Previous Seasons Pre-Opera Talks

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.
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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.

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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
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Michael Mohammed
Omar (Nov 5–Nov 21)

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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.
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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.

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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.
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Cole Thomason-Redus
Partenope (Jun 15-28)

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