Michael Anthonio
Antony and Cleopatra was an auspicious start to San Francisco Opera’s second century, a performance that seems to improve as I continue to think about it.
I felt that the whole performance at West Edge Opera on Sunday was greater the sum of its parts, particularly due to the dedication of the whole cast and crew amidst all adversities.
The July-August timeframe in the San Francisco Bay Area is always exciting time in terms of opera.
On Thursday June 30th, San Francisco Opera closed their summer season with a one-night-only special concert celebrating Eun Sun Kim’s first season as the Caroline H. Hume Music Director, in an aptly named concert “Eun Sun Kim Conducts Verdi.”
The second act of Dream of the Red Chamber reached the apex and provided the audience with soul-stirring fulfillment.
“This used to be a funhouse… but now it’s full of evil clowns / It’s time to start the countdown…. I’m gonna burn it down”
Ludwig van Beethoven’s “rescue opera” Fidelio was presented by San Francisco Opera as their first new production of the season last Thursday in reinterpreted fashion.
The San Francisco Opera became the first US opera company to present a full-blown production indoors on its home turf this season when they ushered the US opera audience into 2021-22 Season on Saturday September 21 with a stellar performance of Giacomo Puccini’s perennial favorite Tosca.
The crown jewel of this year’s Munich Festival is undoubtedly Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, which opened the Festival on June 29 and will close the Festival with an “Opera for All” screening on July 31.
The great Dalai Lama once said, “whenever there is a challenge, there is also an opportunity to face it, to demonstrate and develop our will and determination.”
“Once upon a time / Lived a foolish king. / Mocking Death, his crime, / Pure chaos he bring.”
That question hung in the air when Teatro de la Zarzuela Madrid revived Tomás Bretón’s opera Farinelli for first time since its premiere in 1902.
In the opera world, one of the pieces that underwent a multitude of changes in its reception was undoubtedly Richard Wagner’s longest and most Germanic opera, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.
Jakub Józef Orlinski‘s “Stille amare” packed a lot of punch in terms of dramatic intensity.
Bring your family: This show is special! Such perfect opera is hard to find!
The San Francisco Opera, perhaps incidentally, continued their exploration of operas based on literary works by mounting the revival of Giacomo Puccini’s first success, Manon Lescaut.
Opéra Royal revives Grétry’s Richard Cœur-de-lion, one of the finest examples of the opéra comique genre.
How does one make a performance of standard opera repertoire like Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro feel “fresh?”
A sense of celebration was definitely in the air last Thursday at the Vienna State Opera.
The Paris Opera assembled an all-French cast to stage arguably the most well-known example of opéra-ballet, Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Les Indes Galantes.
A brace of Handel operas at the George Enescu International Festival.
Politics and romance entangled in a spectacular fashion at San Francisco Operas’s Roméo et Juliette.