‘Star Trek’ explores old worlds: Mozart’s ‘Abduction’
The characters don’t have the names Kirk and Spock, but it’s clear who’s who, says Shaw, who’s directing the Bay Area premiere of this “Abduction” this weekend at Festival Opera.
The vital East Bay company is celebrating its 25th anniversary by presenting a contemporary take on the Mozart crowd-pleaser that raised the curtain on Festival Opera in 1991.
Michael Morgan conducts the cast, the Oakland Symphony and the Festival Opera Chorus during the four shows (Friday-Saturday, Aug. 5-6, and Monday-Tuesday, Aug. 8-9) in the Regents’ Theatre at Holy Names University in Oakland.
Shaw, a tenor who once sang the role of the sidekick servant Pedrillo in a more traditional production of the opera, has always loved the music, with its famously demanding arias — Osmin, the pasha’s foul-tempered overseer, played here by bass Kevin Thompson, sings an impossibly low D — and the percussive effects that evoke a Turkish military band.
“You see pictures of Osmin and the pasha from productions at the Met and they’re in blackface,” says Shaw, 37, who was pondering “Abduction” when the phrase “alien abduction” came to mind and triggered an idea.
Two girlfriends are captured by some evil guys in a faraway place and (the good guys) come and try to save ’em.
hawnette Sulker (as Constanza) and Sara Duchovnay (Blondie), performed this slapstick-flavored piece, with its scurrying Klingons and dancing Gorn, at its Southern Illinois Music Festival premiere and subsequently in San Antonio and Los Angeles.
“He loved to have fun and make jokes and thumb his nose at traditions,” Shaw says.
The Chinese Culture Center’s seventh annual Chinatown Music Festival brings an interesting mix of artists to historic Portsmouth Square on Aug. 13, including jazz pianist Jon Jang with spoken-word artist Amanda Kemp, the traditional San Francisco Guzheng Music Society, the San Francisco chamber group Melody of China, the Los Angeles electronic music maker Gingee, and Jest Jammin’, the venerable Chinatown soul band led by the singing and saxophone-playing Rev. Norman Fong.
Chinese Painting at Berkeley, the First Fifty Years is the museum’s latest Chinese acquisition: “Landscape With Buildings,” a huge 14th century landscape painting by Sun Junze.
The work comes from the collection of the late and greatly esteemed Cal art history professor and Asian art connoisseur James Cahill, given to the museum by the scholar’s daughter, the noted new-music pianist Sarah Cahill, in his memory.