The Opera Tattler
Reviews of Performances and their Audiences
Category: Opera Review
-
* Notes * Tosca (Act II pictured, photograph by David Allen) opened at Opera San José in an effective production directed by Tara Branham last weekend. The singing was all very powerful, the action straightforward, and the Sunday matinee was a richly satisfying afternoon of theater. This is the quintessential opera, the title character is…
-
* Notes *Kitka Women's Vocal Ensemble gave the world premiere of Karmina Šilec's opera BABA: The Life and Death of Stana (Act I pictured, photograph by Peter Ruocco) last weekend at Z Space in San Francisco. The opera is based on the lives of women who live as men after taking vows of chastity and…
-
* Notes * Los Angeles Opera is nearly done with a run of a new Le nozze di Figaro, with a final performance this Sunday. The charming co-production with Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Opéra national de Lorraine, Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg, and Opéra de Lausanne features a ladder into the orchestra pit and ramps…
-
* Notes * A 2013 production of Falstaff (Act II pictured, photograph by David Allen) set in a wine cask returned to Opera San José last weekend. There was much lovely singing and comedic physicality. Based on Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor and scenes that Falstaff appears in from Henry IV, Parts 1 and…
-
* Notes *Back in 2021, still deep in the pandemic, Opera Parallèle created an animated film version of Joby Talbot's 2015 one-act opera Everest, which was released online by Dallas Opera. The work is based on the 1996 Mount Everest disaster. Last night an installation of this film (pictured, photograph by Stefan Cohen) opened at…
-
* Notes * The last performance of Orfeo ed Euridice (Act III pictured, photograph by Matthew Washburn) this season at San Francisco Opera had soprano Anne-Marie MacIntosh filling in as Euridice, as Meigui Zhang was indisposed. The December 1st performance was full and standing room in the balcony was rife with latecomers who were unable to…
-
* Notes * Matthew Ozawa's beautiful new production of Orfeo ed Euridice (Act III pictured, photograph by Cory Weaver) opened at San Francisco Opera last week. I attended the second performance last night, and the debuts of Maestro Peter Whelan and countertenor Jakub Józef Orliński as Orfeo were both impressive. The musicians were laid out in…
-
* Notes * Alma Deutscher‘s Cinderella (Act IV pictured, photograph by David Allen) returned to Opera San José last weekend with the seventeen-year-old composer in the pit in her international conducting debut. I brought my Kindergartner to the delightful Sunday matinée as her very first opera. Ms. Deutscher finished this opera when she was only…
-
* Notes * A brand new production of Verdi's La Traviata (Act II Scene 2 pictured, photograph by Cory Weaver) opened at San Francisco Opera yesterday evening, kicking off a series of operas by this composer conducted by our new Music Director Eun Sun Kim. The orchestra sounded lovely, but definitely more restrained than in previous…
-
* Notes * Ars Minerva was back with a seventh modern world premiere last weekend, this time Leonardo Vinci‘s 1725 Astianatte at ODC Theater in San Francisco. The Sunday matinée featured lots of beautiful singing from some familiar voices. The plot concerns the aftermath of the Trojan War, specifically focusing on Astyanax (Astianatte in Italian), son…
The Opera Tattler 