Tag: Milenski

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…

Three fine singers saved Marseille Opéra’s recent 5 performance run of La traviata. Marred by a bizarre pit and weird staging conceits, Verdi’s middle period masterwork emerged, in spite of…

The one by Francesco Cilea. There are several others by forgotten composers. This one sits uneasily in the verismo category given its hyper contrived plot and its historical setting. Leading…