The Opera Tattler
Reviews of Performances and their Audiences
Month: June 2007
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* Tattling * Yesterday’s performance was sold-out, so standing room was ridiculously full, at least for Act I. I got my ticket at 1:30pm and received ticket number 106. There was no late-seating up in the balcony, so there were tons of disgruntled latecomers who could not see the stage or the OperaVision screens because…
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* Notes * Der Rosenkavalier opened June 9th at San Francisco Opera, but so far I have only managed to go last Sunday and yesterday. Lofti Mansouri’s revived production, designed by Thierry Bosquet in 2000, is just as one would expect, and was based on the original 1911 Dresden premiere. Donald Runnicles conducted well, the…
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* Notes * Iphigénie en Tauride had a second performance at San Francisco Opera last Sunday. The singing was again excellent. The choreography was more coherent from the middle of orchestra level standing room, but I still found it overwrought. This time I noticed that the lighting, designed by Robert Carsen and Peter van Praet,…
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* Notes * In the past week I have seen Don Giovanni twice more, in the first row and in a box. From Row A on the orchestra level, the parts that are offstage are much more noticeable, it is obvious that the sounds are coming from the speakers when they are. It was also…
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* Notes * Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride (1779) had its first performance at San Francisco Opera last night. The co-production with Lyric Opera of Chicago and the Royal Opera, Convent Garden is rather sparse, not unlike the music itself. The action takes place in a black box and the costumes likewise black, all quite simple.…
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* Notes * My enthusiasm for opera is well-known enough for the people around me to have picked up on it. It was my good fortune to be given a staff guest ticket for the final dress rehearsal of Der Rosenkavalier last Wednesday. I have been to dress rehearsals before, but only in the Grand…
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* Notes * For the second performance of Don Giovanni, I thought I would check out the new OperaVision screens in the balcony. The two screens are retractable, and the images are not fixed, so that at first we were seeing the conductor and orchestra members and later we saw both close-ups of singers and…
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Austrian Culture Minister Claudia Schmied announced that Ioan Holender would step down as the director of Wiener Staatsoper in the fall of 2010. Replacing him is Dominique Meyer. The music director Seiji Ozawa is also to be replaced by Franz Welser-Möst. Reuters Article | Wiener Staatsoper
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* Notes * Don Giovanni opened the summer half of the 2006-2007 season in San Francisco last Saturday. The co-production with Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie premiered in 2003, and has been also been performed at the Grand Théâtre de la ville de Luxembourg and Opéra de Lille. David McVicar's production was designed by John…
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Ruth Ann Swenson has canceled her scheduled fall performances as Agrippina at New York City Opera. She is recovering from a breast cancer surgery she had last October. IHT Article | Agrippina at NYC Opera
The Opera Tattler 