Author: Michael Milenski

Though composed in 1805 Gaspare Spontini’s La Vestale reached the Paris Opera stage finally in 1807, and then only because Empress Josephine intervened. The empress would not have been amused just now…

Unlike many of the recycled productions at San Francisco Opera, Christopher Alden’s famed 2008 production of Handel’s comedy Partenope, just now on the War Memorial stage, has lost none of…

In recent years the San Francisco Symphony has indulged itself with a staged event in June. This year, with a tightened budget, it was a brief evening made of Schönberg’s…

Rarely has an opera performance enthralled audiences as has Kaija Saariaho’s Innocence just now at San Francisco’s War Memorial Opera House.  We were entranced for its 105 minute duration, suffering the enduring…

It was a hot ticket in Berlin back in 2012, it has since played in L.A. (2013), Chicago (2021), Des Moines (2022), and around the world in many editions throughout…

Daniel Catán’s Florencia en el Amazonas is having a moment. And just now at Silicon Valley’s Opera San Jose it was a quite wonderful moment — well cast, smart production…

Two recent one-acts cleverly combined by stage director Brian Staufenbiel into one grand, operatic sporting event. San Francisco’s alternative opera company, Opera Parallele pulled off a slam dunk show. It…

Both operas staged by famed (for many) or infamous (for others) Spanish stage director Calixto Bieito.  Both Parisian Bieito productions bore this stage director’s signature touches — a complex, abstract…

Forget the West of San Francisco born David Belasco’s The Girl of the Golden West (the source of Puccini’s opera), not to be confused with Peter Sellers’ The Girls of…

The Russian Avant-garde has attacked Lyon, Pique Dame is left in ruin! Enfant terrible (now forty years old) Russian avant-gardiste stage director Timofeï Kouliabine fled Russia in protest of its…