The Girl of the Golden West (La Fanciulla del West), Puccini's oft-forgotten opera that's being billed as "the original Spaghetti Western," has a few more performances at the War Memorial Opera House, and suffice it to say it's real swell. It's great to see diva Deborah Voigt wearing a red leather cowgirl getup, astride a real live (!) horse, and whipping a bunch of sex-starved miners into shape at a bar called the Polka. more ›

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. more ›

Today's the opening day of the new SF Symphony season, with a Gala at Davies Symphony Hall and a performance of Stravinsky's violin concerto with Christian Tetzlaff soloing, and Dvorak's Symphony No. 8, with of course MTT at the helm. Then, the orchestra abandons us to woo the European crowds in the neutral countries of Luxembourg and Switzerland. They come back in time for a free noon-time concert in the Yerba Buena Gardens on Sept. 22nd, with a re-run of the gala program: Glinka's Overture to Ruslan and Ludmila and some excerpts of Dvorak's 8th. If you work downtown, you must pack your lunch and eat it on the lawn while enjoying the sun and MTT and the orchestra and a Beard Papa puff for dessert. more ›