When the SF Opera 08-09 season was announced, we were all excited by the weirder stuff, the Bonesetter's Daughter, or die tote Stadt. "Who needs another La Bohème?" we shrugged at the time. 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 ›

We're just blamelessly living our idyllic lives out here: blue skies, a Democratic mayor, a modern art museum that doesn't cost $20 to get into, a panda bear coming to Oakland..... when suddenly, out of the blue -- this! A fresh cuppa New York hate because they're filming part of Rent out here! more ›