Photos by Scott Strazzante / The Chronicle Above: Paul Appleby rehearses the role of Caesar. Top: A piece of furniture is moved during rehearsal.

Photos by Scott Strazzante / The Chronicle Top of story: Director Elkhanah Pulitzer gives direction during a rehearsal for “Antony & Cleopatra,” the new John Adams composition that the San Francisco Opera commissioned and will premiere as it opens its 100th season. Right: Paul Appleby rehearses the role of Caesar. Left: A piece of furniture is moved during rehearsal. Top of story: Director Elkhanah Pulitzer gives direction during a rehearsal for “Antony & Cleopatra,” the new John Adams composition that the San Francisco Opera commissioned and will premiere as it open its 100th season. They were interested in what was current, what was happening, what story was waiting to be told.” “People weren’t necessarily interested in the pieces of the past. “When opera was first being shaped, it was popular entertainment,” says San Francisco composer Jake Heggie, who has seen four of his operas have their world or local premieres at San Francisco Opera. Yet all of this comes in connection with an art form that for centuries has proven itself endlessly pliable and responsive to the demands of the moment.

Others are specific to this organization and this city.Īmong these challenges are the ever-rising costs of an already prodigiously expensive enterprise, the growing fragmentation of entertainment options, and a widespread perception - not wholly unwarranted but increasingly inaccurate - of opera as stuffy and out of touch. Some are endemic to the field, and apply to all American opera companies trying to thrive amid a perennially treacherous cultural landscape.

As the company heads into its second century, it faces an array of potentially daunting hurdles, both artistic and organizational.

Sf opera 2019