opera

Sing the luxurious voice It’s a little known but not secret fact that bass-baritone Eric Owens is a killer Ping-Pong player. All those years backstage—waiting for technical crews, directors, costumers, repetitions of songs and scene...

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Jealousy, the Undoer In the first act of Puccini’s Tosca, the painter Mario Cavaradossi and his lover, singer Floria Tosca, squabble over her jealousy. His painting of Mary Magdalene in the church has filled her with doubts over the fidelity of the...

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A pocketful of love and tragedy Donald Pippin’s Pocket Opera has come to the East Bay! It’s recently taken residence in the Julia Morgan Theater, starting in February with La Belle Hélène, the inimitable Offenbach’s own spin on the story of Helen of Troy, and last weekend with Donizetti’s La Favorita. Even more intriguing is the upcoming May 9 production of The Haunted Manor by Polish composer Stanislaw Moniuszko, who is the preeminent...

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Plus ça change, plus ... About the opening night of Iolanthe; or, The Peer and the Peri at the Savoy Theater in London, November 1882, a reviewer wrote: “Neither Mr. Gilbert, as an author, nor Mr. Sullivan, as a musician, write for immortality. The school they have founded may not, perhaps, last far beyond their own time; nor can it be said that their operas are likely to confer any benefit upon the future lyric stage.” One hundred and twenty-seven years...

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The uncanny Hoffmann It’s little wonder that E. T. A. Hoffmann was one of the Romantic era’s favorite and most influential writers—long fantastic stories inspired many of the operas and ballets of the time from Delibes to Tchaikovsky to Offenbach. Recognizing a cultural force when he saw one, Papa Freud used Hoffmann’s work as the basis for his essay on the uncanny, “Das Unheimliche.” Hoffmann’s stories are infused with an air of horror and whimsy,...

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Satin and sparkle The dress said it all. Acres of iridescent midnight blue satin embellished with glittering, silvery rococo decorations, a bodice with no visual support above which lay fields of feminine pulchritude, and an ornament-bordered train that went on for some yards. Dazzling touches of light on that smooth skin: necklace and flashing ring. When Cecilia Bartoli walked on the Zellerbach Auditorium stage in an outfit that could have been the physical manifestation...

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Categories: opera