The Opera Tattler
Reviews of Performances and their Audiences
Category: Opera Review
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* Notes * The Merola Opera Program's Don Giovanni opened with the first of two performances last night. Director Catherine Malfitano's production is a bit busy, bursting at the seams with movement. For example, from the very beginning, the overture had an elaborate pantomime, showing us many of the principal characters and detracting from the…
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* Notes * Yesterday’s matinée performance of Tosca ended Berkeley Opera’s 2008 season. The main conceit of the production, directed by Barbara Heroux, was an upstage pentagon screen on which images were projected. The images alternated between representing the physical scene and showing the internal state of the characters. The latter were invariably paintings from…
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* Notes * This evening the Merola Opera Program‘s Albert Herring opened with the first of two performances. The production, directed by Peter Kazaras, is charming. Donald Eastman’s sets are clever and use the small space well. The lighting design from Kate Boyd is nice and simple. Though the opera was originally set at the…
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* Notes * Festival Opera, the third largest opera company in the Bay Area, opened the 2008 season with Il Trovatore yesterday at the Hofmann Theatre. Giulio Cesare Perrone's production is straightforward, his set design is simple but evocative, only small changes are made for the different scenes. The only obvious weak point was in…
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* Notes * The Sunday matinée performance of Lucia di Lammermoor at San Francisco Opera was quite crowded, despite the Pride events happening nearby. Giuseppe Filianoti (Edgardo) sounded less raveled and also more in tune. Gabriele Viviani (Enrico) was also sounding better. Cybele-Teresa Gouverneur was still inaudible in the sextet as Alisa, though I was able to hear…
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* Notes * The last performance of Das Rheingold at San Francisco Opera this summer was yesterday. The orchestra sounded better, the brass section was clearly more in tune. The Rheinmaidens sounded even prettier last night than they had earlier in the run. Tamara Wapinsky (Freia) still had a few high notes that wavered so…
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* Notes *Natalie Dessay had her long awaited debut at San Francisco Opera last night in the opening of Lucia di Lammermoor. Her voice has a marvelous incandescent quality, but also has a hard edge that borders on vulgar. Her movements are light and her acting is strong. She was completely convincing in her mad…
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* Notes * Today's matinée performance of Ariodante was the San Francisco Opera premiere of Händel's 33rd opera, which was first performed at Covent Garden in 1735. John Copley's production is slightly busy, there is a lot of movement to offset the supposed statis of the libretto. For the most part this was not distracting,…
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* Notes * Francesca Zambello's American-inspired Das Rheingold opened last night at San Francisco Opera. The video projections, the work of Jan Hartley, varied from completely campy to tastefully elegant. The first projections did have me in stitches though, and not in a good way. They looked like the opening credits to the Star Wars…
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* Notes * San Francisco Lyric Opera's production of The Turn of the Screw opened last night at Cowell Theatre. The singing was very good all across the board. Interestingly, half of the singers were also in the Oakland Opera Theater production from last October. Brooks Fisher (Miles) has grown quite a bit in the intervening months,…
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