William Burnett

The Los Angeles Opera observed the holiday season by mounting Engelbert Humperdinck’s “Hansel and Gretel”, reviving its 2006 production created and directed by Doug Fitch. Sasha Cooke’s Hansel and Liv Redpath’s Gretel [Photo: Gretel (Liv Redpath, left) and Hansel (Sasha Cooke, right) unexpectedly come across a gingerbread house in a forest; edited image, based on a … Read more

I attended the fourth of nine scheduled War Memorial Opera House performances of Jake Heggie’s opera “It’s a Wonderful Life”, an adaptation, by Heggie and librettist Gene Scheer, of Frank Capra’s 1946 postwar movie of the same name. Previously, I had reported on the opera’s world premiere [see World Premiere Review: Jake Heggie’s Celestial Transformation of … Read more

The Houston Grand Opera spent its entire 2017-18 season in a section of the George R. Brown Convention Center, while its opera house was being repaired from the destruction of Hurricane Harvey. While saving the company’s season, the convention center provisions for producing opera were understandably suboptimal. Puccini’s “La Bohème” was the second opera offered, since … Read more

Since 2016, Lyric Opera each season has premiered an opera a year of David Pountney’s new production of Wagner’s four opera “Ring of the Nibelungs”. Pountney’s new staging of “Siegfried” proved to be one of the most rewarding operatic evenings I have attended. Originally conceptualized by the late German designer Johan Engels, Pountney’s realization of … Read more

Lyric Opera reverentially mounted Jean-Pierre Ponnelle’s 47-year old production of Mozart’s masterpiece “Idomeneo”. Originally conceived for the Cologne Opera (1971), Ponnelle’s beautiful production, that I regard as a “world treasure”, subsequently introduced audiences in San Francisco and New York City to Mozart’s masterpiece. [Below: The God Neptune has washed the living survivors of the storm … Read more

The San Diego Opera opened its 2018-19 season with Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro” in an attractive production conceived by British director Stephen Lawless. [Below: Four principal characters of the opera, Marcellina (Susanne Mentzer, left), Don Bartolo (Ashraf Sewaillam, second from left), Figaro (Evan Hughes, second from right) and Susanna (Sarah Shafer, right) step through the … Read more

The San Francisco Opera mounted British director Tim Albery’s production of Richard Strauss’ “Arabella”, first presented at the Santa Fe Opera in 2012. My review of the Albery production’s 2012 debut in Santa Fe [Erin Wall, Mark Delavan Are Superb in Elegant New Production of “Arabella” – Santa Fe Opera, August 1, 2012] contains many … Read more

The San Francisco Opera unveiled its attractive new Shawna Lucey/Robert Innes Hopkins production of Puccini’s “Tosca”. [Below: the Robert Innes Hopkins sets for the first act of Puccini’s “Tosca”; edited image, based on a Cory Weaver photograph, courtesy of the San Francisco Opera.] Carmen Giannattasio as Tosca In her role debut and San Francisco Opera debut … Read more

Any opera company in the world certainly would have jumped at the chance to mount Verdi’s “Don Carlo” if the cast that Los Angeles Opera had assembled were available – Mexican tenor Ramón Vargas in the title role, Puerto Rican soprano Ana María Martínez as Elisabetta di Valois, Russian soprano Anna Smirnova as the Princess … Read more

Earlier this month, I reviewed the opening performance of San Francisco Opera’s mounting of the Stephen Lawless production of Donizetti’s “Roberto Devereux” [Review: World’s Best Ever “Roberto Devereux” Performance: Radvanovsky, Thomas, Barton, Frizza – San Francisco Opera, September 8, 2018]. In that review, I suggested that the four principals (Illinois soprano Sondra Radvanovsky, Florida tenor Russell … Read more

This is my fourth review posting associated with the San Francisco Opera’s September 2018 mounting of the Jose Cura production of Mascagni’s “Cavalleria Rusticana” and Leoncavallo’s “Pagliacci”. The operas were presented together as a double bill, as they often are, but were staged in a nontraditional manner. For the previous reviews and their discussion of … Read more

I reviewed San Francisco Opera’s 2018-19 season opening night performance of Jose Cura’s fascinating production of ‘s “Cavalleria Rusticana” on a double bill with Cura’s production of Leoncavallo’s “I Pagliacci” [see Review, Part I: San Francisco Opera Season Opening “Cavalleria Rusticana/Pagliacci”, Nicely Sung, Brilliantly Staged, September 7, 2018.] I discussed the musical performance of the cast, … Read more

The San Francisco Opera mounted Donizetti’s “Roberto Devereux” with a cast, conductor and production that would rival any performance of the opera in the 18 decades since its premiere. Sondra Radvanovsky’s Elisabetta (Queen Elizabeth I) [Photo: Sondra Radvanovsky as Queen Elizabeth I; edited image, based on a Cory Weaver photograph, courtesy of the San Francisco … Read more

This is the second part of my review of San Francisco Opera’s presentation of Jose Cura’s production of the operatic double bill of Mascagni’s “Cavalleria Rusticana” and Leoncavallo’s “I Pagliacci”. This follows Review, Part I: San Francisco Opera Season Opening “Cavalleria Rusticana/Pagliacci”, Nicely Sung, Brilliantly Staged, September 7, 2018. Cura’s production moved the locale of both … Read more

The most durable “double-bill” in opera is the linking of Mascagni’s “Cavalleria Rusticana” and Leoncavallo’s “I Pagliacci”, each performed separately with an intermission between them. Their similar tales of the lethal consequences of infidelity in small towns encouraged the Argentine singer, conductor, designer, director Jose Cura to create an imaginative production in which characters from … Read more