For this work, Kentridge sets Schubert's 24 gloomy-beautiful songs about lost love and loneliness to 24 corresponding short films. Kentridge's Lulu premiered last November at the Metropolitan Opera in New York to great acclaim and was shown in movie theaters across the globe as part of the Met Live in HD season. This west coast premiere of a 2014 take on Winterreise by William Kentridge - a famed South African artist known for stark black and white video art - is certainly edgier fare than the company's regular programming. 11, SF Opera Lab officially launches its programming with a multimedia version of Franz Schubert's Romantic song cycle Winterreise ("Winter Journey"). The theater is already in use for recitals by up-and-coming singers enrolled in the San Francisco Opera's young artist program. And on Friday, Mar. Made by Berkeley-based Meyer Sound, the system can be optimized for, among other things, spoken text versus sung lyrics just by tapping on a screen. The room can be configured in a variety of ways, and the challenging acoustic - the 30-foot-high ceiling is great for monumental physical artworks but less forgiving on the human voice - is rectified by an acoustic system of 24 microphones and 75 loudspeakers discreetly placed to adjust reverberation. And the Lab's programming is curated by someone well-positioned to take on this challenge: Director Elkhanah Pulitzer has a track record for staging gutsy operas, as evidenced by her bold production of Lulu for West Edge Opera last summer that featured full nudity. The space is a physical manifestation of the series it hosts, SF Opera Lab. The freshly launched programming concept seeks to appeal to those interested in unorthodox performing arts offerings that involve both the human voice and theater. These include seats with cup holders, an octagonal lighting catwalk, and a state-of-the-art sound system. It also has unabashedly contemporary features more reminiscent of a modern-day multiplex movie theater than an opera house.
Once a sculpture court for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the 299-seat theater retains many neoclassical elements of its original 1932 beaux arts design such as arched niches and garlanded detailing. Mezzo-soprano Zanda Švēde performs the 'Habenera' from Bizet's 'Carmen' at a donor preview of the Taube Atrium Theater. The Taube Atrium Theater is the centerpiece of the Wilsey Center for Opera, which opened on the 4th floor of the recently refurbished Veterans Building in San Francisco's Civic Center neighborhood at the end of February. San Francisco Opera (SF Opera) has opened a new small venue and with it comes an experimental performance series aimed at drawing in a younger audience.
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