The Opera Tattler
Reviews of Performances and their Audiences
Category: Opera Review
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* Notes * Late in September, Oakland Opera Theater was forced to move from their location on Broadway at 2nd Street to 3rd Street at Martin Luther King Junior Way. Nonetheless, the company presented Benjamin Britten’s The Turn of the Screw (1954) from October 5 to 14. The production was set in Louisiana instead of…
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* Notes * Appomattox had its world premiere last Friday. I must confess I do not enjoy contemporary music, in fact, I am not overfond of many operas after Fidelio. This is ridiculous, given that this encompasses Verdi, Wagner, and Puccini. Setting that aside, I found Appomattox rather less challenging than Doctor Atomic, Le Grand…
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* Notes * Graham Vick’s production of Tannhäuser opened at San Francisco Opera yesterday. Designed by Paul Brown, this co-production with Dallas Opera strikes an elusive balance, it is neither cloyingly traditional nor starkly contemporary. The bacchanalia is one of the weaker points, Ron Howell’s choreography here looks to be inspired by Graham and West…
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* Notes* San Francisco Opera opened the 2007-2008 season with Samson et Dalila on September 7th. This 1980 production, by Nicolas Joël, was last revived in 2001. Douglas W. Schmidt’s sets look dated from close up, they are a bit flat and at odd angles. The costumes also have suffered in the 27 years since…
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* Notes * Stephen Wadsworth's 1989 production Der Fliegende Holländer revived at Seattle Opera from August 4-25, 2007, and I caught the fifth and sixth performances on a weekend jaunt to the Emerald City. Thomas Lynch's sets are meant to be 19th century, but the costumes looked like contemporary street clothing. The singing was mediocre.…
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* Tattling * Yesterday’s performance was sold-out, so standing room was ridiculously full, at least for Act I. I got my ticket at 1:30pm and received ticket number 106. There was no late-seating up in the balcony, so there were tons of disgruntled latecomers who could not see the stage or the OperaVision screens because…
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* Notes * Der Rosenkavalier opened June 9th at San Francisco Opera, but so far I have only managed to go last Sunday and yesterday. Lofti Mansouri’s revived production, designed by Thierry Bosquet in 2000, is just as one would expect, and was based on the original 1911 Dresden premiere. Donald Runnicles conducted well, the…
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* Notes * Iphigénie en Tauride had a second performance at San Francisco Opera last Sunday. The singing was again excellent. The choreography was more coherent from the middle of orchestra level standing room, but I still found it overwrought. This time I noticed that the lighting, designed by Robert Carsen and Peter van Praet,…
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* Notes * In the past week I have seen Don Giovanni twice more, in the first row and in a box. From Row A on the orchestra level, the parts that are offstage are much more noticeable, it is obvious that the sounds are coming from the speakers when they are. It was also…
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* Notes * Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride (1779) had its first performance at San Francisco Opera last night. The co-production with Lyric Opera of Chicago and the Royal Opera, Convent Garden is rather sparse, not unlike the music itself. The action takes place in a black box and the costumes likewise black, all quite simple.…
The Opera Tattler 