Bychkov conducts SF Symphony

A passion for life… Last weekend, Semyon Bychkov completed his collaboration with the SF Symphony in style. After a first week program that included famed violinist Pinchas Zukerman in Bruch’s Violin Concerto and Tchaikovsky’s elegant Symphony No. 5, they essayed Shostakovich’s blockbuster Symphony No. 11, the “1905,” to high acclaim. Schubert’s marvelous two-movement “Unfinished”...

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Rigoletto at the SF Opera

Fools and Curses at the SF Opera A lone trumpet set a fragile entrance in the darkened house, followed by melancholy horns. As the curtains rose, a spotlight shone down on a lump of limbs and bells, slowly defined by motion—the hunchbacked jester, Rigoletto. Masked revelers, frozen in the arches, were backlit in red. Leaning into the distance, colonnades mirrored the sharp disaffection and stark shadows of Di Chirico’s “Girl with a...

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