| Date and venue | Title | Submitted by |
|---|---|---|
| 30-Mar-2013 Royal Opera House, Covent Garden | The chorus takes the honours in the Royal Opera's Nabucco | David Karlin |
 “Fly, my thoughts, on gilded wings; fly to rest on hills and mounts.” It’s no understatement to say that Va, pensiero, the Act 3 chorus of the Hebrew slaves in Nabucco, catapulted Giuseppe Verdi to lasting fame. It remains one of the biggest moments in any opera, and the Royal Opera Chorus performed it superbly last night. It was a sort of collective messa di voce, swelling from gentle yearning to the full-voiced nostalgia in the third verse modulation, dying back to an almost whispered ending.
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| 16-Nov-2012 War Memorial Opera House | Patricia Racette is remarkable as Tosca in San Francisco | Jeffery S McMillan |
 Continuing the experiment from the opening of the season, San Francisco Opera’s current run of Tosca has several performances occurring on consecutive days or in close proximity, necessitating two different casts. The Thursday opening made headlines when the leading lady was felled by illness and a new talent, Melody Moore, made her mark in storybook fashion. I attended the second night, when a cast anchored by Puccini heroine extraordinaire Patricia Racette made a persuasive case that this was the Tosca cast to see.Read full review... | ||
| 20-Oct-2012 War Memorial Opera House | Lohengrin returns to San Francisco in effective new production | Jeffery S McMillan |
 Wagner’s Lohengrin was the last work the master completed before settling into a mid-career six-year slump. During this compositional hiatus, he wrote the poems for his Ring operas and ruminated in print on various topics, musical and otherwise, but work on the music dramas essentially ceased.Read full review... | ||
| 15-Sep-2012 AT&T Ballpark | Opera in the ballpark: Rigoletto at the home of the San Francisco Giants | Jeffery S McMillan |
 The Metropolitan Opera’s Live in HD simulcasts to movie theaters all over the world have been one of the biggest stories in the opera world in recent years and an undoubted hit with opera fans. Whether the program’s audience-building potential is commensurate with its box office hauls, however, is still a matter of debate. San Francisco Opera has also invested in technology to connect with new audiences by making performances available in what they call Opera Vision.Read full review... | ||
| 8-Sep-2012 War Memorial Opera House | San Francisco Opera opens 90th season with Rigoletto | Jeffery S McMillan |
 The San Francisco Opera, one of the big American houses that has exhibited commendable fiscal resourcefulness while maintaining its artistic standards, selected a conservative opener for its 90th season with a revival of its de Chirico-inspired production of Rigoletto. During these tough economic times, trotting out an old warhorse, by itself, is no strategy for the long-view, but the company introduced a twist to get the most out of Verdi's tale of vengeance.Read full review... | ||
| 12-Jun-2012 War Memorial Opera House | Verdi's Attila returns to San Francisco… with a vengeance! | Jeffery S McMillan |
 In an attempt to persuade Attila the Hun to spare Italy from the scorch and burn policy, the corrupt Roman general Ezio says, "Avrai tu l'universo, resti l'Italia a me," ("You can have the universe, but leave Italy for me"). The two warlords were not the only ones who stood to profit handsomely when Verdi’s Attila returned to San Francisco's War Memorial Opera House on Tuesday night in Gabriele Lavia’s new staging (a co-production with Milan's La Scala).Read full review... | ||
| 3-Jun-2012 UC Berkeley, Zellerbach Hall | Luisotti and SF Opera Orchestra in Concert | Jeffery S McMillan |
 Anticipation is running high for the kick off of San Francisco Opera’s summer season on Friday, June 8, 2012, with the local premiere of John Adams’s Nixon in China. As a sort of appetizer to the five-week season music director Nicola Luisotti and his players gave an orchestral concert on June 3 at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley. The idea of showcasing the San Francisco Opera Orchestra was initiated last fall when, in the midst of a busy opera schedule, they performed Beethoven’s fifth and seventh symphonies at Zellerbach under Luisotti’s baton.
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