San Diego Opera Podcast

Enjoy this brief description of the sound (the music) that you'll encounter in Donizetti's The Daughter of the Regiment. For an overview of the 2013 operas with Education Director, Nicolas Reveles, start here!

Here's a brief glimpse of the look for our production of The Daughter of the Regiment by Donizetti which comes from the Teatro Comunale di Bologna. For an overview of our 2013 Season with Education Director, Nicolas Reveles, start here!

Here's the first of a brand new series of seriously (!) short podcasts on the story, the look and the music of Donizetti's comedy, The Daughter of the Regiment. For a quick overview of the 2013 operas from Education Director Nicolas Reveles, start here!

Donizetti was a formidable composer in his time and was the toast of Paris in 1840 when he had four operas running simultaneously at the city's largest theatres. Sounds a bit like Andrew Lloyd Webber, eh? Join Nicolas Reveles, Director of Education and Outreach, for an overview of this charming opera which logged 1,000 performances between its premiere and 1900 at the Opera Comique!

Verdi's Aida is certainly the best-known of the operas we're producing in the 2013 Season. But do we really know this opera all that well? Watch and listen as Nicolas Reveles, The Geisel Director of Education and Outreach, takes another look at this perennial favorite, an opera with great music, great spectacle and great drama.

Ildebrando Pizzetti is not a composer known to most U.S. operagoers, but his opera Murder in the Cathedral which premiered at La Scala in 1958, made quite a splash when it first appeared. Based on the historical assassination of Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170 and more specifically the T.S. Eliot verse-play about this event, the opera turned out to be a tour de force for bass, along the lines of Boris Godunov and King Philip. Nicolas Reveles, Director of Education and Outreach, explores this unusual and exciting entry in our 2013 season.

Camille Saint-Saens took his time turning his idea for an opera on this biblical subject (originally conceived as an oratorio) into reality and had to have some encouragement from his friend Franz Liszt to bring it to the stage. Nicolas Reveles, Director of Education and Outreach, explains it all for you as we look forward to the return of this sumptuous, brilliant French opera.

Here it is...the summary video podcast of the 2013 Season! Dr. Nicolas Reveles tells it all, an exciting preview of our best season ever with Donizetti's The Daughter of the Regiment, Saint-Saens' Samson and Delilah, Pizetti's Murder in the Cathedral, Verdi's Aida and the first mariachi opera ever written, Cruzar la cara de la luna (To cross the face of the moon) featuring Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlan! An unbelievable season with extraordinary casts of singers and spectacular productions. Enjoy!

The ultimate independent woman, the most level-headed character in all of opera buffa, is surely Rosina in The Barber of Seville. We have a wonderful Rossini "specialist" in Spanish mezzo-soprano Silvia Tro Santafe who has the personality and the voice (!) for this wonderful role. Listen to Nicolas Reveles' interview with this debut artist who gives us some insight into this brilliant comedy.

The tenor always gets the girl, and The Barber of Seville is no exception. But it takes some wrangling, disguises and subterfuge to finally get Count Almaviva and his beloved Rosina together. Tenor John Osborn is certainly up to the task, a Rossini 'specialist' who is just coming off of a series of critically acclaimed performances of the composer's Otello. Listen in as Nicolas Reveles interviews this talented singer about his career and about the role.