SanFran Opera hits a record low
OperaThe company has announced just six new shows for season 2024-25, almost its lowest in 102 years.
Janos Gereben points out in SFCV that in the tough year of 1945 SF Opera managed no fewer than 17 new productions.
These are next season’s offerings under music director Eun Sun Kim:
– Giuseppe Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera, Sept. 6–27
— Poul Ruders’ The Handmaid’s Tale, Sept. 14 – Oct. 1
— Richard Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde, Oct. 19 – Nov. 5
— Georges Bizet’s Carmen, Nov. 13 – Dec. 1
— Giacomo Puccini’s La bohème, June 3–21, 2025
— Mozart’s Idomeneo, June 14–25, 2025
Not a lot to cheer about.
SF Opera General Director Matthew Shilvock admits: ‘In 2000, the company offered 11 productions and 86 performances; our 2024–2025 season will be 41 performances of six operas. This has been a gradual change over 25 years.’
Later today, the Met will roll out its next season.
Same old stuff apart from the Ruders and the Mozart. Another Boheme and Carmen. All that is missing is Traviata.
Easy for you to say. You’re not paying the bills. Audiences just aren’t coming to newer work.
Who`s the girl imitating a conductor?
It should be noted that the 11 productions in 2000 were all from the standard repertory, as compared to 5 out of 6 in 2024 (and 4 out 8 at Los Angeles Opera) In general, today’s post-pandemic opera and concert seasons and programs are heavily padded with new woke programming, no wonder they can’t sell tickets.
The SF Opera should put-on again Bright Sheng’s ‘Dream of the Red Chamber’ which was a hughe audience success in 2016 and was taken-up later again, with the same result.
That “woke” programming is often selling tickets. And a lot of operas over the centuries could be considered woke: Marriage of Figaro’s mocking of the aristocracy and showing servants rebelling against their masters is perhaps the best example.
Is it “often” selling tickets? What’s your evidence?
Marriage of Figaro was good music though…
This woke crap is selling tickets because, more often than not, they are hugely discounted. And it generally does not result in returning spectators either.
Let’s be frank here. Opera aficionados would rather see rare old works that used to be repertory staples (Faust, Manon, Fiery Angel, Freischutz, Barber of Bagdad, Golden Cockerel, Lakme, La Juive, Gioconda, Louise, and Francesca da Rimini by yours truly) than new works by living composers.
I suddenly realise I love a woke work. I will have to entirely reconsider my aesthetics. I’m deeply disappointed by Mozart, that he reached-out to the 21st century exactly in its weakest spot.
That bodes well for the 2124-2125 season.
Yes, but Nozze has top-shelf music, well-organized plot, and several roles suited for a variety of voices. How many new operas can offer that, especially when the composers (and librettists) are often first-timers who don’t know much about opera or how it successfully functions?
Woke is virtue signaling, mockery is not.
Woke, as you are using it, is not a thing. It is made up by fear mongering politicians because they offer nothing in terms of policy to benefit their constituents.
Paol Ruders is a 74 year old white guy, what’s woke about that?
BRAVO !
I’m confused – there seem to be as many definitions of the word “woke” on here as there are people using it. I’m starting to think it means “anything I don’t like.”
1945 was tough for opera in San Francisco? Compared to 2024, 1945 should have been a banner year for opera in San Francisco. Opera was still a mainstream entertainment option, the city was hopping due to the war while being thousands of miles away from the fighting, and the downtown wasn’t plagued by crime, thousands of homeless people and excrement covered sidewalks.
I suspect that in 1945 the local upper class, having gotten rich from the war without needing to go fight it, were more than able to fund and patronize an opera company.
In 2024 the local upper class, having gotten rich hollowing out our civilization with hi-tech nonsense, isn’t as local anymore, cares little for opera and sees little prestige in donating to it.
It won’t matter what operas are programmed, opera doesn’t show up in their augmented reality glasses.
Sounds like you’re about to lead the proletariat revolution from the comfort of your tablet or smartphone in the comfort of your local Starbucks.
Some people whine that this repertoire is too standard. I only partly agree. It is nice to explore repertoire off the beaten path indeed, but new young audience who has never been to the opera needs to discover the historical milestones. They must hear Boheme, Tosca, Aida, Tristan, Carmen, Faust, and might not be ready to hear Der Ferne Land, Pfitzner’s Palestrina or Magnard’s Guercoeur. Good to program these lesser known works, but in smaller quantity. I highly doubt the audience isn’t showing up because the season is too standard, it might have more to do with ridiculous staging and poor singing.
I concur, also adding that new young audience needs to see these ‘milestone operas’ in traditional stagings first before they are exposed to other ‘interpretations’. Today, that’s mostly only possible on videos.
This woke programming is prevalent in all U.S. opera houses, concert halls and festivals (Just take a look at Chicago, Glimmeglass, Caramoor, Santa Fe for example) But not so much in Europe (4 classics at Glydebourne in 2024)
As an East Coaster, I don’t know much about the San Francisco. However, half a century ago I spent a year and a half as a graduate student in Los Angeles, and traveled to San Francisco for opera. That was sort of a golden age for the San Francisco opera, as they often featured major singers making American debuts, who went on to illustrious careers at the Met. I remember that the program’s list of supporters featured lots of old money San Francisco – Hearst, Getty, Weyerhauser, Bank of America, etc. Bank of America has moved its HQ to North Carolina, and I don’t know where those families have gone. Today the San Francisco Bay area is enormously rich and powerful, but I don’t think the tech billionaires and their acolytes, many of whom pride themselves on working 100 hours a week, being college dropouts, and not being literate in languages other than English and ‘Code’ are a fruitful soil for the support of an Opera company.
You are correct. 90% of arts donors are the old money driving Hondas, not the newly minted tech billionaires in their Lambos and Ferraris. The latter just like to buy their way into the prestige and kulture.
Stop it! RUDERS IS NOT WOKE! He’s a well established white Danish composer with a long career and many interesting and accessible works to his credit. The non-stop parade of ignorant veiled racism and gate-keeping from the usual commenters here is quite pathetic.
And it’s a fabulous opera. Now more than ever.
The problem is quality not quantity. The music making on the stage and in the pit at the last two performances I attended at the SF opera, (both Mozart,) – one before the pandemic, and one since – was not even at the level one would have heard, in a student performance, at a larger US state university NOT known for its music school, a generation ago. Performers were cast in principle roles who literally did not know how to sing, lacking even the rudiments of operatic vocal technique or basic musicianship.
It was shocking and very sad. An almost unbelievable deterioration from even 10 or 12 years ago. Saddest of all for me was the thought that this might be someone’s introduction to opera, or to Mozart…