Opera Warhorses

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

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