Reviews, appreciation and analysis of all things opera
William Burnett 
This is the second of two reviews of performances I attended a month apart of Verdi’s “La Forza del Destino”, the first of which took place at the Zurich Oper [Reviews of Two “Forza del Destinos”, Part 1: Zurich Oper October 19, 2005]. In both cases I sat in the row behind the conductor, which … Read more
Fifty years ago, the Standard Opera Repertory was narrower than it is today. In the United States, impresarios such as Sir Rudolph Bing at the Metropolitan Opera and the newly empowered Kurt Herbert Adler at the San Francisco Opera set out to increase the number of operas that could be considered standard fare. And they … Read more
This is the first of ten observances of historic performances of the San Francisco Opera that I attended during the company’s annual tours of Southern California On November 3, 1955, the San Francisco Opera performed Gounod’s “Faust” at the Fox Theater in San Diego. I was a high school freshman, who had assembled a collection … Read more
We were in Paris for eight days, during every day of which the Opéra Bastille performed “La Boheme” with alternating casts. Although all the performances were sold out, the concierge at our hotel (the Park Hyatt – Paris Vendôme) was able to secure us very nice orchestra seats for the cast headed by the Rodolfo … Read more
My wife and I attended new productions of “Forza del Destino” in Zurich, Switzerland on October 19 and San Francisco, California on November 20, 2005. The production’s destiny The new production was staged by French director Nicolas Joel, familiar to San Francisco Opera audiences as first a collaborator with Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, then as a stage … Read more
In September, the San Francisco Opera mounted director Edward Hastings and set designer Robert Innes Hopkins’ realization of Rossini’s “L’Italiana in Algeri” in a production borrowed from the Santa Fe Opera. The Hastings/Hopkins’ production of Janacek’s “The Cunning Little Vixen” was seen in San Francisco in 2004. “L’Italiana” was, of course, Rossini’s first big hit, … Read more
The San Francisco Opera presented Handel’s “Rodelinda” as the second offering of the final fall season of the departing General Director Pamela Rosenberg. The excellent cast consisted of California soprano Catherine Nauglestad as Rodelinda, South Carolina countertenor David Daniels as Bartarido, Arkansas countertenor Gerald Thompson as Unulfo, British tenor Paul Nilon as Grimoaldo and Italian … Read more
John Cox is rarely thought of as a “concept director”, creating productions that transform an opera into a time, place and context unimagined by the composer and librettist in order to put make some point, or perhaps only for shock and awe. Cox, a former general director at the Glyndebourne Festival whose attentions are now … Read more
The San Francisco Opera, for the first time in “main season” history presented 24-year old Georges Bizet’s “Les pêcheurs de perles [The Pearl Fishers”]. Although French Second Empire opera fare had not been associated with the General Directorship of San Francisco Opera’s Pamela Rosenberg, she signed up San Francisco to be the second stop for … Read more
When is it cool to change the sexual orientation of an operatic character?* Suppose you are an “opera concept director”, and have decided you really want to make a statement on Hawthorne’s “Scarlet Letter”, but that your next operatic assignment is “Harvey Milk”, the opera by composer Stewart Wallace and librettist Michael Korie about the … Read more
The San Diego Opera, whose director Ian Campbell had enlisted British-born California fashion designer Zandra Rhodes to design costumes for a production of Mozart’s “Magic Flute”, commissioned Rhodes to create both the sets and costumes for a new production of Bizet’s “The Pearl Fishers [Les pêcheurs de perles]”. [Photo: Designer Zandra Rhodes; edited image, based … Read more