I just sent off my review to Classical Voice North America; no idea when it will be posted, but here's the really short version: shockingly conventional and dull, singers without much drama on opening night. Why tell everybody for a year about how provocative Calixto Bieito is, then deliver this??
Here's what everybody else thinks:
- Joshua Kosman, SF Chronicle
- Janos Gereben, OperaWest
- Opera Tattler (Roberts)
- Opera Tattler (Costa-Jackson)
- Greg Freed, Parterre Box
- John Marcher, A Beast in a Jungle
- Steven Winn, SFCV
- Lisa Hirsch, CVNA
- Mark Swed, LA Times
- Maria Nockin, Bachtrack
- Georgia Rowe, East Bay Times
(About the photo: if you're wondering what a giant bull is doing behind the smuggler's lair, I wondered too.)
2 comments:
is it so hard to imagine that the giant pasteboard bull is a disused advertising sign? That is was torn down by laborers during the Act 4 prelude should have made this point reasonably clear.
BTW: Ponnelle is dead and therefore is no longer directing.
It's not at all difficult to imagine, but it's not at all obvious without notes, given that bullfighting is significant in the opera, a fact that we don't need to be reminded of.
SFO staged the Ponelle production at least once during this century, because I've seen it.
Really, the big story here is that the production is kind of dull!
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