Soprano Sondra Radvanovsky made an incandescent San Francisco Opera debut this month as Leonora in Il Trovatore, prompting reviewers to glow about her, and rediscover their faith in the workhorses of the Italian repertoire. "Even if nothing else happens during the rest of the San Francisco Opera's 2009 fall season, soprano Sondra Radvanovsky has already provided us with at least one extraordinary and indelible musical memory." the SF Chronicle said. "In her company debut Sondra Radvanovsky wielded her alluring voice with affecting power and poignant intimacy," chimed the NY Times. The Examiner extolled her "big, fabulously projected voice" which "had every note in place." And the SFCV book-ended a lauding paragraph about her with "nothing matched the vocal and dramatic impact Radvanovsky made as Leonora" and "It was all marvelous to hear and witness, from beginning to end." She has sung this role at venerated institutions such as the Met or Covent Garden, so the quality of her performance should not exactly come as a surprise. more ›

The Opera Opening Night is as glamorous as it gets, and Drew Altizer was kind enough to share pictures with us. Enjoy the pix gallery. There was also a performance and we kinda chuckled when we saw that some like, say, Arianna Huffington, were scheduled to skip straight to the gala. Her bad, she missed on a wonderfully exciting performance. One you can attend for free, broacast live on Saturday at the ball park. more ›

Verdi's Simon Boccanegra is a story of curses, kidnappings and misplaced children. It mostly hinges on the love of Simon and Amelia, which some characters interpret as they're doing unspeakable things to each other in the cover of the night, while in truth it's as pure as spring: she's his secret daughter. Confused characters get angry, tragedy ensues. Simon (Dmitri Hvorostovsky) comes onstage in the prologue, set 25 years before the first act, wearing a Rambo headband, and looking as comfortable acting as Sly Stallone... more ›

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. more ›