Pacific Opera Project Opens 15th Anniversary Season with 'Pagliacci;' Sept 5-14, 2025

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

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PACIFIC OPERA PROJECT OPENS
15TH ANNIVERSARY SEASON WITH
OUTDOOR PRODUCTION OF PAGLIACCI

Los Angeles, CA — Pacific Opera Project (POP) kicks off their 15th anniversary season with Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci on Friday, September 5, 2025 at 7:30PM; Saturday, September 6, 2025 at 7:30PM; Sunday, September 7, 2025 at 7:30PM; Friday, September 12, 2025 at 7:30PM; Saturday, September 13, 2025 at 7:30PM; Sunday, September 14, 2025 at 7:30PM on the lawn of the Heritage Square Museum in Los Angeles. Directed by POP Artistic Director Josh Shaw and conducted by Blair Slater, the production will be performed outdoors and will feature table seating with wine included, and audience members are encouraged to bring food and drink. The performance will be performed in Italian with English supertitles.

One of the best known operas in the canon, Pagliacci originally premiered at the Teatro Dal Verme in Milan on May 21, 1892 to mixed reviews, yet was immediately successful with the public. Pagliacci is perhaps best known for “Vesti la giubba,” Canio’s aria at the end of the first act, which reinforced the trope of the “tragic clown” in the broader cultural lexicon. The aria was made famous by tenor Enrico Caruso in the early 20th-century, and has been featured in many films and television shows, including The Simpsons, Seinfeld, and Batman.

POP’s upcoming production takes place in a worn-down traveling circus, and places the audience in the middle of the drama during the opera’s famous “play-within-a-play.” Artistic Director Josh Shaw elaborates: “The first time I walked into Heritage Square, I immediately thought of Pagliacci. I could see the troupe rolling into town on an antique truck and setting up their little circus, and that’s exactly what will happen in our production.”

In Pagliacci, a company of travelling comedians arrives in the small village. The townspeople joyfully greet Canio, the leader of the company, his actress wife Nedda, Tonio the clown, and Beppe the actor. Tonio is nursing a grievance against the company’s jealous leader for offending him. Canio’s jealousy is justified: Nedda has a lover in the village – Silvio. Left alone, Nedda dreams of meeting him, yet Tonio declares his love for her. Nedda responds to the clown’s declarations with derisive laughter, cooling his passions with a lash of a whip. Impotent with rage, Tonio leaves, threatening revenge. Meanwhile, Silvio appears and implores Nedda to abandon her life on the road and run away with him. Suddenly, Canio’s wrathful voice is heard, as he rushes back to call for the offended clown. Silvio, however, manages to flee unrecognized. Canio insists that Nedda name her lover, but to no avail. Canio leaps at her with a knife. Beppe pulls him off and Tonio calms him down, saying that the fugitive will return for the performance and there he will somehow give himself away. The show begins soon…

Cast members for Pagliacci include tenor Nathan Bowles (Dallas Opera, LA Opera) as Canio, soprano Janet Todd (LA Opera, Opera Santa Barbara) as Nedda, baritone Joel Balzun (LA Opera, Chautauqua Opera) as Tonio, baritone Kenneth Stavert (Heartbeat Opera, Santa Fe Opera) as Silvio, and tenor Arnold Livingston Geis (LA Opera, Long Beach Opera) as Beppe.

General admission seating for Pagliacci ranges from $15-$35. Tables for two start at $110 and tables for four start at $200. All tables include a bottle of wine. Additional wine is not available for purchase, however, audience members are encouraged to bring their own food and beverages, including wine and beer. Tickets can be purchased at pacificoperaproject.com.

CALENDAR EDITORS PLEASE NOTE:
PACIFIC OPERA PROJECTS PRESENTS PAGLIACCI
Who: Pacific Opera Project
When: Friday, September 5, 2025 at 7:30PM; Saturday, September 6, 2025 at 7:30PM; Sunday, September 7, 2025 at 7:30PM; Friday, September 12, 2025 at 7:30PM; Saturday, September 13, 2025 at 7:30PM; Sunday, September 14, 2025 at 7:30PM
Where: Heritage Square Museum; 3800 Homer Street, Los Angeles, CA 90031
Cast: Nathan Bowles as Canio, Janet Todd as Nedda, Joel Balzun as Tonio, Kenneth Stavert as Silvio, and Arnold Livingston Geis as Beppe
Creative Team: Josh Shaw, director; Blair Slater, music director

About Pacific Opera Project
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.