The Opera Tattler
Reviews of Performances and their Audiences
Month: June 2010
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* Notes * Orpheus hosted an event with Gregory Henkel, San Francisco Opera's Director of Artistic Adminstration yesterday evening at Credo. Henkel certainly has quite a C.V., having worked at Los Angeles Opera and the Lyric Opera of Chicago. He also was a guest judge at the Met auditions this year. For this talk, he spoke…
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San Francisco Opera's Facebook page has photographs of the contestants for the Ring costume contest that occurred on Sunday. If you "like" San Francisco Opera on Facebook, you may even vote for your favorite costume. Whichever photo gets the most "likes" by Friday at 12 pm will win a production photo from Die Walküre signed by…
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Henry Purcell's "When I am laid in Earth," from Act III of Dido and Aeneas, has been named the UK's favorite aria, based on a BBC poll. BBC News | Radio 3 Breakfast Show
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* Notes * Michael Tilson Thomas just finished conducting San Francisco Symphony in a program of Wagner, Berg, and Beethoven. The Overture to The Flying Dutchman sounded lovely, and the brass were fairly clear and sounded nice. The second piece also had to do with opera, and the Suite from Lulu was dense and lush. Soprano…
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San Francisco Opera is holding a costume contest today before the matinée performance of Die Walküre. The contest involves dressing up as characters from Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen. The judges include David Gockley, Kristina Flanagan, Christopher Verdosci, and Terri Stuart. The potential for utter ridiculousness seems pretty high here. Though sophisticates such as John…
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* Notes * The only Berkeley Festival and Exposition event I could attend this year was a harpsichord recital played by Eugene Petrushansky. The afternoon performance began with Bach's Toccata in F#, BMV 110, which I missed entirely due to my tardiness. I managed to hear all of the Suite in B Minor from Matthias Weckmann,…
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* Notes * Die Walküre had a stunning opening last night at San Francisco Opera. There was never a dull moment from the orchestra pit, and Donald Runnicles kept the tempi apace, and rarely overwhelmed the singers. There were some notes that were out of tune or not perfectly clear from the brass, but for the…
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* Notes * San Francisco Opera‘s latest production of La fanciulla del West (The Girl of the Golden West) opened last night. The production, directed by Lorenzo Mariani and with sets from Maurizio Balò, is cute without being busy or cluttered. The male chorus sounded fine and the ensemble cast did well. The waltz in Act I…
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* Notes * Gounod’s Faust opened at San Francisco Opera last weekend. I had briefly entertained the idea of driving back from Southern California where I was seeing LA Opera’s Ring for this, but decided it would be too disruptive to both my schedule and state of mind. Even at Tuesday night’s performance, it was a bit…
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* Notes * The first cycle of LA Opera’s Ring Festival concluded with Götterdämmerung last night. James Conlon kept the orchestra at a controlled pace, and the volume was never overwhelming. The brass was not terribly secure, even sounding chaotic at times. The horn calls were respectable, albeit very careful and slow. The chorus sounded lovely…
The Opera Tattler 