Results tagged “sfopera”

Grammy-award winning mezzo-soprano Susan Graham just headlined a concert series six weeks ago with the San Francisco Symphony, which will be released on a CD as part of the SFS Mahler project. Obviously, we can't get enough of her: she returns this week to star in a concert version of Purcell's opera Dido and Aenas, with the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra. She chats about her upcoming Dido and looks back at her Mahler performance here.

The SF Opera production of La Fille du Regiment definitively put to rest the notion that opera is not the proper format for comedy: who needs agonizing arias when you can get a wild, fun party. We do not recall have laughed that much in an opera house, ever.

We enjoyed two performances at SF Opera, the 2nd cast of Il Trovatore in the last performance of that run, and Mozart's Abduction from the Seraglio, which continues for three more performances.

Even though it's Puccini, the SF Opera has run Il Trittico (the triptych) only twice before Wednesday night's opening. And for the first time on this stage, the same soprano, Patricia Racette, is singing the lead in all the three one-act pieces, a rare feat since they are all so varied: the first one is drenched in tragic realism, the second one in religious transcendence and the last one is a rubicund farce of stolen heritage. The same baritone, Paolo Gavanelli, is also singing the male lead in all pieces, scoring the middle point on a technicality, since it's an all nun affair in a convent.

               

Sunday's annual Opera in the Park gathering was well attended by opera lovers both committed and occasional, despite the iffy weather. Whatever some may say about opera being a dying art form, people still enjoy hearing the greatest hits, like selections from La Boheme and Il Trovatore. Here, some pictures of the performers and the crowd spread out across Sharon Meadow and Hippie Hill. At around 4:30 p.m., the hippies moved back in and took their rightful place.

The Fall music season has been launched in orbit with a glitzy gala at the Symphony. This week continues with classical music galore: the other heavy hitter, the SF Opera introduces his new music director, Nicola Luisotti, in Verdi's Il Trovatore, tonight. The all-star cast includes Dmitri Hvorostovksy, Sondra Radvanovsky and the comparatively simple to spell Stephanie Blythe in a story that makes Harry Potter look realistic. We don't go to the opera to watch reality tv, and the arias are sublime. You can check for yourself, for free, at a live simulcast of the War Memorial Opera House performance on a giant screen at the AT&T ballpark on Saturday, September 19th. Also, you can get the pupu platter sampler of the upcoming season, also for free, zilch, zero, nada, with the traditional Opera in the Park concert. Please arrive early, it gets really crowded on the Sharon Meadows lawn, and you don't want to miss SF Chronicle's editor-at-large Phil Bronstein's unintentionally hilarious attempts at a stand up comedy routine, if he's MCing again this year.

Attending the SF Opera Merola concerts is like opening a box of chocolate: the artists are mostly unknown young aspiring singers, dedicating their summer to the training program, so you never know what you are going to get. Will there be another Netrebko or Hampson? Or won't we hear of them again? And to double the element of surprise, they always select some rather obscure opera for one of the two fully staged shows. Chocolate boxes within boxes, man. This year: l'amico Fritz, by Mascagni.

People seem to either love opera or feel like they should love it. For the would be lovers of operas the inaccessibility of the genre (even when the lyrics are in English, deciphering them can be tough) has been lessened recently by things such as projected lyrics, and opportunities to see good productions at local movie theaters or ball parks. Perhaps the best way to become an actual opera lover is to see a world-class production of the most accessible opera for American audiences: Porgy and Bess which currently playing at the SF opera.

No one can sell out the War Memorial Opera House faster than Anna Netrebko. Just try and get a ticket for Saturday night's La Traviata, if you want to see why for yourself. The Russian soprano is the biggest draw in opera nowadays: she's the rare bird with the transcendental voice, and, well, she has the physique you'd actually want to see in a satin negligee, as in this Roaring 20s Marta Domingo production of the Verdi masterpiece. Plus, she has an inspiring story, working her way up from scrubbing the floors of the Maryinksy Theater in St Peterbourg, to photo spreads in Vanity Fair, and receiving honors from Vladimir Putin.

The Gershwin's Porgy and Bess opens tonight at SF Opera. It used to be dismissed, if you will, as a musical, but has now moved up to be considered one of the best American operas ever. Not that it's too crowded a category yet. In the role of Porgy, we have Eric Owens, a bass-baritone who is carving a name for himself with compelling performances in exciting productions, new and old. Also, a charmer.

The last Tosca here was in 2004. Considering that Tosca is The Show That Build SFOpera, with 12 runs over in the first 18 years of the company, and since only twice in history has a Tosca black-out lasted more than five years, we were so due. Last night, the umpteenth run opened, and it proved why it's such a fan favorite: when it's done competently, it's as pleasing as it gets.

We learned yesterday that star soprano Patricia Racette had to withdraw from singing today in the Verdi Requiem at the SF Opera house, and will be replaced by Adler fellow Heidi Melton. Racette, a recent hit in Madame Butterfly, was to sing the Requiem for the first time. No disrespect meant to the up-and-coming Heidi Melton, who will nail it, but that's a bummer. Racette and Stephanie Blythe, that was a spectacular tag team. Nonetheless, the SF Opera orchestra and choir, under the baton of departing music director Donald Runnicles, will be on the stage for once, not in the pit. That should be an exciting farewell to the maestro.

We're not too sure what to think of this lede: Some singers travel with their pets, a poodle or a dachshund, perhaps. Stephanie Blythe, one of the hottest properties in opera today, is luckier. She gets to travel with her husband, professional wrestler-turned-actor David Smith-Larsen... Huh? What are you implying, exactly?

In a gloomy economic projection, the SF Opera seemed skeptical about the impact of the economic recovery package being discussed right now in Congress. SF Opera announced yesterday that the New Great Depression would not end for another two years -- at least, that's what we take from the unveiling of the 2009-2010 season: it's an all-workhorse selection of operas by Verdi, Puccini, Donizetti, Verdi, Puccini, and for good measure, Riccardo Straussecco and Wolfganino Mozartini. The silver lining can be found in the all star casts assembled to sing those chestnuts. The production has been canned as planned, and their were rumors of a possible apparition of Janacek's Makropoulos Case, which faded away as fast as a 401(k).

Modest Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov keeps with the un-official theme of the SF Opera's Fall season: Presidenting is hard work. Well, Godunov is not presidenting as much as Tsaring, but he comes on the tail of Idomeneo, who has to sacrifice his son to avoid his city's destruction by a giant monster, and Simon Boccanegra who has to fend all these nasty homicidal traitors. Yet, it's easy work for us, the audience: this production totally succeeds in putting it all together.

The bad news: The Don Giovanni we witnessed last weekend seemed too big a task for the Merola program. Sure, the singing was stellar. And Donna Anna, Leporello, and the Don himself were admirably cast. But the cringe-inducing stage direction, as well as the evening's lackluster orchestra, would not let us enjoy the opera. Bummer.

How is that for nice planning: Gay marriage becomes legal on June 16th, the day after the SF Opera premiered Ariodante for the first time ever. Check this out: Ginevra and Ariodante love each other, will get married. But Ginvevra is also courted by Polinesso, who in turn is the object of Ginevra's attendant Dalinda's unrequited attention. And all these roles are sung by women. How appropriate.

We will get to hear the microphone between the tits! Anna Netrebko, who kicked off her career in the US here in '96 (in Glinka's Ruslan and Lyudmila) will be back in La Traviata, the SF Opera announced today when unveiling their 2008-09 season. You'll want to see other, um, microphones too, as the darn sexy Angela Gheorghiu, who we were so smitten with in La Rondine, comes back for more Puccini with La Boheme. It's the 150th anniversary of the birth of Puccini this year, so you get two operas by him, Tosca being the other one. That's a bit lame, we say, since you typically get two operas by Puccini in any season. Say, La Rondine and Madama Butterfly, for instance. A true anniversary celebration would be to have all operas by Puccini, or even better, eleven different productions of Butterfly. That would rock.

Oh, those nifty New Yorkers; it's all about them. As usual. Why? Because David Gockley, General Director of the SF Opera, announced that the company will start producing HD broadcasts of performances for theaters all across the states. Lovely, right? But the NYT then turns it into some kind of pissing contest because they did it first. Hrumph.

Third opera in November, third reaction from the audience at curtain rise. After the enthusiastic applause for La Rondine's shiny marble sets after the bleak and silent shock of Macbeth's hole-in-the-wall sets, we got the giggles after catching sight of The Rake's Progress' opening oil field.

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.

Angela Gheorghiu, the diva, made her SF Opera debut on Wednesday evening, in Puccini's La Rondine. That she made it onstage was somewhat of an accomplishment; she just had been fired from a production in Chicago for missing rehearsals. She was attending her husband, French tenor Roberto Alagna, concert at the Met, it seems. (Alagna's claim to fame has been walking off the stage at La Scala in the middle of Aida, after being booed. His cover had to jump in, still sporting jeans, to keep the opera going.) Fittingly, they were dubbed the "Bonnie and Clyde" of the opera world before these exploits. The aforementioned are only the latest peccadilloes. (Visit the links above for more of their jaw-dropping behavior.)

This past Wednesday was New-Yorker night in Civic Center: the classical music critic, Alex Ross was promoting his new book at Herbst theater, and we attended the production of the Magic Flute designed by Gerald Scarfe, who regularly illustrates the magazine. Scarfe toned down his usually acidic satirical pen (see the sample from his website that we put after the jump) to cook up sets that are humorous, and respectful of Mozart’s intent.

More bad puns on Philip Glass’ name! Appomattox, which we rose our Glass to, was not the end of our wall-to-wall Glass coverage. The Glass is not full, we haven’t hit the Glass ceiling yet, ha.

Who better to compose an opera on the repetitive forces which govern human nature than Philip Glass! There is no better match to write about the immutability of the human soul, as the theme begs for an insistent ostinato in a minor key, of course. His score is one of the strong points of Appomattox, which had its premiere on Friday night: it is distinctly Glass-ian, but integrates elements and influence contemporary to the civil war. There is a substrate of minor third pedals and a restrained palette of rhythmic motifs in the orchestra, but this is the scaffolding which sustains a surprising variety of colors and sounds. The leading men have singing patterns which are close to speech, but Glass lets his hair down with the women, providing superb arias to moments of intimacy, or pettiness, or even, in the case of Mary Custis Lee, ugliness.

We got word that 27,000 people made a reservation to attend this Friday's Opera at the Ballpark. 27,000! And there are still tickets left! Tonight is the last day to see Barry at AT&T park, but plenty of other divas, plenty of other big guys with supernatural powers will be on stage in the stadium this Friday, as the SF Opera presents Samson and Delilah on a giant High Def video screen with a live simulcast of the performance from inside the opera house.

This settles it for now. Wagner's Tannhäuser, the first new production ordered by SF Opera general director David Gockley, opened last night, initially making us a bit nervous. Why? Well, Gockley had announced the end of the fedora, and the return of glamorous period productions. Since last year’s most compelling production was Iphigenie en Tauride, a timeless rendition in a naked black cell, we fretted: is this season going to be the return of kitsch?

The SF Symphony returned from its trip to Europe and kicks off its 2007-08 season tonight, with a sold out opening night gala featuring MTT and Renée Fleming. We find it ironic that they will play Aaron Copland’s "Fanfare for the Common Man" -- a piece riddled with leftist political overtones -- to SF’s high society. Well then, it looks like the SF symphony is more subversive than we give them credit for this time. Good for them.

While we expected a sense of deja vu at last Tuesday’s performance of Saint-Saëns’ Samson and Delilah -- we had seen Olga Borodina in this very role, sung in that very set, on that very stage back in 2001 -- we didn't. Why? Because the set manages to be both impressive, and, well, forgettable. Sure, it has some striking features, like a giant mill wheel and statue of the God Dagon (or is the Dog Gadon), which resembles a 20-foot chihuahua. Still, it fits a McOpera period style that is appropriate, luxurious but kitsch and not particularly inventive. We did remember the spectacular final collapse of the temple (oops, we spoiled it, didn’t we?), and good thing we did. A curtain malfunction at our performance kept the spectacular effect from working.

What does SF Opera music director Donald Runnicles do when he's not conducting Wagner at the War Memorial Opera House? He's conducting Wagner in London. What does SF Symphony music director Michael Tilson Thomas do when he's not conducting Mahler at Davies Symphony Hall? You guessed it: he's conducting Mahler in London. We knew that addicts to Mahler or Wagner existed. But to think that they live in our own backyard? Well, that's just spooky.