opera

Compelling performance of a problematic work Imagine an opera scene in which five flamenco dancers are executed by volleys of rifle fire. Horrible. And what, one may ask, makes it opera? Then a singer in uniform hoarsely shouts, “¡Viva la Muerte!” (Long live death!), and his squad continues to fire and the bodies to spasm, until those fusillades of bullets turn into a wild percussion theme. Now that’s...

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When Italians sing of Scottish blood feuds… A master of bel canto writing, Gaetano Donizetti created his operas out of direct and touching melodies, showcasing a soaring “beautiful song” vocal line. Lucia di Lammermoor, performing this Saturday Feb. 23 and Sunday Feb 24 by Palo Alto’s West Bay Opera, is a pinnacle of the bel canto style. Building on the inevitability and elegance of Mozart, Donizetti added...

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Springtime for Nero… Judging by a seventeenth century opera, human nature does not seem to have changed very much in the last 400 years. Claudio Monteverdi’s...

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When dreams come knocking on the portals of perception There is a space between waking and sleeping when ones’ thoughts gain a symbolic and surreal brightness, and when images are as small and vivid as the far-off sounds of children in a schoolyard. That hypnagogic state came to life last night at Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall. Part act of rebellion, part musical portrait, Philip Glass’ Einstein on the Beach fused synthesizers,...

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Led by José Luis Moscovich, the spunky West Bay Opera hosted Jacques Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffmann Oct. 12 and 14, and will finish its run this weekend. At last Sunday’s matinee, this Palo Alto troupe brought a massive opera to the modest stage of Lucie Stern Theater, and did so with confidence and immediacy. Moscovich led a fine ensemble with wit and conviction—a number of the instrumentalists appear with other Bay Area symphonies....

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The little opera that could… The tiny Livermore Valley Opera delivered a coup last Saturday, Oct. 6, at the Bankhead Theater in downtown Livermore. Their season opener, Giacomo Puccini’s La Bohème, is an enduring and popular opera, and is, in fact, the single most performed opera of all time. A punchy libretto by playwrights Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa had pin-turn mood swings that battered the audience time and again and...

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Categories: opera