The company's first-I hope last-staging of Donizetti's 'Lucrezia Borgia' (1833) was resuscitated to obtain the services of Renée Fleming, one of the few well-known names in a thrifty season. Theofanidis and librettist Donna Di Novelli couldn't turn Rick Rescorla's life into an opera that mattered. I was impressed by Francesca Zambello's deployment of the large cast, and Peter Davison's sets.

13 review of SF Opera's premiere of Christopher Theofanidis's 'Heart of a Soldier,' based on a true-life account of a modern hero in Vietnam in 1965 and at the World Trade Center on 9/11. But it was conductor Nicola Luisotti and veteran chorus director Ian Robertson who convinced me that Puccini had written one opera that can be ranked alongside Giuseppe Verdi's top 10. After 'In Questa Reggia' (in which she explains why she hates men) and her tormented, house-filling duet with Calaf just before her abrupt change of heart, I was ready to concede that she may be the finest Turandot singing today.

This was the local debut of Iréne Theorin (a Wagnerian star elsewhere), singing the title role. The three courtiers, often played as clowns, were always in dead earnest.

Leah Crocetto-a 2008 Merola Program graduate-sang Liù's Act III aria as movingly as I've ever heard it sung. But he took the role with total seriousness, never as a series of star-turns, and helped transform this 1926 piece of Italian Chinoiserie into something genuinely affecting. Marco Berti lacks the vocal equipment of some of my previous Calafs, though what he has he used very well.

Sf opera turandot