BREAKING NEWS: Opera & Ballet

SF Opera's 2025-2026 Season

Tue, 04 Feb 2025 21:59:14 +0000

September 5–27 2025: RigolettoSeptember 14–28 2025: Jake Heggie's Dead Man WalkingOctober 25- November 13 2025: ParsifalNovember 1 2025: Beethoven's Fifth Symphony and Manuel de Falla's Siete Canciones Populares EspañolasNovember 14–30 2025: Huang Ruo's The Monkey King May 28- June 21 2026: Il Barbiere di SivigliaJune 7–27 2026 ElektraJune 26 2026: Pride Concert San Francisco Opera's 103rd season was announced today. Six operas will be presented in the 2025-2026 season, along with a performance of Beethoven and Falla and a special Pride Concert. Music Director Eun Sun Kim will conduct the Verdi, Wagner, Beethoven, and Falla this fall and returns for Strauss in 2026. Press Release | Official Site

MCO/Uchida - Mozart and Janáček, 1 February 2025

Tue, 04 Feb 2025 12:15:03 +0000

Royal Festival Hall, London, 1.2.2025 (MB)

Mozart: Piano Concerto no.18 in B-flat major, KV 456
Janáček: Mládi for wind sextet
Mozart: Piano Concerto no.21 in C major, KV 467

Mitsuko Uchida (piano, director)
Mahler Chamber Orchestra

Mitsuko Uchida’s series of Mozart piano concertos with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra reaches nos 18 and 21, on this occasion sandwiching an outstanding performance from MCO soloists of Janáček’s Mládi. If KV 456 took a little time to settle – its first movement a little too ‘neutral’ in character – then its later movements and the whole of KV 467 witnessed pianist and orchestra alike on excellent form.

B-flat major is a funny key. My ears ‘tuned’ by orchestral tuning, I could not help but notice its flatter character. Even beyond that, though, that first movement sounded somewhat subdued. The MCO strings offered more extroverted playing in some tutti passages; there were gains too in the intimacy and the need properly to listen. It was only later on, though, that I really felt the music’s inherent drama, though tempo and balance could not be faulted. A barrage of coughing notwithstanding, the opening of the slow movement suggested the subtle tragedy of a great seria aria, and that sense only increased with its passage. There have doubtless been more overtly Romantic readings, but the MCO’s relative understatement did not undersell; nor did Uchida’s dignified response, voice-leading and harmony already pointing toward Mozart’s later years. Orchestral Furies vied with Orphic pleas, leading to a mesmerising close in which time stood still and once again moved—for it could do no other. In the best sense, that drama hung over a finale that truly smiled – rarest of delights – though sterner moments were equally moving. A slip from Uchida went for little; if anything it enhanced the sense of deeply human music-making.

It is difficult not to regret a relative lack of concert music from Janáček, though certainly not at the cost of his operas. In any case, Mládi showed us how intimately connected are both ‘sides’ to his output, the music breathing the air of the late operas, instruments assuming the roles of dramatic characters, as if in anticipation of the music theatre of composers such as Birtwistle. As characteristic as it was compelling, a kaleidoscope of emotions was unleashed in the first movement, only to be added to or deepened in its successors. The second emerged as if the composer’s counterpart to that in the preceding piano concerto, its multiplicity of inflections and incitements, moods both shifting and abruptly changing, highly dramatic throughout. As bubbly as they were mysterious, the third and fourth were not only dramatically consequent but blessed by tremendous, unfailingly eloquent wind playing.

The C major Piano Concerto, KV 467, had the second half to itself. From the off, the orchestra – still on the small side – sounded more energised than at the start of the earlier concerto, as did Uchida’s direction. A larger wind section made its presence felt, as did the commitment of the MCO strings—and of course Mozart’s (natural) trumpets and drums. Phrasing, mood, detail: all came into grater focus. Mozart’s oscillation between major and minor structured an emotionally engaging tonal drama, replete, where called for, with imperious C major ‘public’ grandeur. I assume the cadenza, conceived on a grander scale and inflected with greater modernity than those for the B-flat concerto, was Uchida’s own; at any rate, I did not recognise it.

In the slow movement, the strings again were at least equal partners, whether in their celebrated pizzicato passages or bowed music with meaningfully varied vibrato. A black and white pearl, one might say, of a movement. The tempo, if a little faster than once might have been the case, felt right. Mozart’s music sang and bewitched, in a performance that seemed to conceive his writing in a single breath. At times, I found the finale just a little hard-driven, at others, it scampered delightfully. Uchida’s collegial music-making – rarely did I think of her as a ‘soloist’ – nonetheless proved throughout a treat.

Puppet Regime: L’elisir d’amore at the Teatro Regio Torino

Mon, 03 Feb 2025 14:23:43 +0000

Donizetti – L’elisir d’amore

Adina – Enkeleda Kamani
Nemorino – Valerio Borgioni
Belcore – Lodovico Filippo Ravizza
Dulcamara – Simone Alberghini
Giannetta – Yulia Tkachenko

Coro Teatro Regio Torino, Orchestra Teatro Regio Torino / Fabrizio Maria Carminati.
Stage director – Daniele Menghini.

Teatro Regio, Turin, Italy. Sunday, February 2nd, 2025.

This new staging of L’elisir d’amore at the Teatro Regio Torino, a coproduction with Parma, opened last week and, as is common at the house, was double cast, led by the musical direction of Fabrizio Maria Carminati. The stage direction was confided to Daniele Menghini. This is the third show I have seen by Menghini and the previous two left me with less than a universally positive impression. The first I saw by him, was a Carmen in Macerata which included a clown who enumerated loquaciously in the Italian tongue during the show. It didn’t add anything in particular to the drama, but instead became increasingly tedious. The second, was a Tristan und Isolde in Palermo, which began as a reading in a rehearsal room, morphed into a traditional production, and then went back to the rehearsal room. That said, the naked man on stage did give a lot to look at.