opera

April 28, 2014

Festival Opera pays tribute to Holocaust Day

Chamber opera explores the scars of survival in moving program… Last Monday in Walnut Creek, a star-studded cast of seven singers and 13 musicians joined together to honor Yom HaShoah, the Day of Remembrance for the six million Jews who died in Hitler’s concentration camps. Festival Opera staged two chamber operas on April 28 at the Unitarian Universalist Church, one deeply felt and one darkly humorous. In Another Sunrise,...

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February 22, 2014

Lamplighters’ Die Fledermaus at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

Lamplighters go “batty” The Lamplighters, a venerable Bay Area institution adept at the high camp and broad humor of Gilbert and Sullivan, proved last weekend that they could branch out of their comfort zone and put their signature on grand opera. Their production of Die Fledermaus (The Bat), seen last Friday Feb. 22 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, was accessible and tightly executed, largely thanks to a new translation into English by David...

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February 14, 2014

“Elixir of Love” in Palo Alto

West Bay Opera brings home gold Readers may find it tiresome when a reviewer repeatedly gushes, or names some company “the best operatic experience of the Bay Area.” Still, one wonders how Palo Alto’s tiny West Bay Opera can so bespell an audience. In the interest of journalistic balance, I will try for a more severe look sans superlatives. Of course, seeing Donizetti’s The Elixir of Love, which opened last Friday on...

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October 11, 2013

Tosca at West Bay Opera

Grand Opera the way it is meant to be—shoe-horned into a community theater When all the elements come together, opera has an emotional impact that is unmatched among the arts. Those elements surely came together last Friday, Oct 11, for the opening of West Bay Opera’s Tosca. A talented cast, excellent musicians, and inspired conducting brought Giacomo Puccini’s dark celebration of passions to a boil in the intimate Lucie Stern...

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Categories: opera