Arts & Entertainment SFist Interviews: Baritone Lucas Meachem Baritone Lucas Meachem stars as Don Giovanni in the Mozart opera currently on stage at the SF Opera (three shows left). Every year we see singers go through the ranks of the Merola
Arts & Entertainment SFist Reviews: Don Giovanni at SF Opera Don Giovanni belongs to the category of operas that are insubmersible: as long as the cast is able and has a pulse, neither bad staging nor poor set can sink the show. The
Arts & Entertainment SFist Interviews: 'Heart of a Soldier' Composer Christopher Theofanidis The run of Heart of a Soldier just concluded, the spanking new world premiere commissioned by the SF Opera to commemorate the tenth anniversary of 9/11 (or rather, to honor the fallen)
Arts & Entertainment SFist Reviews: 9/11-themed 'Heart Of A Soldier' At SF Opera In Heart of a Soldier, SF Opera's tribute to 9/11, two platoon leaders discuss their thoughts on the Vietnam war. One says, he does not want to learn the names and lives
Arts & Entertainment SFist Reviews: Merola Grand Finale The curtain opened Saturday night at the War Memorial Opera House on the David Hockney designed set of Turandot. Turandot? Had anyone surreptitiously advanced the SF Opera season opening night? Rather, the Merola
Arts & Entertainment SFist Reviews: The Barber of Seville We love to see the future of opera in action, so we embarked onto the Noah's Ark of the Merola program's Il Barbiere of Siviglia last week-end: we saw two performances, two casts,
Arts & Entertainment SFist Wraps Up the 2010-11 Classical Music Season A few things to wrap up the 2010-11 classical music season: Walküre: the SF Opera Ring Cycle keeps on going strong, it's almost done with its third and final circling of the bases.
Arts & Entertainment SFist Interviews: Soprano Melody Moore Melody Moore has been growing as a singer under our eyes, here in the Bay Area, we can claim her as ours. She came here from Cincinnati to attend the SF Opera Merola
Arts & Entertainment SFist Reviews: Lang-Lang at Davies Symphony Hall. Lang-Lang is the antidote to recessions and deaths of classical music. There are only a few others than the Chinese piano superstar who can sell out Davies Symphony hall on a Tuesday evening
Arts & Entertainment This Weekend in Classical Music A bunch of classical music events happening over the weekend: The San Francisco Early Music Society presents Ciaramella tonight in Palo Alto, tomorrow in Berkeley and Sunday in San Francisco. Ciaramella is Italian
Arts & Entertainment SFist Reviews: Terfel, Aida, Bronfman A few performances we caught, before the Thanksgiving holidays distracted us from writing them up: Bryn Terfel at Cal Performances, Aida at SF Opera and Yefim Bronfman with the SF Symphony Few performers
Arts & Entertainment SFist Interviews Stage Director Olivier Tambosi The Makropulos Case has been the most exciting opera this season, with a convergence of superlative singing, lively conducting, a memorable set and a stage direction that pushes the envelope but makes sense.
Arts & Entertainment SFist Reviews: The Makropulos Case at SF Opera It's a shame that an opera about a soprano who stays literally hundreds of years in the limelight is so often confined to the dusty back shelves of the repertoire. The last production
Arts & Entertainment SFist Reviews: Madama Butterfly at SF Opera Tonight the Makropulos Case opens its run at the SF Opera, as if the scheduling gods wanted to contrast this rare, exciting, must-see opera headlined by superstar Karita Mattila, with the yet-another-Madama Butterly
Arts & Entertainment SFist Reviews: Cyrano at SF Opera With a relatively obscure opera and the biggest opera star on the planet, no one really cares about appreciating Cyrano. It's all about assessing Placido Domingo's performance. Does he still have it? Can
Arts & Entertainment SFist Interviews Baritone Quinn Kelsey If Harry Potter was an opera, baritone Quinn Kelsey would be Hagrid: a mountain of a man, undeniably very strong, yet gentle, approachable, with a genial bonhomie. While he'll have to wait for
Arts & Entertainment SFist Interviews Soprano Danielle De Niese Soprano sex kitten Danielle de Niese had her first San Francisco Opera performance last night as a sexy, perky Susanna in Mozart's Marriage of Figaro. She has been described as having a dancer's
Arts & Entertainment SFist Reviews: Aida at the SF Opera If no one else has stolen this lede for Aida, we will: Costumes Almost As Loud as Singers. British fashion designer Zandra Rhodes [link to her page, but as we write this, hacked
Arts & Entertainment SFist Reviews: Werther at the SF Opera Werther, sung by tenor Ramon Vargas, is in love with Charlotte (Alice Coote). Charlotte has pledged to marry Albert (Brian Mulligan), so she sends Werther away. Werther complies, but then, in a steamy
Arts & Entertainment Merola Program Grand Finale this Saturday How do you sing your goodbyes? So long, farewell, Auf wiedersehen, of course. Not the artists in the Merola program, they'll stick to what they know best: arias by Mozart, Strauss, Donizetti. They'll
Arts & Entertainment Free Opera Concert at Yerba Buena Gardens, Sunday The kids are alright. Every summer, about twenty under-thirty singers get selected after an arduous audition process to participate in the Merola opera program, a ten-week training camp with singing, diction and acting
Arts & Entertainment Hear the Opera Andrew Lloyd Webber Allegedly Plagiarized Now at the SF Opera The Girl of the Golden West (La Fanciulla del West), Puccini's oft-forgotten opera that's being billed as "the original Spaghetti Western," has a few more performances at the War Memorial Opera House, and
Arts & Entertainment SFist Interviews Tenor Salvatore Licitra Italian tenor Salvatore Licitra just made his San Francisco debut, and his role debut, as Dick Johnson (giggle) in La Fanciulla del West with the SF Opera. It's an A-list cast, with Deborah
Arts & Entertainment SFist Reviews: die Walküre at the SF Opera If the fat lady with a Viking helmet became a symbol for opera, it's both a compliment and a condemnation of Richard Wagner. His staging of the Norse mythology has been influential and
Arts & Entertainment SFist Reviews: Faust at the SF Opera It was Opening Night at the Opera on Saturday, for the short summer stretch of the season; Gounod's Faust is an over-roasted chestnut, on the top ten most performed list at most major
