Word: adler
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Francisco is even arguably equal to the Met, it is because Adler has prepared so long in music and drama, and because he oversees every phase of the company's operation -from program notes to the lighting on the front steps...
...inherited a city uniquely devoted to opera," says Kurt Herbert Adler, a man uniquely devoted to opera. Adler is the general director of the San Francisco Opera and last week, as his company kicked off its 50th-anniversary season, citizens and patrons were busy proving their devotion. In what other major American city would the mayor set aside a big chunk of downtown (Union Square) and invite 10,000 for a musicale? Where else would Jesus Freaks mingle with bankers and hard hats to watch Fafner the Dragon chase Wagner's Rhinemaidens and the clowns from I Pagliacci...
...Merola was schizoid in that, though he favored Italian opera, he would have little to do with Italian musicians. "The Italians never come on time," Merola would grumble. "Give me the Germans. They are prompt, orderly, reliable." One of the most prompt, orderly and reliable "Germans" was Kurt Adler. A Viennese immigrant, Adler reached San Francisco as chorus director in 1943, after five years at the Chicago Opera. He became director when Merola died...
...decades since, Adler, now 67, has more than doubled the company's regular fall season (from five to eleven weeks) and quadrupled its annual budget past the $3,000,000 mark. He has also introduced a widely adored spring program for offbeat operatic productions sung in English (among them Kurt Weill's Mahagonny). More important, he has launched the roving Western Opera, a company of young American singers and players that regularly tours in places as far apart as Alaska and Arizona. But it is in the cavernous War Memorial Opera House of the parent company that Adler...
Courtly. Perched on the aisle in Row V at rehearsals, Adler is a fidgety puppeteer who claps his hands if the tempo is too slow, phones backstage impatiently if the chorus is flat, barks commands to his secretary, who will come in an hour early the next morning to type them up. Says Leontyne Price: "Just when you think Adler is finally holed up in his office, he will turn up in the chorus or pop out from behind a bush to tell you your train is a foot too long." A short man with an advancing paunch, soft, silver...