Quests and Anticipations

California’s three major opera companies are each mounting a Wagner work in the first half of 2008. Two of the companies, the Los Angeles and San Diego Operas, most likely by coincidence, are offering their Wagner productions simultaneously. Except for some performances of “Fliegende Hollaender” in venues of various sizes, the only scheduled performances of … Read more

Fifty years ago this Fall, an important event in the history of opera, previously chronicled on this website, took place at the San Francisco Opera. Turkish soprano Leyla Gencer, replacing Maria Callas, whom the San Francisco Opera fired, took on the first bel canto opera role of her career, the title role in Donizetti’s “Lucia … Read more

Nine of the ten operas of Richard Wagner’s maturity abound in magic and spells – enough potions, curses and enchantment to fill a whole semester in Harry Potter’s School of Wizards. Even in the tenth opera, “Die Meistersinger”, the hero’s prize song comes to him, as if by magic, in a dream – fully orchestrated … Read more