We have been singing "Happy we," thankful that Bostridge was coming to sing at Herbst tonight for SF Performances. Actually, we even were supposed to tease you with an interview, but Ian poor thing got a cold last week, and had to rest for his NY concert and canceled our phone call. Obviously, based on the review, he was fully recovered since stuffy nose is not part of his reputation. Which means you're in for a treat.

If you're aching for an interview, here is one here and here you can find Ian in his own video interview. After the jump, a clip of him singing Schubert, as he will tonight, with tonight piano accompanist, Julius Drake.

Dude, why can't we all just get along. It's not like people in Chico are saturated with opera. They see eight performances from the Met. We think there's room enough for the six operas that the SFO will broadcast next year: Puccini’s Madama Butterfly and Rondine, Saint-Saëns’s Samson et Dalila, Mozart’s Zauberflöte and Don Giovanni, and Glass's Appomattox, each shown four times starting in March. If you ask us, we'd show the Rake's Progress instead of Samson.

The SFO just announced its substantial gross last year -- a surplus of $40k on an annual operating budget of $61 million -- and the revenue from said movie theater broadcasts can't hurt the bottom line for opera houses, right? Right. And TiVo-ing through the intermissions will help keep things zipping along.

What better way to enjoy opera than munching on popcorn washed down with a 44oz Super Big Gulp of Coke, and home by 10 p.m.?

Picture of Patricia Racette in Butterfly, Terrence McCarthy/SF Opera

It's never too late to break the ice, and we have an excellent opportunity: usually Ragnar's work happens in the background, and is acknowledged after each chorus performance, when he springs up on stage to receive a deserved round of applause alongside MTT or whomever conducted the orchestra. But this week, starting Wednesday in Cupertino, and Thursday at Davies, he'll be holding the baton himself, leading the orchestra in Handel's Messiah, aka the Holiday Treat. He answers our questions after the jump. Hallelujah!

Picture of Ragnar by Roy Manzanares; below Camilla Tilling, courtesy of SF Symphony

The current run of Madama Butterfly had deja vu written all over it again: same set; same soprano; Patricia Racette in the role of Cio-cio-san, the Japanese wife betrayed by the American officer; same Suzuki (Zheng Cao), Cio-cio-san's maid. We had seen the show a year and a half ago, and the only thing missing in the current run was the simulcast on the Civic Center plaza.

Practice makes perfect though: everything ran smoothly, and whatever kinks there were last time, they got ironed out. They kicked out the dead wood, and replaced the under-performing Pinkerton and Sharpless by two new singers, both making their SF opera debut in this production. Keep what's good, improve the rest, you got a recipe for a spectacular success.

The patrons were willing to entertain an oil well and a 1950s Americana re-setting that dramatically differs from Stravinsky's original 18th Century,even though they were a tad skeptical. At first. After all, what could be the symbolism here? A young couple lying on a blanket in front of the derrick, pumping in, pumping out, viscous fluids a-flowing. (Mmm, we can't put our finger on it. Oh no wait, we can: sex.) Fortunately, the whimsical sets by Carl Fillion (for the Robert Lepage and Sybille Wilson directed production) won them over. And after a few scene changes, they were enthusiastically clapping at the wacky decors thrown at them.

Above, William Burden and Laura Aikin, below James Morris and Catherine Cook, and Denyce Graves, pictures Terrence McCarthy/SF Opera.

In the program notes, we see that this violin concerto was written for and created by Ferdinand David, a violinist virtuoso friend of Mendelssohn. SF Symphony Concertmaster Alexander Barantschik happens to play on David's violin, the 1742 Guarnerius del Gesù, which was used to create the piece. And we wonder: does everyone who plays this concerto at Davies borrow the violin on which that music was born (Gil Shaham will play the same piece in March )? Hey, Sasha, here's my Strad', can I take your David for a ride? And such.

So foul and poor a play we haven't seen. At least, not during this San Francisco Opera season. That is, until now: behold, the vile production that is Macbeth.

It's easier to count the things that went right, because there were so few: Thomas Hampson (fan), the Adler fellows, and Raymond Aceto, who all more or less shine. The rest, sadly, was pretty awful. You know you're in for a long night when you're forced to jostle your neighbor two seats over because of her audible snoring. (We wonder if the opera tattler noticed that.) Still, we can't totally fault that sleeping lady for doing what came naturally. We do, however, marvel at how she caught some zzz's, since the sounds heard coming from the stage were rough, and not at all propitious to dreaming.

Let's start with the production: it makes little sense. The stage looks like a bunker. Unlike La Rondine, it did not receive applause as the curtain went up. A giant hole marks the ceiling of the set, as if a comet crashed through. Guards dressed in black space-trooper-chic outfits didn't work, the same goes for the typewriter sitting on the proscenium, unused. There's only one way we can comprehend the mess onstage: director David Pountney and set designer Stefanos Lazaridis are fan of Terry Gilliam's Brazil, where a fly on a typewriter causes a typo, and a guy named Buttle to be arrested instead of Tuttle, by helmet-clad policemen bursting through the ceiling, etcetera, etcetera, and so forth. This explains it all. The typewriter, ultimately responsible for the mix-up, symbolizes guilty consciousness, and governmental oppression. Or something like that.

Pictures of Thomas Hampson and Georgina Lukács by Terrence McCarthy/SF Opera

Now, Angela has some redeeming qualities: one could excuse her for her behavior; being diva in the truest operatic sense of the word, that's her job after all. Plus, she brings excitement to a performance well before a single note is sung, which is good in the accounting department. It does not hurt that she can display major cleavage very convincingly. And: she can sing.

Pictures of Angela Gheorghiu, above, Anna Christy and Gerard Powers, and Misha Didyk below, by Terrence McCarthy, SF opera.

We chatted with Marielle Labeque half asleep, as we could only schedule the interview for the morning in New York, where she was performing with her sister Katia, conducted by her husband Semyon Bychkov (reviewed here) with the New York Philharmonic. She talks at 100 mph, jumping from one topic to the next, and we could hardly keep note of everything she said. Memo to the kind person who set up the interview: Katia is the one who watches TV in the hotel room till 3 in the morning and sleeps in late, please hook us up with her next time, not Marielle-the-early-bird.

Picture of Katia and Marielle Labeque from their website, Fondazione KML.