San Francisco Opera Orchestra Presents: SAN FRANCISCO OPERA ORCHESTRA: UP CLOSE, 12/8

A special concert featuring the string section of the San Francisco Opera Orchestra has been added to the Company's 2016 fall season. On Thursday, December 8, the 40 violins, violas, cellos and basses of the acclaimed Opera Orchestra will command the spotlight in San Francisco Opera Orchestra Up Close: The Strings a program featuring works by Mozart, Grieg and early 20th-century composers Ruth Crawford Seeger and John Ireland. This one-night-only event will be presented in the intimate Dianne and Tad Taube Atrium Theater within the Diane B. Wilsey Center for Opera.

As with Out of The Shadows, the November 19 concert event featuring the San Francisco Opera Chorus, Up Close: The Strings offers a rare opportunity to experience the Company's fine musicians in fresh repertory and outside of the context of an opera performance. Led by San Francisco Opera Orchestra Concertmaster Kay Stern, who has served in the role since 1994, the musicians of the strings section will perform an array of concert works.

The program will open with Mozart's playful Divertimento in D Major, K. 136, composed in 1772 when he was fifteen years old, and Grieg's Holberg Suite, a work composed for piano in 1884 and reset by the composer for string orchestra a year later. Named in tribute to the Danish-Norwegian dramatist Ludvig Holberg, Grieg's five-movement suite features a theme, or aria, and a series of eighteenth-century dance forms.

Company Resident Conductor Jordi Bernàcer will join the string orchestra to conduct two 20th-century works: Andante for Strings (1931) by American modernist Ruth Crawford Seeger and the three-movement Concertino Pastorale (1939) by English composer John Ireland.

Spanish conductor Jordi Bernàcer joined the Company in August 2015. As San Francisco Opera resident conductor, he serves as musical assistant to Music Director Nicola Luisotti, in addition to participating in a wide range of performance and rehearsal activities. This season, Bernàcer conducts the December 2 The Future is Now: Adler Fellows Gala Concert, the December 4 performance of Puccini's Madama Butterfly, the December 6performance of the new production of Verdi's Aida and Up Close: The Strings concert on December 8. His recent conducting credits include Bizet's Carmen with San Francisco Opera; Verdi's Rigoletto at the Teatro Real in Madrid; Puccini's Tosca at the Teatro di San Carlos in Naples and Los Angeles Opera; and operas and concerts in Italy, Spain and the Castleton Festival in Virginia.

TICKETS AND INFORMATION

Tickets for San Francisco Opera Orchestra Up Close: The Strings at the Taube Atrium Theater on December 8 are now on sale. Seating is general admission and tickets are $30. To purchase tickets and to find more information visit: http://sfopera.com/discover-opera/orchestra-concert/. Tickets may also be purchased through the San Francisco Opera Box Office at 301 Van Ness Avenue and by phone at (415) 864-3330.

(Photo Credit: SFOO)

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