Press Releases
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Press Releases
Announcing OperaFest 2024, June 1-8 in Los Angeles
May 9, 2024 | By TJ Sclafani
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Press Contacts
Adrienne Andisheh, Sounding Point
adrienne@soundingpoint.la
(310) 871-9281TJ Sclafani, Sounding Point
tj@soundingpoint.la
(732) 501-4159Additional Press Materials HERE
OPERAFEST 2024
JUNE 1-9 IN LOS ANGELESA Week-Long Festival Showcasing
LA’s Innovative & Diverse
Approaches to OperaFeaturing Operas & Performances from:
LA Opera, Beth Morrison Projects, Long Beach Opera,
Pacific Opera Project, Synchromy,
Mission Opera & Overtone Industries
“Anyone with a stage, a costume, a voice and an idea is welcome. That is the L.A. opera ideal.”
- Los Angeles TimesLos Angeles, CA — From June 1-8, 2024, a consortium of some of Los Angeles County’s most prominent opera companies, along with OPERA America, presents OperaFest LA, a week-long performance festival featuring running concurrently with the 2024 Opera Conference and World Opera Forum in downtown Los Angeles. Participating companies include LA Opera, Long Beach Opera, Pacific Opera Project, Synchromy, Overtone Industries, and Mission Opera, as well as a special production from Beth Morrison Projects at REDCAT. The operas and performances range from innovative interpretations of mainstays in the opera canon, world and West Coast premieres from award-winning composers, workshops of new works, and screenings of opera films; showcasing the breadth and artistic diversity found in LA’s burgeoning opera scene.
“Los Angeles is one of only a few cities in North America that benefits from the creative variety of so many opera companies, large and small. This is why we chose LA for the site of the second-ever World Opera Forum and 2024 Opera Conference,” says Marc A. Scorca, president and CEO of OPERA America. “Visitors from around the world will experience the full scope of opera in America, from new experimental works to innovative productions of operas from the inherited repertoire.”
The last time the OPERA America conference was held in Los Angeles was in 2010, where Long Beach Opera’s staging of Ricky Ian Gordon’s Orpheus and Eurydice in a swimming pool was the featured event. Since then, the Los Angeles opera scene has blossomed, with four of the presenting organizations forming between 2010 and 2024. “By sheer numbers, Los Angeles has more opera companies than other major metropolitan areas,” says writer and opera critic Heidi Waleson, in a recent article she wrote for Opera America Magazine. “The most significant reason for that appears to be the city’s size — LA’s sprawling geography and perpetually snarled traffic makes its many neighborhoods seem like separate entities, supporting their own infrastructure and arts groups.”
The festival also places a spotlight on new operatic works by a diverse cadre of composers including Joel Thompson and Kate Soper, as well as LA-based composers Dante De Silva, Jason Barabba, and Vera Ivanova. Beth Morrison Projects’s MAGDALENE alone features fourteen women composers from around the world — including Pulitzer-Prize winner Ellen Reid, Kamala Sankaram, and Leila Adu, among others. “Los Angeles's creative community is so special. In other cities, people may shy away from what's new or different, but here, new and different is exciting and inspiring,” says Beth Morrison, president and creative producer of Beth Morrison Projects. “I'm beyond excited for this first-of-its-kind partnership, celebrating the amazing art and artists that call LA home.”
More information about each presenting organization's programming can be found below, as well as on OPERA America’s website. Single tickets can be purchased at each of the presenting companies’ websites. OPERA America members can purchase tickets to all programming when registering for the World Opera Forum and Opera Conference.
LONG BEACH OPERA PRESENTS WEST COAST PREMIERE OF KATE SOPER’S IPSA DIXIT
Long Beach Opera presents the West Coast staged premiere of Kate Soper’s Ipsa Dixit on June 1, 8 & 9 in the historic 1924 Art Theatre cinema in Long Beach, created and directed by Long Beach Opera’s new Artistic Director & CCO James Darrah with LBO's Music Director Christopher Rountree. This new production features tour de force performances from LA based soprano Anna Schubert and dancers from LBO's artistic partner Martha Graham Dance Company in a unique blend of Soper's music, film history, and original choreography from Graham Company artistic director Janet Eilber.
A finalist for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize and composed over six years, The New Yorker described Ipsa Dixit as a “philosophy-opera” when it first premiered in New York. Soper utilizes texts from multiple sources that include Plato, Sophocles, and Lydia Davis to answer the question: “ What is art? How can music unveil the very essence of being a thinker, a language-wielder, with all the glorious contradictions and limitations language itself brings?” This will be the second production of an operatic work by Soper at the company in two years; Darrah directed, with Rountree conducting, the nationally acclaimed world premiere of Soper’s The Romance of the Rose in 2023 which the LA Times declared an “operatic triumph" with LBO now "not only reinventing opera but also itself."
Tickets for Ipsa Dixit start at $45 and can be purchased at longbeachopera.org.
PACIFIC OPERA PROJECT RE-STAGES ACCLAIMED BILINGUAL PRODUCTION OF PUCCINI’S MADAMA BUTTERFLY
Pacific Opera Project (POP) presents the return of its critically-acclaimed production of Madama Butterfly ???? on June 1, 2, 7 & 9 at the Aratani Theatre at the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center in Little Tokyo. With a new bilingual libretto by POP Artistic Director Josh Shaw and Music Director Eiki Isomura, Madama Butterfly ???? is performed in both English and Japanese, bringing a sense of realism and inclusion to Puccini’s oft-performed opera that has rarely been seen in previous productions.
POP previously presented Madama Butterfly ???? on April 6, 13 and 14, 2019 at the Aratani Theatre in a co-production with Houston’s Opera in the Heights, becoming the first known production of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly to have the characters sing in their native languages. “This bilingual production was born well over a decade ago when I asked the very simple question: How would these two people communicate if this story actually happened? Certainly not in Italian,” says Shaw. “In 2018, all the pieces magically came together when I reached out to Eiki Isomura about a co-production. By the time the show opened in 2019, we already knew we wanted to revive the production as soon as possible.”
Opera Today called Madama Butterfly ???? “another remarkable achievement for POP, not only artistically but commercially,” while San Francisco Classical Voice praised the production, saying it was “on a visual scale beyond anything it has taken on before – a sumptuously costumed, fully staged, bilingual co-production.” Kimono designers Sueko Oshimoto and Kentaro Terra of SK Kimono and the South Bay Singers led by Chorus Master Naoko Suga also return for this production. CSU Northridge’s Jishin Taiko Japanese drumming ensemble will perform in the Aratani courtyard before the show on June 1 and 7.
Tickets for Madama Butterfly ???? start at $15 and can be purchased at pacificoperaproject.com.
LA OPERA PRESENTS PUCCINI’S TURANDOT & THE WORLD PREMIERE OF JOEL THOMPSON’S FIRE AND BLUE SKY
As part of OperaFest, LA Opera will present two productions: a new-to-Los Angeles production of Puccini’s Turandot conducted by Music Director James Conlon, and the world premiere of Joel Thompson’s evening-length concert work Fire and Blue Sky, an LA Opera commission conducted by Resident Conductor Lina González-Granados and performed by tenor Russell Thomas.
LA Opera’s production of Turandot presents on June 2, 5 & 8 at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion at the Music Center campus in downtown Los Angeles, starring soprano Angela Meade and tenor Russell Thomas, and will feature stage designs by iconic artist David Hockney. "I’ve been looking forward to this production for many years," said Christopher Koelsch, LA Opera's President and CEO. "David Hockney has been part of the LA Opera family since the company’s earliest seasons, designing landmark productions of Tristan und Isolde and Die Frau ohne Schatten for us. It is a special delight to now present, for the first time in Los Angeles, his astonishingly beautiful production of Turandot." This production also marks the first time Music Director James Conlon has conducted Turandot with LA Opera.
Then, on June 6, also at Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, LA Opera presents Joel Thompson’s Fire and Blue Sky, a concert work expressly written for tenor Russell Thomas, with a libretto by award-winning poet and author Imani Tolliver. Best known for his pivotal 2015 choral work Seven Last Words of the Unarmed, Thompson’s Fire and Blue Sky traces the origin story of an artist—a probing reflection on painful memories, deeply embedded, that reverberate into the present day. Fire and Blue Sky will also feature additional soloist mezzo-soprano Deborah Nansteel, and will be complemented on the program with a performance of an orchestral suite from Thompson’s 2021 opera, The Snowy Day.
Tickets for Turandot start at $35 and tickets for Fire and Blue Sky start at $17; tickets for both productions can be purchased at laopera.org.
SYNCHROMY PRESENTS TWO OPERA WORKSHOP PERFORMANCES AND A SCREENING OF VERA IVANOVA’S THE DOUBLE
Synchromy presents three events as part of OperaFest: workshop performances of Danta De Silva’s Minute to Midnight and Jason Barabba’s My Wings Burned Off and an HD screening of Vera Ivanova’s The Double.
The workshop performance of Minute to Midnight takes place on June 2 at 2PM at the Wende Museum in Culver City. Composed by LA-based composer Dante De Silva and with a libretto by Alan Olejniczak, Minute to Midnight is a comedic opera that takes audiences inside a surreal portrait of the Cuban Missile Crisis, witnessing the tensions between John F. Kennedy, Fidel Castro, and Nikita Khrushchev. As history continues to repeat itself, this opera creates a new interpretation of these historic events through a modern lens and an all-female cast. This workshop concert will showcase an unstaged version of the opera, and audience members will have the chance to offer feedback.
Then, on June 8 at 2PM, Synchromy presents an HD screening of Vera Ivanova’s The Double at the Colburn School in downtown Los Angeles. Recorded in 2022, The Double questions how one’s outward depiction of oneself impacts their perceptions of reality. The opera’s troubled hero believes that his digital social profile, created by him, is acting independently in an attempt to take over his life. Ultimately, the audience is left asking if he really is losing his mind, or if he can see a reality they have missed. The opera film is directed by Alexander Gedeon and stars singers Jon Lee Keenan, Anna Schubert, Timur, and Scott Graff.
Finally, Synchromy presents their second workshop performance, My Wings Burned Off, an operatic monodrama composed by Jason Barabba, with a libretto by playwright June Carryl and starring soprano Mimi Hilaire, on June 8 at 3:30PM at the Colburn School. My Wings Burned Off tells the story of Oluwatoyin Salau, an organizer in the Black Lives Matter movement, who was assaulted and murdered in June 2020. Told from Oluwatoyin’s perspective, this one-woman operatic monodrama for soprano and strings is based on June Carryl’s play The Life and Death Of. Like Minute to Midnight, this performance will be unstaged and audience members will be able to offer feedback to the creative team.
All three events are free to the public, but a reservation is required. Tickets can be reserved at synchromy.org.
BETH MORRISON PROJECTS PRESENTS THE WEST COAST PREMIERE OF MAGDALENE AT REDCAT
Beth Morrison Projects presents the West Coast premiere of MAGDALENE, a chamber opera with musical contributions from fourteen women composers, on June 4, 5, 7 and 8 at REDCAT on the Music Center campus in downtown Los Angeles. Set to Marie Howe’s Magdalene poems, the opera invites the audience into the interior world of the archetypal figure Mary Magdalene—enlarging her to cross time and space, she appears as a woman alive now, who strives to heal the unyielding split between the sacred and the sexual. Encountering her life in flashes – wandering through a hotel, lighting birthday candles, making love in the ocean – Magdalene finds transcendence in the mundane to finally become the subject of her own story.
Co-created by performer/composer Danielle Birrittella and director Zoe Aja Moore, MAGDALENE premiered at the 2020 PROTOTYPE Festival in New York to critical acclaim, with The New York Times describing the performance as “persuasive and powerful.” The composers who contributed to the project include American composers Leila Adu, Sheena Birrittella, Christine Courtin, Gabrielle Herbst, Molly Joyce, Tanner Porter, Kamala Sankaram, Annika Socolofsky, and Ellen Reid; Canadian composer Ruby Kato Attwood, Irish composer Emma O’Halloran, and Icelandic composers Bergrún Snæbjörnsdóttir and Gyða Valtýsdóttir.
Beth Morrison Projects Executive Director Sam Linden states “we at BMP are so excited to bring MAGDALENE back to the stage and to the West Coast for the first time. We think this is an amazing opportunity to not only bring further recognition to an incredible production whose touring life was cut short by the global pandemic, but also to showcase this array of talented women composers.” This remounted production features the original cast members, with Danielle Birrittella starring as Magdalene and movement artist Ariana Daub as Magdalene’s body double.
Tickets for MAGDALENE are $50 and can be purchased at redcat.org.
MISSION OPERA PRESENTS 1980’S GLAM INTERPRETATION OF FRANZ LEHÁR’S OPERETTA THE MERRY WIDOW
Mission Opera presents Franz Lehár’s operetta The Merry Widow on June 7 and 8 at the Canyon High School Performing Arts Center in Canyon Country, CA, about 35 miles north of downtown Los Angeles. Directed by Mission Opera Artistic Director Joshua Wentz and featuring a brand new translation by the director, this production will transport Lehár’s operetta from turn-of-the-century Vienna to 1980s Britain, recasting the characters in the original opera as American and British pop stars. The production will also feature extensive multimedia design, creatively combining traditional opera with contemporary video design and virtual settings. “This show is a wonderful treat for anyone who doesn’t know about opera but loves musicals and theater,” says Wentz. “This hybrid show features folk music, dance, and an experience that one would more likely find on Broadway than in an opera house.”
Tickets for The Merry Widow start at $35 and can be purchased at missionopera.com.
OVERTONE INDUSTRIES PRESENTS EXCERPTS FROM SONGS AND DANCES OF IMAGINARY LANDS
Overtone Industries presents excerpts from Songs and Dances of Imaginary Lands on June 7 at 7PM at the Teatro Frida Kahlo in Historic Filipinotown in Los Angeles, directed by Artistic Director O-Lan Jones and featuring music direction from David O. Written by 6 librettists and 11 composers, the opera tells the story of Tom and Sue, a couple nearing the end of their lives, who are then catapulted into the lands of their childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, after falling victim to identity theft. They visit Social Services to find a remedy and are then launched separately into these imaginary lands. Songs and Dances of Imaginary Lands had its world premiere in 2010 in a vacant Culver City car dealership where it was described as “imaginative” and “ambitious” by the LA Times. LA-based vocalists Molly Pease and Kion Heidari star as Sue and Tom respectively.
Tickets for Songs and Dances of Imaginary Lands are $20 and can be purchased at overtoneindustries.org.
CALENDAR EDITORS PLEASE NOTE:
LONG BEACH OPERA PRESENTS IPSA DIXIT
Who: Long Beach Opera, Martha Graham Dance Company
When: Saturday, June 1 at 7:30PM; Saturday, June 8 at 7:30PM; Sunday, June 9 at 2:30PM
Where: Art Theatre of Long Beach; 2025 E. 4th Street, Long Beach, CA 90814
Ticket Link
Creative Team: Kate Soper, composer & libretto; James Darrah, director; Christopher Rountree, music director; Anna Schubert, soprano; Janet Eilber, choreographer; Wet Ink EnsemblePACIFIC OPERA PROJECT PRESENTS MADAMA BUTTERFLY ????
Who: Pacific Opera Project
When: Saturday, June 1 at 7PM; Sunday, June 2 at 3PM; Friday, June 7 at 8PM
Where: The Aratani Theatre at the Japanese American Cultural & Community Center; 244 San Pedro Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012
Ticket Link
Cast: Janet Szepei Todd as Cio-Cio-San, Peter James Lake as B.F. Pinkerton, Kenneth Stavert as Sharpless, Kimberly Sogioka as Suzuki, Taka Komagata as Goro, Steve Moritsugu as Prince Yamadori, Paul Chwe Minchul An as the Bonze, Norge Yip as The Imperial Commissioner, Hisato Masuyama as the Official Registrar, Monica Isomura as Kate Pinkerton
Creative Team: Josh Shaw, director & libretto (English); Eiki Isomura, music director & libretto (Japanese); South Bay Singers, chorus; Naoko Suga, chorus master; Sueko Oshimoto & Kentaro Terra of SK Kimono, costume designLA OPERA PRESENTS PUCCINI’S TURANDOT
Who: LA Opera
When: Sunday, June 2 at 2PM; Wednesday, June 5 at 7:30PM; Saturday, June 8 at 7:30PM
Where: Dorothy Chandler Pavilion; 135 N. Grand Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90012
Ticket Link
Cast: Angela Meade as Turandot, Russell Thomas as Calaf, Guanqun Yu as Liù, Morris Robinson as Timur, Ryan Wolfe as Ping, Terrence Chin-Loy as Pang, Julius Ahn as Pong, Alan Williams as A Mandarin, Ashley Faatoalia as Emperor Altoum
Creative Team: James Conlon, conductor; Garnett Bruce, director; David Hockney, scenery; Ian Falconer, costumes; Thomas J. Munn, original lighting design; Jeremy Frank, chorus; Kitty McNamee, choreographer; Andrew Kenneth Moss, fight & intimacy directorSYNCHROMY PRESENTS A WORKSHOP PERFORMANCE OF MINUTE TO MIDNIGHT
Who: Synchromy
When: Sunday, June 2 at 2PM
Where: Wende Museum; 10808 Culver Blvd, Culver City, CA 90230
Ticket Link
Cast: Emily Gallagher as JFK, Chloé Vaught as Castro, Amy Fogerson as Kruschev
Creative Team: Dante De Silva, composer; Alan Olejniczak, libretto; instrumental ensemble: Timothy Loo, cello; Jordan Curcuruto, percussion; Katie Eikam, percussion; Cathy Miller, keyboard; Andreas Apostolou, keyboardBETH MORRISON PROJECTS PRESENTS MAGDALENE
Who: Beth Morrison Projects, Danielle Birrittella & Zoe Aja Moore
When: Tuesday, June 4 at 8PM; Wednesday, June 5 at 8PM; Friday, June 7 at 8PM; Saturday, June 8 at 8PM
Where: REDCAT; 631 W 2nd Street, Los Angeles, CA, 90012
Ticket Link
Cast: Danielle Birrittella as Magdalene, Ariana Daub as Magdalene’s body double
Creative Team: Danielle Birrittella, co-creator & performer; Zoe Aja Moore, co-creator & director; Marie Howe, poet; Mila Henry, conductor; composers: Leila Adu, Ruby Kato Attwood, Sheena Birrittella, Christina Courtin, Gabrielle Herbst, Molly Joyce, Emma O’Halloran, Tanner Porter, Kamala Sankaram, Bergrún Snæbjörnsdóttir, Annika Socolofsky, Gyða Valtýsdóttir & Ellen Reid; Hana Kim, scenic designer; Skretch & Emilie Sabath, video designers; Christopher Kuhl, lighting designer; Emilie Sabath & Chris Lael Larson, cinematographers; Lacausa, costume designer; Ariana Daub, assistant choreographer; Beth Morrison Projects, producerLA OPERA PRESENTS FIRE AND BLUE SKY
Who: LA Opera
When: Thursday, June 6 at 7:30PM
Where: Dorothy Chandler Pavilion; 135 N. Grand Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90012
Ticket Link
Creative Team: Joel Thompson, composer; Imani Tolliver, libretto; Lina González-Granados, conductor; Russell Thomas, tenorMISSION OPERA PRESENTS FRANZ LEHÁR’S THE MERRY WIDOW
Who: Mission Opera
When: Friday, June 7 at 7:30PM; Saturday, June 8 at 7:30PM
Where: Canyon High School Performing Arts Center; 19300 W. Nadal Street, Canyon Country, CA 91351
Ticket Link
Cast: Julia Behbudov as Hanna, Elias Berezin as Danilo, Jacob Stucki as Camille, Jason Vincent as Zeta, Catherine Samartin as Valencienne, Jessica Berns-Garner as Sylviane, Michael Lopez as Cascada, Rose Kreider as Olga, Constanze Bonelli as Praskowia, Juwan Stanford as St. Brioche, Eugene Carbajal as Njegus, Alexei Helmbock as Kromow, Pyrec Parker as Pritschtisch
Creative Team: Joshua Wentz, director; Brian Stone, conductor; Lindsay Aldana, music director; Hugo Vera, chorus master; Yolanda-Tianyi Shao, choreographerOVERTONE INDUSTRIES PRESENTS SONGS AND DANCES OF IMAGINARY LANDS
Who: Overtone Industries
When: Friday, June 7 at 7PM
Where: Teatro Frida Kahlo; 2332 4th St, Los Angeles, CA 90057
Ticket Link
Cast: Molly Pease as Sue, Kion Heidari as Tom, Jacob Sidney as Tom’s Father, Kathryn Krasovec as Tom’s Mom, Gretchen Johnson as Sue’s Mom, Michael Harris as Teacher, Cristin Byrdsong as Tassos
Creative Team: O-Lan Jones, director; David O, music director; composers: Joshua Raoul Brody, Bart Hopkin, Eric C. Culver, Jeff Fairbanks, Richard Marriott & David O; libretto by Merle Kessler, Sissy Boyd, Ruth Margraff, Chiwan Choi & Kathleen CramerSYNCHROMY PRESENTS THE DOUBLE IN HD
Who: Synchromy
When: Saturday, June 8 at 2PM
Where: Mayman Hall at Colburn School; 200 S Grand Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90012
Ticket Link
Cast: Jon Lee Keenan as Noth, Anna Schubert as Klara, Scott Graff as Therapist, Timur as The Double
Creative Team: Vera Ivanova, composer; Sarah LaBrie, libretto; Alexander Gedeon, director; Marc Lowenstein, conductor; Brightwork Ensemble; Alejandro Melendez, lighting design; Lena Sands, costume designSYNCHROMY PRESENTS A WORKSHOP PERFORMANCE OF MY WINGS BURNED OFF
Who: Synchromy
When: Saturday, June 8 at 3:30PM
Where: Mayman Hall at Colburn School; 200 S Grand Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90012
Ticket Link
Creative Team: Jason Barabba, composer; June Carryl, libretto; Mimi Hilaire, soprano; Dr. Renee Baker, conductorPrograms subject to change
OPERA America leads and serves the entire opera community with the mission to support the creation, presentation, and enjoyment of opera.
Founded in 1970 by 20 American opera company leaders interested in sharing resources and best practices, we have built an extensive membership base of over 200 professional opera companies; 450 educational institutions and opera-related businesses; and 3,000 individuals invested in the vitality and growth of the art form. The organization’s reach extends even further to 50,000 online followers.
Based at the National Opera Center in Midtown Manhattan, we welcome over 80,000 artists, administrators, trustees, and audience members each year for performances, workshops, auditions, recording sessions, meetings, research, and more. From Washington, D.C., our government affairs office works to ensure a regulatory and legislative environment that supports the work of the field.
We also serve the broader opera industry through partnerships and reciprocal services with the Association for Opera in Canada, Opera Europa, and Ópera Latinoamérica.
Los Angeles is a city of enormous diversity and creativity, and LA Opera is dedicated to reflecting that vibrancy by redefining what opera can be. Through imaginative new productions, world premiere commissions, and inventive performances that preserve foundational works while making them feel fresh and compelling, LA Opera has become one of America’s most exciting and ambitious opera companies.In addition to its mainstage performances at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the company explores unusual repertoire each season through the LA Opera Off Grand initiative, featuring performances in a variety of venues throughout Los Angeles. The LA Opera Connects initiative offers a robust variety of educational programming and community engagement offerings that reaches people throughout every corner of Los Angeles County. The company also offers a multitude of online content via its LA Opera On Now digital offerings, which launched in 2020. Learn more at LAOpera.org.
Beth Morrison Projects (BMP) is one of the foremost creators and producers of new opera-theatre and music theatre, with a fierce commitment to leading the industry into the future, cultivating a new generation of talent, and telling the stories of our time. Founded by “contemporary opera mastermind” (LA Times) Beth Morrison, who was honored as one of Musical America’s Artists of the Year/Agents of Change in 2020, BMP has grown into “a driving force behind America’s thriving opera scene” (Financial Times), with Opera News declaring that the company, “more than any other… has helped propel the art form into the twenty-first century.”
Operating across the US and internationally, with offices in Brooklyn and Los Angeles, BMP’s unique model offers living composers the support, guidance, and freedom to experiment, allowing them to create singularly innovative and impactful projects. Since forming in 2006, the company has commissioned, developed, produced and toured over 50 works in 14 countries around the world, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning chamber operas Angel’s Bone and p r i s m. In 2013, BMP co-founded the PROTOTYPE Festival with HERE Arts Center, which has been called “utterly essential” (New York Times), “indispensable” (New Yorker), and “one of the world’s top festivals of contemporary opera and theater” (Associated Press).
Established in 1979, Long Beach Opera (LBO) stands as the longest-running opera organization in the greater Los Angeles region. Having presented well over 100 productions in that time, LBO has carved out its space as a leader in innovating opera from its founding through the 21st century. With repertoire ranging from the early Baroque to the commissioning of contemporary works and world premieres, the company embraces the idea that no experience will be standard or traditional. This commitment to the future of opera has earned critical acclaim, both locally and nationally, and also secured funding from institutions such as the National Endowment for the Arts, the California Arts Council, the County of Los Angeles, the City of Long Beach, the Mellon Foundation, the Ralph M. Parsons Foundation, the Knight Foundation, and countless others. LBO's history demonstrates that its purpose is the advancement of opera and operatic experiences; embodied by stating that it creates “opera for a new era.”
The company, originally known as Long Beach Grand Opera, was a venture intended to mark the inaugural season of the city’s Terrace Theater. Michael Milenski, formerly of the San Francisco Opera and San Jose Opera, was tapped to mount the first production in March 1979. The success of that production led to the company’s formal independent incorporation with Milenski as the Founder and Executive Director. In 2004, Michael Milenski retired after 25 seasons at the helm of LBO and was succeeded by Austrian conductor, Andreas Mitisek, who continued LBO’s longstanding artistic philosophy of presenting an expanded vision of opera. In 2021, the third and current Artistic Director & Chief Creative Officer, James Darrah, joined the company and is building out a bold, innovative vision centered around defining the form's future.
LBO’s highlights include a long list of premieres, monumental works, and a roster of both creative legends and up-and-coming talent which has resulted in accolades; including the 2019 commission and world premiere of Anthony Davis’ The Central Park Five which consequently won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize. Other world premieres have included Kate Soper’s The Romance of the Rose, Stewart Copeland’s The Invention of Morel, Tobin Stokes’ Fallujah, and Stewart Wallace’s Hopper’s Wife. Also of note are many American premieres including works by Glass, Vivaldi, Mozart, Handel, Cherubini, Piazzolla, Szymanowski, and more. The company’s fierce commitment to collaborations with composers, vocalists, instrumentalists, dancers, filmmakers, curators, conductors, designers, community partners, and more has created a rich legacy at the company. LBO continues to be home to artistic innovators in production, directorial work, and music with a bright future that is abundant with creative possibilities.
Mission Opera is an OPERA America professional opera company serving the Santa Clarita and San Fernando Valleys. As an educational performing arts non-profit, they present live theater, opera, musical theater, and educational outreach initiatives, in addition to diverse programming of concerts and events throughout Southern California. Mission Opera strives to produce high-quality, accessible opera and musical theater, to provide community members opportunities to participate at all levels of these productions, and to afford participants and audiences enjoyment and a deeper appreciation of opera and musical theater.
Overtone Industries is a genre-bending opera-theater company, founded by composer, actress and theater visionary O-Lan Jones, that develops and presents original stories in a collaborative environment and cultivates opportunities for artists with an authentic voice to develop new works. For more information, visit www.overtoneindustries.org
Founded in 2011, Los Angeles’s Pacific Opera Project (POP) is dedicated to providing quality opera that is accessible, affordable, and entertaining in order to build a broader audience for the art form. LA Magazine writes “If you think you hate opera, you’ve probably never seen a Pacific Opera Project show.” POP’s regularly sold-out performances take place in a wide variety of venues, from outdoors, to small clubs, big amphitheaters, and warehouses. LA Weekly named POP the “Best Opera Company in Los Angeles” in 2018, writing “making opera cool, affordable, accessible and enticing to young audiences is easier said than done. It’s also something every opera company in the country is trying desperately to do… [Pacific Opera Project] is not trying desperately to be hip. It just is.” In 2020, POP was awarded The American Prize in Opera Performance.
POP has presented more than 40 innovative new productions to date, including revolutionary drive-in productions of COVID fan tutte and the US staged premieres of two Gluck operas in November 2020, about which Opera Magazine wrote “Despite this plague year of postponements, POP has refused to bow to the pandemic or its restrictions...There is surely no opera company in this Covid-ravaged country with a better average for 2020.” Other critically acclaimed productions include Mozart’s Abduction from the Seraglio set as an episode of Star Trek; a “fan-tastic” (LA Daily News) Harajuku-themed Mikado; a Dick Tracy Don Giovanni; a Magic Flute inspired by 1990s video games, called “one of the freshest takes on Mozart’s 1791 classic I have come across” (Operawire); and many more. POP’s signature take on Puccini’s La bohème, “AKA The Hipsters,” set in modern-day Los Angeles, has become a holiday tradition, returning year after year to sold-out audiences and called “riotous” (LA Weekly) and “an undeniably fun night at the theater that should not be missed” (Stage Raw). POP gave the world premiere of Brooke deRosa’s The Monkey's Paw in 2017.
POP has been dedicated to reaching young audiences with performance and education since its inception, regularly performing for school-aged groups in family-friendly productions, including having a presence in 15 Title 1 schools. POP also partners with Bob Baker Marionette Theater, local YMCAs, and the Burbank Boys and Girls Club. During the COVID-19 pandemic, POP created interactive Education Packs appropriate for kindergarten to eighth-grade students to accompany videos of POP’s productions of The Magic Flute and Madama Butterfly.
In 2019, POP presented its most ambitious project to date: the first-ever true-to-story bilingual Madama Butterfly performed in LA’s Little Tokyo. A co-production with Houston’s Opera in the Heights, the production featured a new libretto written by POP’s Founding Artistic Director Josh Shaw and Opera in the Heights Artistic Director Eiki Isomura, presenting Puccini’s story as if it actually happened and attempting to answer the question: “How would Butterfly and Pinkerton communicate?” All Japanese roles were sung in Japanese by Japanese-American artists and all American roles were sung in English. San Francisco Classical Voice described the production as “on a visual scale beyond anything it has taken on before – a sumptuously costumed, fully staged, bilingual co-production… Pacific Opera Project deserves a great deal of credit for making this concept into a reality… innovative, creative, and immensely successful.”
POP presented the 2018 West Coast premiere of Giacomo Rossini’s rarely performed 1816 opera, La gazzetta “The Newspaper.” The first performances in the US were given in Boston at the New England Conservatory in 2013, and POP's production was only the second in North America. Opera Today raved about the premiere, writing “Director Josh Shaw has invested the proceedings with enough good comic ideas for at least three productions. Shaw has set the show in 1960’s Paris, with eye-popping set elements and brilliant uses of color which add to the manic feel… Mr. Shaw has fashioned a take-no-prisoners approach to the staging, which was rife with clever touches… Pacific Opera Project has evidently hit on a winning formula for a night out, serving up food, drink and an operatic discovery in equal measure.” Learn more at www.pacificoperaproject.com.
Synchromy is a composer service organization working with artists in Los Angeles. Synchromy’s mission is to elevate underrepresented Los Angeles-based composers and expand the scope of new music through commissions, collaborations, and community engagement. By reimagining what concerts look like, we reach out to adventurous new artists and audiences.
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