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.

General Director David Gockley promised to turn the Opera into a "singers house," a claim he made again to welcome us at the annual Opera in the Park in the Golden Gate park on Sunday afternoon. Well, on Friday night, for the opening of the season, he delivered. Italian repertoire: check; production which does not call attention for itself: check; magnificent singers: oh yeah. We would not mind a performance of Wozzeck or St Francois here and there, but we can live with re-runs of the Italian repertoire of this quality.