The Opera Tattler

David Gockley started off his talk by highlighting the various opera news stories of the week. Baltimore Opera and New York City Opera both have lost their heads, Opera Pacific has closed, and Washington National Opera is postponing their Ring. This last item is of especial importance to San Francisco Opera, as it is a co-production between the two companies. If the National Opera cancels their cycle, then San Francisco Opera would have to pay for all of Götterdämmerung. Cost cutting is happening at SF Opera as well, and it is possible the cinemacasts will not continue.

More amusingly, Gockley apparently thinks Jonas Kaufmann is the bee's knees and mentioned that he is much more handsome than Domingo was at a similar stage of his career. Hopefully Kaufmann will be wooed here soon. We also learnt that next season's opener will be a Verdi opera conducted by Luisotti, and not My Fair Lady. Two other operas were confirmed for next season, but we were made to promise not to tell anyone else what they are. The new operas in upcoming years include ones from Mark Adamo, Christopher Theofanidis, and a female composer whose name escaped being mentioned.

Before the talk began there was chatter about how a falling football damaged the principal bassoonist's bassoon during the evening's performance. Again, the economy was spoken of, and ticket sales have gone down starting with Idomeneo, though La Bohème is doing well, naturally. Nicola Luisotti is taking the helm as music director soon, and the plan is that he will conduct four operas each season, three of these will be Italian, with the remaining one being something to expand his repertoire. Gounod's Faust is to be performed next year. Nixon in China is also on the schedule, though exactly when was not made clear. Gockley denied having anything to do with Boosey & Hawkes' withdrawal of permission for the Nixon in China production that was to be at Trinity Lyric Opera this year.