Main Stage Concert: A Night at the Opera (Palo Alto) April 27, 2013

The SFCO is excited to present the fourth and final program of our Main Stage Concert series in the 2012-2013 series, "A Night at the Opera." We close our season with a program of musical stories, spoken and sung. The centerpiece of the evening is the SFCO commission and world premiere of Journey of the Shadow, from our award-winning Composer in Residence Gabriela Lena Frank, in collaboration with Pulitzer-winning playwright Nilo Cruz.

With touches of fantasy and the magical realism--a signature of the work of playwright Nilo Cruz--Journey of the Shadow was crafted from an Andean folktale about the creation of the world, is the story of a boy who writes a letter to his father, a soldier in Afghanistan. At the center of the story is the boy's shadow who slips in with the letter and gets into a bit of trouble in a distant postal office, affecting the letter's journey. History and politics provide context for this intimate human story that illustrates the persistent innocence of children against the backdrop of war. Frank and Cruz have collaborated previously on original new music works for the voice and recently completed the critically acclaimed song cycle La Centinela y La Paloma, a re-imagining of the afterlife of artist Frida Kahlo, for Dawn Upshaw and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. This will be the first piece they have created together for narrator and music with Dr. Frank performing the narration. Benjamin Simon will conduct.

On the program with the new work will be Samuel Barber's brilliant Hand of Bridge--with libretto by composer Gian Carlo Menotti-and Mozart's Bastien und Bastienne--an equally brilliant, one-act comic masterpiece that displays Mozart's precocity in a series of charming scenes and songs. Both works feature seven young fellows from the San Francisco Opera Center's famed Adler Fellows program as the SFCO's 2012-2013 Debut Artists: Jennifer Cherest, A.J. Gluecker, Philippe Sly, Hadleigh Adams, Marina Harris, Chuanyue Wang, and Erin Johnson.

Official Website: http://www.sfchamberorchestra.org/events/mainstage/