Results tagged “actii”

The SF Opera wraps up its Fall season with two girls behaving badly, Puccini's Manon Lescaut and Bizet's Carmen. Manon is a young woman, who on her way to seclusion in a convent, elopes with a poor student, Des Grieux. It is not said what peccadillo she committed to earn a sentence of life as a nun, but her brother, instead of being dismayed at the news of her disappearance, calmly expects her to show up as a courtisan sooner than later. Which she does in Act II, taking residence with a filthy rich old lech named Geronte. When she realizes that, for all her jewelry, she is bored, undersexed and misses her hot stud of a student, and attempts to leave the gilded jail with both Des Grieux and the bling-bling, drama unfolds.

Donald Runnicles opened his tenure at the San Francisco Opera by conducting two ring cycles in 1990, which led to his appointment as musical director in 1992. His expiring contract won’t be renewed in 2009, yet he’ll still conduct the Ring currently in production for 2010-2011: he and Wagner go together.

The one good thing about missing the opening night Gala --and we'd have looked absolutely stunning in a tux-- is that we got to read the underwhelmed reports of the premiere of Verdi's Un Ballo en Maschera. We attended the performance last night with lowered expectation, and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. We will not second guess our estimable colleagues, since we did not see the same performance, and since we came in having integrated their feedback. In order for all of us to converge, we would have to visit the opera house a couple times, and adopt the same ethical reviewing guidelines as a food critic. And still, we'd find ways to disagree.