misc SF Opera Passes the Popcorn Dude, why can't we all just get along. It's not like people in Chico are saturated with opera. They see eight performances from the Met. We think there's room enough for the six
Arts & Entertainment The Rake's Progress The patrons were willing to entertain an oil well and a 1950s Americana re-setting that dramatically differs from Stravinsky's original 18th Century,even though they were a tad skeptical. At first. After all,
Arts & Entertainment A Tale Full of Vile Sounds, Weird Fury 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
Arts & Entertainment Touched by an Angela: La Rondine at SF Opera. Now, Angela has some redeeming qualities: one could excuse her for her behavior; being diva in the truest operatic sense of the word, that's her job after all. Plus, she brings excitement to
Arts & Entertainment SF Opera: the Magic Flute The set, originally designed for the 92-93 season of the LA opera, and seen for the first time in SF, is build around a massive pyramid: Mozart was a Mason when he composed
Arts & Entertainment Appomattox The most powerful moments are written for the chorus: the aforementioned opening women choir, for instance. But Glass also recycles We’re tenting tonight, a song of the era, to intense dramatic effect.
Arts & Entertainment An Army of Philistines We got word that 27,000 people made a reservation to attend this Friday's Opera at the Ballpark. 27,000! And there are still tickets left! Tonight is the last day to see
Arts & Entertainment Tannhäuser We were wrong. Thank God. And the allusion to fedoras was not a dig at the previous general director (even though she indulged in them) but to last year’s LA opera production
Arts & Entertainment SF Opera: Samson and Delilah On the other hand, Olga, how could we not recognize you! Sure, these six years have changed you, like all of us. Plus, last time we saw you, it was a comedy and
Arts & Entertainment Iphigénie en Tauride This season was the last that Rosenberg planned (before her successor at the helm, SF Opera general director David Gockley tweaked it a bit), and the operas on display during the short summer
Arts & Entertainment Der Rosenkavalier If the set-up sounds French to you, don’t worry: it reminds us of La Chartreuse de Parme rewritten by Proust, complete with the blurred genders and the turn of the 20th century
Arts & Entertainment The Philistine: Don Giovanni Was it, as this Berkely Daily Planet op-ed conjectured, due to the new media suite, which will record every performance on high definition from this Don Giovanni on and thus will put some
Arts & Entertainment Carmen and Manon: Girls Gone Wild Carmen wants to have her cake and eat it too: she finds Don Jose cute, and he is hopelessly in love with her. So she demands that he abandons his career as a
Arts & Entertainment The Barber of Seville. The house is early 20th century, Mies Van der Rohe inspired, and black Le Corbusier leather chairs match the architecture of the time; but the costumes (by Yan Tax) vary between period and
Arts & Entertainment Tristan and Isolde So it was no surprise that last night’s performance of Tristan and Isolde turned out as a magistral musical display: from the prelude to the final curtain drop, Runnicles coaxed a splendid
Arts & Entertainment Rigoletto: The Killer, The Jester, His Daughter, Her Lover. We were going to make a snarky comment about the crimson theme of the set: it is the only color, the rest is black and white; and the interiors are only red: walls,
Arts & Entertainment The Philistine Asks for More Ball Movement. The one good thing about missing the opening night Gala --and we'd have looked absolutely stunning in a tux-- is that we got to read the underwhelmed reports of the premiere of Verdi's
Arts & Entertainment Die Fledermaus: The Bat Swings Wildly But we at SFist can go where they can't, with their layers of editors and fear of sanctimonious letter writers: die Fledermaus means "the bat," a somewhat nonsensical title, but then again, the
misc The Philistine's Fall Music Preview. You want to go below to see movie clips of Deborah Voigt and our running commentary on the SF Symphony's and SF Opera's season. Picture of MTT -Hi, Mike, good to see you
Arts & Entertainment Philistine: the Merola Grand Finale One would expect that the format, a sequence of arias not unlike that of Opera in the Park (Sept 10th, it's coming up), would become a bit predictable after a while. One would
Arts & Entertainment Philistine: Verdi's Requiem A shiny light was squarely placed on Verdi's score: all the details came out brightly, all the nuances were expertly underlined. That delicate, masterfully controlled introduction only lead to more of the same
Arts & Entertainment Philistine: the Marriage of Figaro Now, we all know where we are going with this: the last Figaro on the SF Opera stage was Nathan Gunn, in the Barber, a role he'll take again this Fall. Nathan is
Arts & Entertainment Philistine: Joan of Arc The ghost of former general director Pamela Rosenberg was hovering above when a man dressed in a gray business suit was the first to come on the stage. We feared for a second
Arts & Entertainment SFist Goes to the Symphony, Which Then Goes to China. The trip will happen, and it would have been a shame if it had ended up being cancelled: for one, classical musicians are not being paid much compared to other entertainers in this
Arts & Entertainment SFist Goes to the Opera: Fidelio Photos by Terrence McCarthy/SF Opera. Above, from left to right, Christine Brewer, Greta Feeney and Arthur Woodley
