(Photo credit: Reneff-Olsen Productions) San Francisco Opera has released details about its annual Pride celebration, taking place on June 27. Opera singer and winner of the fourth season of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars, Monét X Change is among the artists headlining this celebration of the LGBTQIA+ community. She will serve as emcee for the evening’s events. Soloists include mezzo-sopranos {…}
(Photo: Cory Weaver / San Francisco Opera) We need Beethoven. Especially the 9th Symphony with Schiller’s Ode to Joy. “Freude, schöner Götterfunken/Tochter aus Elysium,/Wir betreten feuertrunken,Himmlische/, dein HeiligtumFreude menschen gotterfunken./Oh friends, no more of these sounds!/Let us sing more cheerful songs, More full of joy!/Joy, bright spark of divinity,/Daughter of Elysium,/Fire-inspired we tread Thy sanctuary!/Thy magic power reunites/All that custom {…}
(Photo Credit: San Francisco Opera) On November 1, at 8 p.m. (PDT), the new film, “Eun Sun Kim: A Journey Into Lohengrin,” was broadcast for the first time, although being available for viewing already. Featuring the Korean conductor Eun Sun Kim and her labors around the preparation of San Francisco Opera’s 2023 production of Wagner’s “Lohengrin,” the behind-the-scenes film is {…}
(Credit: Cory Weaver) Whether you view Richard Wagner’s opera, “Tristan und Isolde,” as an expressive tale of universal human redemption or simply a unique take on the many medieval romances of love and death, there is no question it casts a spell. In the opening of San Francisco’s new production by Paul Curran, conducted by San Francisco’s own Eun Sun {…}
The San Francisco Opera has extended Caroline H. Hume Music Director Eun Sun Kim’s contract. The Tad and Dianne Taube General Director Matthew Shilvock announced the news and noted that Kim will extend her contract for five years through the 2030–31 season. Kim will continue to conduct major operas by two of the art form’s most important composers Giuseppe Verdi {…}
The release of “Eun Sun Kim: A Journey Into Lohengrin,” an hour-long film by San Francisco Opera and Lumahai Productions has been announced. Directed by Elena Park, the new film takes viewers behind the scenes during the weeks of rehearsal leading up to the opening of Wagner’s “Lohengrin” at San Francisco Opera last October. It follows the production team and {…}
(Photo by Cory Weaver) Festivities galore flooded the San Francisco’s Civic Center Friday night – Opera Ball, Opera Dinner, and the opera itself, Verdi’s, “Un Ballo in Maschera.” Opening night at San Francisco Opera sparkled with taffeta gowns and tux, platform heels and feathers, jewelry glittering up and down arms and nifty bowties. In honor of the entitled opera and {…}
Richard Wagner fell in love with the story of Lohengrin. How could he not? A handsome knight, with a golden disposition of purity, nobility and generosity. The son of Parsifal. The leader of the Grail. Destined to rescue, save and uplift all who needed rescuing and salvation. With soaring and beauteous romantic melodies, rich choral support, dazzling duets between glorious {…}
Verdi’s “Il Trovatore” conjures up fire from the outset like firelight. It burns and blazes with passion. It smolders. The more Verdi wrote, the more his imagination leapt into flames. One magnificent, powerful and engaging aria, duet, trio, quartet and chorus, emerging after the other. Dazzling. And what a story – an Italian troubadour with love affairs and babies tossed {…}
Remarkable. Francis Poulenc’s “Dialogues of the Carmelites” opened at the San Francisco Opera War Memorial Opera House for the first time since the 1980s. We were strangers as the curtain rose, far away in time and belief, conviction, and the Reign of Terror after the French Revolution. Yet we were also familiars, who knew in our hearts and minds the {…}
(Credit: Cory Weaver) “I am fire and air; my other elements I give to baser life.” So sings Cleopatra in John Adams’ “Antony and Cleopatra.” The baser life about which Cleopatra sings is everything that is not she and everything that was not Antony. So Adams tells us in the latest from his roster of remarkable operas. San Francisco Opera {…}