The Opera Tattler
Reviews of Performances and their Audiences
Category: San Francisco Opera
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Mark Lamos’ 1996 production of La Bohème is quite beautiful. Michael Yeargan’s set is nearly perfect, the garrett opens up nicely into the Latin Quarter so that Act I transitions seamlessly into Act II. If only they could have done the same with Acts III and IV, the gorgeous Act III set for the Barrière…
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Staatsoper Stuttgart’s production of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk came to San Francisco for six performances last November. The set was stark and geometric. The choreography was highly artificial and omnipresent, at times it was effective. Soprano Solveig Kringelborn was excellent as the lead, Katerina Lvovna Ismailova. Her voice was powerful, but she had good control…
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Way back in November 2003 I attended a couple performances of Don Carlos at San Francisco Opera. They did a five act French version, which is unusual. The two leads, Marina Mescheriakova as Elisabeth and Mark Duffin as Don Carlos, were not particularly impressive. The former was shrill and stiff, the latter was too quiet.…
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On Friday, May 3, 1996 I saw half of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, with dance choreographed by Mark Morris, at Zellerbach Hall. This was my first operatic foray. I liked Euridice’s blazing orange colored shift. On Friday, September 27, 1996 I went to San Francisco Opera’s production of Thomas’ Hamlet at the Orpheum Theatre. Ruth…
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A production of Händel's Alcina from Stuttgart opened yesterday at San Francisco Opera. It garnered enthusiastic and cheerful (perhaps that was just me) booing at the end when the production designer, Anna Viebrock, came out for her curtain call. What a self-indulgent, pretentious, inaccessible staging! It wasn't so much the modern dress, or the little…
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San Francisco Opera’s current production of Leoš Janáček’s Káťa Kabanová starts off with words projected on the scrim, from Alexander Ostrovsky’s The Storm, on which the libretto of Káťa is based. This is during the overture, which could not be more than 5 minutes long. I found the staging to be quite ugly, something about…
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I have a hard time understanding why a person, or a group of people, would feel the need to vocalize or clap at a television set. But I don’t even understand the need to clap before the music is finished at the opera just because the singing is done, as in after an aria, and…
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Die Entführung aus dem Serail again on Sunday afternoon and Otello again with Tuesday evening. I was struck by how different the former opera’s set looks up close and how consistent and monolithic the latter one’s set was even when immediate. The delicate projections used on the palace in Die Entführung aus dem Serail were…
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Olivier Messiaen’s only opera, Saint François d’Assise, closed last night at San Francisco Opera after a run of six performances. This production was the first staged one in North America, and there was much to do about it. The house was quite full, as the production received some acclaim. I was curious what all the…
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