[From the 11/30 www.sfcv.org]

There is altogether too much hue and cry over the land about the
relationship between funding and production.  Large organizations feel
compelled to borrow millions of dollars on top of already bloated budgets,
as if artistic excellence depended on deficit spending.  Artists should
be well-compensated, no doubt, but "overhead" seems to get in the way
too often.  There are alternatives.  Regional companies in Berkeley, San
Jose, Walnut Creek, Palo Alto are making do with relatively tiny budgets,
but there are also notable individual efforts all around.  Below, just
two local examples of using imagination and dedication instead of a
credit card.  Exhibit A: Earlier this year, Doug Han, a graduate student
at the SF Conservatory of Music, spotted an announcement about a 2005
conducting competition in Romania, where the work for the final round
will be Bela Bartok's opera, "Bluebeard's Castle." On a budget of zero
dollars, Han has spent months to organize a performance of the difficult
work at the Conservatory, "with piano, two talented young singers, myself
ready with the baton, uncut, and of course in the original Hungarian."
The public is invited to the free concert at 8 p.m., Friday, Feb. 11.

Of the passion leading to such enterprise, Han says: "I set my sights
on learning this daunting, haunting, wonderful piece, tracked down copies
of the vocal and orchestral scores, devoured every recording I could
find, began learning it with a fantastic German conductor I'd worked
under the previous summer, and found a Hungarian woman who was ever so
enthusiastic to help a young man pronounce the language correctly." For
Conservatory information, see www.sfcm.org.

Exhibit B: Responding to an item in this column about San Francisco
Opera's financial problems, Robert Arnold Hall wrote that by contrast
he had also noticed Classical Voice's report on Mark Streshinsky's
"economical but dazzling staging of the Ring Legend in Berkeley with
virtual scenery." To take "technological artistry" further, and produce
a new opera at a minimum cost, Hall and a group of artists are preparing
the premiere for his opera, "Mrs. Carroll's Alice" in Randall Museum,
on April 9.  It will be a "multimedia production of masked performers
interacting with animated virtual scenery that presents Alice's wild
dream world." The artist is Christine Desrosiers, a San Francisco
illustrator, recent SF Art Academy graduate; her vivid, original images
are being turned into video by George Mauro.

Principal singers of the cast - Suzan Hanson, Sally Mouzon, and Marie
Bafus - perform in multiple roles, which "makes for a budget-friendly
production in presenting such wild fantasy, an approach that could make
new and old opera repertoire more available to diverse audiences," Hall
writes.  Staging is by Donald Cate, musical direction by Barbara Day
Turner.  See www.music-hall.net.

* * *

"Uncle from Boston" to Oregon

Felix Mendelssohn composed an opera at 14, called "Uncle from Boston."
If you never heard of it, you're in good company.  The work's US premiere,
180 years late, will take place next July, in Eugene, at the Oregon Bach
Festival.  Festival director Helmuth Rilling conducted the opera's
first-ever public performance last month in Essen, Germany.

Rilling found the score in the Berlin state library, and found it
"stunning... a 250-page work that in its scope, structure, and technique
belies the composer's age and rivals that of Mozart's early operas. On par
with `Midsummer Night's Dream,' the opera elevates Mendelssohn's status as a
key figure in the era of Romanticism."

Mendelssohn drew on a libretto written 50 years earlier by Johann Ludwig
Caspar.  The title refers to the American Revolution, but the story takes
place in Brandenburg, where two young lovers engage in deceits and
entanglements to hide their romance from their visiting uncle.  "The
usual kind of silliness," Rilling said, "but with fantastic music."
"Uncle from Boston" uses a full chorus, orchestra, and seven soloists,
though it likely was scaled down for its only previous performance, at
the Mendelssohn home in Berlin for the composer's 15th birthday.

Janos Gereben
www.sfcv.org
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