In Opera Parallèle’s The Pigeon Keeper, Michael Anthonio finds a timely message of kindness during hard times.
As of late, the Bay Area has been blessed with a few high-wattage, high-profile recitals as if to compensate for the chilly temperatures and gloomy weather. Roughly a month after Lise Davidsen made an ebullient debut at Cal Performances, the Bay Area welcomed French soprano Natalie Dessay last Saturday.
Opera San José (OSJ) is continuing the second half of its 41st season with a company premiere of Béla Bartók’s Symbolist opera Bluebeard’s Castle (A kékszakállú herceg vára), with a libretto by his friend and poet Béla Balázs, and OSJ truly spared no effort to make the occasion a memorable one.
Not even howling winds and thunderous rain could dampen the excitement of Bay Area audiences to experience Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen for the first time in the Bay Area at Zellerbach Hall Berkeley last Tuesday, 4 February.
The San Francisco Opera announces its 2025-26 season.
The plight of two women, each from different backgrounds, was on full display in San Francisco opera houses last week.
I was just moderately excited when LA Opera announced that French tenor Benjamin Bernheim would be coming to concertize at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills, 90210.
It surprises even me how some operas have eluded me in live performance even after lo, these many years. One of them is Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette.
Sparks flew when the San Francisco Opera opened their new production of Richard Wagner’s monumental Tristan und Isolde on Saturday, October 19th, at the War Memorial Opera House.
Chris’s Cache celebrates an “Easter in October” gala with five special pirate recordings of Cavalleria Rusticana from the Met featuring four prima donnas whose Santuzze never got a Saturday broadcast and one whose did: Giulietta Simionato, Fiorenza Cossotto, Régine Crespin, Rita Hunter and Mignon Dunn.
My vision may have been slightly blurry at the end.
They used to say of the island of Crete that it produces more history than can be consumed locally.
“[W]omen are interesting and important in real life. They are not an afterthought of nature, they are not secondary players in human destiny, and every society has always known that.” — Margaret Atwood, February 2017
Overall, this was a superb achievement and a thrilling season opener for the San Francisco Opera.
Following Gundula Janowitz and Janet Baker, Chris’s Cache sends birthday greetings to another favorite diva—Karita Matilla—with a quartet of broadcasts.
Michael Anthonio crunches the numbers on San Francisco Opera’s recent seasons and goes straight to the top to General Director Matthew Shilvock for a look at where SF Opera has been and where it’s headed
When the subject of New York City Opera comes up, you always hear the same query: “What happened to City Opera? Are they even performing these days??”
Don’t cry for me, Birgit Nilsson
On Friday, June 21st, Opera Parallèle – the Bay Area nomadic, contemporary opera company – together with the Presidio Theatre unveiled their final production of the season, the West Coast premiere of Gregory Spears and Greg Pierce’s Fellow Travelers, an adaptation of Thomas Mallon’s 2007 novel of the same name.
Final opera of the season. Little-known opera. A revival. So, you can probably skip it, right?
She can’t put her foot on the gas the way she used to but there’s still plenty of fuel in that tank.
As an opera fanatic who was baptized by the blood of Leontyne Price, the Messa da Requiem by Giuseppe Verdi appeared on my radar fairly soon after I started delving into the operatic canon.
“The distance between dreams and reality is called action.” – Brian Tracy
The score for Innocence was menacing yet comforting, and, essentially, violent and peaceful at the same time
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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