Arts & Entertainment SFist Reviews: Crissy Broadcast, Joshua Roman, Edwin Outwater and more... What a busy last week-end, with Lisa Bielawa's Crissy Broadcast at Crissy Field, rising star cellist Joshua Roman with the SF Chamber Orchestra, former SF Symphony resident conductor Edwin Outwater's return at the
Arts & Entertainment SFist Reviews: The Flying Dutchman At SF Opera The Flying Dutchman ran aground. This SF Opera production did not take off, at least it did not fall off a cliff. Wait, that's what it was supposed to do! Spoiler alert: the
Arts & Entertainment The Classical Music Week in Review Classical music hit for the cycle last week, with a solo recital, an orchestral performance and an opera that were all exceptional. András Schiff: the Hungarian pianist and scholar returned to share his
Arts & Entertainment SFist Previews: Classical Music for Kids Five family performances worth checking out: the SF Opera Community Open House tomorrow, the collision of the SF Chamber Orchestra with the Circus Bella, the Peter and the Wolf with the SF Symphony
Arts & Entertainment SFist Reviews: Cal Symphony, New 'Dolores Claiborne' Cast, & More After the big hoopla for the gala nights of the Symphony and Opera, last weekend offered a double bill season openers of smaller, but no less ambitious, ensembles. And the SF Opera welcomed
Arts & Entertainment SFist Reviews: 'Dolores Claiborne' At SF Opera There were three strikes against SF Opera's world premiere Dolores Claiborne: soprano Patricia Racette stepped into the title role three weeks ago, taking over from mezzo-soprano Dolora Zajick; we wrote a meh review
Arts & Entertainment SFist Reviews: Tricky 'Mefistofele' At SF Opera Arrigo Boito's opera Mefistofele is an odd duck to open the season. It clocks at three and a half hours (thus an eternity before getting to the post-performance opening-night parties). It's not a
Arts & Entertainment Jennifer Siebel Newsom Stands Up For Russian Gays, Looks Smashing During Friday's SF Opera gala, hordes fancy-smelling types sporting their finest threads showed up at City Hall to kick off the opera company's newest season. Jennifer Siebel Newsom, documentary filmmaker/wife of Lieutenant
Arts & Entertainment SFist Interviews: Former SF Opera General Director Lotfi Mansouri (1929-2013) Lotfi Mansouri>, the former general director of the San Francisco Opera passed away yesterday after a bout with pancreatic cancer. He was at the helm of the San Francisco Opera from 1988
Arts & Entertainment SFist Interviews: Merola Opera's Sheri Greenawald After a long lyric soprano career on the world's most famous stages, Sheri Greenawald hung her hat in San Francisco to become artistic director of the Merola program. She now auditions a bazillion
Arts & Entertainment SFist Interviews: Composer Mark Adamo Last week, Jesus was resurrected with the highly expected world premiere of The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, written and composed by Mark Adamo. Under David Gockley, SF Opera's commissions often tackles ambitious material
Arts & Entertainment SFist Reviews: 'Cosi Fan Tutte' at SF Opera A light comedy with a ridiculous conceit where two guys, one blonde, one with brown hair, sweet talk their way in and out of outrageous situation? Nope, it's not The Internship but Cosi
Arts & Entertainment SFist Reviews: The Secret Garden at SF Opera/Cal Performances Getting down and dirty brings happiness. Or so is the lesson from Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden, lifted wholesale from Voltaire's injunction to cultivate one's garden. The cherished 1911 book has now
Arts & Entertainment SFist Interviews: Tenor Brian Jagde As with Rigoletto earlier this season, the SF Opera is experimenting with a double header format for Tosca, which opened last night. Namely, two casts will alternate nightly for twelve performances of the
Arts & Entertainment SFist Reviews: A Week of Classical Grooves Reviews of a few performances over the past week or so: Andras Schiff co-hosted by the SF Symphony and SF Performances; the first SF Opera production of Lohengrin in sixteen years; and the
Arts & Entertainment SFist Reviews: Week Review In Classical Grooves A few reviews: Friday's Rite of Spring by the Bad Plus with SF Performances, Wednesday's Moby-Dick at SF Opera, András Schiff in a concert jointly hosted by the SF Symphony Project San Francisco,
Arts & Entertainment SFist Reviews: I Capuletti at SF Opera, Mahler at SF Symphony the Cypress String Quartet and Three reviews in this post. I Capuleti e i Montecchi at the SF Opera, Samuel Adams and Mahler at the SF Symphony, and the Cypress String Quartet at Old First Church. I Capuleti
Arts & Entertainment SFist Reviews: Rigoletto at SF Opera We missed opening night at the SF Opera because of reasons. But not to worry, the first offering of the Fall season, Rigoletto is served to us in Big Gulp format: you can
Arts & Entertainment SFist Previews the 2012-13 Classical Music Season The Fall classical music season, or as we call it, the soundtrack to the election campaign, opened last night with the San Francisco Symphony. It's an odd duck opening, as the Real Thing,
Arts & Entertainment SFist Review: the Merola Grand Finale To conclude the Merola program - this summer camp for talented young opera singers - they borrowed the SF Opera orchestra, the opera house with the Moby-Dick set on the stage, and they
Arts & Entertainment SFist Reviews: La Finta Giardiniera and Postcard from Morocco We attend a Merola opera performances through the prism of: which singer will become a star. Some will. And when they do, we can be insufferable opera snobs and say we knew it
Arts & Entertainment SFist Reviews: Attila, The Magic Flute, And Ojai North Video enhancements are all the rage on staging nowadays, and of course opera isn't exempt of the fad. Case in point: both Attila and The Magic Flute at SF Opera, which we saw
Arts & Entertainment SFist Reviews: 'Nixon in China' Sung music enthusiasts, get ready for a massive binge of vocal events: the summer season of the SF Opera just started last Friday night with Nixon in China (more below); it goes on
Arts & Entertainment SFist Reviews: Carmen for Families (And Other Kids Performances) We salute the idea of introducing kids to opera with Carmen for Families: they smoke, they love, they party hard, she's promiscuous, and then he kills her. The beloved SF Opera abridged and
Arts & Entertainment SFist Wraps up the 2011 Opera Season The Fall musical season is giving way to they All-Handel-Messiah-all-the-time holiday season with a few Nutcrackers tossed in for good measure, so let's wrap up what happened at the Opera for 2011. Last