“It’s still the same old story…” but now told through opera and ballet! On February 22 and 23, the month of love, Cinballera Entertainment presented a new take on the most beloved movie of all time, Casablanca!

We told the story twice, once through song and once through dance. First, Tiffany Brannan’s original chamber opera was based on the iconic World War II drama. Five singers told the story through a captivating collection of art songs, opera excerpts, and rousing melodies from the film, woven together with narration and familiar snippets of dialogue.

Next, the roles were switched, and the ballet brought the story to life through movement. Rebekah Brannan created a 50-minute original ballet, with innovative new choreography which blends classical dancing with 1940s style. The eternal triangle dueled through dance to a compelling compilation of jazz standards used in the film, Max Steiner’s breathtaking score, and a romantic violin concerto.

Casablanca was Cinballera's third show at the Mission Theater in Fallbrook.

On February 7, Cinballera brought back our show from April 2024, Phantom of the Ballopera, to the Borrego Springs Performing Arts Center! A brief ballet prologue went into the full chamber opera, Phantom of the Paris Opera.

As before, the Brannan sisters traded out on the roles of Carlotta, the tyrannical diva, and Christine, the sensitive young artist. Tiffany played Christine in the opera, and Rebekah played Christine in the ballet. John Nettles, resident artist of Cinballera, reprised his role of Erique/The Phantom in both the opera and the ballet! New to the cast was tenor Alexis Alfaro as Raoul, the young leading man caught between Carlotta and Christine's affections. Dr. Joe Valent again provided live accompaniment for the opera on piano. 

We concluded our holiday celebration with our performance of the most beloved Christmas opera, Amahl and the Night Visitors by Gian-Carlo Menotti. This one-hour American opera was written for performance on television in 1951, and it has delighted the imaginations and hearts of young and old ever since! The tender story of a crippled boy and his widowed mother who are visited by the Three Magi on their journey to find the Christ child is musically rendered in just an hour, but it will remain in your heart forever. 

Cinballera Entertainment put this performance on in collaboration with the Pacific Coast Chorale at the First Lutheran Church of San Diego on January 6 at 7 PM.

On December 7, we were back at Balboa Park for a second year at San Diego's biggest holiday event, December Nights! We opened the day's festivities in the Spanish Art Village at 11 AM, so it was more like December Mornings this time around!

We brought back our signature holiday program, "A Cinballera Christmas," with some new costumes and one new cast member. It was an honor to bring this combination of opera, ballet, and Hollywood nostalgia to the community for a second year!

What’s that sound? Is it midnight already? Will Cinderella get home from the ball? Will Amelia get there at all? Audiences found out at Cinballera Goes to the Ball!

In November, Cinballera Entertainment brought a delightful double-feature to Fallbrook as its second show as the resident company at the Mission Theater. First, we presented Amelia Goes to the Ball, a one-act comic opera in English. This was the first mature opera composed by Italian-American Gian-Carlo Menotti, and it’s just as witty now as in 1937.

Then, we presented Cinders to Satin, Rebekah Brannan’s brand-new ballet adaptation of the world’s most beloved fairytale, Cinderella. This hour-long work was the company’s longest ballet to date and featured a colorful cast of Cinballera regulars in a fresh, exciting new take on a classic story!

October brought something very special to the Villa Montezuma! Instead of the usual evening of assorted songs, the October Cinballera Salon featured a performance of a chamber opera, Gian Carlo Menotti's The Medium. The second half of the program was a usual Salon, with the theme "Songs of Spain" in honor of Dia de los Muertos and All Hallows Eve. 

The first time we walked into the Gothic Victorian mansion, the Villa Montezuma, we thought that it would be a perfect place to put on The Medium. It was even more enchanting than we thought. The sold-out audience was spellbound by this intimate staging and our artistic take on this opera about spiritualism and the danger of spoofing the supernatural.

A tale of the Wild West that has it all… a girl, an outlaw, a sheriff, and a love worth more than all the gold in California!

Cinballera Entertainment has found a home at the Mission Theater in Fallbrook! The year 2024 is the 100th anniversary of opera composer Giacomo Puccini’s death. In our own homage to these two momentous events, on August 24th and 25th, we presented Puccini’s La Fanciulla del West, aka The Girl of the Golden West!

This was Cinballera’s eighth performance and its first grand opera, we presented something truly American: a work which was not only set in California but was the first opera to be debuted at the Metropolitan Opera!

It featured an international cast of fourteen stellar singers and live piano accompaniment. It was sung in Italian with silent film-inspired title cards for translation.

To set the scene, the show started with an original three-person ballet prologue, choreographed by Cinballera co-founders, Tiffany and Rebekah Brannan. Although the opera score was on piano, audiences still experienced Puccini’s stunning orchestral arrangements in all their glory through the soaring symphonic suite featured in the ballet! 

On the first weekend of April, Cinballera put on its seventh production, Phantom of the Ballopera. This show was a brand-new take on the classic Gaston Leroux novel, which was six years in the making. 

First, we told the story through an original chamber opera, consisting of art songs and opera excerpts, sung by the four principal characters. Then, we presented a different take on the same story, this time focusing on the ballet dancers who performed at the Paris Opera House in the 1890s alongside the opera singers who usually are the main players in this drama. 

Instead of an original chamber ballet with a half-hour runtime to one piece of music, like Cinballera usually presents, this consisted of excerpts from a full-length ballet Tiffany and Rebekah Brannan wrote six years ago. Phantom of the Opera: The Ballet, the Brannan sisters' first completely formulated ballet, is 4 acts and 2 hours long in its entirety, but the excerpts will be under an hour. This performance was the first time anything but the opening dance was performed.

The Brannan sisters traded out on the roles of Carlotta, the tyrannical diva, and Christine, the sensitive young artist. John Nettles played Erique/The Phantom in both the opera and the ballet! 

In 1724, George Frideric Handel brought the timeless love story of Julius Caesar and Cleopatra to life in music through his exquisite opera Giulio Cesare. In honor of this dramatic work's 300th anniversary, Cinballera Entertainment and the Southern California Early Music Society collaborated to present Giulio Cesare - A Baroque Chamber Opera. 

This Baroque masterpiece by the composer of The Messiah debuted in London on February 20, 1724. In its entirety, this three-act opera is over four hours long. However, our performance was only an hour and a half long. Our take on Giulio Cesare is like a baroque chamber opera, with an intimate cast and orchestra. It just focuses on the love story, so the only characters are Caesar and Cleopatra, plus two dancers as Egyptian attendants. Through Caesar's Commentaries, the great Roman general recounted how his heart was captured by the beautiful Egyptian queen. 

The singers were accompanied by a five-piece Baroque chamber orchestra from the Southern California Early Music Society, tuned to the historically accurate A=415 instead of A=440. It was performed with costumes and staging at the historic First Baptist Church of Glendale.

We hope to perform this work again soon!

We were one of the featured performers at December Nights in Balboa Park! We performed on the first of the events two nights, December 1st, at 9 PM in the quadrangle courtyard in front of the Museum of Us.

Our presentation was the first performance of our company's holiday special, "A Cinballera Christmas." It's a half-hour show about a ballerina's journey to find the true meaning of Christmas amid the hectic Nutcracker season. We tell the story through ballet, opera, and classical Tinseltown tunes. It was a joyous holiday celebration for the whole family. 

Two Sisters from San Diego was our third show and first concert. Cinballera and the Gaslamp Quarter Historical Foundation co-hosted this intimate parlor concert in downtown San Diego’s oldest building, the Davis-Horton House. The title was inspired by the 1946 MGM musical Two Sisters from Boston. Just like the sisters in the movie, played by Kathryn Grayson and June Allyson, the Brannan sisters invited guests to this beautiful house for a musical journey into San Diego’s history. They were joined by five gentlemen who are fellow opera singers and ballet dancers for duets and pas de deux.

The first half of the program included songs from operas, operettas, song cycles, and classic movies, in the style of a Victorian parlor concert. Then, guests headed to the downstairs gallery for three original ballet dances. There were three performances of this show, one on November 18 at 7 PM and two on November 19 at 1 PM and 5 PM. 

On September 22, Hobbit Day, we performed our second show, Lady of the Ring, a chamber ballopera based on J.R.R. Tolkien's timeless saga The Lord of the Rings at the Water Conservation Garden in El Cajon. 

The opera was composed of diverse songs, including a rare song cycle commissioned by Tolkien himself, with words in English and the Elvish language from the books. The ballet included original choreography to a piano concerto by Dmitri Shostakovich. Both were arranged, staged, and directed by Cinballera's co-founders, sisters Tiffany and Rebekah Brannan. A fellowship of nine performers, five in the opera and four in the ballet, brought the story to life. 

Our first show, performed on July 29, 2023, at the Grand-Ritz Theater in Escondido! 

Six performers, two couples, one story. Ballet and opera meet in Cinballera Entertainment’s inaugural performance, Stolen Love: A Chamber Ballopera! Cinballera's founders, sisters Tiffany and Rebekah Brannan, bring to life the music of 20th century composer Gian Carlo Menotti in his 1939 comic opera, The Old Maid and the Thief, and a ballet prequel of their own creation, Stella and Starbuck, which sets original choreography to his first and only piano concerto.