Opera

Akhnaten

Mona Day Opera, See, stage, Theater

LA Opera’s 40th Anniversary Season will bring a revival of Philip Glass’s Akhnaten for  six performances February 28 through March 22.

The  opera is the last of composer Philip Glass’s portrait trilogy examining consequential figures in science (Einstein in Einstein on the Beach), politics (Gandhi in Satyagraha) and religion (the Egyptian pharaoh Akhnaten).  Glass describes this an opera about ‘religion, orthodoxy and reaction’.  

A co-production of LA Opera and English National Opera, its story is set in Ancient Egypt where the titular Akhnaten, a doomed visionary with plans to abandon the old gods and lead Egypt into a new age. His feats and foibles put his life in peril.  

Glass’s music has permeated modern culture from New York City Ballet to  Netflix’s Stranger Things.  Its most notable feature is an infinite ritualistic repetition which admirers find hypnotic transcendence as well as a test of endurance.  

The opera is sung in English, ancient  Hebrew and Akkadian. The libretto draws upon ancient texts like The Book of the Dead, ancient hymns, prayers, letters and inscriptions.  Highlights are the funeral music of Act I and the Hymn to Sun in Act II.

The spectacular production is visually arresting, featuring towering sets and costumes with animal heads, exotic plumes and intricate beadwork.  It is replete with soaring acrobats and astonishing juggling acts that pay homage to the earliest known record of juggling found in a four thousand year-old mural in an Egyptian cemetery complex.  Anthropologists think that the tomb depiction may be an analogy between balls and circular mirrors as representation of solar objects, birth and death.  The show’s choreographer, however, leaves its role as deliberately undefined: the objects can be alter egos to the characters’ ideas, miniature globular deities, bouncing thoughts, or even desert sand.

Making her LA Opera debut is Finland’s Dalia Stasevska, principal guest conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

The show is  approximately three hours, including two intermissions. Dr. Tiffany Kuo will present a pre-show talk in Stern Grand Hall one hour before every performance.

For more information and tickets, please visit LAOpera.org/Akhnaten.

Ainadamar

Mona Day Opera, See, stage

LA Opera will present the company premiere of Ainadamar April 26 through May 18. 

The show recounts the fateful final days of poet and playwright Federico García Lorca who was executed during the Spanish Civil War at a natural spring in the hills above the Spanish city of Granada known as Aynadamar, Arabic for fountain of tears. 

Recounting the poet’s life is Margarita Xirgu, a veteran Spanish actress and Lorca’s muse who spent her career portraying Mariana Pineda in Lorca’s play.  Pineda was a 19th-century political martyr executed by the absolutist Spanish regime for sewing a revolutionary flag with the embroidered slogan “Equality, Freedom and Law.  Lorca  could see her statue from the window of his family home in Granada and grew to idolize her.  Evoking the vibrant colors and poetry of Andalusia and especially Lorca’s hometown Granada, the play was Lorca’s first theatrical success. He asked Xirgu to play the title role at its premiere in June 1927 at the Teatre Goya in Barcelona with scenic design and costumes by Salvador Dalí.

Xirgu fled Spain at the beginning of the Civil War but was unable to persuade Lorca to leave as well. His liberal beliefs and open homosexuality subsequently led to his death at the hands of the Falange, the fascist party founded by the son of former Spanish dictator General Primo de Rivera. Xirgu continued to play Mariana Pineda, keeping Lorca’s work alive.  The opera is based on Xirgu’s memories in a series of flashbacks as she prepares  to go on stage as Mariana Pineda.  

The opera opens with a group of young actresses singing the opening ballad and Xirgu remembers Lorca’s brilliance as she tells her young student Nuria of meeting Lorca for the first time in a Madrid bar where he first described his play to her. The flashback is interrupted by a broadcast over the state radio by the Falangist Ramón Ruiz Alonso that his party will stamp out the beginnings of the revolution.  With the launch of the Spanish Civil War, Xirgu pleads with Lorca to join her and her theatre company in Cuba, but he is adamant about staying on in Granada. Xirgu blames herself for not being able to persuade the idealistic Lorca to abandon Spain and save himself.  As she sings of her dreams of finding freedom in Cuba, Lorca insists that he must witness and write about his country’s suffering.

As Xirgu is dying, she performs Pineda’s story for the last time, telling Nuria that though the actor acts only for a moment, but the larger idea of freedom transcends that. A vision of Lorca interrupts her, thanking her for immortalizing his spirit on stage, in the hearts of her students, and the world. 

Led by Resident Conductor Lina González-Granados, the production features a dramatic, flamenco-inspired score by Argentinian composer Osvaldo Golijov and a poignant libretto by David Henry Hwang. Staged by director Deborah Colker, the production has  won acclaim at the Metropolitan Opera, Scottish Opera, Welsh National Opera and Detroit Opera.

Ana María Martínez (currently appearing as Despina in LAO’s Così fan tutte) returns to take center stage as Lorca’s muse, Margarita Xirgu. 

Since its 2003 world premiere, Ainadamar has become one of the most frequently performed operas of the 21st century, seen throughout Europe, North America and South America. Although it is an LA Opera company premiere, the opera has even been performed extensively locally in LA by the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2004, Long Beach Opera in 2012 and USC Thornton Opera in 2016, and so should be familiar to local audience.

Ainadamar is sung in Spanish with both English and Spanish supertitles. 

Special Events planned around the opera include  a Celebración de las Artes hosted by LA Opera Connects and Hispanics for LA Opera after the May 4 matinee, with  music, food and fun for all on the Music Center’s Jerry Moss Plaza.

The May 7 performance will mark Pride Night, with a special post-performance gathering for attendees. 

For more information and tickets, please visit LAOpera.org/Ainadamar.

 Turandot

Mona Day Entertainment, Opera, See, stage, Theater

LA Opera will present Giacomo Puccini’s spectacular Turandot, one of the grandest of all operas, from May 18 through June 8. Puccini’s  final opera showcasing the magnificent music of Italy’s last great operatic composer created at the height of his maturity and technical mastery has continued to draw standing ovations over the last century. 

When Puccini’s untimely death in 1924 left his final opera unfinished, composer Franco Alfano was commissioned to create the ending for its world premiere at Milan’s La Scala in 1926, and his version has the standard finale. 

As a fairy tale set in legendary China, the opera is a departure from the composer’s verismo image and reflects the European fascination with the exotica of Orientalism that shaped 19th-century European arts.  Puccini had already explored it in Madama Butterfly, and now  re-visits it with a richer, more exotic palette.

Baron Edoardo Fassini-Camossi, Italy’s former Italian diplomat to China had given Puccini a music box that played four Chinese melodies, three of which Puccini incorporated into this opera, with the most memorable of these being the folk melody Mò Li Hūa ‘Jasmine Flower’, which serves as a leitmotif for Princess Turandot.  Eight of the themes from Turandot appear to be based on traditional Chinese music and anthems.

However, as elsewhere the Orientalism of the opera remains remains rooted in the West, and remains China as seen by Europeans.  The plot’s central dramatic moment is the life and death confrontation between the Princess Turandot and the Unknown Prince posed by the three riddles which must be correctly answered for the prince to escape execution  are rooted in the enigmas in the classical tradition of Ancient Greece, and the comedic characters of the ministers  Ping, Pang and Pong are straight out of Italy’s commedia del arte tradition.

For many years, the government of the People’s Republic of China forbade performance of Turandot because to them it portrayed China and the Chinese unfavorably.  They finally relented for the international collaboration Turandot at the Forbidden City performed for eight nights in September 1998.  Conducted by Zubin Mehta, the production featured opulent sets, even using soldiers from the People’s Liberation Army as extras. 

The opera’s celebrated aria Nessun dorma has become a staple of operatic recitals, with Luciano Pavarotti taking it beyond the operatic world by performing it for a global general audience at the 1990 World Cup, and the Three Tenors performed it at three subsequent World Cup Finals. Many crossover and pop artists have continued to perform and record it, and it has been used in the soundtracks of numerous films.

A co-production of San Francisco Opera and Lyric Opera of Chicago, the LA production is new to Los Angeles. Turandot’s soprano role is demanding both in its range – from vulnerability to the ice-cold princess of  her bloody reign.  It must also keep the audience attention  and audience sympathy from being upstaged by the other soprano – the selfless Liu tugging at the audience’s heartstrings. Angela Meade is up for this this challenging role, with Russell Thomas as her fearless suitor.

Conducted by LA Opera’s Music Director James Conlon, the production features stage designs by David Hockney, long associated with Southern California, creating the splendor and spectacle of imperial China. 

Turandot is sung in Italian with English subtitles, with a running time of two hours and 55 minutes which includes two intermissions.  There will be six performances of Turandot, all at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

For more information about the production is available at LAOpera.org/Turandot.

LA TRAVIATA

Mona Day Entertainment, Opera, See, stage, Theater

LA Opera will present a beloved staple of the opera repertoire, Giuseppe Verdi’s romantic tragedy La Traviata, from April 6 through 27.

The story of La Traviata, The Fallen Woman,  follows the Parisian courtesan Violetta Valéry whose love affair with Alfredo Germont offers her an unexpected taste of true love, but also devastating consequences when Alfredo’s father intervenes.

The story is based on the life of a real woman Marie Duplessis who rose from poverty to become one of 19th-century Paris’s most celebrated courtesans before dying from tuberculosis in her prime at age 23. Writer Alexandre Dumas based his romantic novel La Dame aux Camélias on their brief affair and subsequently adapted the novel into a hugely successful play upon which Verdi based his opera.

Marie’s tragically short life continues to both haunt and inspire creative expression in  film from the silent era to modern times, including the 1936 Greta Garbo classic Camille, the 1990 romantic comedy Pretty Woman, and the 2001 musical Moulin Rouge! Franco Zeffrelli directed  a film of the opera in 1982 starring LA Opera’s Placido Domino. 

Since its 1853 premiere, La Traviata has won the hearts of generations of opera fans with its memorable music with deep emotional resonance highlighted by the  prelude,  and  showstopping arias like Violetta’s Sempre libera to make it one of the most popular operas in the repertoire. 

One of 1850s trio of Verdi’s most popular operas, La Traviata is an example of French influenced romantic realism that was calculated to test the moral tolerance of its contemporary audience. The Parisian drawing rooms were habited by men like Germont who had no problems while carousing and gambling themselves, had no problem seeing the courtesan, an epitome of selfless love as morally inferior.  When Traviata first played in London, the theater provided no translation of the libretto, fearing that might cause moral offense. 

But history has proven the last laugh to be Violetta’s and Verdi’s, as both sing their way into immortality as the beloved La Traviata.

Music Director James Conlon will conduct five of the six performances at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, with Louis Lohraseb conducting on April 18. The production, new to Los Angeles, premiered in San Francisco Opera in 2022.  Directed by Shawna Lucey, it  stars Rachel Willis-Sørensen as Violetta and  Armenian tenor Liparit Avetisyan as her lover Alfredo. 

The opera is sung in Italian with English subtitles. The running time is  approximately two hours and 55 minutes, including two intermissions.

For more information and tickets, please visit LAOpera.org/Traviata.

A DOUBLE FEATURE OF ONE-ACT GEMS

Mona Day Opera, See, stage, Theater

LA Opera will present two one-act rarities – William Grant Still’s Highway 1, USA and Alexander Zemlinsky’s The Dwarf  conducted by Music Director James Conlon  February 24 through March 17.

Unifying the operas is the theme of unrequited love told through powerful, emotional music.  The story of Highway 1  USA follows a hardworking Black couple Bob and Mary, who have scrimped and saved to put Bob’s younger brother through college. After the ne’er-do-well Nate attacks Mary for refusing his advances, the couple come together to focus on building a better life for themselves.

Based on Oscar Wilde’s The Birthday of the Infanta  The Dwarf  involves a birthday celebration for a young Spanish princess, who along with other gifts is presented with a Dwarf, who falls in love with her. She toys with his affections before callously rejecting him;  devastated, he dies of a broken heart.  A gothic tale of an impossible one-sided romance in a decadent Spanish court, the story is animated by a lush and romantic score.  The production was last staged at LA Opera to critical acclaim in 2008. 

A second theme unifying the double bill is that they are both works by major composers lauded in their time but who fell into obscurity as a result of oppression.  Hailed as ‘the dean of African-American composers’,  trailblazing composer William Grant Still wrote more than 150 works ranging from operas, ballets, symphonies and chamber pieces and was the first Black conductor to conduct a major American symphony orchestra when he led the Los Angeles Philharmonic in a 1936 concert of his own compositions at the Hollywood Bowl.  However, he fell into obscurity despite his early successes as well as the quality of his compositions, especially his operas.  As such, Highway 1, USA composed in the 1940s didn’t have a major professional production until one by Opera Theatre of Saint Louis in 2021.

Similarly, The Dwarf was composed by Zemlinsky during his conducting tenure  at the Deutsches Landestheater, but he was forced to resign when the Nazis seized power, and after Hitler’s invasion forced to flee with his family to New York where he died in 1942, a broken man.  He then fell into obscurity till his rediscovery in the 1970s.

Both operas are part of LA Opera’s groundbreaking Recovered Voices initiative  launched by LA Opera in 2007. 

There will be six performances of the double bill at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Highway 1, USA is sung in English,  The Dwarf  in German, and both will feature projected subtitles in English.  The running time is approximately two hours and 50 minutes, including one intermission.  For more information and tickets, please visit  LAOpera.org

THE LAST DREAM OF FRIDA AND DIEGO

Mona Day Opera, See, stage, Theater

LA Opera will present the company premiere of El último sueño de Frida y Diego, The Last Dream of Frida and Diego with six performances November 18 – December 9 at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. 

The new opera by composer Gabriela Lena Frank and librettist Nilo Cruz draws an  international cast in a tribute to two iconic Mexican artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.  When a desperate wish on Day of the Dead reunites Diego Rivera with his wife Frida Kahlo, Diego jumps at the chance to seek forgiveness, but Frida refuses to return to the world that caused her so much pain, until another departed soul inspires her to look back at the art and the man she once loved. 

This provides the impetus for Mexico’s renowned artists and infamously stormy lovers and their paintings to come alive as the artists’ emblematic paintings blend  with a folklore-inspired score to provide  a fresh perspective on the love-hate saga of the famous couple. 

The opera is sung in Spanish with subtitles in both English and Spanish with a running time of approximately two hours and 15 minutes which includes one intermission.  The production includes brief nudity, viewer discretion is advised. 

Special events planned for the production include a Newcomer Night on Thursday Nov 30 that will include a pre-show talk introducing the story and music as well as  a reception with wine and desserts during  intermission.  Celebración de las Artes hosted by Hispanics for LA Opera on Sunday, Dec 3 performance will provide music, food and fun on the plaza. For more information about the production and tickets, please visit LAOpera.org/Frida.

Pelléas et Mélisande

Mona Day Entertainment, Opera, stage

LA Opera continues its 2022/23 season with Claude Debussy’s enigmatic masterpiece Pelléas et Mélisande, conducted by Music Director James Conlon. 

The opera tells the story of a prince lost in the forest, encountering an ethereal beauty with a mysterious past. After he brings her home to his family as his bride, she begins to grow increasingly close to his handsome younger brother. Debussy’s sensual, exquisitely nuanced score casts a hypnotic spell, capturing an enigmatic dream world where forbidden love blossoms.

Last presented by LA Opera in 1995, Christopher Koelsch, LA Opera’s president and CEO calls it “one of the most rapturously beautiful operas in the entire repertory … one of my, and James Conlon’s, favorite operas” that they’ve been planning to offer for several years now.

Although Debussy received international recognition for its genius immediately after the premiere of Pelléas, 

the opera did not take immediate root in opera houses because they were dominated by the Italian or German traditions. By the composer’s choice, there were none of the conventional props that audience had long come to expect and seek from opera:   vocal acrobatics, bombastic overtures, choruses, and even no ballet, a virtual requirement in France.  Rather, the demands on the audience are more similar to those on a concert-going audience. 

Most surprisingly, there are even no arias that could be excerpted and popularized.   As Conlon explains, “Self-revelation is the dynamic of the solo operatic aria, and the characters in Pelléas, especially Melisande, do everything but reveal themselves.”

The typical operatic diva or divo has little interest in a work that does not show off the voice, and specially one in which there is no interruption for applause.  Most notably, even the quiet, sad and intimate final act discourages any noisy or prolonged applause, making the opera hardly attractive for serious, success-seeking singers and conductors. But this is exactly what makes the opera different – requiring instead sustained concentration on detail – for greater clarity, tonal color, and expression. 

Says Conlon, “Pelléas belongs to a group of works that should be constantly performed, studied and revisited.” Like Parsifal, Tristan und Isolde, Boris Godunov and Wozzeck, Pelléas is unique and does not belong to any tradition or genre.

James Conlon conducts a production created by director David McVicar for Scottish Opera in 2017 Production new to Los Angeles. The cast is led by baritone Will Liverman and soprano Sydney Mancasola as the titular lovers, both of them making their company debuts. 

With an estimated running time of three hours and five minutes which includes one intermission, the opera will be performed in French with English supertitles.  Six performances March 25 through April 16 will take place at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Although masks are encouraged, they are no longer required indoors at the theater.

For tickets and more information is available at LAOpera.org/Pelleas.