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Month: June 2015

SAN FRANCISCO’S OPERA PREMIERE IN ITALIAN

SAN FRANCISCO’S OPERA PREMIERE IN ITALIAN

Tutino Work Recalls World War Atrocities SAN FRANCISCO—The Italian world premiere opera “Two Women” is a vibrant old-style melodrama with immediate appeal, one that will play even better when it arrives in Italy. A World War Two tragedy became a novel, then film that had propelled Sophia Loren into super-stardom, and now a searing opera of a woman’s wartime ordeal composed by the retiring, soft-spoken Marco Tutino, 60. Tutino’s musical roots lie close to Puccini’s cohorts of a century or…

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A SITCOM-LIKE, SEINFELD-LIKE COMEDY

A SITCOM-LIKE, SEINFELD-LIKE COMEDY

The SF Playhouse offers a Pinteresque mad-cap via the world premiere of Richard Dresser’s “Trouble Cometh”—funny and true, from the minute it starts. Five actors replicate a New York firm that produces TV reality shows. It assigns two writers the task of coming up with the next big thing. Joe (Kyle Cameron) is the unwitting newby whose sadistic boss Dennis (Patrick Russell) goads him at every opportunity. Joe and Dennis have a deadline where the “line” part keeps changing with…

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BERKELEY REP’S UPDATE, 4 CENTURIES LATER

BERKELEY REP’S UPDATE, 4 CENTURIES LATER

If the plot of the Berkeley Reps new show, “One Man, Two Guvnors”, sounds familiar, it should. The story of a man who has two bosses derives from the 17th century Italian commedia dell’arte tradition, specifically, the famous 17th play Carlo Goldoni’s “The Servant of Two Masters.” It’s not so unusual for us to observe people with more than one job. By necessity these people have to juggle bosses’ demands, time schedules and temperaments. That is exactly what Francis Henshall…

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SAN FRANCISCO’S DANCE CORNUCOPIA

SAN FRANCISCO’S DANCE CORNUCOPIA

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Via the International Festival By Karl Toepfer artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area dance Weeks starting June 15, 2015 Vol. 17, No. 74 SAN FRANCISCO—From May 21 to June 7, Fort Mason hosted the San Francisco International Arts Festival. This extravaganza presented more theater, dance, and music groups than anyone can sanely absorb. Most of the performers came from the United States, but several groups came from faraway places like Iran, Poland, Kurdistan, Ireland, Taiwan and Argentina….

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RARIFIED ATMOSPHERE OF ‘MISSA SOLEMNIS’

RARIFIED ATMOSPHERE OF ‘MISSA SOLEMNIS’

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Bold Semi-Staged ‘ThomasSolemnis’ at S.F. Symphony The audacity of Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas is astounding, bordering on a touch a genius, as he dared to mount a semi-staged performance of Beethoven’s great Latin mass, the Missa Solemnis. It turned a church concert into a grand and vibrant spectacle at Davies Hall, which had to be reconfigured mightily to adapt to unaccustomed theatrical flashpoints. Controversy will surround this venture, of course, just as past stagings of church works like the…

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SMUIN BALLET, THREADING THE GENRES

SMUIN BALLET, THREADING THE GENRES

Starting Multi-City California Tour The Smuin Ballet Company holds a unique position in the dance world for pursuing an idea of ballet that is more heterodox than the aesthetic perspectives of more high profile, traditional, and heavily institutionalized ballet companies. With his extensive experience on Broadway and in Hollywood, as well as in ballet, the company’s founder, Michael Smuin (1938-2007), believed that a prosperous future for ballet involved the incorporation of elements from popular culture, with music, movement, and mood…

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UNRAVELING RAVEL’S SPANISH VEIN

UNRAVELING RAVEL’S SPANISH VEIN

And SFS Tackling de Falla, Lethargically If you love classical music of Spain, you rush to the French composers. Enamored of the Iberian Peninsula, they gave us “Iberia,” “El Cid,” “Carmen,” “Bolero,” “Tzigane,” “Don Quichotte,” “España,” and myriad titles containing the word “espagnol.” The quasi-Spanish vein however has never been a strong repertory point of the S.F. Symphony, which took another crack at it this week under Charles Dutoit but served up merely a watered-down gazpacho. Two alluring works which…

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