Upcoming Streams at San Francisco Opera

Janáček’s "The Makropulos Case" with Karita Mattila as Emilia Marty 

Photo: Cory Weaver/San Francisco Opera

Well. San Francisco Opera will have two superb productions streaming in July:

July 18, 2020: La Cenerentola (Cinderella), Rossini

Cast:  French soprano Karine Deshayes as Angelica (Cenerentola) opposite American tenor René Barbera as her Prince Charming, Don Ramiro. The cast includes baritone Efraín Solís as Dandini, baritone Carlos Chausson as Don Magnifico, bass-baritone Christian Van Horn as Alidoro and soprano Maria Valdes and mezzo-soprano Zanda Švēde as Angelica’s stepsisters, Clorinda and Tisbe, respectively. Jesús López-Cobos conducts.

(Regular readers and friends of mine know I'm not a big fan of the Rossini comedies, but for this cast....Deshayes was a wonderful Urbain in the Paris Huguenots, René Barbera is one of the great bel canto tenors of our time, and Efraín Solís stole the show as Golaud in the WEO Pelleas two seasons ago. So I'll be watching!)

July 25, 2020: Vec Makropulos (The Makropulos Case), Janáček

Cast:  Finnish soprano Karita Mattila in her role debut as the enigmatic, renowned singer Emilia Marty. The late Jiří Bělohlávek conducts this 1926 Czech masterpiece full of “restless, sharp-edged, brilliantly scored music” (San Francisco Classical Voice). The cast also features Slovak tenor Miro Dvorsky as Albert Gregor, German bass-baritone Gerd Grochowski as Baron Jaroslav Prus and America bass-baritone Dale Travis as Dr. Kolenatý. 

(Karita Karita Karita. Bělohlávek was superb; the whole cast was excellent, and this was the perfect role for Mattila.)