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....

So foul and poor a play we haven't seen. At least, not during this San Francisco Opera season. That is, until now: behold, the vile production that is Macbeth. It's easier to count the things that went right, because there were so few: Thomas Hampson (fan), the Adler fellows, and Raymond Aceto, who all more or less shine. The rest, sadly, was pretty awful. You know you're in for a long night when you're forced......

We had an interview lined up, and were instructed to call his hotel at the agreed time, and ask to be transferred to Christopher Hampton. What? The guy won an Academy Award for writing the screenplay for Dangerous Liaisons, won a Tony award for the libretto of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical adaptation of Sunset Boulevard, wrote the script for, and directed tons of movies involving Leonardo di Caprio, Richard Gere or Gérard Depardieu, and he......

Photos of Opera in the Park...

A photo of a large crowd enjoying ballet at the Stern Grove Festival...

Donald Runnicles opened his tenure at the San Francisco Opera by conducting two ring cycles in 1990, which led to his appointment as musical director in 1992. His expiring contract won’t be renewed in 2009, yet he’ll still conduct the Ring currently in production for 2010-2011: he and Wagner go together. ...

-Dick met Bush yesterday and in one of his speeches Bush talked about how he's going to end poverty and bring world peace. No, just joking, he talked a lot about terrorism, Iraq, 9/11 blah, blah, blah. But that's not the big thing. No, the big thing is, and we kid you not, there is an actual George W. Bush Elementary School in Stockton. And the library is the Laura Bush Library. We'll leave it up to you to make with the jokes, but if you want a starter joke, the obvious one is if the library carries "My Pet Goat?" ...

Joe Goode manages in Transformation, this summer's first fully-staged production of the SF Opera Merola program, the opposite trick as in his own shows: instead of getting dancers to sing, he got singers to dance. It helps that his cast is youthful, -- Merola singers are between 20 and 34-- full of energy, and willing to take risks. But his direction enlivened an opera which, since it is a sequence of a prologue plus nine......

There is a monument in Rouen, France, in homage of St. Joan of Arc who was burned there on the sizzling stake in 1431, with a quote from André Malraux etched in the stone: "O Joan, without sepulchre, without portrait, you who knew that the tomb of heroes is the heart of the living." Malraux was right about the heart thing, but wrong about the rest: Dolora Zajick gave us a beautil portrait of the......

The San Francisco Opera went into hibernation, leaving opera addicts searching for their fix in the other companies, or in other cities. A charming option for the no-frill opera lover is the San Francisco Lyric Opera, whose Abduction from the Seraglio opened last Friday at the Florence Gould Theater, in the Legion of Honor. Mozart's opera, about a wife imprisoned in a pasha's harem, and the efforts of her lover to rescue her, is......

What do Holocaust dramas, hip hop and weddings have to do with each other? Nothing, but we've got all of them crammed into a mere weekend....

The San Francisco Opera has been quite busy, with three shows running concurrently right now, each opening almost a week apart. Yesterday, Fidelio had its premiere with a quality production, as always in this opera season, but one which lacks a little oomph, a little something to make it great. The audience appeared to enjoy it nonetheless. Photos by Terrence McCarthy/SF Opera. Above, from left to right, Christine Brewer, Greta Feeney and Arthur Woodley...

This week we bring you a crucifixion, ghetto Shakespeare and mean people in love. ...

The San Francisco Opera opened its season last Saturday and picked up right where it left off last time we visited. The Italian Girl in Algiers, just like Cosi fan Tutti, is another joyful and energetic opera, another fun comedy of an opera, which should reach to a wide audience. The continuity is musical as well: Rossini was inspired by the language of Mozart. He actually composed The Italian In Algiers in 1813, a mere 22 years after Amadeus’ last opera. He was 21 years old and composed the opera in 18 days. 18 days! Maybe John Adams will start writing Dr. Atomic soon. To put this in perspective, when we were 21, our main achievement was not to miss dollar pint night for a whole semester. One could hear Mozart’s influence in general, but in particular the piccolo in the overture reminded us of the Magic Flute, as well as the choice of Papatachi as a title for one of the characters echoed Mozart’s wit with Papageno. Again, as for Cosi last season, the performance is displaced in time. However, there start the differences. Cosi was a farce too, but grounded in some seriousness by its setting in the ominous background of WWI. One does wild things indeed when the apocalypse is near. The Italian in Algiers, on the other hand, is costumed for the 1930s, happens in a land of fantasy, and is light all the way. ...