The Opera Tattler
Reviews of Performances and their Audiences
Category: Cal Performances
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* Notes * Tenor Ian Bostridge (pictured left, photo by Simon Fowler) performed with Les Violons du Roy at Cal Performances yesterday in Berkeley. The performance was odd but certainly of interest. For one thing, the string players of Les Violons du Roy use Baroque bows on modern instruments. The effect was bizarre, given that the…
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September 16-18 2011: Mark Morris Dance Group performs Dido and Aeneas September 21 2011: Herbie Hancock, piano September 25 2011: Fall Free for All: Open House at Cal PerformancesOctober 2 2011: Cambodia's Khmer Arts EnsembleOctober 9 2011: Kronos Quartet October 11 2011: Yefim Bronfman, pianoOctober 14-16 2011: Mariinsky OrchestraOctober 21 2011:The Infernal Comedy: Confessions of…
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* Notes * This weekend Cal Performances presented Castleton Festival‘s Albert Herring. The production involves much abuse of artificial fruit. It was particularly unsatisfying when the title character threw fake peaches against a Plexiglas window in Act II. The use of astroturf was, however, entertaining. The cast, as with The Rape of Lucretia, boasted not a…
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* Notes * Cal Performances presented Castleton Festival's The Rape of Lucretia this week. The opera itself struck me as highly contrived, even for an opera, framed by not one but two narrators. There was a lot of telling rather than showing. The production was not particularly illuminating, though it did have moments of beauty, especially…
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On the evening of Sunday, March 13, LCU and UO attended the highly anticipated song recital of internationally acclaimed tenor, Jonas Kaufmann. Co-presented by Cal Performances and the San Francisco Opera, the performance took place at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley. What follows is a discussion of the performance between LCU and UO. LCU: Kaufmann is…
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* Notes * The Vienna Philharmonic's latest tour with Semyon Bychkov started in Cologne, has 5 stops in California, and ends in Toronto. Last night's performance at Cal Performances in Berkeley was the first of three different concerts here. The evening began with Schubert's Symphony No. 2 in B-flat major. The sound was fastidious yet with…
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This weekend soprano Marnie Breckenridge (pictured left) will be singing the role of the Princess in Ensemble Parallèle‘s production of Orphée by Philip Glass. She will be singing in The Rape of Lucretia with Castleton Opera, which will be presented by Cal Performances in Berkeley next month. Last week, the Opera Tattler met with her…
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* Notes * The pianist Nicolas Hodges paired Stockhausen and Beethoven for a recital at Cal Performances this afternoon. Hodges made Stockhausen's Klavierstück X oddly compelling for a piece played with wrists, forearms, and elbows. He was able to get quite a lot of sound out of the piano, and emphasize the percussive nature of the…
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* Notes * The Takács Quartet played a program of Haydn, Mendelssohn, and Beethoven at Cal Performances yesterday afternoon. The playing had a lot of fire, yet with geniality as well. There were a few screechy moments in the otherwise courtly Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 71, No. 3 from Haydn, but it certainly was not…
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* Notes * Christian Tetzlaff played Bach’s complete Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin in Berkeley last night as part of Cal Performances 2010-2011 Koret Recital Series. In the first half he played Sonata No. 1 in G minor, Partita No. 1 in B minor, and Sonata No. 2 in A minor. It seemed he only…
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