First a one-act play by famed playwright Tennessee Williams (1958), then a famous movie (1959), and now, finally, an opera composed by Courtney Bryan — a 2023 MacArthur Fellow. More…
Author: Michael Milenski
Elektra in San Francisco
Richard Strauss’ 1909, second break-out opera Elektra just now was set in the same Greek antiquities museum as it had in 2017. But that’s not the big news. The first…
Il barbiere in San Francisco
It was not a ho-hum affair after all, though I had fears that it might be, given the ubiquity of Rossini’s most famous title, to the exclusion of most of…
Doubt in San Francisco
Chamber opera on a grand scale, such was San Francisco’s alternative opera company, Opera Parallèlel’s Doubt — two nuns, and a priest and the mother of a gay black male…
Ring excerpts in San Francisco
San Francisco Symphony offered a brief Wagnerian orgy just now — a 65 minute orchestral concoction made of bits of Rheingold, Walküre, Siegried and Gotterdammerung. It began in the very darkened…
Carmen at the Bastille
Stage director Calixito Bieito’s 1999 production of Carmen made its way to the Opéra Bastille in 2017, one year after its performances in San Francisco, and three years after its…
Eugene Onegin in Paris
Eugène Onéguine at the Opéra Garnier was an intimate exploration of the first opera in the Tchaikovsky operatic canon, directed by British actor Ralph Fiennes, an Onegin himself in the excellent…
Un ballo in maschera in Paris
Un Bal Masqué at the Bastille, the 41st performance of Belgian stage director Gilbert Deflo’s 2007 production (the sixth in this edition). This performance was the first with American soprano…
The Monkey King in San Francisco
A sixteenth century Chinese epic novel has found its way to the stage of San Francisco’s War Memorial Opera House just now, namely “A Journey to the West” by Ming…
Parsifal in San Francisco
San Francisco Opera unveiled a handsome new production of Parsifal just now — new productions a fairly rare occurrence at SFO. More importantly this Parsifal continues San Francisco Opera’s music…