ArtsSF

SAN JOSE, CA—-Doubts abounded, with nay-sayers smirking that not even Verdi could set a Shakespearean comedy into a good opera. Those doubting Thomases were silenced when nearing the then-doddering age of 80, Verdi brought off that sparkling operatic masterpiece, “Falstaff,” which is getting its due and more from a highly animated production at Opera San José. Major companies, take note: This smaller troupe with its actor-singers, only in its 39th season, can run circles around many grand-opera troupes having major…

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Call the opera “Orphée,” “Orfeo,” or, like the SF Opera, “Orpheus and Eurydice”—whatever the name, the production here offers breakthroughs in many directions—a dazzling feast of primary colors and lighting, acrobatic dancers, a goddess descending from heaven on a swing, and the most nimble of males ever in the title role. This reprise of Gluck’s early classical-period opus in this memorable new production is a feast for ears and eyes, despite the severe dramatic limitation of having merely three solo…

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One of the real problems in John Adams’ new opera is that Shakespeare wrote plays but never opera librettos. Now, Will, “Hamlet,” “Macbeth” and “Othello” are all well and good as stage plays, but couldn’t you think of baritones and sopranos too? In using Shakespeare and earlier texts for almost all of his libretto, composer Adams was stuck with lines rarely ending in vowels. He thus  saddles the singers with drooping fade-out lines that suppress their attractiveness and expressiveness. Just…

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Composer John Adams has made a welcome attempt to bring under control the unwieldy “Antony and Cleopatra” story out of Shakespeare. Evolving from there, past  composer Samuel Barber’s grand 1966 Met failure, to Adams’ world premiere, it has been  boiled down from some 40 scenes and two dozen solo voices (ouch!) to this sleek, late-model version in three hours, two acts debuting Sept. 10 to mark the 100th year of the San Francisco Opera. If you were waiting for gooey…

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This is the sleek new 2022 model of Carmen, straight from the showrooms. Forget gypsies, forget Spain. The new Carmen is a cool sorority sister type and girl-next-door coed. And yes, the 2022 Carmen is wearing blue jeans; in the finale, she could well be transformed into a casino croupier. And oh yes, she’s hanging out in the dregs of a bankrupt amusement park with wrecks of merry-go-round and roller coaster. Ahh, modern-day symbolism! I think I heard, after a…

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SANTA FE, N.M.—A story at once preposterous and all too real propels the new opera “M. Butterfly.” But where is the music that can propel the thoughts, the moods, the innermost personalities of the players? Composer Huang Ruo’s rugged score reproduced all the conflicts and disruptions in the libretto. But where is the music to let the singers expound, philosophize, emote and breathe? So much work, yet so aloof remain the protagonists. This story of multiple enigmas is based on…

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SANTA FE, NM—–A dawdling Mark Twain said it best, tongue-in-cheek, when late to a lecture in German: “We’ll get there in time for the verb” (which comes at the end). The Santa Fe Opera made a grand and memorable stab at its first oversize opera ever, Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde,” a huge work for huge voices few thought ever possible in this indoor-outdoor theater with scant flies lacking elaborate stage machinery and giant orchestra pit while projecting the opera world’s…

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Opera Parallèle was not content just staging a chamber opera, but rather mounting a troika of simultaneous images in one of the most imaginative productions ever in San Francisco. In the process, it linked a fantasy fairy tale that is millennia old with a vintage 1946 French film as well as a recent Philip Glass score in dazzling counterpoint with one another, assisted by Brian Staufenbiel’s recent movie footage  running in between. The triple play elevated the Glass instrumental ensemble’s…

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MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA—For this early opera, if you generously award 1.5 stars to Richard Wagner, you have to give at least four stars to Pocket Opera for its spanking-fresh semi-staged production. San Francisco‘s smallest opera troupe brought off an animated, sparkling show with Wagner’s “No Love Allowed” (Das Liebesverbot), an early production before Wagner became Wagner. Instead of the usual stab at German mythology and grim machinations, here we get a pseudo-Italian frivolity sounding like Donizetti, featuring an assignation-with-wife plot…

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PALO ALTO, CA—World-renowned are Stanford University’s technology expertise and her women’s sports teams. But across town, there’s a little miracle called West Bay Opera, which despite a postage-stamp-sized auditorium to play in, brings off productions that are both presentable and downright moving. Cheers rang out with WBO resuming performances after the two-year Covid padlock, hitting its stride in its 66th season. Imagine a theater incapable of scene changes. Half the musicians are sitting in the wings like caged birds, barely…

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