Coming attraction . . .
Salons at the Garden Gate
a Sunday Afternoon Recital Series
West Edge Opera brings you some of our favorite stars from past productions in recital.
Each introduces a promising young artist of her choice.
Discover the Garden Gate, a charming new performance space in the shadow
of the Claremont Hotel. Your ticket includes wine and hors d'oeuvres
and an opportunity to meet the artists following the recital.
* * *
Christine Brandes – June 2, 3:00
Our Nero in L'Incoronazione di Poppea performs works both new and old,
and presents Ana Miranda, mezzo soprano, from San Francisco State University. Laura Dahl, piano.
Laura Bohn –
July 14, 3:00
You watched her cavort in both Caliban Dreams and Mahagonny Songspiel. Laura Bohn now takes on a character entirely different: The Governess in The Turn of the Screw. Laura will perform works to celebrate the Britten centenary and our upcoming production, and present Nikola Printz, mezzo soprano, from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
Jonathan Khuner, piano.
Buffy Baggott –
August 11, 3:00
A perennial favorite, our Carmen and The Composer in Ariadne will entertain you in her inimitable style
and present a finalist from the East Bay Opera League—Angela Jarosz, soprano, recent graduate of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Pianist TBA.
* * *
The Garden Gate Creativity Center
2911 Claremont Ave at Ashby in Berkeley
Free parking in the lot adjacent to The Garden Gate; enter from Claremont
Each Salon is $35, or buy all three for $94.50 — order below or call (510) 841-1903.
Purchase tickets:
[Christine Brandes]
[Laura Bohn]
[Buffy Baggott]
[Salon Series]
Headlines From West Edge
San Jose Mercury News
> West Edge Opera brings Paul Gauguin to life on stage
If Richard Wagner were able to take a peek into our 21st-century world of opera, he likely would take particular interest in the goings on at West Edge Opera. Wagner, the great 19th-century composer of such iconic works as "Der Ring des Nibelungen," may have been the one who coined the long German word "Gesamtkunstwerk," which he used to describe his ideas regarding ideal opera.
...So, when one considers the opera's subject, post-impressionist painter Paul Gauguin's iconoclastic career as it ranged from Brittany and France to Tahiti in the South Seas, you come up with a striking example that would please old Wagner.
San Francisco Classical Voice
> Christine Brandes: Singing While Rome Burns
...She’s the kind of person who looks on her career and success and says, simply, “I’ve had the sort of happy luck of opportunities presenting themselves when I was ready to take them up.” Bay Area audiences have been grateful for her much-lauded performances with Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and other ensembles, and can count themselves lucky to look forward to her upcoming interpretation of the emperor Nero in West Edge Opera’s production of Monteverdi’s Poppea, which runs at El Cerrito High School’s Performing Arts Theater Feb. 1–2 at 8 p.m. and Feb. 3 at 3 p.m. Of director Mark Streshinsky’s take on the piece, she says, “It is very interesting. It’s 1962 before the Cuban Missile crisis, and Ottavia is Jackie Kennedy, Nero is Jack Kennedy, and Poppea is Marilyn Monroe. So, what would have happened if he, mid-administration, had dumped Jackie and picked up with Marilyn Monroe?!”
> West Edge Monteverdi, Title Changes, NEA Grant
West Edge Opera's upcoming production of Monteverdi's L’incoronazione di Poppea is recommended for a $12,500 National Endowment for the Arts grant. The award is one of 832 grants totaling $23.3 million in funding nationwide, announced by NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman...
Artistic Director Mark Streshinsky has been named General Director. He and MusicSources Artistic Director Gilbert Martinez are creating a reduced performance version of the 1642 L'incoronazione di Poppea, based on an orchestral edition by early-music scholar Alan Curtis. Streshinsky is stage director, Martinez will conduct a Baroque ensemble from the harpsichord.
San Francisco Chronicle
> 2013 Bay Area classical music preview
Joshua Kosman (selecting 12 productions of interest in the next four months):
"L'incoronazione di Poppea" (Feb. 1-3, El Cerrito High School) West Edge Opera inaugurates its season with Monteverdi's 1642 operatic masterpiece of love and treachery in ancient Rome, with Christine Brandes as Nero and Emma McNairy as Poppea.
"Bonjour, M. Gauguin" (April 6-14, El Cerrito High School) Fabrizio Carlone's opera about the painter's life gets its American premiere from the West Edge Opera and Kunst-Stoff, in a production featuring Shawnette Sulker as Gauguin's inner voice.
Repeat Performances
> Bay Area Opera—opening the season
West Edge Opera, formerly the Berkeley Opera, has had two successful seasons in its digs at the new El Cerrito Performing Arts Center... They have not only reinvented themselves, but grown into a new creative identity. Last year’s “Popera” season was a smashing success, and they continue their focus on artistic accessibility with a new season that stretches from baroque classic to American premiere.
Chronicling a journey from mistress to empress, Monteverdi’s L’Incoranazione di Poppea was steamy in 1642 and still surprising today, as well as a good fit for chamber orchestra. Artistic Director Mark Streshinsky is certain to add flair to the careful period sensibility of conductor and harpsichordist Gilbert Martinez of MusicSources, and it will be sung with an accomplished cast that includes renowned Christine Brandes as Nero (yes, that Nero!) and coloratura soprano Emma McNairy as Poppea (stealing the show last year in Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos). Performances will be held Fri Feb 1 and Sat Feb 2 at 8:00 p.m. and Sun Feb 3 at 3:00 p.m.
In April Fabrizio Carlone’s Bonjour M. Gauguin immerses us in the world of French post-Impressionist Paul Gauguin, with text derived from his own writings and dance collaboration by the Kunst-Stoff Contemporary Dance Company, all set amidst a video backdrop of the artist’s arresting neo-primitivism. They end their season in July with Benjamin Britten’s gorgeous and chilling The Turn of the Screw.
 San Francisco Classical Voice
> Sin City at West Edge Opera
West Edge’s program in late July and early August features two fantasies — one about an unreal city but with real experiences, the other about a real city with unreal experiences.
...Perhaps it’s not what most people would think of for an opera company, but rest assured, there’s still a strong operatic basis in its next unusual offering.
Mercury News
> West Edge Opera mounts a double bill...
Today's world would be barely recognizable to people living in past centuries. But although there have indeed been dramatic changes in the world itself, its human inhabitants seem to have changed very little...
This contention will be explored later this month when West Edge Opera presents City of Sin, a double bill of one-act operas telling the tales of two cities. Although each city exists in a different era and locale, the human characters in each could be interchangeable. The first, Mahagonny Songspiel, was completed in Germany in 1927, and the second, Vera of Las Vegas, in the United States in 2003.
theatrebayarea.org
> Theatre Bay Area Editor's Picks: City of Sin: Mahagonny Songspiel / Vera of Las Vegas
...This production dresses up the "Songspiel's" ferocious social satire in luxe 1920s cabaret and jazz style, pairing it with another one-act, "Vera of Las Vegas," which features a pop-music mashup score reorchestrated for the slinky house cabaret band. Don’t even try to tell me you don’t want to hear that...
 San Francisco Classical Voice
> West Edge's Marley/Manga Flute
"No matter how many productions you might have seen of Mozart’s Magic Flute, almost certainly none was like what West Edge Opera is serving up March 4–11. It’s the famously “different” David Scott Marley’s new English adaptation in Japanese manga (comics/cartoons) style..."
> The Magic in That Flute
"...'It’s my fantasia on a theme by Mozart,' Marley said. 'In my adaptations, what I’m concerned with is to bring out the qualities in a work that’ve been neglected by translating them to modern-day equivalents.' To that end, Marley turned to Manga, the Japanese comic book and animated film style."
 San Francisco Chronicle
> Richard Paul Fink to debut as Wotan in Berkeley
"Doesn't matter how good you are at something, nobody appreciates being pigeonholed. Baritone Richard Paul Fink, one of today's leading interpreters of Wagnerian villains, will confirm the point..."
San Francisco Chronicle
> Prompter helps singers get back in the groove
"When a baritone goes "cold" and forgets a line, Jonathan Khuner is there. When a soprano gets lost in her character and sings ahead of the beat, Khuner reins her in. He's the prompter at the San Francisco Opera, "the first line of defense," he says, against a singer's potential humiliation..."
Bonjour M. Gauguin
Photographs by Alessandra Mello, mellopix, of Bonjour M. Gauguin.
West Edge Opera News
West Edge Opera at Caffé Venezia's New Year's Eve
West Edge Opera singers entertained diners at Caffé Venezia for a special New Year's Eve celebration.
Moss, Khuner, and friends sing the Barcarolle 
Meredith, Seigel 
Benjamin Bongers waits his turn Mezzo soprano Kathleen Moss and soprano Jillian Khuner were joined by patrons dressed for the occasion for a rousing rendition of the Barcarolle from The Tales of Hoffmann.
Soprano Eileen Meredith and tenor Sigmund Seigel sang solos and duets for the early diners.
Tenor Benjamin Bongers joined Moss and Khuner to serenade the later diners.
A happy Divine Comedy
West Edge Opera Artistic Director Mark Streshinsky, the evening's master of ceremonies (and one of the voices in the Brindisi), soprano divas Marie Plette and Aimée Puentes, pianist Daniel Lockert, mezzo diva Kathleen Moss
Photos by Marian Kohlstedt Chef Tom Brougham provided a scrumptious dinner and divas Kathleen Moss, Marie Plette, and Aimée Puentes kept us laughing with their songs and antics, including Rossini's famous Cat Duet and a "group effort" performance of the Brindisi from La Traviata. A good time was had by all.
West Edge Opera Past President Paul Sugarman,
Barbara West, Jeremy Knight 
Patron Ann Williamson with the
orchid she won. The orchid table
centerpieces were courtesy of
D'Jour Floral & Antiques in El
Cerrito, official flower supplier to
West Edge Opera
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El Cerrito Patch
