Verdi’s
Un Ballo in Maschera. Starring Aprile Millo, Harolyn Blackwell, Florence Quivar, Luciano Pavarotti, and Leo Nucci, conducted by James Levine. From January 26, 1991. View here and for 24 hours.
Wagner’s
Das Rheingold. Conductor: Adam Fischer, director: Sven-Eric Bechtolf. With Tomasz Konieczny, Norbert Ernst, Jochen Schmeckenbecher, Herwig Pecoraro, and Michaela Schuster. Production from January 2016. Register for free and view here.
Sunday, January 3 Handel’s
Semele. First streamed on OperaVision at its premiere in Berlin on May 12, 2018. Barrie Kosky’s production returns as part of the Komische Oper winter streaming festival. Konrad Junghänel conducts a cast including Philipp Meierhöfer, Nicole Chevalier, Katarina Bradic, Eric Jurenas, Allan Clayton, Ezgi Kutlu, and Nora Friedrichs. View here for one month.
All Outside Lands News
January 2007 - Lafayette Elementary School, old and new, and a Then and Now look at 38th and Balboa. We pay some attention to the architectural gems of the Sunset, starting with Pinehurst Lodge and the Trocadero Inn.
November 2006 - John Freeman tells us about the Richmond district s Beer Town, a Then and Now look at 20th and Taraval, and pages for Parkside markets past and present: 22nd and Taraval, 555 Taraval (16th Avenue Foods), and 1201 Vicente (Pinelake Market). Plus, Alamo Elementary School.
October 2006 - St. Paul s Presbyterian Church in the Oceanside is 100 years old (check out the old basketball photos!) and Argonne School photos. (Did you know the first idea for a name was Park-Presidio School?)
Adrian Spinelli December 24, 2020Updated: January 2, 2021, 2:50 pm
Thao Nguyen of Thao & the Get Down Stay Down performs during the 2018 Noise Pop Festival at the Fox Theater in Oakland. Photo: Tim Mosenfelder, Getty Images
The Chronicle’s guide to notable new albums from the year.
Rock
Thao & the Get Down Stay Down, “Temple” (Ribbon Music)
In 2016, the already distinguished career of Thao Nguyen took an incredible turn on the album “A Man Alive.” The Oakland indie folk singer-songwriter had turned within to confront the role that her absentee father played in shaping her pain and existence, in music that was both vulnerable and fantastic. Now on “Temple,” Nguyen digs deeper into her own identity as a queer Vietnamese American woman, and how going to Vietnam for the first time in 2015 (with her mother who hadn’t been back in 43 years since fleeing the war-torn country) helped her find herself.
Christmas Oratorio. Ensemble Resonanz presents Bach s
Christmas Oratorio as Hausmusik among friends. With a small cast and no large choir, the ensemble has arranged 30 arias, recitatives, choruses, and chorales from Bach s masterpiece in its own version. The score remains untouched, but electric guitar and Hammond organ sound in the continuo, there’s only one trumpet, and the whole ensemble joins in the chorales. View here.
Delibes’s
Sylvia. Conductor: Kevin Rhodes, choreography: Manuel Legris after Louis Mérante. With Kiyoka Hashimoto, Masayu Kimoto, and Davide Dato. Production from November 2018. Register for free and view here.
2 pm ET: VOCES8 Live from London presents
Joshua Kosman December 18, 2020Updated: December 19, 2020, 12:41 am
San Francisco Symphony pianist Robin Sutherland at home in San Francisco in 2013. Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle 2013
Robin Sutherland, the longtime San Francisco Symphony pianist renowned for his formidable keyboard skills, vivid personality and trademark ponytail, died on Friday, Dec. 18, at his San Francisco home. He was 69.
Sutherland died of a brain tumor, his husband, Carlos Ortega, confirmed.
Over the course of an extraordinary 45-year career with the Symphony, Sutherland established his reputation as an artist of elegance, power and stylistic range. He was passionate about the music of Bach and Mozart, deeply committed to the music of the Romantics and exuberantly fearless in the face of knotty contemporary scores.