Reviews, appreciation and analysis of all things opera
Note from William: In celebration of the upcoming 50th anniversary of the San Diego Opera, I will be re-printing program notes that the opera company commissioned me to write. The second of these, re-printed with the kind permission of the copyright holder, the San Diego Opera, contains the program notes for their April and May 2011 … Read more
Note from William: In celebration of the upcoming 50th anniversary of the San Diego Opera, I will be re-printing program notes that the opera company commissioned me to write. The first of these, re-printed with the kind permission of the copyright holder, the San Diego Opera, will be the program notes for their March 2010 performances … Read more
Italian Opera Composer Gaetano Donizetti is usually identified – along with Rossini and Bellini – as one of the principal exponents of the bel canto school of the early 19th century, which, in the legends about the history of opera that gained currency in the late 19th and 20th centuries, was in decline by the … Read more
Observances of the sesquicentennial of Gounod’s “Faust” begin this year – the 150th anniversary of the first version of what proved to be a revolutionary opera. To this day more popular than any French opera that preceded it, its influence on both later French and Italian opera was profound. The only French opera that exceeds … Read more
The San Francisco Opera season of 50 years ago was especially memorable. The long-awaited debut of Maria Callas was aborted when she did not show up for her dress rehearsals of Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor” and was fired by San Francisco Opera General Director Kurt Herbert Adler. Her scheduled performances in two roles were taken … Read more