Opera 2023

Over at Boulezian, Mark Berry has a summary of his operatic year, and after reading it, I decided to do one myself. In the process, I discovered that three operas never made it onto the list of operas I've seen, so, I'm particularly glad to have gone through this exercise. Here's what I saw in 2023, in alphabetical order by composer.

• Aa, van der, Blank Out
• Bates, The Revolution of Steve Jobs
• Britten, The Rape of Lucretia
• Davis, The Life and Times of Malcolm X (Met HD)
• Debussy, Pelléas et Mélisande (Two productions, superb in every way at LA Opera, a muddled production at Santa Fe)
• Dvořák, Rusalka
• Frank, El último sueño de Frida y Diego
• Giddens and Abel, Omar
• Martinez, Cruzar la Cara de la Luna
• Monteverdi, L'Orfeo
• Monteverdi, L'incoronazione di Poppea
• Moravec, The Shining
• Oh, The Emissary
• Puccini, Madama Butterfly
• Reagon and Reagon, Octavia Butler's The Parable of the Sower
• Saariaho, Adriana Mater
• Schoenberg, Erwartung
• Shearer, Prospero's Ghost
• Strauss, Die Frau ohne Schatten
• Stravinsky, The Nightingale
• Verdi, Il Trovatore
• Verdi, Falstaff
• Wagner, Die Fliegende Hollander
• Wagner, Lohengrin
• Wallen, Dido's Ghost

Twenty-six operas, twelve of them new to me. I saw multiple performances of the operas I reviewed at San Francisco (Frida y Diego, Frau, Omar, Lohengrin) and the LAO Pelléas. 

Looking forward to 2024, most companies haven't announced their seasons, but there are Der Zwerg and Highway 1 at LAO, Bulrusher at West Edge Opera, Bluebeard's Castle at SFS, The Cunning Little Vixen and The Merry Wives of Windsor at Pocket Opera, Florencia en el Amazonas at Opera San José, The Finch Opera, Balls, and Fellow Travelers at Opera Parallele, the Barrie Kosky Magic Flute at SFO, and above all,  the American premiere of Kaija Saariaho's Innocence, also at SFO. I expect to see all of the Santa Fe operas but it's more individual performances than the particular operas that I'm looking forward to.