The Opera Tattler
Reviews of Performances and their Audiences
Category: San Francisco Opera
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Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail opened last night at San Francisco Opera, with Peter Schneider conducting, and a whole gaggle of singers, and one actor, from the Germanic realms. The production seemed to not have confidence in either Mozart’s music to enchant or the audience’s ability to attend to this music, and the beautiful…
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A production owned by the Washington Opera of Verdi’s Otello opened at San Francisco Opera last Wednesday. Tenor Ben Heppner was to sing the titular role, but withdrew earlier in the year. Consequently, the part is now being shared by Jon Fredric West and Timothy Mussard. West’s voice is not particularly stunning. West sounded cold…
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I had planned on purchasing proper tickets for the opening night, but the San Francisco Opera Web site did not operate properly the day single tickets became available, and they were sold-out quite quickly. I fear the telephone and I didn’t muster enough energy to go to the box office in person, being that it…
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Ariadne auf Naxos is an odd little opera with only one act, but has a prologue that lasts about 30 minutes. It is more or less an opera about opera, and is quite diverting. The juxtaposition of opera seria and opera buffa produced some entertaining effects as well. All together Ariadne pointedly shows the nature…
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Opening night of the opera is splendid event. Everyone dresses up in a most lavish manner, and there are flowers everywhere. This year red roses decorated the boxes and filled enormous vases in the halls. I spent a half hour before the performance and both the intermissions simply gaping and tittering at all the splendid…
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Da tempeste il legno infranto,se poi salvo giunge in porto,non sa più che desiar.Così il cor tra pene e pianto,or che trova il suo conforto,torna l’anima a bear. * * * I managed to get a standing room ticket for last night’s performance of Giulio Cesare, though I was somewhat intimidated by figuring out the…
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Last night I attended San Francisco Opera’s production of Bizet’s Carmen with a certain friend. We agreed that the program’s cover, which has been used on every program all season, is hideous. The work featured is Diebenkorn’s Blue Surround (1982), that involves color aquatint, spit bite aquatint, etching offset, and drypoint with scraping. The dimensions…
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The San Francisco Opera performance that I had been waiting for all season finally arrived, and I was not disappointed. Händel’s Giulio Cesare has quite a lot of beautiful and compelling music in it. It is an opera seria that premiered in 1724 at London’s Royal Academy of Music, and the title role was created…
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I am filled with delight because the San Francisco Opera has announced the 2002-2003 season. I particularly want to see Turandot (September 7 – December 8, 2002), Otello (October 9 – November 1, 2002), Alcina (November 19 – December 7, 2002), Il Trovatore (June 15 – July 5, 2003), and La Cenerentola (June 7 –…
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Two weekends ago I went to see Falstaff with a friend who graduated in Linguistics with me. It was much fun, the opera is funny and the staging was excellent. They had a wonderful model landscape background that included minute houses and even cows, and they did a fabulous rainy scene at the beginning. The…
The Opera Tattler 