scena

Someone else will have to tell me if this is a normal sight.

Never mind why I was there, but yesterday afternoon I was walking down Maiden Lane in San Francisco, an alleyway famous for being lined with high-end clothing stores, most of which were closed on a Sunday. I don't get to that part of the City very often.

As I reached the end of the block, I could see, and hear, across Grant Avenue, a woman standing in the middle of the street at the start of the next block of Maiden Lane, not where I'd expect to see a busker. She was wearing a red-and-white stage dress, and she was singing something that I'd never heard a busker perform, an opera aria. It was Puccini's "O mio babbino caro." She may have been accompanied by a boombox, but if so it was inaudible across the street, whereas she was not. I stopped to listen. After going through it what seemed like 3 or 4 times (it's a short aria), she stopped. Applause from across the street.

concert review: Symphony Silicon Valley

First concert of the year.

The title the editors put on it is more enthusiastic than I intended to be. I was really looking forward to Lt. Kijé, which, despite its supposed warhorse status, rarely gets played. That was a real disappointment.

But I didn't intend to be unenthusiastic. What I was getting at in my praise of the orchestra's playing, but may not have expressed clearly - this review was written tucked into odd bits of time yesterday in between things like trips to San Francisco - was that they were securely in tune. Ensemble - playing together, and at the right moment - sometimes failed, but intonation did not. They're usually pretty good at that, but sometimes they bomb. None of that here.

Noting that there was no opening gala was not just to differentiate them from the San Francisco Symphony, but another delayed dig at the SJ Mercury reviewer several years ago who complained about their not having one. I'm happier without it.