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Press Releases
Apr. 24 & 25: Pacific Opera Project Presents Trouble in Tahiti, Outdoors at the Heritage Square Museum
For Immediate Release
Contact: Katy Salomon | Morahan Arts & Media
katy@morahanartsandmedia.com | 863.660.2214
Pacific Opera Project Presents Leonard Bernstein's Trouble in Tahiti
Four Shows Outdoors at the Heritage Square Museum, April 24 & 25
“Despite this plague year of postponements, POP has refused to bow to the pandemic…
There is surely no opera company in this Covid-ravaged country with a better average for 2020.”
– Opera Magazine
Los Angeles, CA (March 29, 2021) — Pacific Opera Project (POP) announces its next installment of revolutionary, pandemic-safe productions, Leonard Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti, performed live outdoors at the Heritage Square Museum in Los Angeles. The four, socially-distanced performances reprise POP’s first ever debut production in 2011 and will take place on Saturday, April 24, 2021 at 7:30 and 8:45pm PT and Sunday, April 25, 2021 at 5:30 and 7:30pm PT. Picnic and enjoy a bottle of wine with your pod, safely distanced from others and nestled between the historic homes and buildings at Heritage Square.
With just five singers, a simple set, and a 50-minute runtime, Trouble in Tahiti is a candid portrait of the troubled marriage of a young suburban couple and draws upon popular songs styles to deliver an uncompromising critique of post-war American materialism. ?The cast includes Megan Potter as Dinah, Andrew Potter as Sam, Robert Norman as Boy 1, Ryan Reithmeier as Boy 2, and Eleen Hsu-Wentlandt as Girl 1. Pacific Opera Project Artistic Director Josh Shaw produces and directs with musical direction by Kyle Naig and costumes by Maggie Green.
Pacific Opera Project Artistic Director Josh Shaw says, “Trouble in Tahiti is one of my personal favorites and with its manageable cast size, length, and subject matter, it has been on my mind since the beginning of the pandemic. Its themes are sure to hit home with audiences now, as much or more than they ever have. And I'm so excited to work with Heritage Square Museum, a venue I've had in mind for years now. It's one of those hidden LA gems, right in our own backyard in Highland Park. I hope this will be the first of many productions there.”
Performance Information
Pacific Opera Project Presents Leonard Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti
Saturday, April 24, 2021 at 7:30pm PT (Gates open at 6:30)
Saturday, April 24, 2021 at 8:45pm PT (Gates open at 8:30)
Sunday, April 25, 2021 at 5:30pm PT (Gates open at 5:00)
Sunday, April 25, 2021 at 7:30pm PT (Gates open at 6:30)
Heritage Square Museum | 3800 Homer Street | Los Angeles, CA 90031
More Information: www.pacificoperaproject.com/
Music and lyrics by Leonard Bernstein
Directed and Designed by Josh Shaw
Music Directed by Kyle Naig
Costumes by Maggie Green
Runtime: 50 minutes
Cast:
Dinah – Megan Potter
Sam – Andrew Potter
Boy 1 – Robert Norman
Boy 2 – Ryan Reithmeier
Girl 1 – Eleen Hsu-Wentlandt
Tickets:
Section 1: Front Rows $40/person (Sold in Pairs Only)
Section 2: $25/person
Chairs are provided for Section 1, but you are welcome to bring your own blankets or low chairs. Please bring your own chairs or blankets for Section 2. Food and drink (beer/wine, but not hard alcohol) is allowed. Guests are encouraged to arrive at that time to picnic and to look at the exteriors of the historic homes and buildings. Pack out what you pack in.
Contactless ticketing, free parking on site. All seating areas are appropriately spaced to follow current COVID guidelines. Guests may only sit with people from their own household or in groups that are fully vaccinated. No groups larger than five people may sit together. Masks required at all times, except when eating.
Trouble in Tahiti is produced by arrangement with Boosey & Hawkes, Inc., Sole Agent for Leonard Bernstein Music Publishing Company LLC, publisher and copyright owner.
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 amphitheatres, 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 30 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; its critically acclaimed version of 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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