STRAVINSKY’S OEDIPUS REX

June 10, 11 & 12, 2022

Overview

Esa-Pekka Salonen has said “ritual is at the very heart of Stravinsky’s craft.” With the austere and incantatory Oedipus Rex, Stravinsky brings to life a classic Greek myth of power, deception, and heartbreak in a voice that is only his. The Symphony of Psalms turns to an altogether different ritual, cloaking three familiar religious texts in a mantle of drama and timelessness. Salonen and the Orchestra are joined by a cast of stellar vocalists, the SF Symphony Chorus, and legendary director Peter Sellars for this staged event.

For more information, including full program notes, visit the San Francisco Symphony’s digital program book platform at sfsymphony.encoreplus.app or text “SFS Concert” to 55741.

Concert Extras

Pre-Concert Talk: Join us for an informative “Inside Music” talk from the stage with Elizabeth Seitz and Peter Sellars. Free to all ticketholders, these talks begin one hour before the June 10-12 performances. Doors open 15 minutes before.

At A Glance

THE STORY OF OEDIPUS REX

While Igor Stravinsky had picked the story of Oedipus Rex precisely because he assumed everybody already knew the plot, posterity has vindicated that a composer or librettist should not assume much about an audience’s literary background. Most opera-goers have doubtless appreciated the Speaker’s role in reminding us of the classic plot: how Oedipus, King of Thebes and husband of Jocasta, is urged by the Oracle of Delphi (whose directive is conveyed by Oedipus’s brother-in-law Creon) to save his city from plague by discovering who killed King Laïus; how, at his own unwitting urging, Oedipus himself is revealed (reluctantly, by the blind seer Tiresius) to be the ignorant murderer of King Laïus; how he accuses Creon of fomenting this accusation in an effort to unseat him; how it is further disclosed (by a messenger) that his ancestry is not what he had thought, and (by a shepherd) that he is in fact the son of King Laïus and Jocasta, Oedipus’ own wife; how the revelation of this unsuspecting but nonetheless incestuous bond and inadvertent patricide causes Jocasta to commit suicide and leads Oedipus to blind himself with her brooch.

Artists

Conductor

Director

Lighting Design

Costume Designer

tenor (Oedipus)

mezzo-soprano (Jocasta)

Willard White

bass-baritone (Creon/Messenger/Tiresias)

Jose Simerilla Romero

Tenor (Shepherd)

Breezy Leigh

Actor (Antigone)

Laurel Jenkins

dancer

San Francisco Symphony Chorus

San Francisco Symphony

Program

Igor Stravinsky

Oedipus rex [staged]

Igor Stravinsky

Symphony of Psalms [staged]

THESE CONCERTS, A PART OF THE BARBRO AND BERNARD OSHER STAGED PRODUCTION FUND, ARE MADE POSSIBLE BY A GENEROUS GIFT FROM BARBRO AND BERNARD OSHER.