Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Peter Josheff's Inferno




Peter Josheff's Inferno (libretto by Jamey Robles) -- quite impressive, compositionally, librettoly, stagecraftily (re lighting, set, and Harriet March Page's direction), with first-class dancers and pianistic fireworks, and a wow cast including Eliza O'Malley, Richard Mix, and a talented newcomer to the scene who has performed with John Kendall Bailey's Trinity Opera, among others.

Friday, June 12, 2009

No Exit / The Old Maid and the Thief


Goat Hall Productions /


San Francisco Cabaret Opera's double bill of Zak Watkins's No Exit




(after Jean-Paul Sartre), and




(Hadley at the piano for both productions) Gian Carlo Menotti's




The Old Maid




and the Thief.




with a dream cast of female leads Michelle Jasso, Meghan Dibble, and Suzanna Mizell in the latter.




Cast party after at Tuk-Tuk Tai, with director Harriet March and Wayne Wong (Garcin);




Meghan,




Michelle,




Suzanna, and




Diane.

Sunday, May 24, 2009

Fresh Voices IX: Festival of New and Used Works (B)


Fresh Voices IX's Program B with



Meghan Dibble (as a bratty child),




Jo Vincent Parks (here with Michael Muhammed), and




Eliza O'Malley, in Sheli Nan's Saga;



Wayne Wong and



Indre Vistkontas realizing David Heuser's The Golden Ax;




Cary Roscoe and Elizabeth Henry singing Warren Gooch's Academy Songs;




Chris Pratorius's Roxane de Boveda with C.A. Jordan, Joaquin Quilez-Marin (above), Cecily Greaburn, and Zoltan Lundy;




Edward Knight's Tales Not Told featuring Rosko, Dalyte Kodzis, Kristen Brown, Henry, and Viskontas;




Veronika Krausas' Beckettian




Mortal Thoughts of Lady Macbeth bewitched by Michelle Jasso, Brown, Julia Hathaway, Sarah-Nicole Ruddy; and Lan-chee Lam's The Lady Doth Protest Too Much from Rachel Warner and Edward Coverdale.

Saturday, May 23, 2009

Fresh Voices IX: Festival of New and Used Works


Second night of Fresh Voices IX, with



Cynthia Weyukker setting up for another musical-saw-tour-de-force.




A very fine show overall, graced by a demonstratively responsive crowd for each featured work, including



Sex and



Delilah.

Friday, May 22, 2009

Fresh Voices IX Festival of New and Used Operas



Fresh Voices IX Festival of New and Used Operas – Part II
Three Evenings and One Afternoon in Hell - Or Is It Heaven?

"Rash Acts and their Consequences"
"Yearning to Touch a Loved One: Dead or Alive!"

Dates
Program A:
Friday, May 22, 2009 at 8:00 pm
Saturday, May 23, 2009 at 8:00 pm
Program B:
Sunday, May 24, 2009 at 3:00 pm and 7:30pm

Cast
May 22, 23:
Mark Alburger, Kristen Brown, Georgia Duan, Kate Howell, Alix Jerinic, Dalyte Kodzis, Peter Lindh, William Loney, Nanette McGuinness, Eileen Meredith, Maria Mikheyenko, Mark Narins, Tristan Robben, Jason Sarten, Sarah Sloan, Megan Stetson, Rachel Warner, Cynthia Weyuker

May 24: Kristen Brown, Edward Coverdale, Meghan Dibble, Cecily Graburn, Julia Hathaway, Elizabeth Henry, Michelle Jasso, C.A. Jordan, Dalyte Kodzis, Zoltan Lundy, Eliza O'Malley, Harriet March Page, Jo Vincent Parks, Joaquin Quilez-Marin, Cary Rosko, Sarah-Nicole Ruddy, Indre Viskontas, Rachel Warner, Wayne Wong

Location
Community Music Center, 544 Capp St., SF

Tickets
Cabaret Table Ticket (per person) $25.00; General Seating $15.00; Student/Senior $10.00
Box Office (Reservations voicemail box): (415) 289-6877


Featuring


Mark Alburger's Sex and Delilah, with


Maria Mikheynko
(Woman at Timnah, Prostitute, Delilah)

Mark Alburger
(Samson)


Kristen Brown
(Angel, Manoah, Lion, Philistine, Samson's Wife's Father, Israelite)

Nanette McGuiness
(Manoah's Wife, Honey Bees, Philistine, Israelite)

***



Goat Hall Productions
San Francisco Cabaret Opera
Fresh Voices IX




Community Music Center
San Francisco, CA

Mark Alburger - Sex and Delilah (Maria Mikheyenko)



I. Death



II. Defeat (Kristin Brown and Nanette McGuiness)



III. Delilah.




Dalyte Kodzis and William Loney in The Touch.

Friday, April 17, 2009

Purcell's Dioclesian / Alburger's Diocletian



 
Goat Hall Productions P.O. Box 31056, SF, CA 94131-0056

DIOCLESIAN / DIOCLETIAN
NOHspace @ Theatre Artaud, 2840 Mariposa St., SF
8pm Friday, April 17 & 24;
8pm Saturday, April 18 & 25;
5pm Sunday, April 19 & 26

$20 general admission /
$15 students, seniors, and TBA

The all-female cast for both Purcell and Alburger are:

Kimberly Anderman, Annemarie Ballinger, Katherine Cornelius, Alison Collins,
Robin Costa, Alexandra Jerinic, Erin Lahm, Maria Mikheyenko, and Indre Viskontas

Stage Director: Harriet March Page
Fight Director / Choreography: Durand Garcia
Pianist April 17-19: Skye Atman
Pianist April 24-26: Alexander Katsman

The Prophetess: or, The History of Dioclesian
Music by Henry Purcell,
Drama adapted from Fletcher & Messinger's
The Prophetess
Diocletian: A Pagan Opera
Music by Mark Alburger,
Based on Edward Gibbon's
Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire

 
 Visit San Francisco Cabaret Opera /
Goat Hall Productions
@ www.goathall.org

***

DIOCLETIAN: A PAGAN OPERA (libretto after Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire) (2000), is a trope of Henry Purcell's Dioclesian distorted by atonality, ragtime, minimalism, children's songs, rock'n'roll, and Peter Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5.

MARK ALBURGER is an award-winning ASCAP composer of postminimal, postpopular, and postcomedic sensibilities, published by New Music. He is Music Director of San Francisco Cabaret Opera and San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra, Instructor in Music Theory and Literature at Diablo Valley College and St. Mary's College, Editor-Publisher of 21st-Century Music Journal, oboist, pianist, vocalist, recording artist, musicologist, author, and music critic. He began playing the oboe and composing in association with Dorothy and James Freeman, George Crumb, and Richard Wernick; and studied with Karl Kohn at Pomona College, Joan Panetti and Gerald Levinson at Swarthmore College (B.A.), Jules Langert at Dominican University (M.A.), Roland Jackson at Claremont Graduate University (Ph.D.), and Terry Riley. Among his 174 opus numbers are 12 concertos, 11 chamber ensemble pieces, 4 masses, 20 operas, 2 piano suites, 11 song cycles, 9 symphonies, and a five-hour work-in-progress opera-oratorio (The Bible). Sex and Delila, in preparation for next Spring's Sex and the Bible, will receive its premiere this May during SF Cabaret Opera's Fresh Voices IX Festival.


Mark Alburger - DIOCLETIAN, Op. 90 (2000)

I. FIRST PARAGRAPH MUSIC
"Diocletian . . . abject and obscure . . . was successively promoted . . .in the . . . war."

II. Aria (Mezzo-Soprano) & Chorus, E-I-E-I-O THUNDER
"[P]erfect form of government"

III. Aria (Soprano) & Chorus, HAPPY FUNERAL MUSIC
"[T]he nation was gradually reduced to a state of servitude; compelled to perpetual labour"

IV. Aria (Soprano), WHAT SHALL I DO?
"Christianity introduced stricter notions"

V. Aria (Bass) & Chorus, SPEAK, FLAME
"[S]ubdued"

VI. COUNTRY DANCE
"[F]or a while fortune [graced his retirement]"


CHARACTERS

Edward Gibbon

Maria Mikheyenko


Diocletian

Alexandra Jerinic


Drusilla

Kimberly Anderman


Pagans and Christians

Annemarie Ballinger, Alison Collins, Kat Cornelius,
Robin Costa, Erin Lahm, Indre Viskontis



Mark Alburger - DIOCLETIAN
(after Edward Gibbon's The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire,
and Henry Purcell's Dioclesian)


I. FIRST PARAGRAPH MUSIC

Edward Gibbon:

Abject and obscure,
successfully promoted,

declared the most worthy of the
imperial throne,

Diocletian may be viewed as
founder of Byzantium.

Ostentation was the first principal of the
new system.

II. E-I-E-I-O THUNDER

(The stately magnificence [in the spirit of] the court of Persia.
Sumptuous interior with slaves, officers, eunuchs, [etc.])

Diocletian:

Great Diocletian
a bore has become.
Oh me oh my
What heart is heretofore
stirred.

Chorus:

E-I-E-I-O
All praise the thundering Jove

Old Mars and Venus
mutually inspire
all of life's passions.


III. HAPPY FUNERAL MUSIC

(Drusilla, wife of Diocletian, a Christian, among Christians)

Drusilla:

Sing in suppression,
affliction,
derision.

Oh sing in
our oppression and injury,
servitude, labor, confinement and pain.

Sing yet
while servile.
Oh sing still

(Christians -- clergy and common people -- murmuring.
Soldiers, armed with rustic weapons, suppress the people, murmuring fades.)

Chorus: Happy


IV. WHAT SHALL I DO?

(Drusilla is led to prison, Diocletian's voice fades in and out at every usage of "her," "man," "she")

Drusilla:

What shall I do?
What shall I do to show how much I love her?

I will love more.
I will love more, than man ever loved before me.

To show how much I love her? What shall I do? What shall I do?
How many millions of sighs can suffice? How many millions of sighs can suffice?

Than man ever loved before me? I will love more. I will love more.
Till for her own sake she will implore me. Till for her own sake she will implore me.


V. SPEAK, FLAME

(Drusilla, brought before Diocletian and the people, as a religious traitor to be burned)

Diocletian:

Speak flame,
Brazen flame.

Stand in the center of the universe
Call the listening world.

Joy can be yours
With well-chosen words

Great Diocletian waits

Chorus:

Great Diocletian
The Great Persecutor

Sound his renown

O! O sacred flame
Embalm his name
With honor here
and glory after death


VI. COUNTRY DANCE

(The people fade away, Drusilla and Diocletian remain frozen in place)

Edward Gibbon:

21st year of his reign Diocletian executed
his memorable resolution abdicating empire --

action not naturally expected from a prince who never practiced
lessons of philosophy either in attainment or the use of power

Notwithstanding severity of a rainy cold winter
Diocletian left soon after the ceremony -- pale, wan --

retiring immediately to a villa in Luciana where it was
impossible to find any lasting tranquility or peace.

 ***




April 18

***


April 24




Noh




Space

***



Cast party at Adam and Indre's, with Harriet, Maria, Annemarie,




Kim, Robin, Alison and her husband.