Pocket Opera to Conclude Season this Month

The 2026 season of Pocket Opera performances in San Francisco will conclude on the final Sunday of this month. The opera to be presented will be Giacomo Puccini’s three-act La rondine (the swallow). This is one of the few comic operas in the Puccini catalog, the best-known being the one-act “Gianni Schicchi.”

Angela Gheorghiu singing the “Doretta” aria during a gala concert for the Silver Jubilee of Queen Beatrix of The Netherlands

I have to confess that I have never seen this opera in its entirety, and I suspect that most readers are just as unfamiliar with any of the arias in it. At best, there is probably one exception, “Chi il bel sogno di Doretta,” which the courtesan Magda sings in the first act. The poet Prunier presents himself as an authority on love. He is the author of the words for that song, but he never manages to finish it until Magda takes over to prove a love-conquers-all conclusion. All of this takes place at a salon in Paris, but it is only the first of the three acts.

The overall narrative accounts for Magda’s relationship with the young Ruggero. In the first act we learn that he meets Magda on his first visit to Paris and is smitten by her. By the end of the second act, they have decided to begin a new life together. That “new life” takes them to the French Riviera in the final act. It that setting Magda eventually concludes that she is just not the right women to be Ruggero’s bride. She goes back to Paris to maintain her social life; and Ruggero is devastated at having been abandoned. Nevertheless, he is still young and will probably be better equipped for any future romantic encounter!

As of this writing, casting has not yet been announced. However, a Web page has been created for purchasing tickets at prices from $45 to $89. (That Web page says even less about the narrative than the preceding paragraphs!) The performance will begin at 1:30 PM in the Gunn Theater at The Legion of Honor. For those that do not yet know, this building is located in Lincoln Park, which involves following 34th Avenue into the Park after it crosses Clement Street.