Deep within the bowels of San Francisco's Parc 55 Renaissance
Hotel this weekend, CIStA and FAIS hold forth with a well-attended
English-French-Spanish conference on "World Languages and Cultures." Those
mysterious acronyms will be decoded further on, but let's first get to the
musical portion of the business.

Friday afternoon, while everybody was still talking about the previous
night's keynote address by Leonard Shlain on "Language, Art and Culture"
(left brain, right brain, Gutenberg, TV, how the proliferation of images is
contributing to the re-emergence of the feminine [?!], etc., etc.), there
was a wonderful session on "Le Francais bien chante," Patricia Kristof-Moy
teaching French diction to opera singers.

Kristof-Moy, a French diction coach of such ability that can belong only
to a Hungarian with a Chinese spouse, put her 20 years of experience with
the San Francisco Opera to good use in a session with three Opera Center
youngsters.

As the purpose of the event was to observe diction coaching, it wouldn't
be right to report on the "performances," but I cannot resist saying that
moments of magic in Elena Bocharova's Dalila served as a powerful reminder
that his young Russian-American mezzo - former Merola participant, now an
Adler Fellowette - may soon emerge as a major artist.  No objects hurled
in this direction, please, but I heard a note or two that sounded like a
hybrid of Rise Stevens at her usual and Olga Borodina on a good day.  You
can get a jump on the future, at her upcoming Schwabacher Debut Recital, on
Sunday, April 7, in Old First Church.  The event will also feature baritone
Brad Alexander, who won the $10,000 grand prize in the Portland Opera's
2002 Eleanor Lieber Competition last week.

(Almost forgot:  CIStA and FAIS - Council of International Schools of the
Americas [NOT affiliated with the CIA] and French-American International
School.)

Janos Gereben/SF
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