FRIDAY

Pub date October 25, 2006

Oct. 27

Film

Bernal Heights
Outdoor Cinema

Icy nights be damned: San Franciscans are incapable of overdosing on outdoor cinema. Xanadu in Dolores Park may attract a certain roller-skating niche audience, but the past few months have proven that there’s something for everyone at Bernal Heights Outdoor Cinema. A special “Best of Bernal” night closes out the series, with works by local favorites Jay Rosenblatt, Jeff Fino, Jenni Olson, and more filling the program. Don’t miss Bolerium, Keary and Nathan Kensinger’s affectionate portrait of the Mission District indie bookstore. (Cheryl Eddy)

7:30 p.m.
Metro High School
Folsom between Precita
and Stoneman, SF
Free
(415) 641-8417
www.bhoutdoorcine.org

Opera

Tristan und Isolde

O divine madness, the oblivion of desire, a “bliss inspired by deception” – that’s Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. The debt-ridden composer’s quickie respite during his marathon work on the Ring cycle became so much more than an earthshaking moneymaker – instead it’s a musically radical and vocalist-taxing ode to “soul states” and transcendent love that champions, as it curses, night, death, and desire over daylight, life, and duty. Even pop culture and cinema’s greedy appropriation of SF Opera music director Donald Runnicles’s favorite opera (I couldn’t stop recalling Un Chien Andalou at the first strains of the prelude or feeling the urge to blurt a Looney Tunes-appropriate “Kill the wabbit!” at key moments) won’t stem your appreciation of Wagner’s chromatic romanticism, David Hockney’s deep-focus Salvador Dali-meets-Alfred Hitchcock sets, and the utter vocal chops of Thomas Moser as Tristan in the third act and Christine Brewer as Isolde during the “Liebestod” (Love death) in this LA Opera production presented by SF Opera. (Kimberly Chun)

7 p.m.
Opera House
301 Van Ness, SF
$40-$205
(415) 864-3330
www.sfopera.com