opera

To live and die in Bruges Bruges is where the young couple, Paul and Marie, lived and walked during their short and happy life together. Once Marie dies, her spouse’s grief overwhelms him, not merely his life but also their apartment, the city—its canals and streets—transforming into “the dead city” of Die Tote Stadt. The opera, composed by Erich Wolfgang Korngold to a libretto by the composer and his father, takes this psychological phenomenon—an...

Continue reading

Categories: opera

This is the second half of an interview with San Francisco Opera’s Musical Administrator, Kip Cranna.  Post: How would you describe the current general director’s taste and interests? Cranna: David is a fascinating guy He has probably commissioned more American opera than any other general director. He has over thirty titles to his credit. Of the current projects he’s looking at there are some very fairly out there concepts....

Continue reading

Categories: opera

How SF Opera Organizes its Season An Interview with SFO’s Musical Administrator Kip Cranna A historian by background, Kip Cranna organizes the opera house’s complicated schedules. He was recently awarded the prestigious SF Opera Award and given the title of Director of Musical Administration. In this first part of the interview he talks about his work at SFO and reveals some of the ways in which the company construct a season. The second part of the interview...

Continue reading

Categories: opera

  The virginal King of May A forceful young woman in tweed clomps across the stage and climbs onto a platform above rows of white wood file cabinets. From her exalted perch above stage and audience she surveys th e surrounding territory through a telescope: she...

Continue reading

Categories: opera

True Stories “One of the weirdest as well as most melancholy stories of human deformity is that of Edward Mordake, said to have been heir to one of the noblest peerages in England … His figure was remarkable for its grace, and his face—that is to say his natural face—was that of an Antinous. But upon the back of his head was another face, that of a beautiful girl, ‘lovely as a dream, ugly as a devil.’” Composer...

Continue reading

Categories: opera

Much has been made of producer Francesca Zambello’s Americanization of Wagner’s Ring cycle. In theory, it makes a lot of sense to place this long quartet of operatic dramas, which examines and equates the lust for gold and power vs. sexual lust and love, within the context of our materialistically driven history. Practically, though, an Americanization of this monumental work seems a sad mix of narcissism and advertising appeal. Not so, though. S.F. Opera’s...

Continue reading

Categories: opera