Tag archives: Opera Santa Barbara
The first opera I ever saw was Wagner’s Die Walküre on a school trip to the Sadler’s Wells Opera at London’s Coliseum in 1970, a three-act production lasting nearly five hours, which almost put me off the art form for life. Thankfully Puccini and Verdi enticed me back, so it was particularly interesting attending Opera […]
Japan’s primary broadcaster NHK spotlighted Opera Santa Barbara in an extensive news segment on its Lobero Theatre production An American Dream on the treatment of legal American residents of Japanese heritage after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Tokyo TV crew was in our Eden by the Beach for several days during the filming. Clearly […]
Opera Santa Barbara’s latest production The Light in the Piazza at Center Stage Theater, this year’s annual showcase of the Chrisman Studio Artist Program, was an absolute gem. With music and lyrics by Adam Guettel and a book by Craig Lucas, the show was based on the 1960 novella by Elizabeth Spencer and the 1963 […]
Opera Santa Barbara’s recent seasons have represented remarkable innovation for the company, from staging productions for the Concerts in Your Car series during the pandemic, to taking on Wagner for the first time, to mounting a mountain of new works. That ambitiousness continues this weekend with The Light in the Piazza, the first time OSB […]
Man’s inhumanity to man was vividly on display with Opera Santa Barbara’s (OSB) latest one-act production An American Dream by Jack Perla and Jessica Murphy Moo at the Lobero. The moving 70-minute work, that premiered at the Seattle Opera in 2015, is set in Puget Sound in the 1940s, intertwining the fates and tragedies of […]
An American Dream represents mezzo-soprano Nina Yoshida Nelsen’s 10th production with Opera Santa Barbara over two decades, but there’s no doubt that the California debut of the 2015 opera represents a milestone for the Montecito native. Nelsen, who has sung in the world premieres of seven new operas, had a hand in shaping the role […]
A Westmont music professor participates in a community conversation about the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. Paul Mori, whose grandparents and parents were all incarcerated under President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, will speak on a panel with two internment camp survivors, Roke Fukumura, and Hideko Malis, on Saturday, February 4, […]
Santa Barbara Beautiful, which focuses on the built, green, and cultural environment, has elected a new slate of officers for 2023 led by president Kerry Methner, editor and publisher of VOICE magazine for the last 20 years, and a gifted sculptor. She has been on the board since the early 2000s and was president in […]
After three years as Opera Santa Barbara’s Director of Development, Nina Dunbar is leaving to become Donor Advisement Officer at the Santa Barbara Education Foundation. In her new role, Dunbar will be overseeing the organization’s relationship with major donors involving supporting programs that enrich the academic, artistic, and personal development of Santa Barbara Unified School […]
After staging Puccini’s triumphant work Tosca at the Granada, it was time for Opera Santa Barbara to turn to comedy for its latest production, Rossini’s La Scala di Seta – The Silk Ladder – at the Lobero, a one-act vintage work from 1812. Home-grown soprano Jana McIntyre, who sang in Handel’s Semele last season, was […]
The venerable Granada Theatre was almost packed to overflowing when Opera Santa Barbara staged a magnificent version of Puccini’s beloved masterpiece Tosca. Artistic director Kostis Protopapas conducted the orchestra on stage while stage director Layna Chianakas managed the complexities of the spartan production with film and still images superbly. Greek soprano Eleni Calenos excelled as […]
Normally when Opera Santa Barbara’s (OSB) Artistic and General Director Kostis Protopapas signs a stage director for one of the company’s productions, he largely leaves the non-musical decisions behind. “I hire directors that I trust and I let them run with it,” he said, a formula that has served Protopapas well over his six-year tenure […]
It couldn’t have been a more picturesque locale when Opera Santa Barbara hosted its second Opera in the Park concert at Godric Grove in Elings Park. More than 150 fans turned out to watch five singers, all Chrisman Studio Artists, sing famous opera works and music from the likes of Rossini, Verdi, Bizet, Mozart, Puccini, […]
Nicholas Burlett is the new chair of Opera Santa Barbara replacing Joan Rutkowski after a four-year reign. Burlett, a graduate of Cornell University, New York, is a director of engineering for an international safety and security software firm and moved to our Eden by the Beach in 2004. “We must be willing to look for […]
Zach Mendez, Opera Santa Barbara’s Director of Operations and member of the organization’s team since 2018, and a member of the chorus before that, is leaving to dedicate his talents full time to his photography business. “Zach has been my closest partner, deputy, confidant, and friend for over four years, and every area of our […]
To the Riviera aerie of Joan Rutkowski, board chair of Opera Santa Barbara, for a delightful Bistro Musicale for gourmands and oenophiles organized by Epicurean SB founder Amy Baer Robinson, and concert pianist Jacopo Giacopuzzi, founder of the two-year-old Italian organization La Piazza. Jacopo and his sister, Maddalena, both alumni of the Music Academy, played […]
Opera Santa Barbara ended its season in grand style with a lavish production of Verdi’s 1853 classic La Traviata at the Granada, last performed in our Eden by the Beach 11 years ago. Soprano Anya Matanovic was superb as the titular Fallen Woman with her beloved played rousingly by tenor Nathan Granner in the three-act […]
Grand opera is returning to the Granada Theatre. After Opera Santa Barbara’s (OSB) two-plus years filled with ways to creatively cope with the COVID pandemic that ranged from virtual performances, to two Concerts in Your Car outdoor staged adaptations (that included, appropriately, a version of Carmen) and a season of smaller, shorter one-acts, reworkings, and […]
Opera Santa Barbara took over the cavernous stage at the Granada for A Night in Rome, a monochromatic themed tribute to the iconic 1960 Oscar-winning Federico Fellini-directed satire comedy-drama film starring Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg, with a sold-out crowd of 154 guests raising more than $180,000 for the popular organization. The boffo bash, emceed […]
Opera Santa Barbara, under artistic director Kostis Protopapas, brought a new dialogue to an old artform with its latest production, As One, at the Lobero. The innovative 75-minute production, featuring baritone Evan Bravos and mezzo soprano Ashley Kay Armstrong, both Chrisman student artist alumnae, as the transgender characters before and after transitioning. An on-stage quartet […]
