Tag archives: Puccini

A New Setting for an Old Favorite
By Richard Mineards   |   July 25, 2023

Italian composer Puccini’s beloved opera La bohème took on a whole new tone at the Granada as part of the Music Academy’s 76th annual Summer Festival. Instead of Paris’ Latin Quarter in the 1830s, as in the original 1895 work, the setting was Brooklyn and Manhattan in 2011, a time of restless energy and a […]

Mission: Impossible Objects
By Steven Libowitz   |   March 10, 2021

Ed Lister, who is known in both Los Angeles and Santa Barbara as a skilled scenic artist with credits in the theater credits and mural making, has created a series of vibrant abstract silk screen prints, or serigraphs. They were made starting in the early 1970s while he was teaching printmaking at the Chelsea School […]

Felder Finds a New Forum: 6Qs with the musician-actor
By Steven Libowitz   |   November 26, 2020

Prior to the arrival of COVID-19, veteran virtuoso playwright, performer, and pianist Hershey Felder had made a career out of creating and performing solo shows about composers Claude Debussy, George Gershwin, Frédéric Chopin, Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Liszt, Leonard Bernstein, Irving Berlin, and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky that have been seen across a wide range of […]

Float Like a Butterfly
By Richard Mineards   |   November 7, 2019

If you have a yen for opera, Puccini’s Madama Butterfly at the Granada was definitely the production for you. Opera Santa Barbara’s 25th anniversary season opener was a cracker with artistic director Kostis Protopapas working musical magic with soprano Eleni Calenos in the pivotal role. She was joined by a superb cast, including tenor Harold […]

Opera-tunity
By Richard Mineards   |   November 15, 2018

Opera Santa Barbara, celebrating its 25th anniversary, launched its latest season in cracking style with Puccini’s classic work La Boheme at the Granada. Director Omer Ben Seadia, who made her local debut three years ago with A Streetcar Named Desire and L’Italiana in Algeri, has done an artfully crafted four-act show with opera director Kostis […]