Tom Stoppard’s newest Play Rock and Roll is having its first west coast performances at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. It covers the years 1968 to 1990 from the perspective of Jan a graduate student at Cambridge who returns to his native Czechoslovakia after the Soviets crushed the “The Prague Spring” in 1968….
The San Francisco Opera presented Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra on Friday September 12th. The last time I heard Verdi’s flawed masterpiece was also in San Francisco. Paolo Gavanelli sang the title role in the company’s 2001 production. The performance I heard was a disaster. Gavanelli’s voice was somewhere else yet he attempted to sing. A whisper…
Mark O’Connor performed a solo recital at the Allen Theater at Texas Tech University on Thursday September 4, 2008. All the music, except the evening’s only encore – America, was written by Mr O’Connor. He has developed a style that attempts to combine American fiddle music with classic European music for the violin. The result…