Reviews

Rossini’s “L’Italiana in Algeri” had been a once a decade opera for me. I had seen five performances (two in the 1960s, one in the 1970s, one in the 1990s) the fifth being the Santa Fe production at San Francisco Opera, reviewed elsewhere on this website, with William Burden as Lindoro, the object of the … Read more

64 year old Placido Domingo demonstrated to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion audience that Wagner, sung beautifully, is magical. His incredible voice, its legato still intact, brought to his Parsifal the sensitivity and dramatic expressiveness that I vividly recall from seeing him perform, among other roles, Don Jose in “Carmen” and Cavaradossi in “Tosca” in his … Read more

The final performance of Beethoven’s “Fidelio” was also General Director’s Pamela Rosenberg’s last performance as San Francisco Opera’s fourth General Director. Circumstances (not all of which likely are known to the general public) resulted in her tenure being the shortest in San Francisco Opera’s 82 year history. She was presented with a giant bouquet of … Read more

In the final days of Pamela Rosenberg’s controversial tenure as General Director of the San Francisco Opera, a production of Bellini’s “Norma” new to San Francisco was mounted, starring Catherine Naglestad as Norma, Irene Mishura as Adalgisa, Zoran Todorovich as Pollione, and Attila Jun as Oroveso. The production and performance, in the context of the performance history of Bellini’s … Read more

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