… but it’s not Eugene Onegin and I don’t have to fret about reeds!

Tonight Dan and I get to go to Simon Boccanegra. This is a new opera for me, so I have been reading the blogs of those who have already attended, and now I’ve found a San Diego Opera YouTube video that I think is helpful as well.

If you go to the San Francisco Opera link and then click on the video there you can hear and see snippets of the production with Dmitri Hvorostovsky. (You can also hear the camera clicks. I’m assuming they do the same thing we do here in our little opera company; the photographer comes in to our rehearsals to take pictures prior to opening. I’ve gotten used to the noisy camera clicks, but it used to drive me nuts!)

Update
Hmmm. Not sure why there are two, but below is another opera talk by the same guy as above. Much of the information is the same, but since I’m in a “get all the info you can online” mode, I watched it anyway.

This second video is longer, and talks a bit more about the revision. But, really, it covers so much of the same information, some of the script is the same, and the speaker, Dr. Nick Reveles, is being filmed in the same locations in San Diego. You will, in the middle, also hear musicologist Dr. Ron Shaheen discuss the opera.