The opera is based on Margaret Atwood’s novel about a dystopian American future where fertile women are forced into child-bearing servitude by a theocratic regime.ĭanish conductor Thomas Søndergård makes his company debut, along with Royal Danish Opera Artistic Director John Fulljames as stage director and set designer Chloe Lamford. 22, 2020), in a new English-language coproduction with the Royal Danish Opera. Thomas Søndergård | Credit: Martin BubandtĪlso different, although expected, is the West Coast premiere of Poul Ruders’s The Handmaid’s Tale (Oct. Henrik Nánási will conduct, stage direction is by the debuting Darko Tresnjak, and the cast features sopranos Heidi Stober and Sarah Cambidge and American heldentenor Clay Hilley. Zemlinsky - who taught Arnold Schoenberg and Erich Wolfgang Korngold among others - might have been prompted to write the opera by his dismissal as “a hideous gnome” by his pupil Alma Schindler, who left him for Gustav Mahler (and, subsequently, Walter Gropius and then Franz Werfel). The one-act opera is based on Oscar Wilde’s short story “The Birthday of the Infanta,” about an outsider who courts a princess in vain. This series - unfortunately suspended for some years - revived works by Jewish composers who were silenced in the Holocaust. It was performed for the first time on the West Coast in 2008, as part of James Conlon’s “Recovered Voices” series at LA Opera. Given the inevitable “old warhorse” lineup - albeit with some brilliant casting - this is an unexpected appearance of an operatic rarity.

Scene from Zemlinsky’s Der Zwerg | Credit: Robert Millard

“It” is the surprise of SF Opera’s 2020–2021 season, which Shilvock announced today, the company premiere of Alexander Zemlinsky’s 1922 Der Zwerg (The Dwarf), April 27 – May 15, 2021.

San francisco opera fall 2021