17 August 2008. One of these days smorg will transform into a snail from sheer tardiness... Then I'll really have a valid excuse for being perpetually late in answering emails and comments!
My email, of course, is sdcmorg@yahoo.com - Please put "epinions" on the subject line to prevent your note from getting sucked into my high-gravity SPAM bin-of-no-return (the more spams it eats, the more massive the bin, the suckier its gravitational field. Even a light beam finds it hard to make it out of there nowadays!).
Why should you check San Diego Opera out? Because they can come up with a line-up like this:
2009
Jan 24, 27, 30, Feb 1, 4: Puccini's Tosca: Edoardo Müller/ Sylvie Valayre (Tosca), Marcus Haddock (Cavaradossi), Greer Grimsley (Scarpia)
Feb 14, 17, 20, 22: Massenet's Don Quixote: Karen Keltner/ Ferruccio Furlanetto (Don Quixote), Reinhard Dorn (Sancho), Denyce Graves (Dulcinea)
Mar 28, 31, Apr 3, 5: Verdi's Rigoletto: Edoardo Müller/ L'Ubica Vargicova (Gilda), Roberto Aronica (Duke), Lado Ataneli (Rigoletto), Kirstin Chavez (Maddalena)
Apr 18, 21, 24, 26: Britten's Peter Grimes: Steuart Bedford/ Anthony Dean Griffey (Peter Grimes), Jennifer Casey Cabot (Ellen), Rod Gilfry (Cpt Balstrode)
May 9, 12, 15, 17, 20: Puccini's Madama Butterfly: Edoardo Müller/ Patricia Racette (Cio-Cio-San), Carlo Ventre (Pinkerton), Malcolm MacKenzie (Sharpless), Zheng Cao (Suzuki)
2010
-Puccini's La Bohème: Anja Harteros (Mimi), Piotr Beczala (Rodolfo)
-Verdi's Nabucco: Ferruccio Furlanetto (Nabucco), Zeljko Lucic (), Sylvie Valayre ()
-Gounod's Romeo et Juliet: Stephen Costello (Romeo), Ailyn Pérez (Juliette)
-Verdi's La Traviata: Elizabeth Futral (Violetta), Marius Brenciu (Alfredo)
-Puccini's Manon Lescaut: Patricia Racette (role debut as Manon), Aleksandr Antonenko (Des Grieux), Dwayne Croft (Lescaut)
2011
-Puccini's Turandot: Lise Lindstrom (Turandot), Fabio Armiliato (Calaf)
-co-world premiere of Heggie's Moby-Dick:
-R Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier: Anja Harteros (Marschallin), Marina Domashenko (Oktavian), Ferruccio Furlanetto (Ochs)... all having role debut
-Gounod's Faust: Stephen Costello (Faust), Ailyn Pérez (Marguerite), Greer Grimsley (Mephistopheles)
-Bizet's Carmen: Nino Surguladze (Carmen), Julian Gavin (Don José)
Still don't think that you would enjoy opera? 1. Vesselina Kasarova and Edita Gruberova sing Rossini's Cats' Duet, 2. Juliette Galstian sings Carmen’s ’Séguedille’, 3. Vesselina Kasarova as Offenbach's Beautiful Helen, 4. Vivica Genaux sings ‘Qual guerriero in campo amato’, 5. Vesselina Kasarova sings Sappho's death scene, 6. Dorothea Röschmann as Mozart’s Vitellia, 7. Edita Gruberova sings ‘Proch Variations’, 8. Violeta Urmana rehearses Verdi’s Requiem, 9. Marilyn Horne sings ‘Beautiful Dreamer’.... 10....Toy Dolls' Idle Gossip.. bwahaahaahaa
=============================== Smorg bin ich. I'm approximately as old as Hideki Matsui, Kate Moss, and Leonardo DiCaprio combined and divided by three, though they aren't as into classical music and opera as I am. I play the piano and the clarinet (though not a professional musician). Opera is my primary review subject on this site and occasionally at Amazon.com, AssociatedContent.com, and Ciao.co.uk (all as 'Smorg', 'Smorgy', or 'EpinionSmorg').
I'd like my reviews to give you a good glimpse of the product, so do let me know if there is any inaccuracy or anything I should do better. And please DON'T feel obligated to rate VH (Very Helpful) even if most other ratings are. I would appreciate a tip on how to improve on SH (Somewhat Helpful) rating and below, however.
The artists whose works I reviewed have my permission to use my specific reviews or essays where their name is mentioned, as long as they cite 'Epinions Smorg' as source. Also... No, you weren't visited by a smorg back-stage. I'm a shy bat and would rather admire you guys from a safe distance (so if any 'smorg' shows up unannounced, be sure to hit it extra-hard with the biggest thing you have on hand!). :o)
My Open AGENDA: Opera is a highly technically demanding art-form that takes a lot of efforts from the performers and the opera house and the recording companies to put on, though it is not given the attention it deserves in the mainstream media, so I dedicate most of my posts here to review of live or recorded performances of opera and classical music in the hope of enticing some new audience to the genre. However, any 'new' audience will probably not hang around if I over-sell a bad performance, so my reviews won't always be positive.
My Web of Trust is a list of Epinionators who consistently post helpful reviews for the consumers looking for info on products. Being friends or relatives yields NO automatic admission to my WoT, though abusive members will be removed from it no matter how well they write.
VESSELINA KASAROVA, the Bulgarian-Swiss mezzo-operano with an amazing multi-color dream voice and enough stage presence to fill the Empire State Building is my singing goddess... I ramble on endlessly about the gal (it doesn't help that she is as cool off-stage as she is on one):
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