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In The News...
San Francisco Chronicle 
Berkeley Opera's Artistic Director, Jonathan Khuner, describes his job as a prompter
at San Francisco Opera in the Monday, June 8 edition of The San Franciso Chronicle (link).
Berkeley Opera launches new Business Council
As Berkeley Opera celebrates its 30th Anniversary season, we have launched a new Business Council to partner with local businesses. We are delighted to welcome the East Bay Express, DeYoe Wealth Management, Fidelity Insurance, Mechanics Bank, Panoramic Interests, Andronico's Market, Berkeley Daily Planet, Judith Bloom, CPA, R. Kassman Pianos, Henry C. Levy CPA, Nectar Consulting Inc. and Pacific Western Mortgage Group as charter members. Your business can join too:
Call Berkeley Opera's message line at 510-841-1903 or email info@berkeleyopera.org to ask someone to call you to discuss Business Council membership. Berkeley Opera at Caffé Venezia 
Thursday June 18, 6:00 - 8:00 pm. is the next Berkeley Opera at Caffé Venezia featuring soprano Angela Cadelago (star of our Tales of Hoffmann and Elixir of Love) and tenor Andy Truett (star of Elixir of Love and Abduction from the Seraglio).
The evening will explore the rich repertoire of Lyric Italian Opera. Light laments of lost love, passionate duets on dashed hopes, and charming affirmations of affection will be the main fare. Composers included will be Bellini, Donizetti, and Verdi. Call Caffé Venezia at 510-849-4681 for reservations. Berkeley Public Library Events 
SPECIAL FREE EVENTS AT THE BERKELEY PUBLIC LIBRARY
The Berkeley Public Library is at 2090 Kittredge Street (at Shattuck) in downtown Berkeley. Berkeley Opera on YouTube
Berkeley Opera retrospective, excerpts from past productions. Produced in 2008. The Tales of Hoffmann, 2009. Angela Cadelago and Adam Flowers. L'Enfant et les Sortilèges, 2008. Animation by Jeremy Knight. Aïda, 2007. Triumphal March. William Pickersgill, Kevin Courtemanche, Paul Cheak, Jennifer Roderer, Charlotte Khuner. The Legend of the Ring, 2004. Excerpts illustrating the use of projections. The Riot Grrrl on Mars, 2002. Overture. Reviews from our Current Season Tales of Hoffmann Review: Berkeley Opera's retold
'Tales of Hoffmann' captivates
By Cheryl North Contra Costa Times correspondent
Posted: 03/02/2009 12:13:36 PM PST Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann, aka E.T.A. Hoffmann, is certainly one of the most fascinating characters to emerge from a century overflowing with fascinating characters. He has been rendered — if possible — a little more so by the Berkeley Opera. Born in East Prussia in 1776, Hoffmann became one of the 19th-century's most popular, if slightly macabre, writers. He was, at the same time, a lawyer, composer, music critic, painter, caricaturist and an enduring, although dissolute and unfaithful, husband. The plucky 30-year-old Berkeley Opera is currently in the midst of four performances of Jacques Offenbach's not-quite-completed 1881 opera, "Les Contes d'Hoffmann" (The Tales of Hoffmann), which is loosely based on the infamous Hoffmann's life. The Berkeley production benefits mightily from a wittily illuminating update of the Offenbach-Barbier French-language original, written by Berkeley resident David Scott Marley. Marley's version, defined in the program not as a translation, but as an "English adaption," allows ample creative leeway, as well as a reordering of the opera's various elements. While both plot iterations feature Hoffmann as the primary character in an amalgam of three of his own fantastical stories, Marley has endowed his, in a way that other English translations do not, with a pleasing supply of graceful rhyme that melds beautifully and lyrically into Offenbach's music. Berkeley's Hoffmann, portrayed as a sort of anti-hero writer suffering from "writer's cramp," is sung by tall, dark-haired tenor Adam Flowers. The opening scene sets him and a jolly company of opera patrons doubling as an exceptionally skilled opera chorus, in a basement cafe enjoying drinks during an intermission in the opera going on in the hall above. The glittering star of the opera happens to be Stella, Hoffmann's current mistress, sung by the versatile soprano Angela Cadelago. Tailing Hoffmann is his benevolently nagging "Muse," disguised as his sidekick, Nicklaus, a sort of guardian angel type who tries to encourage him to write. Mezzo-soprano Nora Lennox Martin, with laudable acting ability, voice and diction, created an exceptionally adept Nicklaus. The ensuing plot entails Hoffmann's entertaining the assembled group by recounting the tales of his "other" mistresses — the mechanical doll Olympia, the tragically doomed singer Antonia and the heartlessly deceptive Venetian courtesan Giulietta — all impressively sung by the same Angela Cadelago. Splendid baritone Paul Murray suavely inhabited all four of the evil figures creating havoc and challenging Hoffmann in each of his love affairs. Other roles were admirably sung by Wayne D. Wong, Sara Couden, Patricia Prewitt, George Arana, Brian M. Rosen and Alexander Frank. Ernest Frederic Knell conducted the fine small orchestra; Phil Lowery created the clever staging; Emilica Sun Beahm did the Victorian "steam punk" costumes and Alex Sardelich provided the Victorian gothic sets. Opera Review
More reviews:
San Francisco Chronicle San Francisco Classical Voice Berkeley Daily Planet SFCV feature story Reviews from the 2008 Season Elixir of Love "[Angela] Cadelago's Adina is consistently wonderful—right notes, right phrasing, bright sound, good diction, and excellent acting of a role that requires a hard-to-believe transformation from flirty-mean to selflessly loving. The soprano also has that ineffable quality that separates good from something better; she defiitely has "it."- Janos Gereben, San Francisco Classical Voice "...a bubbling success. Angela Cadelago (Adina) ...exhibiting the surest lyric coloratura I can recall in a small-company performance. Absolutely relaxed onstage, and charming as all-get-out ... sailing through Donizetti's challenging writing as though it was second nature." - Jason Victor Serinus, Opera News Bluebeard's Castle and L'Enfant et les Sortilèges Another huge feather—Cyrano's famed plume, even—in Berkeley Opera's tiny cap, the double-bill of Béla Bartók's 1918 Bluebeard's Castle and Maurice Ravel's 1925 L'Enfant et les Sortilèges opened Saturday night at the Julia Morgan Theatre with a fabulous production... the orchestra's rock-solid, red-hot, intense, mighty rendition of the Bartók, and then its elegant, effortless performance of the wickedly intricate Ravel..."—Janos Gereben, San Francisco Classical Voice "...a stunner, outstanding by any measure or any company, whether tiny (like Berkeley) or huge like a grand-opera house. Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle in the original Hungarian sung by two local artists got a finer performance than many a recording..." —Paul Hertelendy, artssf.com "For me, the single most exciting moment of the evening came early in the Ravel, when a pair of overstuffed chairs walked off the stage and immediately reappeared on screen in cartoon form—with the addition of the anthropomorphic eyes and ears that enabled them to sing. At that moment, the audience felt instantly and intuitively that the magic had begun to take hold. And the rest of the performance bore that out." —Joshua Kosman, San Francisco Chronicle Tosca "Led by Artistic Director Jonathan Khuner, the 24-piece orchestra played with great sensitivity. The delicate moments were rendered more so, and the dramatic passages sounded as full and intense as one could hope for. Indeed, for an ensemble a fraction of the size typically used, the depth and richness that Khuner coaxed out of his players were quite remarkable... Jillian Khuner and Kevin Courtemanche both gave solid, finely crafted performances. They made a wonderful pair, with well-matched voices."—Kathryn Miller, San Francisco Classical Voice * * * * * * * "Berkeley Opera is one of the more interesting small companies in the nation." - San Francisco Classical Voice (sfcv.org)
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