Pacific Opera Project Announces 15th Anniversary Season

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

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PACIFIC OPERA PROJECT ANNOUNCES
15TH ANNIVERSARY SEASON

Pagliacci at Heritage Square; Sept 5-14, 2025
Auber’s Fra Diavolo at The Ebell; Nov 7-16, 2025
Turandot at The Aratani Theater; Mar 14-22, 2026

The Return of POP’s Star Trek-inspired
Abduction from the Seraglio; Feb 6-8, 2026

The LA Premiere of Héctor Armienta’s Zorro
May 16 & 17, 2026 at the San Gabriel Mission Playhouse

Los Angeles, CA — Pacific Opera Project (POP) has announced details for the company’s 15th anniversary season, which will launch with their production of Pagliacci at the Heritage Square Museum on September 5, 2025. The season will include five productions, including three brand-new productions of operas from the classical canon, a revival of POP’s beloved Star Trek-inspired Abduction from the Seraglio, and the LA premiere of Héctor Armienta’s Zorro. The season will also feature several additional events, which will be announced at a later date, including artist recitals at POP HQ in Highland Park.

POP’s Artistic Director Josh Shaw says this about the anniversary season: “It’s a big one, and there’s a little something for everyone. From the titles, to the artists, to the venues, I’m so excited about every aspect of the season. Comedy, tragedy, adventure, legend, parody — this season has it all.” POP’s Executive Director Katherine Powers adds, “In 14 years, POP has made a meteoric ascent from an ambitious upstart to a beloved LA icon. This 15th anniversary season is a testament to everything that makes POP unique, from irreverent takes on classics to LA premieres. As always, POP continues to subvert the cliches of the genre, creating productions you could never imagine, and performances you’ll never forget.”

POP’s 15th Anniversary Season Highlights

• The season begins with an outdoor production of Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci at the Heritage Square Museum, which will run on Friday, September 5; Saturday, September 6; Sunday, September 7; Friday, September 12; Saturday, September 13; and Sunday, September 14, 2025. Widely known for the iconic character Canio, the tragic clown, and his aria “Vesti la giubba,” this production will put the audience in the center of action during the opera’s “show-within-a-show.”

• POP presents Fra Diavolo, a rarely-performed opéra comique by the early Romantic French composer Daniel Auber, at The Ebell in Highland Park on Friday, November 7; Saturday, November 8; Sunday, November 9; Wednesday, November 12; Friday, November 14; Saturday, November 15; and Sunday, November 16, 2025. One of the most popular opéra comiques of its day, Auber’s Fra Diavolo follows the opera’s namesake, a roguish bandit whose name means “Brother Devil” in Italian, who disguises himself to prey on the aristocratic guests of an inn on the western coast of Italy.

• POP’s beloved Star Trek parody, Abduction from the Seraglio, returns on Friday, February 6; Saturday, February 7; and Sunday, February 8, 2026 at Thorne Hall on Occidental College’s campus. Originally premiered in 2015 at the El Portal Theater in North Hollywood, The Huffington Post called it “a creative bit of genius from Josh Shaw,” and Mercury News said it was a “riotously funny staging.” This production has since been revived at Salt Marsh Opera, Festival Opera, and Opera Orlando, among others. This will be the first revival of this production in Los Angeles County since September 2016, where it ran for a one-night only performance at The Ford. Tenors Brian Cheney and Robert Norman return for their iconic roles of Captain James T. Belmonte and Mr. Pedrillo.

• 2024 Richard Tucker Award-winning tenor Clay Hilley and soprano Sara Duchovnay star in Puccini’s Turandot at the Aratani Theatre at the Japanese American Cultural & Community Center in Little Tokyo on Saturday, March 14; Sunday, March 15; Saturday, March 21; and Sunday, March 22, 2026. In this new production from POP, Turandot is transported to a fairytale world of ice and snow, as cold as Turandot’s broken heart.

• Finally, on Saturday, May 16, and Sunday, May 17, 2026; POP will present the LA premiere of Héctor Armienta’s Zorro at the San Gabriel Mission Playhouse. A native of Los Angeles and one of the few Chicano composers working in opera today, Armienta’s music has been commissioned and performed by Pacific Symphony, Fort Worth Opera, and Oakland East Bay Symphony, among others. Zorro had its world premiere in 2022 at Opera Southwest in Albuquerque, NM. When it closed Opera Santa Barbara’s season in 2024, the Santa Barbara Independent called Zorro a “modern opera with potential to appeal to admitted opera-philes while also luring in new opera fans.” The beautiful San Gabriel Mission Playhouse is the perfect setting for this Los Angeles-based tale of the masked hero, Zorro.

Subscriptions for the 2025/26 season will go on sale on April 8, 2025, while single tickets will go on sale on May 1, 2025. For more information regarding the 2025/26 season, visit POP’s website at pacificoperaproject.com.

Founded in 2011 and based in Highland Park, Los Angeles’s Pacific Opera Project (POP) reimagines opera as an affordable adventure, by making unforgettable, entertaining performances accessible for all. A mobile opera company, POP has presented over 60 productions in more than 20 venues, reaching over 50,000 audience members. 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 variety of venues that celebrate LA’s Northeast and Downtown communities, including outdoor museums and cemeteries, small clubs, 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… [POP] is not trying desperately to be hip. It just is.” The LA Times recently named POP amongst the “Best of 2024” in classical music.

Known for unforgettable reimaginings of familiar operas, POP’s innovative productions have included the fan-favorite and critically acclaimed productions Mozart’s Abduction from the Seraglio set as an episode of Star Trek; a “fan-tastic” (LA Daily News) Harajuku-themed Mikado; #Superflute, 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).

During the pandemic, POP presented a revolutionary drive-in production of COVID fan tutte and the U.S. staged premieres of two Gluck operas, 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.” In April 2021, the LA Times noted that POP produced “the first major musical or theatrical event in Los Angeles County in nearly 14 months.” To this day, POP offers free live-streamed and archived performances that are available online to audiences around the world, garnering over 337,000 lifetime views.

In 2024, POP remounted its groundbreaking bilingual Japanese/English Madama Butterfly ???? performed in Little Tokyo’s JACCC Aratani Theatre. The LA Times hailed the production as “revisionist and enlightening,” continuing, “The singers… are believable and stunning. The tragedy has a kind of inevitability that feels more Mishima than the maudlin Italian original… Pacific Opera Project has a triumph on its hands.”

In addition to reimagining familiar favorites, POP is known for presenting undiscovered and forgotten gems, updated for modern audiences. POP presented the 2018 West Coast premiere of Giacomo Rossini’s rarely performed 1816 opera, La gazzetta “The Newspaper.” Opera Today raved about the premiere, writing “Director Josh Shaw has invested the proceedings with enough good comic ideas for at least three productions. 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.”

In 2024, POP presented the modern US premiere of Antonio Cagnoni’s bel canto meta-comedy, Don Bucefalo. Updated to the 1960s, the site-specific production was set and presented in Highland Park’s Garibaldina Society, recently featured in the LA Times for its family-style pasta dinners and Italian retro charm. To date, POP has presented four U.S. premieres, two world premieres, and three LA premieres.

POP’s Education & Community Engagement Department was established in 2021 to support ABIDE (Accessibility, Belonging, Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity), by offering free engagement events and serving students in in-school and summer education programs. POP’s in-school programs are provided at no cost to Title I schools.

Learn more at www.pacificoperaproject.com.

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