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San Diego Opera returned to the Pechanga Arena parking lot over the weekend for a spring festival with a pandemic-themed recital and a colorful production of “The Barber of Seville.”
The festival which continues with three more performances of “Barber” this week takes place in the same spot as the company’s last drive-in opera last fall, “La bohème,” but it improves on the formula.
This time there’s better video screen placement, more live close-ups of the singers, a performance area that expands beyond the stage and the ability for audience members to view program notes and English translations on their cellphones mid-show. Artistically, it’s a feast for the ears, with many fine vocal and musical performances.
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Last October, San Diego Opera became one of the first opera companies in America to return to production during the pandemic, with a well-attended “La bohème” presented for an audience of 4,200 people seated in their cars in the Pechanga Arena parking lot.
Next weekend, the company will return to the Pechanga lot for its spring opera festival, with a pandemic-inspired “One Amazing Night” concert on Saturday night, followed by a four-night run of Gioachino Rossini’s “The Barber of Seville,” April 25 through May 1.
Like last time, the festival will feature a cast of singers from around the country, the San Diego Symphony, video screens throughout the parking projecting close-ups of the singers and English translations of the libretto and high-definition audio streamed through the car radio.
Print Jonah Gercke grew up in a theatrical family, where both of his parents run local theater companies: Francis Gercke of Backyard Renaissance in San Diego and Kristianne Kurner of New Village Arts in Carlsbad.
But for the 22-year-old Gercke, who uses the pronouns they/them/theirs, film was always their first and only passion. At age 9, they could recite from memory the weekly film national box office tallies. And after graduating from high school in Carlsbad, they filmed a documentary on teen relations in Israel and the West Bank that earned the budding filmmaker a 2018 Genius grant from OZY Magazine.
Inspired by the success from their safe drive-in performances of La bohème in the Fall, which heralded the return of live, in-person, opera to San Diego County since the start of the pandemic, and provided over 300 jobs to many who had not worked since March of 2020, San Diego Opera has announced a Spring season of safe, socially-distanced, drive-in performances.
The Spring Season opens on Saturday, April 24, 2021 at 7:30 PM with One Amazing Night, San Diego Opera s annual concert of arias and duets with the San Diego Symphony. Titled When I See Your Face Again: Unmasking the music of notorious pandemics, this year s one-night-only event will explore great works inspired by, and composed in response to, cataclysmic moments in history such as 1918 Influenza Pandemic and the HIV Crisis of the 1980s. Special guest performer Angelina Réaux will join guest performers Allison Spratt Pearce and James Newcomb along with members of the exceptional San Diego Opera Chorus and the San Diego S
When San Diego theaters abruptly shut down March 12 due to the pandemic, nobody expected they would stay dark for the rest of the year. And yet, out of the darkness, local artists began producing hundreds of online productions, play readings, cabarets and concerts, audio-casts, podcasts, interviews and education programs to stay connected to their art and their audiences.
For this year’s look back at the 2020 year in theater, I found it impossible to choose a top 10, since there’s no way to compare the work produced onstage before a live audience with shows presented on Zoom and Facebook Live, or filmed plays. So I offer my picks for standout work in a multitude of formats and themes.