Opera Parallèle – Repeat Performances

December 8, 2018

Opera Parallèle’s “The Little Prince”

Holiday glitter and desert blooms Opera Parallèle paid tribute to the season last Saturday, Dec. 8, with a heartwarming performance and plenty of tinsel. That was Rachel Portman’s opera adaptation of The Little Prince, an oft-republished story by Antoine de Saint-Exupery that uses the form of a children’s book to impart some ageless wisdoms. And the “tinsel” was a cast of top-notch voices and members of the San Francisco Girls Chorus who dressed in gold and silver with...

Categories: opera

February 15, 2018

Opera Parallèle’s on-pitch tribute to Bernstein and love

Opera Parallèle celebrated the centennial of Leonard Bernstein’s birth this past weekend in a performance that included two short operas and several dramatized musical pieces woven into a loose narrative, rather like the one-act that was the finale of the evening, Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti. Perhaps in honor of their collaboration with SFJAZZ at the Center where the performance was held, the evening began with a jazz-infused selection from West Side Story, blazingly...

Categories: opera

January 18, 2018

“Harriet’s Spirit” rises in young voices

Once again Opera Parallèle, that unique and valuable company founded and directed by Artistic Director and Conductor Nicole Paiement and Creative Director Brian Staffenbiel, showed us the relevance of opera to contemporary life. Not through reworkings of traditional opera but through the active writing and producing of new opera. For several years, Opera Parallèle has developed an educational program that offers multiple opportunities for school children – from attending rehearsals to...

Categories: opera