LA Opera’s “Il Postino”

  LA Opera's artful new opera The floor of the open stage of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion is covered with blue and white decorative tile, reminiscent of Italian ceramic work, and, upstage, a small movable terrazzo seems to float on air like a balcony overlooking the sea. As the lighting shifts and alters, the tiles transform, seeming...

Continue reading

San Francisco Opera’s ‘Aida’

Opera is a many-splendoured thing  What’s cyan blue and gold and spectacular all over? Why, the San Francisco Opera’s new production of Verdi’s “Aida” (developed in concert with the English National Opera and Houston Grand Opera), which opened September 10 at the War Memorial Opera House and continues through December 5. This venerable pillar of 19th-century values...

Continue reading

San Francisco Opera’s ‘Werther’

Between the sorrows of love ... Within the series of letters that make up Goethe’s “The Sorrows of Young Werther” many of the emotions and aesthetics later characteristic of 19th-century Romanticism flow and ebb amid the writer’s youthful enthusiasms. These letters addressed to Werther’s friend, Wilhelm, tell of his brief and unhappy love for a woman who marries another man, his despair and his...

Continue reading