You can imagine my surprise at encountering an almost wholly traditional staging with one teensy difference.
In 1982 I saw Turandot at the San Francisco Opera, the year after I became an opera fan, and it was my first live opera.
Madama Butterfly is the opera of the moment.
Rachel Willis-Sørensen might be the greatest American soprano right now who doesn’t sing much in America.
I have a confession and you may need to sit down for it: Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Evita was one of the gateway drugs to my eventual opera fandom.
I love recitals.
Over the weekend, Opera Parallèle, San Francisco’s contemporary opera company, stayed true to their mission of “merging tradition and innovation to re-invent opera for a modern world” as they presented a world premiere double-bill cheekily titled Birds & Balls at SFJazz Center’s Miner Auditorium.
Oh, La traviata, how do I love thee? Let me count the recordings.
Yes, there were other Giocondas if not of quite the same distinction. Chronologically…
“What I am trying to achieve is to be what I am to the fullest. Black to the fullest, a musician to the fullest, a homosexual to the fullest.”
One of the first things James Conlon did when he took over the reins as Music Director of LA Opera was create the “Recovered Voices” project, producing operas that had been suppressed by the Nazis.
Leos Janácek’s rise to international prominence as a Titan of music was dovetailed by a cluster of profoundly original operas that were written during his extraordinary autumnal years.
We may all be armchair Handelians, but some of us are more used to it than others.
Following the composition of Un ballo in maschera, Verdi had gone into a self-imposed retirement, at least musically; he had not composed a note in four years.
On this day in 1974 soprano Kiri Te Kanawa made an “emergency” Met debut as Desdemona and her broadcast debut
A convocation of mezzos–and a pride of tenors–produce hundreds of sixteenth notes in a bewitching Rossini showpiece
A perfect escape for a city laden with recent layoffs and job cuts coming into Holiday season
Despite this being the first full-length opera for Gabriela Lena Frank, there’s no lack of experience across the creative team which, along with favorable reviews for the production, contributed to high levels of anticipation.
“What would you do if the world you knew was suddenly gone and you were thrown into the deepest abyss stripped of all humanity? Would you fight to remember who you were?”
Two problematic 1990s Donizetti daughters
I hate to say I nearly cringe at the thought of Gioachino Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia.
All in all, this was truly a superb achievement for San Francisco Opera and an auspicious first chapter in the Wagner opera journey with Eun Sun Kim.
I love it, truly, just not that much.
Bay Area composer Mason Bates’s and librettist Mark Campbell’s contemporary opera about the life of the tech mogul Steve Jobs came home “to the place where it all began” in spectacular fashion
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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