Lucia di Lammermoor is a dramma tragico in three acts by Gaetano Donizetti. Salvadore Cammarano wrote the Italian-language libretto loosely based upon Sir Walter Scott's 1819 historical novel The Bride of Lammermoor.
Amy Ruth Tan is an American author known for The Joy Luck Club, which was adapted into The Joy Luck Club in 1993 by director Wayne Wang.
Mefistofele is an opera in a prologue and five acts, later reduced to four acts and an epilogue, the only completed opera with music by the Italian composer-librettist Arrigo Boito. The opera was given its premiere on 5 March 1868 at La Scala, Milan, under the baton of the composer, despite his lack of experience and skill as a conductor.
San Francisco Opera (SFO) is an American opera company founded in 1923 by Gaetano Merola (1881–1953) based in San Francisco, California.
The Mandrake is a satirical play by Italian Renaissance philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli. Although the five-act comedy was published in 1524 and first performed in the carnival season of 1526, Machiavelli likely wrote The Mandrake in 1518 as a distraction from his bitterness at having been excluded from the diplomatic and political life of Florence following the 1512 reversion to Medici rule. Some scholars read the play as an overt critique of the House of Medici; and some scholars assert that the play is a mirror to his political treatises. However, Machiavelli set the action in 1504 during the period of the Florentine Republic in order to express his frustrations without fear of censure from patrons already ill-disposed towards him and his writing.
The Bonesetter's Daughter, published in 2003, is Amy Tan's fourth novel. Like much of Tan's work, this book deals with the relationship between an American-born Chinese woman and her immigrant mother.
Jake Heggie is an American composer of opera, vocal, orchestral, and chamber music. He is best known for his operas and art songs as well as for his collaborations with internationally renowned performers and writers.
Michael Korie is an American librettist and lyricist whose writing for musical theater and opera includes the musicals Grey Gardens and Far From Heaven, and the operas Harvey Milk and The Grapes of Wrath. His works have been produced on Broadway, Off-Broadway, and internationally. His lyrics have been nominated for the Tony Award and the Drama Desk Award, and won the Outer Critics Circle Award. In 2016, Korie was awarded the Marc Blitzstein Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Chen Shi-Zheng is a New York-based theater and film director.
The Mother of Us All is a two-act opera composed by Virgil Thomson to a libretto by Gertrude Stein. She wrote the libretto in the winter of 1945–46, sending it to Thomson in March of 1946; he began the score that October, shortly after Stein's death in July, and completed it early in 1947. The opera chronicles the life of Susan B. Anthony, one of the major figures in the fight for women's suffrage in the United States. In fanciful style, it brings together characters, fictional and non-fictional, from different periods of American history.
Stewart Wallace is an American composer and cantor.
Thunderstorm is a play by the Chinese dramatist Cao Yu. It is one of the most popular Chinese dramatic works of the period prior to the Japanese invasion of China in 1937.
David Gockley is an American opera company administrator. He served as general director of Houston Grand Opera from 1972 to 2005 and San Francisco Opera from 2006 to 2016. He is a student of Margaret Harshaw.
Old San Francisco is a 1927 American silent historical drama film starring Dolores Costello and featuring Warner Oland. The film, which was produced and distributed by Warner Bros., was directed by Alan Crosland.
Dr. Sun Yat-sen is a 2011 Chinese-language western-style opera in three acts by the New York-based American composer Huang Ruo who was born in China and is a graduate of Oberlin College's Conservatory as well as the Juilliard School of Music. The libretto was written by established playwright and translator Candace Mui-ngam Chong. It is her first opera libretto.
Zheng Cao was a Chinese-born, American operatic mezzo-soprano known for her signature role of Suzuki in Madama Butterfly. She performed this role with opera companies such as San Francisco Opera, Grand Théâtre de Genève, Pittsburgh Opera, Vancouver Opera, Washington National Opera, San Diego Opera, and under the baton of Seiji Ozawa with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Her portrayal of the role of Cherubino in The Marriage of Figaro also earned her recognition at several American opera companies, including San Francisco Opera, Pittsburgh Opera, and Houston Grand Opera. She died from lung cancer in San Francisco, California in 2013.
Dolores Claiborne is an opera in two acts composed by Tobias Picker to a libretto by J. D. McClatchy. Based on the Stephen King 1992 novel Dolores Claiborne, the opera was commissioned by the San Francisco Opera and premiered in San Francisco on September 18, 2013. In 2017, the New York City Opera performed the world premiere of a new chamber version of the opera at the 59E59 Theater A, directed by Michael Capasso.
Harvey Milk is an opera in three acts composed by Stewart Wallace to a libretto by Michael Korie. A joint commission by Houston Grand Opera, New York City Opera, and San Francisco Opera, it was premiered on January 21, 1995 by Houston Grand Opera. The opera is based on the life and death of the gay activist and politician Harvey Milk who was assassinated along with San Francisco's mayor George Moscone on November 27, 1978.
Dream of the Red Chamber is an English-language opera in two acts composed by Chinese American composer Bright Sheng, with libretto by Sheng and David Henry Hwang. Based on the classic 18th-century Chinese novel of the same name by Cao Xueqin, the three-hour English-language opera had its world premiere on September 10, 2016, by the San Francisco Opera.
La Dori, overo Lo schiavo reggio is a tragi-comic opera in a prologue and three acts composed by Antonio Cesti to a libretto by Giovanni Filippo Apolloni. It was first performed in the court theatre at Innsbruck in 1657. The story is set in Babylon on the shores of the Euphrates and is a convoluted tale of mistaken identities—a female protagonist who disguised as a man eventually regains her lost lover, and a man disguised as a woman who causes another man to fall in love with him. In several respects it resembles the plot of Cesti and Apolloni's earlier opera L'Argia and foreshadows Apostolo Zeno's libretto for Gli inganni felici (1695) and Metastasio's libretto for L'Olimpiade (1733). The first Italian staging of La Dori was in Florence in 1661 for the wedding of Cosimo III de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany. It subsequently became one of the most popular operas in 17th-century Italy. The opera was revived three times in the 20th century, beginning in 1983.
