Pacific Opera Project Presents the LA Premiere of Dvorák's 'Rusalka'

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

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PACIFIC OPERA PROJECT PRESENTS
THE LA PREMIERE OF
DVORÁK’S RUSALKA

POP Opens Their 2024/25 Season with
Outdoor Production of Dvorák’s Classic Opera

July 12-14, 19-21, 2024;
Descanso Gardens in La Cañada Flintridge, CA

Los Angeles, CA — Pacific Opera Project (POP) presents the Los Angeles premiere of Antonin Dvorák’s 1901 opera Rusalka on Friday, July 12 at 7:30 p.m.; Saturday, July 13 at 7:30 p.m.; Sunday, July 14 at 7:30 p.m.; Friday, July 19 at 7:30 p.m.; Saturday, July 20 at 7:30 p.m.; and Sunday, July 21 at 7:30 p.m. on the Main Lawn of Descanso Gardens in La Cañada Flintridge, CA. This outdoor production will feature a brand-new English translation by POP Artistic Director Josh Shaw, and will be conducted by Alexandra Enyart, who has “garnered universal praise in the local classical music realm…as her reputation flourishes nationally.” (New City Magazine)

Dvorák’s ninth opera, Rusalka premiered in 1901 in Prague and has become Dvorák’s most successful opera from his oeuvre. Based on Slavic mythology, the “rusalka” is similar in concept to a mermaid, and in that sense, Dvorák’s Rusalka is similar to other 19th-century tales about mermaids and water nymphs such as Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid or Fouqué’s Undine. In the opera, the rusalka falls in love with a human prince and asks a sea witch to make her human. However, the story takes a dark turn when the prince mistreats and eventually rejects the rusalka, leading to dire consequences for both.

The vision to perform Rusalka initially came from searching for an opera that would play well outdoors, according to Shaw. "Having previously done Into the Woods and Hansel and Gretel at Descanso Gardens, I wanted to find another opera that was ideal for the beautiful outdoor setting,” says Shaw. “Rusalka was among a list of about 10 operas I was considering. After hearing the recording once, I was hooked. Only after picking the show did I find out that the opera has never been done in Los Angeles.”

Cast members for the production include soprano Rachel Blaustein (Santa Fe Opera, Opera Theatre of St. Louis) as Rusalka; tenor Derrek Stark (Met Opera, Knoxville Opera) as The Prince; bass Steve Pence (LA Phil, LA Opera) as Vodnik; mezzo-soprano Erin Alford (Florida Grand Opera, Teatro Nuevo) as Jezibaba; soprano Claire Pegram (LA Opera, Mission Opera) as Foreign Princess, soprano Emily Gallagher (Pittsburgh Opera, Pittsburgh Festival Opera) as Nymph #1, soprano Tiffany Ho (Mission Opera, Rochester Lyric Opera) as Nymph #2, mezzo-soprano Christine Li as Nymph #3, soprano Sunwoo Park (Opera Santa Barbara, Wolf Trap Opera) as Kitchen Boy, and baritone José Luis Moldanado (Long Beach Opera, Aspen Music Festival) as Hunter #2.

Tickets for Rusalka start at $20 for Descanso Gardens members and $25 for non-members, and can be purchased at pacificoperaproject.com. Seating will be provided; outside chairs, blankets, and picnics are not allowed.

CALENDAR EDITORS PLEASE NOTE:
PACIFIC OPERA PROJECTS PRESENTS THE LA PREMIERE OF RUSALKA
Who: Pacific Opera Project
When: Friday, July 12 at 7:30PM; Saturday, July 13 at 7:30PM; Sunday, July 14 at 7:30PM; Friday, July 19 at 7:30PM; Saturday, July 20 at 7:30PM; Sunday, July 21 at 7:30PM
Where: Descanso Gardens; 1418 Descanso Dr, La Cañada Flintridge, CA 91011
Cast: Rachel Blaustein as Rusalka, Derrek Stark as The Prince, Steve Pence as Vodnik, Erin Alford as Jezibaba, Claire Pegram as Foreign Princess, Emily Gallagher as Nymph #1, Tiffany Ho as Nymph #2, Cristine Li as Nymph #3, Sunwoo Park as Kitchen Boy & José Luis Maldonado as Hunter #2
Creative Team: Josh Shaw, Director & Translation; Alexandra Enyart, Conductor 
Ticket Link: https://bit.ly/poprusalka

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 59 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’s 2024 revival of their groundbreaking bilingual Japanese/English production of Madama Butterfly ???? was hailed by the LA Times as “a triumph.”

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 24 classrooms in 10 Title-I 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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