The Opera Tattler
Reviews of Performances and their Audiences
Category: Eugene Brancoveanu
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* Notes * Yesterday afternoon San Francisco Performances presented baritone Eugene Brancoveanu in a recital of Georgy Sviridov, Maurice Ravel, Henri Duparc, Franz Schubert, and Carl Loewe. The performance began with Sviridov's Russia cast adrift (1987), songs set to 12 episodic poems by Sergey Yesenin. Brancoveanu conveyed the range of emotions in the music and…
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* Notes *Berkeley Opera's inaugural production at El Cerrito Performing Arts Theatre, Don Giovanni, is a great success. The new venue features an actual orchestra pit, a balcony, and 450 seats compared to the 328-seat Julia Morgan, where Berkeley Opera performed for the last 12 years. The second performance last night looked quite full, and…
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* Notes * Festival Opera‘s production of Faust opened last Saturday at the Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek. The orchestra, under Michael Morgan, sounded jaunty all evening long, though there were some issues with the horns. The chorus did not fare quite as well, at times they lacked confidence, particularly the men’s chorus in…
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Festival Opera's 2009 season opens July 11th with Turandot, and ends August 16th with Faust. TurandotTurandot: Othalie Graham Calaf: Christopher Jackson Liù: Rebecca Sjöwall Timur: Kirk Eichelberger Ping: Igor Vieira Pang: Adam Flowers Pong: Michael Mendelsohn Mandarin: Ted Weis Emperor Altoum: Jonathan Nadel FaustFaust: Brian Thorsett Marguerite: Kristin Clayton Méphistophélès: Kirk Eichelberger Valentin: Eugene Brancoveanu…
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* Notes * The West Coast premiere of Rachel Portman’s The Little Prince was last night in Berkeley. Portman’s music is benign enough, quite light and pretty. The strongest point was the end of Act I, the lamplighter ensemble. It is not surprising the composer won an Academy Award for Best Original Score in 1996…
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Houston Grand Opera‘s 2003 production of The Little Prince opens tomorrow at Zellerbach Hall on the UC Berkeley campus. The opera, by Rachel Portman, is in English, and the production is the work of Francesca Zambello. There are also two other operas based on Antoine de Saint Exupéry’s Le Petit Prince, Nikolaus Schapfl’s Der Kleine…
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* Notes * Yesterday evening Eugene Brancoveanu gave a recital of Gerald Finzi's Let us Garlands Bring, Schumann's Dichterliebe, and Ravel's Don Quichotte à Dulcinée. The room for the Salons at the Rex series is rather intimate, and Brancoveanu started off a tad too loud in the first few songs. His diction in English is…
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* Notes * The Adler recital last night started off with the overture from Bernstein's Candide. This was followed by a most terrible butchering of Händel's Alcina Act III, Scenes 2 through 7. Soprano Elza van den Heever was a shrill, nasal, and gasping Alcina. Mezzo-soprano Kendall Gladen was cold and too quiet as Bradamante,…
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* Notes * Die Fledermaus ended its seven performance run at San Francisco Opera yesterday. It was as charming as ever, almost everyone had it together for the final go-around. Wolfgang Brendel had the correct footing for his Rockettesque duet with Eugene Brancoveanu at the end of Act II. Likewise, Brancoveanu managed to keep the…
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