Due to illness, soprano Nadine Sierra is unable to perform. Replacing Ms. Sierra in the title role of Lucia is Russian soprano Albina Shagimuratova.”
By La Cieca
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With a primary color, projection-heavy English-language Magic Flute that’s going to feel like a matinee whenever you see it, the SFO season has lived up to its initial promise.
By Greg Freed
Well that’s a terrible place to start a review, and it’s not quite fair to SFO’s Lucia di Lammermoor, but…
By Greg Freed
“Our patrons are also our investors, and because many of our core subscribers are also our most generous philanthropists, we need to make sure that our programming jives with their expectations, what they’d like to see onstage.”
By La Cieca
The breaking news from San Francisco Opera is that Nadine Sierra will sing the title role of in a new production of Lucia di Lammermoor, replacing Diana Damrau, who will not.
By La Cieca
If I’d gotten an hour less sleep you’d now find me mixing everything up and writing about Mrs. Lovett making her entrance on a bronze horse like Peter the Great.
By Greg Freed
Gala this; gala that; who knew rich people wore clothes so badly?
By Greg Freed
In celebration of the impending retirement of San Francisco Opera’s head honcho David Gockley, La Cieca proposed a quick midweek competition, with a first prize of not having dinner with San Francisco Opera’s head honcho David Gockley.
By La Cieca
You might be surprised, though, when that title turns out to be Show Boat.
By Patrick Mack
Three blocks from the opera house is a terrible time to realize there was homework.
By Greg Freed
I have an idea (soon to be angrily debunked in the comments section) that Le nozze di Figaro is rarely a source of unalloyed bliss to the chronic operagoer.
By Greg Freed
It is easy to become overly identified with opera—as a cleverer friend of mine once noted: being a sports fan is an interest, but if you like opera, everyone thinks of it as a crippling obsession.
By Greg Freed
Certain operas are better in theory than practice.
By Poison Ivy
Cast changes (already) for San Francisco Opera.
By La Cieca
The key to enjoying Bellini’s I Capuleti e Montechi is to do a hard factory reset and reformat your brain to forget all other works based on Romeo and Juliet.
By Poison Ivy
The San Francisco Opera has just done the big reveal for 2015-2016 and here’s what we have in store.
By Greg Freed
Jungfer Marianne Leitmetzerin notes: while this performance of Janácek’s Jenufafeatures the same three principal singers from the legendary Carnegie Hall concert of 1988, the fact that it is a staged performance raises the temperature even higher.
By La Cieca
Imagine the good fortune of attending La Bohème with someone who’s never seen it!
By Greg Freed
Kitsch is alive and well in Rossini’s La Cenerentola at the War Memorial.
By Greg Freed
The San Francisco Opera is batting a thousand where young singers are concerned this season.
By Greg Freed
Christopher Alden‘s production of Handel’s Partenope is so erudite and theatrically audacious and also such a rollicking ride, it’s hard to believe it isn’t crap.
By Greg Freed
The big news out of the Bay this week, of course, is that David Gockley, after ten years at the helm here and over forty in opera, has decided not to pull a Bloomberg/Galupe-Borszkh.
By Greg Freed
Far be it from me to join the Schadenfreudian chorus of “Bye, Bye, Berti!” you may have been hearing in certain quarters, but the first thing I am duty-bound to report about San Francisco Opera’s Norma (of which three performances remain) is that they’ve hit the jackpot, coverwise.
By Greg Freed
