Previous Seasons Pre-Opera Talks

Fall 2024
Un Ballo in Maschera, Kip Cranna (Sep 6-Sep 27)
The Handmaid's Tale, Christabell Nunoo (Sep 14-Oct 1)
Tristan and Isolde, Peter Susskind (Oct 19-Nov 5)
Beethoven 9, Jessica Bejarano (Oct 26)
Carmen, Michael Mohammed (Nov 13–Dec 1)


Summer 2025
La Bohème, Robert Hartwell (Jun 3-Jun 21)
Idomeneo, Laura Prichard(Jun 14–Jun 25)
Pride Concert, Suzanne Ford (Jun 27)

• Kip Cranna (Fall 2024)

  Kip Cranna Un Ballo in Maschera (Sep 6-Sep 27) Clifford (Kip) Cranna, Dramaturg Emeritus (Scholar in Residence) of San Francisco Opera, served on the staff for over forty years and was Director of Music Administration for over thirty years. In 2008 he was awarded the San Francisco Opera Medal, the company’s highest honor, and in 2012 he received the Bernard Osher Cultural Award for distinguished efforts to bring excellence to a cultural institution. In 2014 he received the Star of Excellence Award for outstanding service to the programs of the San Francisco Opera Guild. He holds a Ph.D. in musicology from Stanford University and teaches opera appreciation at the Fromm Institute at the University of San Francisco and at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes (OLLI) at U.C. Berkeley, San Francisco State University, and Dominican University. LISTEN Details

   

• Christabell Nunoo (Fall 2024)

  Christabel Nunoo The Handmaid's Tale (Sep 14-Oct 1) Christabel Nunoo is an operatic soprano, experiential educator, and budding Oakland creative. She has been fully immersed in the world of opera and community-based education programs for nearly two decades. After discovering her love for opera in her youth, Christabel went on to attain her BM in Vocal Performance from The University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre and Dance. On and off the stage, she is dedicated to creating access to relevant, relatable, and informed art. She has eight years of experience in curriculum development spanning from social justice based social-emotional learning and critical race media literacy to music education, community building, and empowerment within various Bay Area-based organizations and corporations.   Listen Details

• Peter Susskind (Fall 2024)

  Peter Susskind Tristan and Isolde (Oct 19-Nov 5) Peter Susskind was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and at the Royal College of Music in London, but has been a resident of the Bay Area since 1989. He has conducted in London, Prague, Seoul and Vienna, as well as all over the USA. He was Assistant Conductor for the Saint Louis Symphony and also Music Director of their Youth Orchestra. He then held a similar position in San Jose. He has led The Nutcracker for the San Francisco Ballet and Children’s Concerts with the San Francisco Symphony and was conductor for the U.C. Berkeley Symphony Orchestra for a period. For 12 years he was Music Director and Conductor of the South Bay Youth Orchestra, which he founded. He was recently Executive Director for the Midsummer Mozart Festival and then Executive Director for Pocket Opera. He is the Artistic Advisor for Noontime Concerts as well as introducing the concerts. He is also a regular pre-performance speaker for the San Francisco Opera Listen Details

   

• Jessica Bejarano (Fall 2024)

  Jessica Bejarano Beethoven 9 (Oct 26) Jessica Bejarano is the Founder and Music Director of the San Francisco Philharmonic, Cover Conductor with San Francisco Symphony, Scholar In Residence with San Francisco Opera and serves as board member of the Association of California Symphony Orchestras (ACSO).   Jessica was featured on NBC’s The Today Show with Natalie Morales as the “Woman Breaking Barriers as a Trailblazing Symphony Conductor”.  PBS NewsHour Weekend also featured Jessica as an emerging female conductor and KQED named Jessica 1 of 10 artists to watch in KQED Arts’ Bay Brilliant Top 10 Artists of 2018. In 2022, Jessica was featured on ABC’s hit show, To Tell the Truth.  Lil’ Libros (book company) is excited to announce that they will publish Jessica’s first bilingual children’s book and recently, March of 2023, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) named Jessica 1 of 100 Honorees for 2023 for her contribution to the Arts in the Bay Area. Jessica was the first woman in history to guest conduct the American Youth Symphony in Los Angeles. She was also the featured guest conductor and clinician at San Diego State University and was 1 of 12 female conductors selected from around the world to conduct at the International Women’s Conference in New York City.   Jessica has guest conducted in Russia, Italy, Romania, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Spain, Venezuela and throughout the United States. Details Pre-Opera Talk coming soon.

   

• Michael Mohammed (Fall 2023)

  Michael Mohammed Carmen (Nov 13–Dec 1) Michael Mohammed is an opera and theatre artist and scholar whose interests lie at the intersection of expression and identity. He received his doctorate from the Music and Music Education Program at Teachers College, Columbia University. He works as the Director of the Musical Theatre Ensemble at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. He is also on the faculty of San José State University, the American Conservatory Theater, and the San Francisco Community Music Center. He is currently the Scholar-In-Residence at Opera Parallèle, developing resources for sustainable social change through opera. Additionally, he is on the working teams of the Black Opera Research Network and the Research Riff. He has co-created multiple projects for Amplified Opera, a Toronto based company that places equity-seeking artists at the center of public discourse. Recent directing credits include Carmen (Festival Opera), A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder (Lamplighters Music Theatre), and The Merry Widow (Pocket Opera). Listen Details

   

• Robert Hartwell (Summer 2025)

  Robert Hartwell La Bohème (Jun 3-Jun 21) Robert Hartwell is a Professor of Music and Department Chair at Foothill College, where he specializes in welcoming the uninitiated into the world of classical music. He is also a staff lecturer at the Institute for the Study of Western Civilization. Keenly interested in issues of teaching and learning, he serves on the board of directors for the K. Patricia Cross Academy, an online resource for college professors. Dr. Hartwell has co-authored a three-volume series on the history of Western music, as well as contributing to The Quarterly Journal of the Riemenschneider Bach Institute and the New Pedagogies in Higher Education series. Before coming to academia, he taught piano privately for 20 years. A longtime pre-opera speaker, he holds a doctorate in music education from Columbia University. Listen Details

• Laura Prichard (Summer 2025)

  Laura Prichard Idomeneo (Jun 14–Jun 25) Laura Stanfield Prichard studied at Yale, Emory, and the University of Illinois; she holds master’s and doctoral degrees in choral conducting, library science, musicology, and education. She lectures regularly for the San Francisco and Chicago Symphonies and opera companies in Boston and San Francisco (since 1995).  The Boston Musical Intelligencer sent her to Cuba in 2015 as a foreign correspondent, and she has reviewed concerts for them since 2010. She was the President of the Pacific Chapter of the College Music Society (1996-98) and Assistant Conductor of the San Francisco Symphony Chorus under Vance George (1995-2003). She and her husband Michael sing with the Boston and San Francisco Symphony Choruses.  Her twenty-five continuous years of college teaching have focused on interdisciplinary cultural analysis of music, dance, and art history. Recent publications include editorial prefaces for orchestral scores (Musikproduktion Höflich, Munich, Germany), 650 translations of song and choral texts (www.lieder.net), and more than three dozen entries to the Encyclopedia of Latin American Popular Music (2012), the landmark revision of the multi-volume New Grove Dictionary of American Music (2013), the SAGE International Encyclopedia of Music and Culture (2019), and the forthcoming Music Around the World (2020). She was a finalist for the 2015 Pauline Alderman Award for outstanding writing on women and music and the 2019 Kurt Weill Award for writing on contemporary musical theater. Listen Details

   

• Suzanne Ford

  Suzanne Ford Pride Concert (Jun 27) Suzanne Ford graduated with honors with a BA in History from Murray State University in Kentucky. She then attended Howard Law School. She was employed as a Regional Sales Manager at Revere Packaging for over 11 years, and was named by Plastic News as one of Women Breaking the Mold in the Packaging Industry in 2017. The Trans Day of Visibility Committee of San Francisco recognized her with the Legacy Award in 2022. Suzanne was chosen for the prestigious Horizons’ Foundation Leadership Award in 2024. Suzanne recently moved to the iconic Castro neighborhood. She is the first trans woman to hold the office, she is a fierce activist working toward equal rights for the trans community. She is a founding member of the SF Pride Golf Tournament, the first and only PGA-endorsed event ensuring queer visibility in one of the most cis-heteronormative spaces in the world– as well as SF Pride’s most lucrative board-led annual fundraiser to date. She has also served as President of the board of the Spahr Center in Marin County and as a board member, Vice President, and Treasurer of SF Pride. Listen Details

   

Summer 2024
Robert Hartwell, The Magic Flute (May 30–Jun 30, 2024)
Alla Gladysheva, Innocence (Jun 1–Jun 21, 2024)
Cole-Thomason-Redus, Partenope (Jun 15–June 28, 2024)

Fall 2023
Kip Cranna, Il Trovatore (Sep 12–Oct 1)
Jessica Bejarano, The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs (Sep 22–Oct 7)
Peter Susskind, Lohengrin (Oct 15–Nov 1)
Michael Mohammed, Omar (Nov 5–Nov 21)
Marcia Green, The Elixir of Love (Nov 19–Dec 9) 

• Robert Hartwell (Summer 2024)

  Robert Hartwell The Magic Flute (May 30-Jun 30) Robert Hartwell is a Professor of Music and Department Chair at Foothill College, where he specializes in welcoming the uninitiated into the world of classical music. He is also a staff lecturer at the Institute for the Study of Western Civilization. Keenly interested in issues of teaching and learning, he serves on the board of directors for the K. Patricia Cross Academy, an online resource for college professors. Dr. Hartwell has co-authored a three-volume series on the history of Western music, as well as contributing to The Quarterly Journal of the Riemenschneider Bach Institute and the New Pedagogies in Higher Education series. Before coming to academia, he taught piano privately for 20 years. A longtime pre-opera speaker, he holds a doctorate in music education from Columbia University. Listen Details

   

• Alla Gladysheva (Summer 2024)

  Alla Gladysheva Innocence (Jun 1-21) Alla Gladysheva holds an M.M. degree from the Leningrad State Conservatory (Russia) where she majored in piano and musicology while working as a teacher, collaborative pianist, and journalist. She immigrated to the United States in 1995. She is extremely grateful to the opportunity to keep her music career. For 18 years, she has worked as accompanist with several ballet companies, including the San Francisco Ballet School. She has performed with various chamber and choral groups and has collaborated in recording of five CDs. Since 2000, Mrs. Gladysheva is on the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Department of Musicianship and Music Theory, and since 2005, on the faculty of the SFCM Pre-College and Continuing Education programs, piano and chamber music. Listen Details

   

• Cole Thomason-Redus (Summer 2024)

  Cole Thomason-Redus Partenope (Jun 15–28) Cole Thomason-Redus is a Program Manager in our Department of Diversity, Equity and Community. His first association with SFO was as a boy chorister in the 1987 production of Puccini’s Tosca. Over the next seven years, Cole performed in sixteen productions with the company and went on to train boy choirs for numerous SFO productions.. Listen Details

• Kip Cranna (Fall 2023)

  Kip Cranna Il Trovatore (Sep 12-Oct 1) Clifford (Kip) Cranna, Dramaturg Emeritus (Scholar in Residence) of San Francisco Opera, served on the staff for over forty years and was Director of Music Administration for over thirty years. In 2008 he was awarded the San Francisco Opera Medal, the company’s highest honor, and in 2012 he received the Bernard Osher Cultural Award for distinguished efforts to bring excellence to a cultural institution. In 2014 he received the Star of Excellence Award for outstanding service to the programs of the San Francisco Opera Guild. He holds a Ph.D. in musicology from Stanford University and teaches opera appreciation at the Fromm Institute at the University of San Francisco and at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes (OLLI) at U.C. Berkeley, San Francisco State University, and Dominican University. listenDetails

• Jessica Bejarano (Fall 2023)

  Jessica Bejarano The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs (Sep 22-Oct 7) Jessica Bejarano is the Founder and Music Director of the San Francisco Philharmonic, Cover Conductor with San Francisco Symphony, Scholar In Residence with San Francisco Opera and serves as board member of the Association of California Symphony Orchestras (ACSO).   Jessica was featured on NBC’s The Today Show with Natalie Morales as the “Woman Breaking Barriers as a Trailblazing Symphony Conductor”.  PBS NewsHour Weekend also featured Jessica as an emerging female conductor and KQED named Jessica 1 of 10 artists to watch in KQED Arts’ Bay Brilliant Top 10 Artists of 2018. In 2022, Jessica was featured on ABC’s hit show, To Tell the Truth.  Lil’ Libros (book company) is excited to announce that they will publish Jessica’s first bilingual children’s book and recently, March of 2023, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) named Jessica 1 of 100 Honorees for 2023 for her contribution to the Arts in the Bay Area. Jessica was the first woman in history to guest conduct the American Youth Symphony in Los Angeles. She was also the featured guest conductor and clinician at San Diego State University and was 1 of 12 female conductors selected from around the world to conduct at the International Women’s Conference in New York City.   Jessica has guest conducted in Russia, Italy, Romania, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Spain, Venezuela and throughout the United States. LISTEN Details

• Peter Susskind (Fall 2023)

  Peter Susskind Lohengrin (Oct 15-Nov 1) Peter Susskind was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and at the Royal College of Music in London, but has been a resident of the Bay Area since 1989. He has conducted in London, Prague, Seoul and Vienna, as well as all over the USA. He was Assistant Conductor for the Saint Louis Symphony and also Music Director of their Youth Orchestra. He then held a similar position in San Jose. He has led The Nutcracker for the San Francisco Ballet and Children’s Concerts with the San Francisco Symphony and was conductor for the U.C. Berkeley Symphony Orchestra for a period. For 12 years he was Music Director and Conductor of the South Bay Youth Orchestra, which he founded. He was recently Executive Director for the Midsummer Mozart Festival and then Executive Director for Pocket Opera. He is the Artistic Advisor for Noontime Concerts as well as introducing the concerts. He is also a regular pre-performance speaker for the San Francisco Opera Listen Details

   

• Michael Mohammed (Fall 2023)

  Michael Mohammed Omar (Nov 5–Nov 21) Michael Mohammed is an opera and theatre artist and scholar whose interests lie at the intersection of expression and identity. He received his doctorate from the Music and Music Education Program at Teachers College, Columbia University. He works as the Director of the Musical Theatre Ensemble at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. He is also on the faculty of San José State University, the American Conservatory Theater, and the San Francisco Community Music Center. He is currently the Scholar-In-Residence at Opera Parallèle, developing resources for sustainable social change through opera. Additionally, he is on the working teams of the Black Opera Research Network and the Research Riff. He has co-created multiple projects for Amplified Opera, a Toronto based company that places equity-seeking artists at the center of public discourse. Recent directing credits include Carmen (Festival Opera), A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder (Lamplighters Music Theatre), and The Merry Widow (Pocket Opera). Listen Details

   

• Marcia Green (Fall 2023)

  Marcia Green The Elixir of Love (Nov 19-Dec 9) Marcia Green graduated from the Eastman School of Music where she studied voice, piano, and organ. She obtained advanced degrees from The State University of New York at Buffalo (M. Ed.) and the doctorate (in interdisciplinary music education) from the University of Southern California. She studied voice with Eileen Farrell at the Peabody Conservatory and appeared with Opera Sacra, Opera Western New York, Syracuse Opera, and the New York City Opera. A prominent educator, she has delivered pre-opera talks at the San Francisco Opera since 2006. She created the courses The Don Juan Myth in Music and Literature and The Faust Myth in Music and Literature at San Francisco State University. She has lectured widely in the United States, Canada, England, Portugal, Russia, and Italy. Her articles and essays on music, cinema, literature, and the arts have appeared in a wide variety of publications and have been translated into many languages. She is a specialist in the relations of music to the other art forms, humanities, and psychology and is the founder, Executive Director, and CFO of the Humanities Education and Research Association, [HERA], a non-profit organization dedicated to bringing together the educational resource potentials for the arts and humanities. Listen Details

   

Summer 2023
Nick Ishimaru, Madame Butterfly
Peter Susskind, Die Frau ohne Schatten
Jessica Bejarano, El último sueño de Frida y Diego

• Nick Ishimaru (Summer 2023)

  Nick Ishimaru Madame Butterfly (Jun 3–Jul 1) Nick Ishimaru is a co-founder of Kunoichi Productions, a collective of Japanese American performing artists.  He also serves on the Board of Directors of Festival Opera, and the advisory board for Diamond Wave.  He served as the Artistic Director of Theatre of Yugen from 2016 to 2020.  He holds a BA in Performing Arts from Colorado State University, where he directed a kabuki adaptation of Macbeth, a Masters in Drama from San Francisco State University, and did additional doctorate work at the University of Hawaii. PRE-OPERA TALK Details

• Peter Susskind (Summer 2023)

  Peter Susskind Die Frau ohne Schatten (Jun 4–28) Peter Susskind was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and at the Royal College of Music in London, but has been a resident of the Bay Area since 1989. His has conducted in London, Prague, Seoul and Vienna, as well as all over the USA. He was Assistant Conductor for the Saint Louis Symphony and also Music Director of their Youth Orchestra. He then held a similar position in San Jose. He has led The Nutcracker for the San Francisco Ballet and Children’s Concerts with the San Francisco Symphony and was conductor for the U.C. Berkeley Symphony Orchestra for a period. For 12 years he was Music Director and Conductor of the South Bay Youth Orchestra, which he founded. He was recently Executive Director for the Midsummer Mozart Festival and then Executive Director for Pocket Opera. He is the Artistic Advisor for Noontime Concerts as well as introducing the concerts. He is also a regular pre-performance speaker for both the San Francisco Opera and the Symphony. PRE-OPERA TALK Details

• Jessica Bejarano (Summer 2023)

  Jessica Bejarano El último sueño de Frida y Diego (Jun 13–30) Jessica Bejarano is the Founder and Music Director of the San Francisco Philharmonic, Curator and Scholar in Residence with the San Francisco Opera, Assistant Conductor of Opera Parallele and serves as board member of the Association of California Symphony Orchestras (ACSO). Jessica and the San Francisco Philharmonic have performed with American legendary rock band – Journey and upcoming local rap legend, Nickatina. Jessica is the first woman in history to guest conduct the American Youth Symphony in Los Angeles and was one of twelve female conductors selected from around the world to conduct at the International Women’s Conference in New York City. Jessica has guest conducted in Russia, Italy, Romania, Bulgaria, Spain, Czech Republic and Valenzuela. Jessica earned her Master of Arts in Orchestral and Choral Conducting from UC Davis, Bachelor of Music in Music Education from the University of Wyoming and Associates of Fine Arts from Casper College. PRE-OPERA TALK Details