San Francisco Opera rolled out the first installment of its new Mozart/DaPonte trilogy, a handsome Nozze, by Canadian director Michael Cavanagh to lively if mixed result.
Tag: Milenski
RomÈo et Juliette in San Francisco (bis)
The final performance of San Francisco Opera’s deeply flawed production of the Gounod masterpiece became, in fact, a triumph — for the Romeo of Pene Pati, the Juliet of Amina Edris, and for Charles Gounod in the hands of conductor Yves Abel.
Billy Budd in San Francisco
San Francisco Opera’s Billy Budd confirms once again that Britten’s reworking of Melville’s novella is among the great masterpieces of the repertory. It boasted an exemplary cast in an exemplary production, and enlightened conducting.
RomÈo et Juliette in San Francisco
The star-crossed lovers were entrapped in an opera mess worlds away from the smooth elegance of Gounod’s score effected by Canadian conductor Yves Abel.
La traviata at the Palais Garnier
The clatter of information was overwhelmed by soaring bel canto, Verdi’s domestic tragedy destroyed by director Simon Stone, resurrected by conductor Michele Mariotti, a tour de force for South African soprano Pretty Yende.
La traviata at the Arena di Verona
There is esoteric opera — 16,500 spectators at this year’s Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro, and there is pop opera — upwards of 500,000 spectators for the opera festival at the Arena di Verona, one quarter of them for an over-the-top new production of La traviata, designed and directed by Franco Zeffirelli.
Semiramide at the Rossini Opera Festival
The pleasures (immense) and pain of Gioachino Rossini’s Semiramide (Venice, 1823). Uncut.
L’equivoco stravagante in Pesaro
L’equivoco stravagante (The Bizarre Misunderstanding), the 18 year-old Gioachino Rossini’s first opera buffa, is indeed bizarre. Its heroine Ernestina is obsessed by literature and philosophy and the grandiose language of opera seria.
MÈdÈe in Salzburg
Though Luigi Cherubini long outlived the carnage of the French Revolution his 1797 opÈra comique [with spoken dialogue] MÈdÈe fell well within the “horror opera” genre that responded to the spirit of its time. These days however MÈdÈe is but an esoteric and extremely challenging late addition to the international repertory.
Simon Boccanegra in Salzburg
It’s an inescapable reference. Among the myriad “Viva Genova!” tweets the Genovese populace shared celebrating its new doge, the pirate Simon Boccanegra, one stood out — “Make Genoa Great Again!” A hell of a mess ensued for years and years and the drinking water was poisonous as well.