Tonight the Makropulos Case opens its run at the SF Opera, as if the scheduling gods wanted to contrast this rare, exciting, must-see opera headlined by superstar Karita Mattila, with the yet-another-Madama Butterly we heard last Friday. It was the second cast for Puccini's beloved opera, headlined by soprano Daniela Dessi and conducted by SF newcomer Julian Kovatchev. They replaced Svetla Vassileva and Nicola Luisotti, who had to head out of town to conduct Fanciulla at the Met. If you can see only one of these productions, we strongly encourage you to take a chance on the Makropulos Case as Butterflies come back pretty much every other year. more ›

If Harry Potter was an opera, baritone Quinn Kelsey would be Hagrid: a mountain of a man, undeniably very strong, yet gentle, approachable, with a genial bonhomie. While he'll have to wait for someone to compose that score, he's been sticking to the Italian repertoire with San Francisco opera. On this stage, he has recently sung Verdi (Count di Luna in Trovatore) or Puccini (Marcello in La Boheme), and he returns this season with more ...Verdi and Puccini, of course. When the second run of Aida comes around in November, he'll be her dad, Amonasro. And starting tonight, he'll be Sharpless in Madama Butterfly. This Butterfly is somewhat bittersweet: we grew accustomed to Zheng Cao in the role of Suzuki, and our thoughts go to her battle against cancer. 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 ›

Oh, those nifty New Yorkers; it's all about them. As usual. Why? Because David Gockley, General Director of the SF Opera, announced that the company will start producing HD broadcasts of performances for theaters all across the states. Lovely, right? But the NYT then turns it into some kind of pissing contest because they did it first. Hrumph. more ›

The current run of Madama Butterfly had deja vu written all over it again: same set; same soprano; Patricia Racette in the role of Cio-cio-san, the Japanese wife betrayed by the American officer; same Suzuki (Zheng Cao), Cio-cio-san's maid. We had seen the show a year and a half ago, and the only thing missing in the current run was the simulcast on the Civic Center plaza. more ›