The Opera Tattler
Reviews of Performances and their Audiences
Month: September 2005
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The production of Händel’s Rodelinda currently at San Francisco Opera is one from the Bayerische Staatsoper, and I had attended a few performances of it in Munich a few years ago. It is one of the tamer offerings of this particular director, David Alden. The opera is set as 1930s film noir, Buki Shiff’s costumes…
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The production of Rossini’s The Italian Girl in Algiers currently at San Francisco Opera belongs to Santa Fe Opera, where it was premiered in 2002. The style of director Christopher Alexander is possibly more suited to this comic opera. The last opera he directed at San Francisco was Turandot in 2002, which looked like something…
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The current Los Angeles Opera production of Pagliacci is surprisingly good, especially when one considers the opera company is a mere 20 years old. Franco Zeffirelli brought the staging into the 20th century, the set was urban, the costumes were fit for a disco, but there was also a roller blader, so a bit of…