The bicentennial of Mozart's death is bringing out the musical best in many American cities this year, but in San Francisco it's also bringing out the bizarre.
The city launched a three-month "Mozart and His Time" festival on Wednesday, a celebration of 150 performances by 50 groups. Most - such as a joint performance by the symphony and opera - are truly classical.But performance artist Hank Hyena is putting on a fashion show of Austrian undergarments of the late 18th century, and a local equestrian club plans a ballet in which horses will perform to the strains of Mozart and his contemporaries.
"They have an incredible facility to prance, and then they'll be doing extensions," said Melba Meakin, who usually organizes polo events. "To me, it's a close second to being in heaven, because you see this thousand-pound animal behaving like a ballerina."
Not to be outdone by horses, soprano Julie Queen plans to sing two arias from "The Magic Flute" while swinging on a trapeze.
"I'll be doing ankle hangs and balancing and hanging upside down and a type of somersault where I'm not coming off the trapeze," she said.
While Queen is exploring the physical angle, psychologists meeting at the University of California at San Francisco will hold a three-day symposium to psychoanalyze Mozart and his work.
"In some of his opera, he presents the internal psychological states or motifs of different characters simultaneously, which is something that hadn't been done before," said psychologist Leonard Zegans.
At the Exploratorium, a hands-on science museum, the staff is setting up tuned wine glasses on which visitors will be invited to play Mozart tunes.