Wednesday, March 24, 2021

San Francisco Opera Streams

 


War Memorial Opera House
Photo by Lisa Hirsch

It's the next batch of streaming performances from San Francisco Opera:
  • Donizetti’s Don Pasquale April 3–4
  • Getty and Debussy Double Bill of The Fall of the House of Usher April 10–11
  • Verdi’s Don Carlo April 17–18

My view of these works? Don Pasquale is very very thin and meets the definition of lightweight and dumb. The cast was good. Regarding the Poe double bill, oy vey. The Debussy is an interesting completion of a fragment. The Getty....uh...well, I'm going to let Joshua Kosman's review of the double bill do the heavy lifting here.

Don Carlo, though: this is a masterwork, one of Verdi's greatest accomplishments. The production is terrible (and on its way to the junkyard if it's not there yet), and the direction was terrible, but the cast was (mostly) tremendous and the conducting just fine. Watch this one; for one thing, baritone Mariusz Kwiecien has retired from opera owing to back problems, so we will sadly not be seeing him here again.


No comments: