ArtsSF

I’ve heard various “shabby little shockers” in opera, but “Tosca” is not one of them. The late (and revered) Berkeley musicologist Joseph Kerman called it that 66 years ago, dismissing one of the most hot-blooded dramas of the early 20th century, powered by a very current theme of sexual harassment. And, as usually happens, the woman is a victim. Yes, Prof. Kerman, that theme is always a shocker, but far more “elegant, monumental” than shabby in this reprise. “Tosca” is…

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What more could any one want in grand opera—abundant arias, duets, cabalettas and scenas, plus choruses, opulence, a melodious score, and three superlative lead voices? Plus political intrigue and intimations of infidelity. In addition, Queen Elizabeth the First (QE1) played as much as a harridan as a hurricane leading the vocal fireworks in a Maria-Callas-like role. This one scores  A+ in these departments. This was Donizetti’s historical opera “Roberto Devereux” (1837) at the S.F. Opera, a work that curiously was…

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SANTA FE, NM—The Santa Fe Opera’s fascination with 21st-century works came to a head with “Doctor Atomic,” which sold out all six performances up to a month ahead, to the wonderment of all. The box office tsunami for the historical opera about creating The Bomb was partly because of the hot John Adams-Peter Sellars creative team, and partly because its development under Robert Oppenheimer occurred right up the road in Los Alamos during World War Two. As one local put…

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You can blame us music critics for all the long, uncut Wagner opera performances, as in the four “Ring” works currently on the boards. Whenever cuts are actually made in five-hour-long operas, you can bet that some one will complain in print. Well, the Wagner operas can benefit from cuts, which are made even at the holiest of the holy, the Bayreuth (Germany) Wagner Festival. These works are clogged with static narration, particularly recounting of the drama that had gone…

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Of the four Wagner “Ring” operas, “The Valkyrie” (Die Walküre) the one with the Valkyries is the most popular and most played. Not because all those fetching female deities come tumbling out of the sky, but because it has very compelling love scenes, both sexual and familial. I mean, those evil sorcerers and gods and giants and dragons and dwarves running wild in the other operas can only take you so far. They’re stunning, but with emotional limitations. In addition…

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The greatest show on earth? Now that a certain circus is no more, the greatest show is arguably Richard Wagner’s “Ring” cycle, 17 hours of potent song and drama spread over four nights. Though presented at the S.F. Opera every decade or so, the audience for these masterful 19th-century operas seems limitless. Going to the first-night “Rheingold” June 19 I was impressed that the Opera House was once again sold-out. The gent next to me had actually flown in for…

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SAN JOSE—Bounce up out of that easy chair and catch a rare “The Flying Dutchman,” for which Opera San Jose imported singers from as far away as Berlin. You might need a seat belt, because these are big-league (and big volume) Wagnerian voices, in a small 1,200-seat theater (about a quarter the size of NYC’s Met)—a rare treat for listeners, one that few companies can afford. In his fantasy operas Richard Wagner had the knack of creating bigger-than-life characters in…

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ALAMEDA, CA—In the S.F. East Bay, the tranquil community of Alameda is the home of a new opera troupe, presenting an ambitious double bill of Rimsky-Korsakov, half of it representing an important staging of a neglected work. Using the ballroom of an Elks Lodge and making do with a modest budget, the Island City Opera gave what was termed the US premiere of the one-act fantasy “Kashchey the Immortal” (1902), named after the evil wizard also encountered in the subsequent…

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In this his fourth opera, composer John Adams reminds me of a football game that is 0-0 at the half, but ends up in a furious 42-41 score. Given major revisions for act one, this could become the resounding opera of our times. Adams’ brutally candid historical opera premiere  retells the California Gold Rush miners’ days, this time with accounts of hardship, poverty, mob violence, lynchings  and  racial prejudice. Whether or not he truly struck gold here, once again he…

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How long since a world-premiere opera got an instant standing ovation almost five minutes long? With several scenes en route evoking spontaneous applause? The Berkeley Ph.D. grad Mason Bates pulled it off July 22 with his first such effort, a bio-opera on “The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs.” In portraying the late iPhone creator, warts and all, it spotlighted his unique overdrive personality and headstrong brashness. Often his own worst enemy, the workaholic Jobs drove his coworkers and women in his life as hard as himself, with only his Buddhist teacher Kobun and his own wife Laurene injecting equilibrium into existentialism before the untimely illness and death.