L'Opera

We're doing the opera thing again this year, and since we'll be travelling so much in the next month, we've had to move up a couple shows. As a result, we went to see both Strauss' Die Fledermaus and Verdi's A Masked Ball this week at the SF Opera.

I thought the music in Die Fledermaus was nice, but the production emphasized the slapstick elements of this operetta so much that it rather turned me off. It was also sung in English, and since many parts of the dialogue was spoken normally rather than sung, it really felt more like a musical than an opera.

There were no such problems with A Masked Ball, which actually had a pretty decent plot. Combine that with amazing singing and beautiful sets made this one of the better operas I've seen in a while.