What happens when the director develops in directions the company neither wanted or expected? For San Francisco Opera’s new Der Fliegende Holländer, this discovery led to decisive action: director Petrika Ionesco was sacked just before the opening.
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.
In keeping with its summer season of novelties, San Francisco Opera have produced a new English-language production of Mozart's The Magic Flute. Advertisements for the production showed baritone Nathan Gunn in a green, full-body leotard as a sort of frogman of a Papageno, leaping in the air and wearing a manic expression.
Librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte billed Don Giovanni a “dramma giocoso,” literally a “jocular drama,” and, unsurprisingly, finding the balance between comedy and drama is the key to any good production.
Roger Vontobels Operndebüt im neuen Hamburger Tell beweist Mut und Fingerspitzengefühl und erweist sich Schmähkritiken zum Trotz als durchaus sehenswert.
