Pacific Opera Project Presents US Premiere of 'Il Fortunato Inganno,' Sept 4-13

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

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PACIFIC OPERA PROJECT
OPENS THEIR 2026/27 SEASON
WITH THE US PREMIERE OF
DONIZETTI’S IL FORTUNATO INGANNO

An Uncovered Operatic Gem Premieres at
the Oldest Italian Society Venue in America

Sep 4, 5 & 6; 11, 12 & 13, 2026;
The Garibaldina Society, Los Angeles, CA

Los Angeles, CA — Pacific Opera Project (POP) kicks off their 2026/27 season with the United States premiere of Gaetano Donizetti’s Il Fortunato Inganno on Friday, September 4, 2026 at 7:30PM; Saturday, September 5, 2026 at 7:30PM; Sunday, September 6, 2026 at 3PM; Friday, September 11, 2026 at 7:30PM; and Saturday, September 12, 2026 at 7:30PM; and Sunday, September 13, 2026 at 3PM at the Garibaldina Society in Los Angeles. Directed by POP Artistic Director Josh Shaw and conducted by Alexandra Enyart, this production marks the return of POP to the Garibaldina Society, after their hit 2024 production of Don Bucefalo, which the LA Times called an “obscure and hilariously outrageous takeoff on the genre of Italian opera buffa.” The production will be sung in Italian with English supertitles. 

Thought to have been lost to time, Il Fortunato Inganno received its premiere on September 3, 1823 at the Teatro Nuovo in Naples, and did not receive a second performance until it was revived in 1995 at the Vadstena Academy in Vadstena, Sweden. It received a more formal revival at the Festival della Valle d’Itria in 1998, which was the last time the opera was mounted. As POP specializes in reviving rare and lost bel canto operas, Artistic Director Josh Shaw naturally had his eye on the score for Il Fortunato Inganno. Unfortunately, after contacting multiple publishers and receiving no word on the score’s availability, he considered giving up on finding the score. However, by happenstance, Shaw was vacationing in Italy, near the town that hosts the Festival della Valle d’Itria, when he had the idea to contact an administrator at the Festival regarding the score’s availability. 

“Sometimes you just have to get lucky. It was a fortunate  detour that led to finally securing the score for Donizetti’s ‘Fortunate Deception,’” says Shaw. “ I hadn’t even planned to visit that part of Italy, but I sure am glad it worked out. This score is packed with everything you’d expect from Donizetti and from a POP production. It’s hard to believe the composer was only 24 years old when he wrote the piece, because you can already hear conventions made so famous in his later operas. I’m thrilled to bring this long lost gem to POP audiences.”

Similar to Don Bucefalo and other opera buffas of the day, Il Fortunato Inganno is an opera about opera, taking place behind the scenes at a fiery Italian opera company. Rehearsals are in full chaos at Lattanzio Lattughelli’s opera company when romance adds fuel to the fire. Eugenia, a young actress, is in love with Eduardo, a cavalry lieutenant—but his gruff uncle, Colonel Franceschetti, refuses to let his nephew marry anyone from the stage. Enter Aurelia, Eugenia’s clever aunt, with a performance of her own. Hijinx ensues, and a comedy of familial proportions plays out through a truly “happy deception.”

Il Fortunato Inganno marks the second production and collaboration between POP and the Garibaldina Society.  One of the first mutual-aid societies for Italian immigrants in America, the Garibaldina Society is the oldest Italian club in Los Angeles, when it was founded as the Società Garibaldina di Mutua Beneficenza in 1877. The Garibaldina has received renewed interest in recent years after opening up membership to non-Italians in 2017, and after Nicole Infante, previously of Frederick’s of Hollywood, became president in 2022. The Garibaldina recently received praise from the LA Times, where the club was called an “absolute delight.”

Cast members for Il Fortunato Inganno include bass-baritone Scott Levin (LA Opera, Long Beach Opera) as Lattanzio Lattughelli; soprano Avery Boettcher (Santa Fe Opera, Detroit Opera) as Aurelia; baritone Kenny Stavert (Musica le Mans, Indianapolis Opera) as Ortenzio Franschetti; baritone Joel Balzun (LA Opera, Santa Fe Opera) as Bequardo; baritone John Tibbetts (Opera Atelier, Palm Beach Opera) as Vulcano; tenor Fran Laucerica (Opera Philadelphia, Pittsburgh Opera) as Eduardo; soprano Sunwoo Park (Wolf Trap Opera, Opera Santa Barbara) as Eugenia; mezzo-soprano Kira Dills-DeSurra (Chicago Opera Theater, Beth Morrisson Projects) as Fulgenzia del Foletto, baritone Chris Walters (Lyric Opera of Orange County) as Biscaglino; bass Steve Pence (LA Opera, LA Phil) as Ascanio; and soprano Joanna Kim (Opera in the Ozarks, Opera North) as Firodelisa.

Tickets for Il Fortunato Inganno start at $15 and can be purchased at pacificoperaproject.com. This production offers general and table seating; all table seating comes complete with a pasta dinner and a glass of wine. Additional wine by the bottle and by the glass will be available for purchase, and there will be a full bar all evening.

CALENDAR EDITORS PLEASE NOTE:
PACIFIC OPERA PROJECTS PRESENTS IL FORTUNATO INGANNO
Who: Pacific Opera Project
When: Friday, September 4, 2026 at 7:30PM; Saturday, September 5, 2026 at 7:30PM; Sunday, September 6, 2026 at 3:00PM; Friday, September 11, 2026 at 7:30PM; Saturday, September 12, 2026 at 7:30PM; Sunday, September 13, 2026 at 3:00PM
Where: The Garibaldina; 4533 N Figueroa St, Los Angeles, CA 90065
Cast: Scott Levin as Lattanzio Lattughelli, Avery Boettcher as Aurelia, Kenny Stavert as Ortenzio Franschetti, Joel Balzun as Bequardo, John Tibbetts as Vulcano, Fran Laucerica as Eduardo, Sunwoo Park as Eugenia, Kira Dills-Desurra as Fulgenzia del Foletto, Chris Walters as Biscaglino, Steve Pence as Ascanio, and Joanna Kim as
Fiordelisa
Creative Team: Josh Shaw, director; Alexandra Enyart, music director & conductor

About Pacific Opera Project

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.

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