phantoms of Asia: Contemporary Awakens the Past,” the first large-scale show of contemporary art organized by the museum, showcases old and new artworks together throughout all galleries and outside in the Civic Center Plaza, too.
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"Voicebox," a public radio program broadcasting eclectic vocal music, is venturing into new territory — drinking songs.
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San Francisco’s age-old fondness for music is apparent in “Singing the Golden State,” a fun show of vintage sheet music covers at the Society of California Pioneers.
Most of the 150-piece exhibit comes from the collection of curator James M. Keller, a prominent music critic, with assistance from Tim Evans, the society’s exhibition and education coordinator.
A forerunner of today’s tweets, sheet music served as a major form of media in the 19th century. “If something happened, there’s a fair chance someone wrote a song about it,” Keller says.
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