Berlioz's Les Troyens is a masterful 4+ hour opera that somehow encapsulates about 500 years of history on the backs of two humans, Dido and Aeneas. How two normal humans managed to live from the time of the Trojan War, approximately 1200BC, to the founding of Carthage by Queen Dido in 814BC, and ending with the founding of Rome around 700BC, we'll never know, but boy, did this opera hit all the right spots!

First and foremost, if you like spectacles with your performance arts, then you must go to this production. The set and staging for this opera is, well, Wagnerian, to misapply a phrase.

Of course, no story about the Trojan War would exclude the Trojan Horse. This opera did it with a monstrous 23 foot tall structure that one could easily imagine being hauled around Black Rock Desert during Burning Man week. The imposing and frightening horse head representing the Trojan Horse was a sight to behold. The music was almost a secondary effect to support the prop, as opposed to the other way around.

Whether Berlioz was competing with Wagner, his contemporary, on making the next big thing in opera is questionable, but they both did take pleasure in borrowing musical elements from each other. Whereas Wagner kept to his motifs (which Les Troyens did not include), Berlioz's grand opera had an Italianate feel. Indeed, it appears to me that the opera would have sounded better had it been sung in Italian than in French.

The opera included all the key players from both the Greek and Roman mythologies. There was Cassandra the nay-sayer (who was right, though), Hector, Priam, Aeneas, Dido. It was strange to hear they call out to Roman gods like Venus, Jupiter and Mars. I guess back then (either Berlioz's time or the actual Ancient Greece time) there was a lot of leeway on choosing your gods' names.

But back to the staging and the opera. This production had everything: the Burning Man art pieces, parkour gymnastics, pyrotechnics, cast of a thousand, and even a nod to George Lucas's vision of Tatooine. The third and fourth acts were set in Carthage and the set had the look of Tatooine from Episode I, Phantom Menace.

I strongly urge your attendance before it's over. You'll greatly enjoy the whole spectacle.

The long awaited – by me – production of La Bohème for the Holiday season finally arrived. This stalwart Puccini favorite is always a winner for the holidays and can easily fill up the seats at the War Memorial. The last time I saw Bohème with the San Francisco Opera must have been twenty years ago. This production improved upon that previous one with snazzier sets.

That said, I sincerely hope that the subsequent performances would be better than the one I came to see. While this performance was wonderful, there were more than a few technical flaws that rankled the cognoscenti, I am sure.

La Bohème is a timeless story of people struggling in the face of extreme uncertainty. You know, like the start-up culture here in San Francisco. People do what they can to get by. Given that very real, personal backstory, and the gut-wrenching music that Puccini scored, it should not be difficult at all to pull off one of the most poignant, deeply emotional, and full of pathos piece of musical art ever. And yet, here we are, wondering what happened last night.

Maybe it's me. Maybe after twenty-five years of listening to this opera in my car, on my iPod, watching versions on end on YouTube and Netflix, I'm just jaded to the story. Or, maybe it was the rather pedestrian, bland production with everyone just seemingly going through the motions and no passion behind it all.

I can't enumerate all the little tics and flaws, and I wasn't there to keep score. But there were little things here and there that just bothered me. The gratuitous use of slapstick antics was unnecessary. The oddly choreographed actions from the four bohemians broke the mystique of the make-believe desperate living conditions. The movements by some of the principals betrayed their bedraggled and sickly personae. And lastly, the orchestra's performance just didn't have any oomph to it.

The whole production came off as a very good high school production. It might not even have been on par with a very good college production.

Sure, I still cried at the end. And the false festive atmosphere at the end of the second act gave everyone an upbeat feeling as they left for intermission. But I was hoping for, and expecting, some real creativity and passion to shine through the performance.

Nonetheless, for the newbies who have yet to experience the monumental opera, do yourself a favor and attend it. You wouldn't know the flaws without you having seen and heard hundreds of other performances. Ok, except that part when the two sets didn't completely abut each other properly. That, you'd notice.

There are two main items to discuss with Peter Jackson's The Hobbit, which came out about a week ago. The two items are, how was the movie, and what's this about the 48 fps filming?

For its golden anniversary, the venerable Eon Productions tagged Sam Mendes, director of another long, drawn out outré film, The Road To Perdition, to make the 23rd episode in the long running James Bond series, Skyfall. What Eon and Mendes fail to produce, however, is a uniquely James Bond movie. At the start of the franchise, the Bond character was so powerful that a whole slew of wannabe movies popped up immediately afterwards, copying the style.  There was the Our Man Flint series with James Coburn, The Saint (even though it first came out much earlier than James Bond), and many others, not to mention parodies such as Austin Powers.

I couldn't help thinking how humans could behave in such cruel ways when I saw San Francisco Opera's Opening Night production of Verdi's Rigoletto.

Tom Cruise finally found the winning director for the M:I franchise.  Brad Bird, the director of several wacky Pixar flicks including The Incredibles and Ratatouille finally made a decent Mission: Impossible movie.

Went to see Carmen at the War Memorial this Saturday.  Carmen is a hugely popular opera, currently ranked third most popular behind Die Zauberflote and La Traviata (and ahead of stalwarts, La Boheme, Le Nozzi di Figaro and Tosca).

In this particular performance, I have to give out my rarely offered and unusual play-by-play.  I have to say it:  Don Jose was not well sung.  The singer just didn't project the voice enough and Don Jose was almost inaudible for the most part.  All right, that's as far as I'll go.

The opera offers what the audience wants:  lots of great hummable hits: the habenera, the bugle song, the flower song, the toreador song, and many others.  You'll go home whistling these hits.  And they're still hits one-hundred and forty years after it premiered in Paris.

The first act offers the first glimpse of the intoxicating power of Carmen.  I've met a few Carmens in my life.  No, I didn't get to the stage where one or both of us went fatal, but I can fantasize, if you know what I mean.  As a younger, more innocent child of life, I fell into the narcotic effects of a beguiling woman who was learning and honing her carmenesque skills.  Luckily for me, graduation and a move to the other coast cleared my head.  (BTW, I'm not referring to any women I'm currently friends with.)

Since then, I've met other Carmens and know well enough to keep a wide buffer zone from them.  I'll enjoy their tease and give back as much as I get -- possibly more even -- as I know the teasing only encourages their ardor and no harm is done to anyone.  At the very least, no humans were harmed on my account.

I particularly enjoyed a line near the end of the first act: "If you don't love me, I will love you.  If you love me, be on guard."  An ominous declaration that Carmen gives to Lieutenant Zuniga.

Don Jose, the poor sap (and I can relate), becomes the fall guy for Carmen's escape after she is arrested for battery.  He is sent to jail in her stead because he let her escape.

Act II is a month later, at Lilla Pastia's little tavern (and smuggler's hideout, house of ill-repute, drug den and nest for thieves), Carmen teases Zuniga, who tells her that her sap, Don Jose, is being released that day from jail.  At the same moment, Escamillo, the toreador, comes by and is instantly smitten by Carmen's deadly charms.  Escamillo, however -- being a more worldly person than Don Jose or even Zuniga -- has a hardier tolerance to Carmen's charms and instead of being drunk with it, quaffs the charm like it was lite beer.  Of course, that inflames Carmen even more, upon seeing her effects on this particular man lacking the expected results.  

Still, she's reserving her love for Don Jose, who she knows is coming to the tavern.  He arrives and she bounds up to him like a puppy dog.  Then, Carmen shows her charms to Don Jose by performing what might be the very first lap dance in entertainment history.  Don Jose, being the schmuck that he is, decides to return to his barracks upon hearing the bugle call for retreat to barracks.  The putz.  You can't assign a person like Carmen as second fiddle, and certainly not second fiddle to a non-sexual first fiddle bugle call.  She tells him to am-scray.  As he dejectedly do so, Lieutenant Zuniga returns to Pastia's tavern for a second chance at Carmen-nookie.  Well, Carmen and the rest of the smugglers there can't have Zuniga around and Don Jose is also caught out of barracks and trying to put the moves on Zuniga's supposed paramour.  All in all, it ends with Zuniga tied up, Don Jose reluctantly joining forces with the smugglers and Carmen concluding a great trade deal.

The third act begins with one of the most sublime entr'actes.  (Anyone who've seen the definitive film version by Francesco Rosi with Julie Migenes-Johnson and Placido Domingo will remember the pastoral and scenic views of Andalusia Spain; damn Netflix is still stumbling around on getting this version available on DVD.)  The whole of the third act takes place in the mountains outside of Seville.  Don Jose has become a smuggler, having gone from corporal to a lowly soldier, and now joining the other side.  The smugglers get their contraband and the wiley gypsy ladies, led by Carmen, seduce the border guards to enable the smuggling operation to succeed.  Escamillo happens to drop by, boasts to the unknown-to-him Don Jose that he, Escamillo, is now the new love of Carmen because she has decided to ditch the putzy ex-soldier.  Don Jose gets angry and actually takes out a knife for a knife fight with the toreador.  The toreador, used to eluding a 2000 pound beast with two sharp sword-like appendages, has no problem tackling the novice fighter Don Jose.  However, after being a bit too confident, Escamillo is caught by Don Jose.  Just then, Carmen and the rest of the smugglers return and break apart the fight.  Escamillo uses that moment to thank Carmen for saving his life, which only infuriates Don Jose as Carmen sweetly accepts the gratitude.

The angelic Micaela (to balance out the demonic Carmen) again turns up at the most inappropriate time and tells Don Jose that his mother is dying.  He was, until that moment, going to stick with Carmen come hell or high water.  Now, with the knowledge of his mother's impending death, wimps out with nary a fight.  What a putz (sorry to all the moms out there, but really).  He runs off home with Micaela, to the tune of the toreador singing his song.

The fourth act encapsulates the final phase of Don Jose's "your love life on meth" death spiral.  Beatened down after his corporal position demotion to a mere soldier, then becoming a smuggler, then losing his mother and any chance of a married life with a willing Micaela, Don Jose is reduced to stalking Carmen by the bull ring.  This most pathetic man just can't let go of Carmen.  Even after two rejections, Don Jose still offers Carmen another chance to join up with him.  At this stage, what woman would want such a chump?  Even Micaela would have enough of him.  Carmen rejects him one more time with a sexually charged no by taking the ring he gave her and sheathing it on his knife like a condom.  Well, that was the last straw of rejection and Don Jose in a fit of pathos kills Carmen.  (Shades of OJ and Nicole?)

If there's any takeaway from this opera, in terms of morals, it would be for a man to be a man and don't go all putzy with women.  For women, try to control you power over men; a little miscalculation could cost you your life.  In terms of entertainment, four hours of hits after hits.

I'm on Netflix's watch movies online.  I peruse the selections and see "Working Girl" the 1988 movie with Melanie Griffith, Sigourney Weaver and Harrison Ford.  I saw it once in the theaters and again on VHS (yes!) about twenty years ago and wondered if it would still make it today.  You know, some stories are just dated and don't transcend time as well as others.  (La Traviata or even Tosca are very dated classics which probably were great operas at their time, but just can't make the jump to modern day.)

So I'm watching Working Girl with dinner.  And half way through, I'm blubbering like a baby in pain.  Maybe it's male menopause or something, but the story works.  It worked then and it works now.  The acting by the principals and the supporting crew was more than adequate.  But the story really hits home with this story of a 99%-er who makes good and doesn't forget her roots.  AND, the 1%-er gets screwed over as she should. The story is even more poignant in this day and age.  Also in this day and age, the intertwining of the characters is even more relevant.  The image of New York City, with the sore thumbs that are the Twin Towers makes one contemplate deeply about what we've gained and lost since this 1988 movie.

Of course, as it's a great story, I can imagine it getting a reboot (since Hollywood is so out of new stories to tell).  There'll be more web-enabled documents, cell phones zapping information from one end of the globe to the other, texting instead of phone calls, a single secretary for the whole building instead of a secretarial pool… Nonetheless, it worked back then and can work now, if not even better.  Even better, make an opera out of it with the backdrop of the Twin Towers standing in for the eternal glow of raw capitalism.

For those who are not familiar with the story, there are three main characters:  Tess McGill, played by Melanie Griffith (while she was still un-plasticized), a lower-level secretary with a fire in her belly; Jack Trainer, played by Harrison Ford, Tess's love interest and current-so-to-be-former boyfriend of Katharine Parker and crucial businessman making the deal; and Sigourney Weaver playing the role of the main antagonist, Katharine Parker, the epitome of all the 1%-ers that everyone now hates: conniving, over-deserving, over-ego'ed, undeservedly privileged, unqualified, petulant, unethical, immoral, useless and finally, called on and pwned.

Tess loses her job as a secretary to a stockbroker when he tries to get her to be a fuck-buddy for an arbitrager (Kevin Spacey in one of his earlier roles).  Tess, having some gumption and moral spine, quits after calling her boss (Oliver Platt) a pimp.  She then lands another secretary job with Katharine Parker.  During the whole time, Tess is always on the make for a great business idea and lands a whopper of an idea of getting Trask Industries to invest in a a radio station.  She tells Parker the idea and Parker, who extends a hand of professional friendship to Tess, at first dismisses it as a good, but not great idea.  In reality, Katharine realizes it as a great idea and steals it from Tess.  She writes up some notes to contact Jack Trainer (who is her boyfriend, but that's not revealed at the moment) about making this deal happen.

The next day, Katharine gets fitted for ski-boots and relates to Tess that she's ready to get her boyfriend (no indication that it's Jack) to propose a "merger".  She tells Tess what to do while she vacations in Switzerland.  Unfortunately for Katharine, she breaks her leg skiing in the alps and is stuck in a hospital there for several weeks.

Tess takes the opportunity to visit Katharine's home to bask in ths wonder of a modern high-flying, jet-setting, go-getting woman.  Instead, she finds out that Katharine has usurped her idea of Trask Industries buying out a radio station, and wants to make it happen with Jack Trainer helping along.  Pissed at Katharine's duplicity, Tess decides to fight fire with fire and go after Jack instead.

No need for me to cover the whole story:  rent it or download it yourself for a fun two hours or so.  It's the female-empowerment version of Rocky, except, this time, Rocky wins.

This movie wins on several levels, and that is attested by the fact that the movie was nominated for best picture, as well as best actress and best supporting actress.  It's not a film that should even be considered for the best picture: it's a fluff piece intended to make the audience laugh here and there.  The movie did win an oscar for best music.  Carly Simon's Let the River Run is an inspiring anthem to the dedicated underdog.
How great is this simple story?  I was so mesmerized by it that I managed to watch it twice in a row and couldn't stop cheering it on, despite the 1:00AM curfew we have here in San Francisco on unadulterated cheering for the good guys.

The three-act opera by Gaetano Donizetti of a real person, Lucrezia Borgia, is an interesting opera to digest.  The story, aside from including some historically named characters, has no relation with any historical events.  In a sense, Lucrezia Borgia, the person, became a vehicle for an operatic drama about infidelity, loyalty and subterfuge.

It is a shame that the plot of the opera has no relation to reality.  Borgia's story is so rife with delectable events that can easily be transformed into opera.  Instead, the opera's story is one of a mother who loves her son, Gennaro, who doesn't realize she is his mother.  Lucrezia's husband, the Duke Alfonse d'Este, believes she is cheating behind his back with Gennaro (when in fact, she is trying to keep him alive).  The lack of knowledge of the relationships among the male portion of the party causes all the tension in the story-line.  From a modern perspective, the whole tragedy could have been easily averted if all Lucrezia had to do was admit to all that Gennaro was her son.  Bam, Alfonse would understand why Lucrezia has been lurking around this guy.  Bam, Gennaro would not be put off by being seen with Lucrezia.  Gennaro, a loyal Venetian Guard, belongs to the party that considers the Borgia name as evil.

The Borgias, during the time of the Renaissance, was a powerful family dynasty.  The father, Rodrigo, became the Pope Alexander VI.  Lucrezia was involved in several marriages of convenience, to solidify connections with important men seated in powerful political positions.  And, she and her family were not averse to using whatever means to move ahead, including murdering the husband when his value waned.

As I said already, her historical escapades would have made for several operas.  Instead, Donizetti chose to fictionalize a story.  The origin of the story was by Victor Hugo, so I shouldn't criticize Donizetti or his librettist, Romani, too much.  Hugo's fictionalized story of Lucrezia was the basis for the opera.

Now, as to the opera, let me first say my only introduction to Donizetti's very large body of operatic works (over 70 operas) is Lucia di Lammermoor.  I enjoyed Lucia, a take-off of the Romeo and Juliet story, but my immature ears back then (about 25 years ago) didn't know better.

This opera, Lucrezia Borgia, had *ahem* interesting (as in curious, as in WTF?) choices of musical passages and instrumentation.   True, Donizetti composed during the transitional period between the stand-and-sing concept of an opera that evolved from Monteverdi through Handel to Mozart and other contemporaries of Donizetti, versus the more mature operatic works of Wagner and Puccini.  Donizetti was setting new trails by employing a more visual stimulus with action.  (How it was performed back in his days, well, I couldn't begin to guess.)  There were sword fights and poisonings and multiple dead bodies, that much is known.  (His Lucia di Lammermoor is famous since its debut for the gory final scene when Lucia essentially commits seppuko while wearing a white wedding-night robe.  It's always done to be as graphic as possible.)

Musically, Donizetti still followed a template from the previous generation.  And that template does not work for this opera with a heavy and serious storyline.  I mean, how can one be singing about a very tragic event that just occurred using a light, major-key lilting song with refrains and trills?  The refrains really got to me.  Here is a situation:  Lucrezia is saddened by Gennaro's refusal to take the antidote, and dies.  Rather than just sing her pieties, she sings the aria and adds the refrain (as required), all to a waltz beat with the brass taking up the oomp-pah-pah tempo.  All that mishmash detracted from the story.  Here I am, sitting down and listening to the brass coming on.  I wonder, why is the brass playing here?  Shouldn't there be violins straining away melancholically, considering that it's a very moving, tragic, minor-key moment?

I went to see a matinee of the opera, Heart of a Soldier, that made its world premiere last Saturday here at the War Memorial Opera House.  Feel free to google all the other reviews about this opera.  The NYT panned it, as did a local SF rag.  The Chron gave it a decent write up.  NPR also gave its review.

Here's my quick review:  not a single dry eye in the whole damned place.  As a big opera fan, I've enjoyed plenty of heart-wrenching operas.  There's Puccini's La Boheme and Madama Butterfly.  Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana is another tear jerker.  Tear jerkers are bread and butter in the opera trade.  But this one really hits home because, well, it tells the story of a recent seminal event that really hit home.

The opera's protagonist is Rick Rescorla, a ex-cornish Brit who became a US citizen by fighting in the Vietnam War and then became the head of security for Morgan Stanley.  On the fateful September 11 day, Rick pressed his instructions for evacuation from WTC 2 to the employees of Morgan Stanley, much to the counter-orders of the Port Authority (who requested that people in WTC 2 stay at their desks).  The 2700 employees of Morgan Stanley, plus others from floors above and below those leased by Morgan Stanley, escaped the destruction of WTC 2 because of Rescorla's leadership.  He returned one more time to the burning building with first responders only to never exit.

It's a real and true and incredibly impactful story.  The music and the set design provided an eerie yet novel interpretation of Rescorla's biography.

The first act recounts Rescorla's childhood through his experience in Rhodesia and eventually in Vietnam.  Already, the swelling music from the first act brought tears from many an opera-goer, mine included.  But the second act, with the telling of Rescorla's evacuation drills sandwiched around his brief love affair with Susan Rescorla, was the real punch in the gut.  Unlike other operas where one has empathy for the characters, this one strikes you hard with the thomp of reality.  It hits you with a "Hey, you remember what happened on 9-11, eh?"  Only the most jaded, most ice-veined, unfeeling, misanthrope could sit through the ending and not blurt out a cough to mask his or her sinuses welling up with tears.

Operas are primarily musical.  The credit goes to the composer, not the lyricists (or librettist in the case of operas), nor the set-designer, director, scene-producer or whatever their titles are.  But a good opera incorporates all elements from the music to the lyrics (libretti) to the set design to the whole package.  I can't say that there can't be an even better set-design for this opera, as this is the premiere and there has been no other to compare it to.  But, the combination of the music with the singing (ok, you still need to read the supertitles despite the libretto being in English) and the visual set design made for a monumental spectacle.

Go see it before it's over.  I think September 30 is the last day.  Check it out.