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San Francisco Chronicle
23-06-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
Baritone Brian Mulligan on coming out with San Francisco Opera in style and song
For two decades, baritone Brian Mulligan has performed on many of the world's great stages, but his heart belongs to San Francisco. Now, in a full-circle moment, the internationally acclaimed singer returns to make history as one of the featured soloists in San Francisco Opera's first-ever Pride Concert, set for Friday, June 27, at the War Memorial Opera House. 'San Francisco Opera is unquestionably the most important opera company in my life,' Mulligan, 46, told the Chronicle by phone from his native town of Endicott in upstate New York. 'They have taken chances on me and given me opportunities that no place else in the world has done. I consider it my home opera company.' While the baritone snagged his first professional role at New York's Metropolitan Opera in 2003 when still a student at the Juilliard School, he's truly come into his own in San Francisco. Since making his debut at the War Memorial in 2008's ' La Bohème,' he's appeared there nearly two dozen times, singing everything from the title characters in ' Sweeney Todd ' and ' Nixon in China ' to a series of Wagner roles (mostly recently Telramund in 2023's ' Lohengrin '). He is set to return in October to sing the role of Amfortas in a new production of Wagner's 'Parsifal.' 'I've had so many firsts in San Francisco,' he recalled fondly, listing his first major Verdi role as Count Anckarström in 2014's 'Un Ballo in Maschera' among them. 'It's incredible to go back and see people, faces who know me and have helped me over the years to deliver performance after performance.' For the Pride Concert, Mulligan is slated to be joined by a few other San Francisco Opera favorites, mezzo-sopranos Jamie Barton and Nikola Printz, for a program featuring tunes by Harold Arlen and Jerry Herman, among others, as well as operatic fare by Tchaikovsky and Camille Saint-Saëns. Music Director Eun Sun Kim will share conducting duties with Robert Mollicone, while drag queen Sapphira Cristál serves as emcee. Mulligan spoke to the Chronicle about Pride and his passion for the Opera ahead of the upcoming concert. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Q: On the cusp of the city's 55th Pride Celebration, the San Francisco Opera is presenting its very first Pride Concert. What does that milestone mean to you? There was a long time (when) I felt my sexuality was a liability as an opera singer. Because almost all of the roles I play are straight people, being gay isn't exactly a good calling card. (But) over the years, I've proven myself as an actor. That's what being an opera singer is all about — portraying somebody else. Q: You've said that one of the reasons you leaned into opera growing up was because you were gay. Could you please elaborate on that? A: I started taking voice lessons when I was 17, and at that age, I didn't know or understand my sexuality. I knew that I was different, and (by) taking a step toward opera, which was also different, I was establishing my otherness — because most people don't know or understand anything about opera. Q: Fast-forward a few decades to this upcoming Pride Concert. Among the tunes you're preparing to sing are 'You Take My Breath Away,' Freddie Mercury's 1976 hit with Queen, as well as the aria 'I love you, dear' from Tchaikovsky's 'The Queen of Spades.' Did you make the selections? A: I had a hand in choosing the songs, but they were largely suggested by (the company). They explained that they were trying to highlight gay composers, iconic gay moments in opera and theater. (As) with any kind of recital program, it's about the order that you sing the pieces in. I'm starting with the Tchaikovsky; that will be most technically challenging because it's opera. After that, we'll move to the standard stuff. Q: Your 2022 solo CD, 'Alburnum,' features works by Mason Bates, Missy Mazzoli and Gregory Spears. You've also sung in contemporary operas, including John Adams' 'Nixon in China.' What is your attraction to new music? A: I often say to people, 'The greatest music may not have been composed yet.' There's a lot of phenomenal music that's been composed, but I have to believe that there's music that we don't know about yet. I really believe that one of the biggest draws for me in performing contemporary music is (that) often, it's written in English. I communicate best in English because it can (sometimes) be a struggle in other languages. No matter how good I get at German, French or Italian, I'm most powerful as a communicator in English. Q: As is the case with most successful opera singers today, your travel schedule is something akin to a rock star's. In the last few weeks, you were in Leipzig, Germany, before which you made your debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Where do you go to rejuvenate, and how do you keep it together on the road? A: Because I'm working more than 85% of the year, a few years ago I moved back to upstate New York, where my entire immediate and extended family lives — and I actually get to see them. So I come home to the absolute country. It's quiet. This morning, I opened the windows and I could hear all of the birds. It's incredible. I love living here. I have a small Norwich Terrier, Beauregard, who just turned 7, but he's still a puppy in many ways. He has a European passport, and he's been traveling with me everywhere — except Asia or the U.K. — since he was a baby, so he's completely used to it. I've found now that my life is centered around him, and wherever I go, I make sure it's near a place that's beautiful where we can walk. … He's improved my life, and since I need to (rest my voice) when I'm not performing, it's all silence with him. A: It's funny because I was thinking maybe I should wear some kind of glittery, sparkly, crazy Pride thing. But as time went on and I thought about it, Pride is actually more about being yourself and just owning who you are, and who I am is a simple tux kind of guy. I'm wearing a black tux with pink accessories — a pink tux shirt for part of the show and a pink pocket square.
Asharq Al-Awsat
31-01-2025
- Politics
- Asharq Al-Awsat
Is a ‘Trump in Tehran' Operetta Possible?
"Trump in Tehran!" This is the name of an operetta imagined by some American advocates of Realpolitik calling themselves Council on Foreign Relations rather than the sobriquet that G.K. Chesterton would have suggested: The Club of Queer Trades. The 'Real' part of the English-German cliché is misleading; what is offered has nothing to do with reality but a fantasized perception of it. The Realpolitik crowd looks at a country, decides who is Big Cheese at any given time, and tries to make a deal with him regardless of ethical, idealistic and even geostrategic considerations. One prominent advocate of the approach was Hans Morgenthau, a German-American academic. Like his fellow German Karl Marx who looked for 'laws of history' Morgenthau tried to find 'the laws of politics' as applied to international relations.' In his Weltanschauung, the concept of power was the overriding goal in international relations as it defined national interests. Morgenthau's analysis had found echoes in President Franklin Roosevelt's administration even in the final phases of the Second World War. It was in that spirit that Roosevelt through what was to be marketed as Track-II diplomacy, tried to find alternatives to Adolf Hitler inside Nazi Germany. Later, Realpolitik inspired both George Kennan and Henry Kissinger. Kissinger's détente roadshow with the Soviet Empire and the People's Republic of China became textbook examples of successful Realpolitik. The same method was also used to 'solve' the so-called Palestinian Problem, to rein-in the Kim gang in Pyongyang and persuade the mullahs of Tehran to enter the tent, at President Barack Obama's invitation and do their pissing from inside. In all those cases, the Realpolitik tribe high-fived its success but helped prolong the life of regimes doomed to crumble under the weight of their ignorance, error and crimes. For peddlers of Realpolitik, Kissinger's China experiment has become the referential point for successful diplomacy with the operetta 'Nixon in China' as its Broadway narrative. According to it, the US president forgot and forgave almost half a century of enmity and went to Beijing, had a few rounds of mao-tai with the 'Supreme Helmsman' and made the world a safer place for everyone including America. In the same vein, why shouldn't another US president go to Tehran to drink some fizzy water with the 'Supreme Guide' and close the 50-year-long history of hostage-taking, terrorism, vicious propaganda, sanctions and military confrontation? The question was first raised during Obama's tenure with hangers-on like John Kerry musing about an 'Obama in Tehran' operetta that would send 'Nixon in China' into oblivion. The Broadway rendition of 'Nixon in China' suffered from the speeding-up technique that made the Keystone Cops reels funnier. Seeing the operetta, one might think that Nixon flew to Beijing in a jiffy, waved a magic wand and, hey presto, Red China became as white as snow. That isn't what happened. The first contact between the Nixon Administration and Red China was established with the help of Iran and Pakistan early in 1970 and led to Kissinger's first visit to Beijing in was followed by Nixon's visit in 1972. Nixon sent one of his most senior diplomats, the future President George W H Bush, to Beijing as a semi-official envoy for a year of monitoring China's compliance with the deals made step by-step. It was only at the end of a seven-year long probation that the US extended full diplomatic recognition and normal relations to the People's Republic in 1979. In those years, China changed the way the US wanted it to change. To start with the fear of a hardline military clique emerging as Mao's successor was removed with the 'accidental' elimination only six months after Kissinger's secret visit to Beijing of Field Marshall Lin Biao, the standard-bearer of the anti-American faction in the Communist Party. Next, the Chinese leadership moved fast to conclude the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution that regarded the 'American paper tiger' as the arch-enemy of global revolutionaries. The Gang of Four consisting of Mao's wife Jian Qing, Shanghai Mayor Yao Wenyuan and self-styled theoreticians Zhang Chunqiao and Wang Hongwen were booted out of key positions and, later, even put on trial for 'crimes against the revolution.' In 1971, covering a visit to China by Empress Farah and Premier Amir- Abbas Hoveyda of Iran, I had an opportunity to talk to Mrs. Mao in Beijing and Yao Wenyuan in Shanghai both of whom were still adamant that 'American Imperialism' would be defeated across the globe. During those seven eventful years, China steadily moved away from its status as a vehicle for global revolution to reshape itself as a normal state behaving as normal states, good or bad, do. The US wanted China to abandon its proxies in Angola, Mozambique, Southwest Africa and South Yemen, which the Beijing leadership did as quickly as it could. That helped Iran crush the guerrillas operating under the label 'People's Front for the Liberation of Occupied Arabian Gulf' (PFLOAG). With Hua Guofeng becoming Prime Minister and Deng Xiaoping emerging as 'strongman,' China adopted a clearly pro-US profile as both nations regarded the Soviet Union as a rival if not an actual threat. The Nixon-in-China episode was about hardnosed diplomacy which had little to do with Realpolitik. The Americans told the Chinese: If you want us to do something that you want, first deliver what we want. The Chinese complied and were rewarded. Applying the Chinese model to normalization with the mullahs will have to start with a long laundry list that Iran has to deal with in domestic and foreign policy fields. Is the 'Supreme Guide' Ali Khamenei ready for a seven-year ordeal in the hope of securing relief at the end? Does he have the clout that Mao had when he agreed to dramatically change course? Will he even last that long?
