Das Liebesverbot (No Love Allowed)

Saturday April 4, the Wagner Society welcomes Jonathan Khuner for a presentation to acquaint us with Wagner’s rarely performed opera Das LIebesverbot (No Love Allowed) based on William Shakespeare’s play Measure for Measure. This program is timed to coincide with Pocket Opera’s presentation of “No Love Allowed” in there 2020 opera season. Pocket’s driving force of nature, Donald Pippin, translated Das Liebesverbot into English many years ago, but it seems that the opera was never revived in the intervening years. Khuner will familiarize us with the plot and provide musical examples from the opera. 

When Pocket Opera stages “No Love Allowed” Jonathan Khuner will lead the Pocket Philharmonic in two performances scheduled for Sunday April 21st and Sunday May 3rd. You can find out more about the production and purchase tickets by visiting the Pocket Opera webstie  http://pocketopera.org/season/

Conductor Jonathan Khuner resides in Berkeley but has worked for major opera companies across the USA and abroad. Khuner has been Musical Director of  West Edge Opera (formerly Berkeley Opera) in the East Bay since 1985 and was its artistic director between 1994 and 2009. He has led over seventy productions, most recently Breaking the Waves (Mazzoli) , Pelléas et Mélisande (Debussy), Frankenstein (Larsen) , Hamlet (Thomas) and for the Claude Heater Foundation Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde and Verdi’s Nabucco. Khuner has worked as Assistant Conductor and prompter for San Francisco Opera, the Metropolitan Opera, and the Lyric Opera of Chicago. In 1996 he was also the prompter for the Ring Cycle at the Bayreuther Festspiele. In the Wagner bicentennial year 2013, Khuner conducted a mini-Ring-Cycle for Minnesota Concert Opera (Minneapolis, MN) and in 2019 for Pacific Northwest Opera (Skagit, WA). Khuner conducted  the nation of Albania’s first ever Wagner production – Tannhäuser, at their National Opera in Tirana. Besides appearing frequently as guest conductor with various California opera companies, Khuner also initiated an opera workshop performance course for the University of California at Berkeley (2001 – 2004). 

Jonathan Khuner is a native of the San Francisco Bay Area and earned degrees from U.C. Berkeley in Mathematics and Musicology.

We meet at the JCC-SF 3200 California Street San Francisco, CA

This meeting is free to members and there is a suggested donation of $10 for non-members