Arts & Events

Worth Noting:

Very busy week ahead. Besides all the City meetings, the League of Women Voters is sponsoring candidate forums Tuesday evening for the School Board and Wednesday for the Rent Board.

Future

October 2, City Council meeting agenda posted and available for review and comment, 9. Parking, 10. a.&b. Cannabis Ordinance, 11. a.&b. Homelessness, 12. a.&b. Sanctuary Working group, 13. Whistleblower protection ordinance

https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/City_Council/City_Council__Agenda_Index.aspx -more-

There’s a French saying, “à chacun son goût/each to his own taste.” While honoring this proverbial wisdom, I find Joshua Kosman’s review, (in the Monday, 9/10 issue of the Chronicle), of San Francisco Opera’s current duo of Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci so wrong-headed that I have to register my profound disagreement. Of course, historically, there have been avid partisans and/or detractors of one or the other of this famed duo of operas. But never, I think, until Kosman, has a critic deigned to dismiss Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana (“Rustic Chivalry”), as “a piece of second-rate motley, with its halting dramaturgy and dull digressions.” I simply couldn’t disagree more with this rude dismissal of an opera that, in case Kosman hasn’t noticed, never fails to move audiences, and even moves quite a few critics. -more-

;Worth Noting:

Elections are heating up and there is plenty to do even if you don’t like door to door canvassing or phone banking. Hand written postcards are helping in out of area campaigns. Check Indivisible Berkeley for Postcard Parties https://indivisibleberkeley.org/

League of Women Voters is sponsoring Berkeley City Council Candidate forums on Tuesday District 1 and Wednesday Districts 4,7,8.

Thursday, City Council decides the Campanile Way View appeal.

Future

Agenda plan for Sept 25 City Council Meeting is posted, however, it has not been updated to include City Council items that were not voted on at the September 13, Council meeting. -more-

Last year, Sondra Radvanovsky was the darling diva of the Met, where she sang “the three queens”: the lead soprano roles in Donizetti’s Anna Bolena, Maria Stuarda, and Roberto Devereux. Now she is the darling of San Francisco Opera, where she reprised her role as Queen Elizabeth I in Roberto Devereux. Make no mistake about it: this was sensational singing, and, for that matter, it was also sensational acting. Sondra Radvanovsky not only sang the role brilliantly; she also brought to life the vain, aging Elizabeth, “the virgin queen,” who even in her 60s pursued love relations, all the more intense for being platonic, with the most interesting of the much younger men at her court. The Earl of Essex, Robert Devereux, was only the latest and perhaps last in a long line of men upon whom Elizabeth exerted her charm, power, and emotionally intensity. -more-