While few are mentioning retirement, most music lovers know that this weekend’s gala for singing great Frederica von Stade, presented by major local organizations, is part of her farewell tour — following similar events in New York, Chicago and Houston.
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With the exhibition “Artistic San Francisco,” Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco curator James A. Ganz has realized at least one of his longtime goals: to compile and display wide and varied artistic representations of The City.“The San Francisco Bay Area landscape is a monumental work in progress, with the sea sculpting the shoreline, subterranean plates grinding each other, and rolling blankets of fog nourishing the coastal forests,” he says.
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Watching two reindeer in the California Academy of Sciences’ East Gardens on a cloudy day, a child recently asked, “Will they be OK when it rains?” The mother, probably not a spelling bee winner, replied, “Sure, they are reindeers!”Better known as caribou in North America, the Arctic deer, with their spectacular antlers, are perhaps the most popular part of the Academy’s current show, “’Tis the Season for Science.” The male is called Miles; the name of the female will be supplied by the winner of a contest sponsored by the Academy.
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Time has not been kind to the recorder, but virtuoso Marion Verbruggen has.
The Dutch musician, appearing with San Francisco’s Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra in several Bay Area concerts this weekend, is among the instrument’s best-known masters.
Winner of many international competitions, she teaches at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, and performs with chamber music ensembles around the world.
Verbruggen calls San Francisco, where she often returns, "a special place.
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Elected pope but unrecognized and hiding out in Rome, an old man watches a theater rehearsal and mouths words by Chekhov, his childhood idol. It’s among the many amusing and affecting scenes of director Nanni Moretti’s film “We Have a Pope” (“Habemus Papam,” the traditional announcement when cardinals elect a new pontiff), screening at the San Francisco Film Society’s New Italian Cinema program this week. “Pope” has the same setting — the Vatican backstage scene — as Hollywood blockbusters “The Da Vinci Code” and “Angels and Demons,” but viewers will remember it longer.
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For Elana Altman, a featured soloist in the San Francisco Ballet’s annual “Nutcracker,” her first memory of ballet goes back to age 3, when she attended a performance of the Tchaikovsky classic in the War Memorial Opera House.
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For a weighty reference to Handel’s “Messiah,” consider that Beethoven spoke of it as one of the great works in all music. And so it is, of course, a global favorite since its premiere in 1741.
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Aurora Theatre Company has assembled an exceptional group of local talent — writers, directors, dancers and musicians — to present Igor Stravinsky’s unique “The Soldier’s Tale,” opening in previews today.
In 1918, the young Stravinsky was a leading composer for ballet companies, including the famed Ballets Russes, when he wrote “Tale,” an unusual mix of music, narration, acting, puppetry and dance.
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The origin of the de Young Museum’s current exhibition, “Masters of Venice: Renaissance Painters of Passion and Power,” is the one-time global maritime power and center of commerce. Venice was immensely rich during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and its nobility spent lavishly on arts, music and architecture.
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The musical definition of “grand opera” is a work sung, not spoken. That’s not the case with the original opéra-comique version of Bizet’s “Carmen,” which returned Sunday to San Francisco Opera for the 168th time. (Only “La Boheme” and “Madama Butterfly” have been presented more in the company’s history.)While “Carmen” has so much dialogue (kudos to French language coach Patricia Kristof Moy) it remains a very grand — or, at least big — opera.
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The ninth annual San Francisco International South Asian Film Festival, “3rd i,” running Wednesday through Sunday in The City, is dedicated to promoting diverse images of South Asians through independent film.
The roster includes art-house classics, documentaries, experimental and Bollywood features, as well as movies made by San Francisco filmmakers.
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Everything is old about Handel’s “Xerxes”: The Persian king and conqueror lived in the fifth century B.C., the opera was written in 1738, the English production onstage at War Memorial Opera House is from 1985 — and yet the San Francisco Opera production, which premiered Sunday, feels fresh and new.Musically, it’s a grand-slam winner, with a brilliant cast: Susan Graham (Xerxes), David Daniels (Arsamenes), Lisette Oropesa (Romilda), Heidi Stober (Atalanta) in the top rank, closely followed by Sonia Prina (Amastris), Michael Sumuel (Elviro) and Wayne Tigges (Ariodates).
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Among many unforgettable people from the brush of the painter Camille Pissarro, the first to make an indelible impression is a 7-year-old boy, Felix. One of Pissarro’s eight children, he is the subject of a birthday portrait near the entrance of the “Pissarro’s People,” an exhibition of more than 100 oil paintings and works on paper on view through January at the Legion of Honor. Felix, with an upturned nose and long brown hair, wears a pink bow and a red beret and sits against a paisley-decorated wall in the background.
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As Hollywood was during the Great Depression, as Bollywood is for vast masses of India’s poor, the Asian Art Museum’s new exhibit diverts attention from economic problems so apparent in the museum’s Civic Center neighborhood.“Maharaja: The Splendor of India’s Royal Courts” is a luxurious vacation to the far-away, long-gone world of the princely courts of the Subcontinent.
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Few composers survive varied interpretations and levels of performance quality as well as Mozart; the music almost always wins over circumstances. That was the case on opening night of San Francisco Opera’s new production of “Don Giovanni.”
When Nicola Luisotti began to conduct the overture on Saturday, the sound from the orchestra was unusually restrained, and the performance continued in the same vein for almost three hours, until the finale caught fire.
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