Musings on ballet, classical music, the violin, and life
At last the San Francisco Ballet has returned to the stage at the War Memorial Opera House, commencing with their 75th anniversary performance of Nutcracker, North America’s first full-length production, a fact we SFB patrons are mighty proud of. The Nutcracker run has finished, alas, and as we burst into the New Year, my eye is now … Read more
Okay, so I’ve reviewed San Francisco Ballet’s Nutcracker before. Like, well, five times. It’s a little humbling when you pen a shiny new review, only to discover that you’ve unwittingly used much of the exact same wording in past reviews. Actually, it’s embarrassing, or would have been, if I hadn’t caught myself before submitting THIS … Read more
San Francisco Ballet patrons love their story ballets, and the most beloved is surely Swan Lake. Whether it’s because of, or in spite of the 2010 film, Black Swan, seeing this ballet at least once seems to be on everyone’s bucket list. Next to Nutcracker, this is what draws the non-ballet-goer to the ballet. Artistic … Read more
San Francisco Ballet dancers in Caniparoli’s “Lambarena” I never thought I’d get the chance to mention San Francisco Ballet and my two-year African experience in the same breath, much less blog about it, but here we are. Tuesday night I attended San Francisco Ballet’s 2015 season opener, a program that featuring Serenade, RAkU and Lambarena. … Read more
Willem Christensen and Gisella Caccialanza, 1944 It hadn’t been intended as a “timeless holiday classic,” that first year, on Christmas Eve day, 1944, when Willem Christensen, artistic director of the fledgling San Francisco Ballet, presented to audiences his complete, two-act Nutcracker production. He’d known he was doing something relatively new. The only other complete Nutcracker ballet outside Russia had been in … Read more