August 2018 – Repeat Performances

August 25, 2018

An epic “War of the Roses”

The War of the Roses now showing in a four-hour production at Cal Shakes in Orinda is a distillation of four of Shakespeare’s English histories, Henry VI, parts 1, 2 and 3 and Richard III. Consolidating the plays has been done several times in their 400-year-plus theatrical history. This version, a collaboration between Cal Shakes Artist Director Eric Ting and the company’s dramaturg Philippa Kelly, is a company first. Eric Ting directed the production. The...

Categories: theater

August 11, 2018

The darkest corners of opera shine through in West Edge Opera’s “Quartett”

Beginning their 2018 Festival with Debussy’s only opera, a love triangle sketched in delicate sensuality, West Edge Opera closed its summer offerings with Luca Francesconi’s Quartett, an operatic staging of Heiner Muller’s 1982 play of the same name, both inspired by Laclos’ 18th-century novel, Les liaisons dangereuses. Very different fare. There are crucial similarities, however, not only the operas’ focus on love and sexuality, suppressed or distorted, but more...

Categories: opera

August 5, 2018

Mata Hari, an offering to the exotic and the difficult

Always open to radically new and contemporary writing, West Edge Opera opened its second production of the season this past Sunday with the 2017 opera by Matt Marks and Paul Peers, Mata Hari. The opera, which premiered at New York’s Prototype Festival, combines spoken voice with classical singers. At the Craneway Conference Center, West Edge Opera’s current venue, Emily Senturia conducted the opera’s four-member instrumental ensemble of violin, piano, accordion and electric...

Categories: opera

August 4, 2018

West Edge Opera’s captivating “Pelléas et Mélisande”

West Edge Opera opened its 2018 season with an enchanting performance of Pelléas et Mélisande, the 1902 opera by Claude Debussy to the theater libretto of Belgian playwright and poet Maurice Maeterlinck. It was an inspired program choice, tenderly sung and evocatively produced, revealing what a fine jewel of a company West Edge Opera is. This year all West Edge Opera Festival performances take place at the Craneway Conference Center in Richmond. Teetering between the end of...

Categories: opera