A Civil War Bridges the Two Americas.

Inside the opera house, there’s a pretty interesting selection in the first season fully programed by General Director David Gockley. We covered some of it already here. The big event of the Fall is the world premiere of Appomattox, the new Philip Glass opera. Philip recently celebrated his 70th birthday, and was offered some champagne, and he said: Just a Glass. Ha! Appomattox is A Big Deal, the opera is swamped with requests for press credentials. Last world premiere, Dr Atomic, turned out to be a huge hit, and the expectations are cranked up to the max. It might be hard to get tickets for this one, you should book early. Appomattox is based on a turning point in the Civil War, and we’re so psyched to learn about it, we never studied the topic in our French school.

There’s some Wagner-a-go-go this season, with Tannhäuser this month AND das Rheingold in June, both conducted by Wagner expert, SF Opera music director Donald Runnicles. And what does Runnicles do in his spare time, when he is not conducting Wagner on the SF Opera stage? He is conducting Wagner at the Royal Albert Hall, of course. Don't let anyone tell you the man is not committed. Actually, just between us, we’ll let you in on a little tidbit: the BBC says that you can listen to the Proms concerts only for one week after the performance. But that’s not true. If you have seven (7!) hours to spare, you can listen to Runnicles and Christine Brewer right here. Hush, though, it’s our secret.

Then there are the big names of the opera, and you’ll get a nice helping of famous divos and divas. Angela Gheorghiu, she of the sexy cleavage, in La Rondine, Patricia Racette in Madame Butterfly (a re-run of last year’s prod), Susan Graham AND Ruth Ann Swanson in Ariodante, our pais Natalie Dessay in Lucia di Lammermoor. That’s a lot of amazingly talented singers. For the men’s team, you have Eric Owens in Ariodante or Thomas Hampson as McBeth, in the namesake opera, shortly after the recording of his performance across Grove street with the SF Symphony in Das Lied von der Erde this month...

And last, the opera that get us really excited is Stravinsky’s Rake Progress, as we cannot wait to see what visual tricks director Robert Lepage will come up with. The guy was turning an ironing table into an entire 24hour Fitness gym last time we saw one of his production. He staged Cirque du Soleil shows, and his familiarity with svelte, limber dancers will be totally useless here, so he’ll have to come up with something new. Neat!