Innocence Opera Previews

May 28th - May 30th, 2024

Explore Innocence in a 90-minute in-person presentation by Kip Cranna or join the virtual Opera Preview for a presentation from librettist Sofi Oksanen.

Clifford (“Kip”) Cranna is Dramaturg (Scholar in Residence) Emeritus of San Francisco Opera, where he served on the staff for over forty years, more than thirty of them as Director of Music Administration. 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. For thirty years he was Program Editor and Lecturer for the Carmel Bach Festival. He lectures regularly on opera appreciation at the Fromm Institute at USF and the OLLI Lifelong Learning Institutes (OLLI) at UC Berkeley, San Francisco State, and Dominican University. He loves going on bike trips internationally and has a world-class collection of martini shakers.

One of the most awarded literary authors in Scandinavia and translated into 46 languages and sold in more than 2 million copies, Finnish-Estonian novelist, librettist and playwright Sofi Oksanen (b. 1977) is an icon of her field. Called a “literary phenomenon” by The Times, Oksanen has since her international breakthrough novel, Purge, proved time and again that she is a mistress of human drama, incorporating historical and contemporary issues that move the reader. Her most recent work is Same River Twice – Putin’s War on Women, a literary essay on colonialism and oppression, women, and war.