David Gockley is again the catalyst for a rare venture: an opera created with families in mind.
With Engelbert Humperdinck’s “Hansel and Gretel” among the few operas written for children, the San Francisco Opera and Cal Performances aim to add to the under-represented genre with “The Secret Garden.”
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Grand spectaculars of opera and musical theater are on tap for the San Francisco Opera’s 2013-14
season.
General director David Gockley announced Monday that the season will open Sept. 6 with Arrigo Boito’s 1868 mighty, ultra-romantic, Wagner-scale “Mefistofele” in Robert Carsen’s sensational production last seen here in 1994.
The work fits well into 2013’s Verdi-Wagner bicentennial in that it was composed by Verdi librettist Boito and admired by Verdi.
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Giacomo Puccini's 1900 "Tosca," one of world's most popular operas, has love, jealousy, political oppression, an evil tyrant, torture, murder, execution, a suicide leap... and great music.
But when San Francisco Opera's double-cast run of 12 performances opened Thursday, there was more: the diva took ill, the understudy stepped in, and a star was born. The young local favorite received an ovation that shook the walls of the War Memorial Opera House.
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The San Francisco Opera’s 90th season opens Friday with a romantic crowd-pleaser so popular that General Director David Gockley has scheduled 12 performances. The production of Verdi’s 1851 “Rigoletto,” a sweeping melodrama of love and betrayal, is a revival of a Michael Yeargan-designed work. San Francisco Opera Music Director Nicola Luisotti (“who makes every Verdi opera he conducts into an event,” Gockley says) leads the orchestra.
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San Francisco Opera’s unusual and impressive new production of Mozart's "The Magic Flute" melds music, art and technology in a delightful mix.
Instead of a conventional set, it features 3,000 tempera-and-chalk paintings by Jun Kaneko projected over the stage.
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At the conclusion of the San Francisco Opera’s opening of Giuseppe Verdi’s 1846 “Attila” Tuesday, general director David Gockley presented chorus director Ian Robertson with the San Francisco Opera Medal. The timing was excellent. Robertson’s chorus shined just as brightly as it did in last week’s premiere of John Adams’ “Nixon in China” and provided the opera’s highlights.
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“The Magic Flute” may be the most familiar offering in San Francisco Opera’s summer season, but a high-tech production opening this week at the War Memorial Opera House promises to live up to the challenge of presenting an old favorite in a new setting, while remaining faithful to the music.
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While the recession is not over in the world of the arts, San Francisco Opera General Director David Gockley’s plan for the company’s 90th season, announced today, indicates that tough times may not last forever. Still carrying a deficit, a continuing concern, the company in 2012-13 is offering a felicitous mix of popular masterpieces with international stars, new productions and more risky commissioned works.
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“Here he comes again with another CNN opera,” San Francisco Opera General Director David Gockley joked about himself at a press event about the fast-approaching world premiere of “Heart of a Soldier.”
The opera about 9/11, opening in the War Memorial Opera House on Sept. 10, follows a long line of contemporary works produced by Gockley among 33 premieres during his 33 years at the head of the Houston Grand Opera, John Adams’ 1987 “Nixon in China” among them.
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When San Francisco Opera completed the first of three cycles of Richard Wagner’s 17-hour marathon “The Ring of the Nibelung” on Sunday, size was just one of the thrills for the audience of 14,000 filling the War Memorial during the four-day event.
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