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 ›

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 ›

If you ever needed a cheer-me-up, we heartily recommend a sip of Donizetti's Elixir of Love, the effervescent show at the SF Opera. Or, two sips of it, since there's a family version which packs some of the same good-hearted fun and the same sweet romance into a crisp, condensed two hours. more ›

After the stage fireworks of the Bonesetter's Daughter (acrobats! videos!), the SF Opera presented Wednesday night a re-run of the 1989 production of Idomeneo. This stale, dated setb was chosen, we guess, most likely to offset the costs of the previous show: one cannot have it all shiny new prods. Thank Neptune the singer's budget was allocated wisely, for it would be a long evening otherwise. Stellar turns from Kurt Streit and Genia Kühmeier, along with the steady hand of maestro Runnicles, made the evening thoroughly enjoyable. The story goes like this: on his return from winning the Trojan war, the king of Crete, Idomeneo gets caught at sea in a storm. Neptune, God of the oceans, lets him go home safely only after Idomeneo vows to sacrifice the first person he meets on land. Of course, the Gods being a facetious bunch, it's his son Idamante who happens to be there. Idomeneo and his legal councel wise advisor Arbace decide to send Idamante away rather than fulfill the pledge. Neptune is not amused, and sends some Godzilla monster to Crete. Idamante goes and kills the monster, an act of courage which earns Neptune's admiration and forgiveness. more ›

Last week, we heard some talking head comment that all Sarah Palin had to do to beat expectations was come out of her VP debate without losing a limb. That's how we felt going to the last performance of the Bonesetter's Daughter, especially after reading some excruciating reviews. more ›

We had so much fun watching Erich Wolfgang Korngold's (1897-1957) masterpiece, we are kinda sad he did not make it to the 1960s: if his psychedelic opera, die tote Stadt, is any hint, he would have written the ultimate LSD trip arias. For lack of psychotropics, die tote Stadt has to make do with funky wacky dreams. Quite naturally in fact, it's a Viennese guy writing music in Freud's Vienna, and Sigmund had just put out his interpretation of dreams twenty years before. more ›

Stewart Wallace's previous effort with the SF Opera was the very successful Harvey Milk, which was about San Francisco's most famous city supervisor. His latest opera, The Bonesetter's Daughter, uses yet another famous Bay Area icon, this time a work by writer Amy Tan on a lady with Alzheimer. Gay guys and old ladies, we can't deny that Wallace knows his core opera audience. 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 ›

Do you guys remember when Steve Nash played hoops for the Santa Clara Broncos? How he single handedly kicked UCLA's tush? Could you tell he was going to become a mega-star, sure shot into the NBA Hall of Fame? If so, we have another exercise for you to identify diamonds in the rough: the Merola Opera program. It's where the kids who sing go learn their trade, improve their voice, diction, acting and all, and show off their stuff through a series of summer events: a free concert in Yerba Buena gardens, that we missed, two operas (Albert Herring on July 18th and 20th and Don Giovanni on August 1st and 3rd) and a grand finale (August 16th) to wrap up the summer and send the kids home singing Ce n'est qu'un au revoir. Some will then become Adler fellows and perform on the SF Opera stage, and some will become bona fide stars. To know which one, you'll have to listen for that fellow who can hit that three point aria at the buzzer to steal the game. more ›

Wagner's Ring, which opened its new and awaited SF Opera production last week with das Rheingold, made the Gods human. Francesca Zambello went one step further, and made them American. Zambello has decided to stage Wagner's tetralogy, which will unfold over the next few seasons, as an American Ring. 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 ›

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. more ›

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 checks in the hotel under his real name? We're glad to be of help, so we put his name into the Ron Mexico name generator: Christopher, you'll be Fausto Tobaggo on your next trip. more ›

Photos of Opera in the Park more ›

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

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. more ›

-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?" more ›

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 little stories without an overarching narrative line, only a common theme, could potentially feel repetitive. more ›

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 saint, from shy shepherdess devoted to God, to fierce warrior, to passionate lover, to resigned martyr, in the San Francisco Opera production of Tchaikovsky's Joan of Arc (The Maid of Orleans) which opened last Saturday. more ›

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 such a masterpiece it would sound good in any setting. Here, the theater is just adorable, a cute bonbonnièe with period furniture in the stairs leading to it and flowery frescos on the ceiling. Just like the theater, everything is scaled down yet very professional in this endeavor: the real orchestra, conducted by Barnaby Palmer, comprised of 13 instrumentists (just for reference, that is about half as many as there are violins in the orchestra of that other opera in civic center). The singers played their roles gamely, keeping the energy level up through-out the three acts and the two set changes. more ›

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. more ›

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 more ›

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

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. more ›

Both the San Francisco Symphony and the San Francisco Opera open their new seasons this week. more ›