Colorado audiences get a classic treat in Opera Colorado's La bohème
Opera Colorado is deep in rehearsals for it's production of La bohème, the iconic opera written by Giacomo Puccini in 1895. It's the story of four young friends living the bohemian lifestyle in Paris. There is a poet, a painter, a musician and a philosopher. The opera follows the characters as they pursue their passions, eek out a living, fall in love, and face tragedy.
"We see every aspect of their friendship from their laughter to their struggles, and we see everything kind of shift when Rodolfo, the poet, meets Mimi," said Raquel González, who sings Mimì in the Opera Colorado production.
La bohème was first performed in Italy in 1896, but many of the themes of the stories hold true today.
"It is a wonderful story. It's really fast paced. It's really funny in a lot of places, but it's really moving as well," said Kristine McIntyre, Director of the Opera Colorado production.
La bohème includes some of the most recognizable music in opera, and the story has been retold in many ways including the movie, Moulin Rouge, and the musical, Rent. The Opera Colorado production is sung in Italian with English and Spanish subtitles at every seat.
Opera Colorado's La bohème will be at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House for 5-nights only: February 22, 25, 27, 28 & March 2, 2025.
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San Francisco Chronicle
an hour ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
One of Napa Valley's oldest winemaking families debuts a major tasting room transformation
It's a story made for Hallmark Channel: Tired of the hustle in Hollywood, a screenwriter returns to his sleepy hometown, realizes the story of his career was right in front of him all along and decides to tell it through the revitalization of his family's historic wine business. It sounds scripted, but that's exactly what Greg Pestoni has spent the past decade doing. Now, the transformation of St. Helena's charming Pestoni Family Estate Winery is ready for its premiere. Pestoni credits famed director and winery owner Francis Ford Coppola for inspiring his move from his native Napa Valley to Hollywood after high school in the 1980s. Since the third grade, he was friends with Coppola's son, Roman, and recalls watching rough cuts of 'Apocalypse Now' on a Betamax before it was released. Napa was a quiet agricultural valley, and he was anxious to get out. 'You didn't idolize (your friends) who worked in the vineyard,' said Pestoni.'It was as sexy as picking walnuts.' But after 27 years in the film industry and two discouraging Guild strikes, the screenwriter, who worked on 'The Godfather' movies, returned to a very different Napa Valley, one that felt a lot more like Hollywood than when he left it. There, he found a story he desperately wanted to tell: His family's 130-year-old wine journey. 'This was an unsung period of winemaking,' Pestoni said. 'When you think of the 1890s and the bunch that was making wine, who is still here doing it? Just a few.' In the 1880s, the Swiss-Italian Pestonis arrived in Napa Valley. In 1892, Greg Pestoni's great-grandfather, Albino Pestoni, planted vineyards and built a winery in the Eastern hills on Howell Mountain. The winery shut down due to Prohibition and was sold in the early 1920s; a few years later, Greg Pestoni's grandfather, Henry Pestoni, purchased a property on Whitehall Lane in the Rutherford wine region, now the home of Pestoni's Sauvignon Blanc vineyard. Like many wine families, the Pestonis picked up other agricultural pursuits during Prohibition. Over the years, the family raised chickens, hogs and dairy cows, but it also grew grapes and made bootleg brandy. Henry Pestoni allegedly sold his brandy to staff at the Napa County courthouse and, in return, they'd tip him off about upcoming federal raids. Greg Pestoni's uncles also owned a Napa Valley winery and bootlegged alcohol; the original stone building is now the home of Ehlers Estate. In the early 1960s, Greg Pestoni's father, composting pioneer Bob Pestoni, founded the Upper Valley Disposal Service, revolutionizing winery waste recycling. He went on to own a second operation, the Clover Flat Landfill just south of Calistoga. (The family sold both companies in 2023; last month, federal prosecutors closed an investigation into environmental crimes and obstruction of justice related to both properties, now owned by a company called Waste Connections.) The family went decades without commercially producing wine, but they continued to grow and sell grapes. Then, in 1994, the winery next door came up for sale. Bob Pestoni bought it, and Greg Pestoni's brother, Andy Pestoni, became the winemaker. They named the winery Rutherford Grove after a eucalyptus grove on the property, but it created confusion with two other local businesses, the Rutherford Grill restaurant and Rutherford Hill Winery. 'Someone would ask if we served the duck burger,' joked Greg Pestoni, adding that he felt the name 'sounded like a big operation,' when the winery only makes a few thousand cases of wine a year. Shortly after Greg Pestoni returned home in 2014, he convinced his father to change the name to Pestoni Family Estate Winery. He called relatives to compile old family photos and wrote up the family's history for the website. 'It helped make it a much more personal experience,' Greg Pestoni said. 'I think what's really missing in Napa these days is the people behind something and the story behind something.' The winery has been one of the last remaining embodiments of a down-home era in Napa Valley, before luxury resorts, Michelin-starred restaurants and multi-million-dollar tasting rooms, like its flashy new neighbor, Bella Union. 'You get the feeling of going to somebody's house or being in somebody's yard,' said Greg Pestoni. 'People would say, 'You're like a Sonoma winery in Napa.' They don't want the secret to get out of this place, they don't want to tell anybody.' But remaining a secret isn't good for business, especially during a global downturn in wine sales. Despite Pestoni's prime positioning off Napa Valley's busy Highway 29, the winery has remained under the radar, and like many of the region's older wineries, the family decided to renovate. 'We're in Napa,' Greg Pestoni said. 'We needed to step up.' They started with the large, grassy picnic area surrounded by eucalyptus and redwood trees, which became a COVID-19 pandemic hot spot. 'Saturdays and Sundays were bananas. We were serving on picnic tables and our staff were crossing the lawn in 100-degree heat,' recalled Aimee Pestoni, Greg Pestoni's wife. 'People wanted to be outside, and they still do.' Pestoni kept its picnic lawn — one of the few kid-friendly spots in Napa Valley — but built a new pavilion for more formal tastings. The striking cedar pavilion, featuring a bar, tables and heaters, was designed by the same architect behind San Francisco's Rolex boutiques. Yet a much more significant transformation took place inside the 1995 tasting room. 'There were no seats, you'd slam (the wine) down and go on your way,' said Aimee Pestoni. While the lawn maintains Pestoni's classic, old Napa feel, the new tasting room interior catapults visitors to the present: It's moody, sophisticated and edgy, designed like a cozy study found within a luxurious mountain escape. The space features dark wood, a stone fireplace, velvet bar stools and leather armchairs with fur throws. Geometric fur rugs look like tile from a distance, while custom wallpaper features layers of burlap, hand-painted and then fringed, by an Alaskan artist. The change is a jarring departure from the family's humble roots, but upon closer observation, visitors will find ties to the Pestoni story in every nook and cranny. There's a wall of black and white family photos, including a 1919 capture of Henry Pestoni at his coming home party from World War I, taken at the William Tell Hotel in St. Helena. Historic documents sit underneath the glass top of a coffee table, including the assessment taxes for the original 1892 winery ($2 for four gallons of wine) and a corn sales ledger. A bookshelf displays an antique winemaking tool and remnants of a wooden backpack, which Albino Pestoni made and used while herding in the Swiss Alps in the 1870s. Noted Napa Valley designer Erin Martin also incorporated eclectic homages to the family's history, like an ornate, hand-carved cuckoo clock that nods to their Swiss-Italian heritage. The centerpiece is a massive chandelier constructed from a round, wooden form, which was used to make wine casks in the 19th century. A black crow sculpture sits on the chandelier, a quirky tribute to Joe, Greg Pestoni's pet crow that the family rescued and fed when he was growing up. Andy Pestoni recently retired, so his brother hired renowned consulting winemaker Aaron Pott to help craft the wines, which include classic Napa grapes like Petite Sirah, Sangiovese and Barbera. Fancier tasting experiences ($50-$125) launched with the renovation, but the winery can still accommodate walk-ins and kids. Those looking for something casual can opt for a self-guided tasting at a picnic table ($45) and bring their own provisions, which most Napa Valley wineries don't allow. 'We want to keep that vibe,' said Aimee Pestoni.
Yahoo
8 hours ago
- Yahoo
'I Don't Understand You': Nick Kroll, Andrew Rannells movie inspired by adoption fraud story from filmmakers
While Nick Kroll and Andrew Rannells voice some pretty hysterical characters in Big Mouth, they're now sharing the screen in the horror-comedy I Don't Understand You (now in theatres). Written and directed by married filmmakers David Joseph Craig and Brian Crano, the movie had a particularly interesting starting point. In I Don't Understand You Kroll and Rannells play a couple, Dom and Cole, who have just fallen victim to adoption fraud, but things are looking up. A pregnant woman named Candace (Amanda Seyfried) thinks they're the right fit for the family to adopt her child. But just before that happens, Dom and Cole take a romantic Italian vacation. Things take a turn when they get lost outside of Rome, trying to find a restaurant. As their stranded in an unknown location, the trip turns to bloody Italian chaos. As Craig and Crano identified, the first portion of the movie, up until the couple gets stuck going to the restaurant, is quite close to the real experience the filmmakers had. "We were adopting a child. We had been through an adoption scam, which was heartbreaking, and then had a completely different experience when we matched with the birth mother of our son," Crano told Yahoo. "But we found out that we were going to have him literally like two days before we were going on our 10th anniversary trip." "And we were like, 'Shit, should we not go?' But we decided to do it, and you're so emotionally opened up and vulnerable in that moment that it felt like a very similar experience to being in a horror movie, even though it's a joyful kind of situation." A key element of I Don't Understand You is that feeling of shock once the story turns from a romance-comedy to something much bloodier. It feels abrupt, but it's that jolt of the contrast that also makes that moment feel particularly impactful to watch. "Our sense of filmmaking is so ... based on surprise," Craig said. "As a cinephile, my main decade to go to are outlandish '90s movies, because they just take you to a different space, and as long as you have a reality to the characters that are already at hand, you can kind of take them wherever." "Personally, the situation of adoption was a constant jolt [from] one emotion to another that we felt like that was the right way to tell a story like this, which was literally, fall in love with a couple and then send them into a complete nightmare. And I think you can only get that if you do it abruptly, and kind of manically." While Rannells and Kroll have that funny and sweet chemistry the story needs, these were roles that weren't written for them. But it works because Crano and Craig know how to write in each other's voices so well, that's where a lot of the dialogue is pulled from. Additionally, the filmmakers had the "creative trust" in each other to pitch any idea, as random as it may have seemed, to see if it could work for the film. "When you're with somebody you've lived with for 15 years, there is very little that I can do that would embarrass me in front of David," Crano said. "So that level of creative freedom is very generative." "We were able to screw up in front of each other a lot without it affecting the rest of our day," Craig added. Of course, with the language barrier between the filmmakers and the Italian cast, it was a real collaboration to help make the script feel authentic for those characters. "All of the Italian actors and crew were very helpful in terms of being like, 'Well I feel like my character is from the south and wouldn't say it in this way.' And helped us build the language," Crano said. "And it was just a very trusting process, because neither of us are fluent enough to have that kind of dialectical specificity that you would in English." "It was super cool to just be watching an actor perform a scene that you've written in English that has been translated a couple of times, but you still completely understand it, just by the generosity of their performance." For Craig, he has an extensive resume of acting roles, including projects like Boy Erased and episodes of Dropout. Among the esteemed alumni of the Upright Citizens Brigade, he had a writing "itch" for a long time, and was "in awe" of Crano's work as a director. "Truthfully, in a weird way, it felt like such a far off, distant job, because everything felt really difficult, and I think with this project it just made me understand that it was just something I truly love and truly wanted to do," Craig said. "I love the idea of creative control and being in a really collaborative situation. Acting allows you to do that momentarily, but I think like every other job that you can do on a film is much longer lasting, and I think that's something I was truly seeking." For Crano, he also grew up as a theatre kid, moving on to writing plays in college. "The first time I got laughs for jokes I was like, 'Oh, this is it. Let's figure out how to do this,'" he said. "I was playwriting in London, my mom got sick in the States, so I came back, and I started writing a movie, because I was living in [Los Angeles] and I thought, well there are no playwrights in L.A., I better write a movie.'" That's when Crano found a mentor in Peter Friedlander, who's currently the head of scripted series, U.S. and Canada, at Netflix. "I had written this feature and ... we met with a bunch of directors, great directors, directors I truly admire, and they would be like, 'It should be like this.' And I'd be like, 'Yeah, that's fine, but maybe it's more like this.' And after about five of those Peter was like, 'You're going to direct it. We'll make some shorts. We'll see if you can do it.' He just sort of saw it," Crano recalled. "It's nice to be seen in any capacity for your ability, but [I started to realize] this is not so different from writing, it's just sort of writing and physical space and storytelling, and I love to do it. ... It is a very difficult job, because it requires so much money to test the theory, to even see if you can." But being able to work together on I Don't Understand You, the couple were able to learn things about and from each other through the filmmaking process. "David is lovely to everyone," Crano said. "He is much nicer than I am at a sort of base level, and makes everyone feel that they can perform at the best of their ability. And that's a really good lesson." "Brian literally doesn't take anything personally," Craig added. "Almost to a fault." "And it's very helpful in an environment where you're getting a lot of no's, to have a partner who's literally like, 'Oh, it's just no for now. Great, let's move on. Let's find somebody who's going to say yes, maybe we'll come back to that no later.' I'm the pessimist who's sitting in the corner going, 'Somebody just rejected me, I don't know what to do.' ... It just makes you move, and that's that's very helpful for me."
Yahoo
9 hours ago
- Yahoo
'I Don't Understand You': Nick Kroll, Andrew Rannells movie based on adoption fraud story from filmmakers
While Nick Kroll and Andrew Rannells voice some pretty hysterical characters in Big Mouth, they're now sharing the screen in the horror-comedy I Don't Understand You (now in theatres). Written and directed by married filmmakers David Joseph Craig and Brian Crano, the movie had a particularly interesting starting point. In I Don't Understand You Kroll and Rannells play a couple, Dom and Cole, who have just fallen victim to adoption fraud, but things are looking up. A pregnant woman named Candace (Amanda Seyfried) thinks they're the right fit for the family to adopt her child. But just before that happens, Dom and Cole take a romantic Italian vacation. Things take a turn when they get lost outside of Rome, trying to find a restaurant. As their stranded in an unknown location, the trip turns to bloody Italian chaos. As Craig and Crano identified, the first portion of the movie, up until the couple gets stuck going to the restaurant, is quite close to the real adoption experience the filmmakers had. "We were adopting a child. We had been through an adoption scam, which was heartbreaking, and then had a completely different experience when we matched with the birth mother of our son," Crano told Yahoo. "But we found out that we were going to have him literally like two days before we were going on our 10th anniversary trip." "And we were like, 'Shit, should we not go?' But we decided to do it, and you're so emotionally opened up and vulnerable in that moment that it felt like a very similar experience to being in a horror movie, even though it's a joyful kind of situation." A key element of I Don't Understand You is that feeling of shock once the story turns from a romance-comedy to something much bloodier. It feels abrupt, but it's that jolt of the contrast that also makes that moment feel particularly impactful to watch. "Our sense of filmmaker is so much based on surprise, Craig said. "As a cinephile, my main decade to go to are outlandish '90s movies, because they just take you to a different space, and as long as you have a reality to the characters that are already at hand, you can kind of take them wherever." "Personally, the situation of adoption was a constant jolt [from] one emotion to another that we felt like that was the right way to tell a story like this, which was literally, fall in love with a couple and then send them into a complete nightmare. And I think you can only get that way if you do it abruptly, and kind of manically." While Rannells and Kroll have that funny and sweet chemistry the story needs, these were roles that weren't written for them. But it works because Crano and Craig know how to write in each other's voices so well, that's where a lot of the dialogue is pulled from. Additionally, the filmmakers had the "creative trust" in each other to pitch any idea, as random as it may have seemed, to see if it could work for the film. "When you're with somebody you've lived with for 15 years, there is very little that I can do that would embarrass me in front of David," Crano said. "So that level of creative freedom is very generative." "We were able to screw up in front of each other a lot without it affecting the rest of our day," Craig added. Of course, with the language barrier between the filmmakers and the Italian cast, it was a real collaboration to help make the script feel authentic for those characters. "All of the Italian actors and crew were very helpful in terms of being like, 'Well I feel like my character is is from the south and wouldn't say it in this way.' And helped us build the language," Crano said. "And it was just a very trusting process, because neither of us are fluent enough to have that kind of dialectical specificity that you would in English." "It was super cool to just be watching an actor perform a scene that you've written in English that has been translated a couple of times, but you still completely understand it, just by the generosity of their performance." For Craig, he has an extensive resume of acting roles, including projects like Boy Erased and episodes of Dropout. Among the esteemed alumni of the Upright Citizens Brigade, he had a writing "itch" for a long time, and was "in awe" of Crano's work as a director. "Truthfully, in a weird way, it felt like such a far off, distang job, because everything felt really difficult, and I think with this project it just made me understand that it was just something I truly love and truly wanted to do," Craig said. "I love the idea of creative control and being in a really collaborative situation. Acting allows you to do that momentarily, but I think like every other job that you can do on a film is much longer lasting, and I think that's something I was truly seeking." For Crano, he also grew up as a theatre kid, moving on to writing plays in college. "The first time I got laughs for jokes I was like, 'Oh, this is it. Let's figure out how to do this,'" he said. "I was playwriting in London, my mom got sick in the States, so I came back, and I started writing a movie, because I was living in [Los Angeles] and I thought, well there are no playwrights in L.A., I better write a movie.'" That's when Crano found a mentor in Peter Friedlander, who's currently the head of scripted series, U.S. and Canada, at Netflix. "I had written this feature and ... we met with a bunch of directors, great directors, directors I truly admire, and they would be like, 'It should be like this.' And I'd be like, 'Yeah, that's fine, but maybe it's more like this.' And after about five of those Peter was like, 'You're going to direct it. We'll make some shorts. We'll see if you can do it.' He just sort of saw it," Crano recalled. "It's nice to be seen in any capacity for your ability, but [I started to realize] this is not so different from writing, it's just sort of writing and physical space and storytelling, and I love to do it. ... It is a very difficult job, because it requires so much money to test the theory, to even see if you can." But being able to work together on I Don't Understand You, the couple were able to learn things about and from each other through the filmmaking process. "David is lovely to everyone," Crano said. "He is much nicer than I am at a sort of base level, and makes everyone feel that they can perform at the best of their ability. And that's a really good lesson." "Brian literally doesn't take anything personally," Craig added. "Almost to a fault." "And it's very helpful in an environment where you're getting a lot of no's, to have a partner who's literally like, 'Oh, it's just no for now. Great, let's move on. Let's find somebody who's going to say yes, maybe we'll come back to that no later.' I'm the pessimist who's sitting in the corner going, 'Somebody just rejected me, I don't know what to do.' ... It just makes you move, and that's that's very helpful for me."
