Reviews, appreciation and analysis of all things opera
Note from William: This post continues my series of observances of historic performances that I attended at San Francisco Opera during the general directorship of Kurt Herbert Adler. This is the second of 13 such observances of performances from the company’s 1964 Fall season. Two seasons prior at the San Francisco Opera, I had seen the team … Read more
Note from William: This post continues my series of observances of historic performances that I attended at San Francisco Opera during the general directorship of Kurt Herbert Adler. This is the first of 13 such observances of performances from the company’s 1964 Fall season. In the late summer of 1964, I had my Saturday night subscription … Read more
The late composer Daniel Catán’s 1996 Spanish-language opera “Florencia en El Amazonas”, has been revived in a new co-production between the Washington National Opera (where the production debuted in September 2014), the Los Angeles Opera and the San Francisco Opera. The lushly-scored, romantically melodic work is a Latin American fantasy about three couples, two present on … Read more
The night after the first San Francisco Opera performance of its co-production of “La Boheme” with Houston Grand Opera and Toronto’s Canadian Opera Company [see Review: Michael Fabiano, Alexia Voulgaridou are Vocally Splendid in John Caird’s Cleverly Conceived “La Boheme” – San Francisco Opera, November 14, 2014], the opera was presented again with a cast in … Read more
Puccini’s “La Boheme” is a perennial candidate for the title of world’s most popular opera. There are a couple of other contenders, bur none so peopled with likeable characters so in love with life, and so affected when one of them, Mimi, succumbs to a fatal illness.. The San Francisco Opera has a long record … Read more