Pacific Opera Project Co-Commissions Leslie Burrs’ I Can’t Breathe for West Coast Premiere at El Portal Theatre

For Immediate Release
Contact: Katy Salomon | Morahan Arts & Media
katy@morahanartsandmedia.com | 863.660.2214

Pacific Opera Project Co-Commissions Leslie Burrs’ I Can’t Breathe

Performing the West Coast Premiere of the New Opera on
May 13-15, 2022 at the El Portal Theatre in North Hollywood

“In this strange time and strange place and strange way, the pandemic has 
made POP matter in a telling new way.” – Los Angeles Times

www.pacificoperaproject.com

Los Angeles, CA (December 16, 2021) — Pacific Opera Project (POP), known for “making opera cool, affordable, accessible and enticing" (LA Weekly), presents the west coast premiere of I Can’t Breathe, a new opera by Leslie Burrs with libretto by Brandon J. Gibson, at the El Portal Theatre in North Hollywood on May 13, 14, and 15, 2022.

The opera was inspired by and written in the wake of repeated instances of fatal police brutality perpetrated against African Americans and tells the stories of six individuals from different walks of life as a series of six separate monodramas to tell each character's story. The opera will premiere at Marble City Opera in February 2022 and the commissioning consortium also includes Cleveland Opera Theater and Opera Columbus.

Artistic Director Josh Shaw explains, "POP is of course known for our comedies and our emphasis on entertainment, but producing new and meaningful opera is also part of what we do, and something we can do well. When I was approached with this project, it seemed far too relevant and too important to postpone to a future season. We attempt to reach all of LA with POP’s brand of approachable opera, and that includes new works like these that are vital to the broadening and continuation of the art form."

The production will be directed and designed by POP’s Founding Artistic Director Josh Shaw, and will be music directed by Joshua Foy. The cast for I Can’t Breathe will be announced in spring 2022.

Performance Information
Pacific Opera Project Presents I Can’t Breathe
El Portal Theatre | 5269 Lankershim Blvd | North Hollywood, CA
Friday, May 13, 2022 at 8:00pm
Saturday, May 14, 2022 at 6:00pm
Sunday, May 15, 2022 at 3:00pm
Tickets: On sale February 1, 2022
Link: http://pacificoperaproject.com/ICB

Leslie Burrs (libretto by Brandon Gibson) – I Can’t Breathe [World Premiere]

Cast TBA
Joshua Foy, conductor
Josh Shaw, director

About Pacific Opera Project
Founded in 2011 by Artistic Director Josh Shaw and Music Director Stephen Karr, Los Angeles’s Pacific Opera Project (POP) is dedicated to providing quality opera that is innovative, 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.

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 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.”

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 of The Mikado, The Barber of Seville, Sweeney Todd, Cosi fan tutte, Gianni Schicchi, L'enfant et les sortilèges, and La bohème. POP has ongoing internships with Occidental College and collaborates with their Glee Club every other year, as well as internships with The Waverly School and Orange County School of the Arts. POP also partners with 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. Learn more at www.pacificoperaproject.com.

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