The Opera Tattler
Reviews of Performances and their Audiences
Category: Opera Review
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Metropolitan Opera‘s current production of La Fanciulla del Westmarks the 100th anniversary of the opera’s world premiere. The Unbiased Opinionator attended the performance last Tuesday. * Notes * The genesis of the La Fanciulla del Westis well known. Puccini, in New York to supervise the Met premiere of Madama Butterfly, saw David Belasco’s play The Girl…
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* Notes * Yesterday’s matinée performance of Lohengrin opened at Los Angeles Opera was the second of six. The new production, designed by Dirk Hofacker and directed by Lydia Steier, is exceedingly silly. The set is on a turntable and appears to be set amidst German ruins in a Prussian army camp. One especially enjoyed the fact…
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* Notes * Rigoletto opened at Los Angeles Opera last night. San Francisco Opera's production, designed by Michael Yeargan and directed by Mark Lamos, takes inspiration from the painter Giorgio de Chirico. The stage looked clean, and Mark McCullough's lighting was effective in defining the various spaces, but garish at times. Constance Hoffman's attractive costumes…
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* Notes * The November/December run of Aida at San Francisco Opera opened last night with Maestro Giuseppe Finzi at the helm and a bevy of new principal singers. The orchestra sounded rather pretty but not perfectly secure, there was some slight squeaking from the woodwinds, brief fuzzy moments in the brass, and the finale…
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Metropolitan Opera's Don Carlo, a co-production with the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet, opened last night. What follows is the Unbiased Opinionator's account of the prima. * Notes * Very rarely does an opera with a 7:00 pm start time and midnight closing curtain, on a Monday night, rivet…
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* Notes *The production of Serse that recently completed a run at Berkeley West Edge Opera turned Händel's opera seria on its head, to amusing effect. Though I was reluctant to go to this, as I had just heard and seen a fantastic Serse in Houston only 7 months ago, the experience in El Cerrito was…
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Metropolitan Opera's new production of Carmen was revived this season. Here is the Unbiased Opinionator's account of the performance that occurred on November 16th. * Notes * The Metropolitan Opera's reprise of its 2009 production of Carmen, directed by Richard Eyre, updates the story from Prosper Mérimée's 1830s setting to the time of the Spanish Civil…
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* Notes * The November performances of Madama Butterfly at San Francisco Opera star Daniela Dessì in the title role. Dessì's vocal entrance was muted, at least on the orchestra level, and one could barely make out the lines of her voice. Once she was on stage, she was audible, though not terribly robust. She…
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* Notes * The opening performance of San Francisco Opera’s The Makropulos Case was spectacular. The co-production with Finnish National Opera, from Frank Philipp Schlössmann, is stylish, the set design employs cross-hatching that recalls the work of Edward Gorey. The set is on a quiet turntable that was spun during the first overture. The use…
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* Notes * Having missed Urban Opera‘s Dido and Aeneas last year, the Opera Tattler made a concerted effort to attend their sophomore production, which opened yesterday afternoon. The work at hand, entitled The Witch of Endor, is a pastiche that includes a poem by Rudyard Kipling, bit and pieces of music from Henry Purcell, a…
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