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 ›

In a gloomy economic projection, the SF Opera seemed skeptical about the impact of the economic recovery package being discussed right now in Congress. SF Opera announced yesterday that the New Great Depression would not end for another two years -- at least, that's what we take from the unveiling of the 2009-2010 season: it's an all-workhorse selection of operas by Verdi, Puccini, Donizetti, Verdi, Puccini, and for good measure, Riccardo Straussecco and Wolfganino Mozartini. The silver lining can be found in the all star casts assembled to sing those chestnuts. The production has been canned as planned, and their were rumors of a possible apparition of Janacek's Makropoulos Case, which faded away as fast as a 401(k). more ›

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 hadn’t really opened last year’s Christmas gift yet: when David Gockley became general director of the San Francisco opera a year ago, we did not really know what was in the box. The second half of the 2006 season, and the 2006-2007 season operas were already booked by his predecessor. He was not the one who chose this rather uninspired selection of yet another Carmen, yet another Barber of Seville, yet another Rigoletto. more ›