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Sunday, September 16, 2018

Runnicles and Luisotti

I did a summing up the other month of Nicola Luisotti's career at San Francisco Opera, but I omitted something I'd consider important: a summary of the composers he performed at SF. Just for the heck of it, I'm including Donald Runnicles for contrast:

Runnicles: 101 productions of operas by Wagner, Rossini, Mussorgsky, R. Strauss, Verdi Beethoven, Mozart, Puccini, Gluck, Susa, Bizet, Wallace, Britten, Debussy, Janacek, Humperdinck, Berlioz, Messiaen, Busoni, Shostakovich, Thompson, Tchaikovski, Adams, J. Strauss, Stravinsky, and Korngold.

Luisotti: 36 productions of operas by Verdi, Puccini, R. Strauss (Salome), Bizet, Wagner (Lohengrin), Boito, Bellini, Tutino (Two Women), Giordano (Andrea Chenier).

Runnicles was here for many more years, including part of the Mansouri era, which featured a lot of Russian opera, and the Rosenberg era, which was the most adventurous ever. Luisotti was here for most of Gockley and the early Shilvock era only, and as we know, David Gockley really wanted to restore endangered Italian opera to its full glory, so a music director whose talents lay 95% in that area was perhaps just right for him.

Still, you can see whose talents are the broader.


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