Zaide

Over at Out West Arts, Brian has posted a review of a production of Mozart's Zaide, which he aptly terms "the one that got away." What interests me most is that the opera he saw, styled as a rescue-from-the-Turks comic opera, differs so greatly from what I saw at the Mostly Mozart Festival in NYC in 2006. That production was directed by none other than Peter Sellars, who modernized it and set it in a third-world sweatshop. Just a small twist, and you get something quite different!

I didn't write a contemporaneous blog posting but I will say in retrospect that the performance was stylishly played by the Concerto Koln, with Louis Langree at the helm, and well-sung as well. Lots of lovely music, indeed, and more convincing to me than to Allan Kozinn. I liked Norman Shankle a great deal when he was an Adler Fellow in SF; his roles included the soon-to-be-dead husband of Lucia in the eponymous opera and one of the smaller parts in the legendary Poppea with LHL. I'm happy to see that he has a good career going now. I also recognized a certain red-headed coloratura soprano and said hello to her during the intermission. Wish we could get her back to S.F. Opera!