Pacific Opera Projects Presents 'Cinderella Story,' Sept. 2024

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

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PACIFIC OPERA PROJECT &
THE CITY OF WEST HOLLYWOOD PRESENTS
CINDERELLA STORY

A Free, Family-Friendly Revue
Featuring Beloved Arias & Showtunes
By Rodgers & Hammerstein, Massenet & Rossini

Sept 7, 8, 14, 15, 21 & 22;
Kings Road Park in West Hollywood

Los Angeles, CA — Pacific Opera Project (POP) and the City of West Hollywood present Cinderella Story, a family-friendly, musical revue celebrating the namesake fairytale, on Saturday, September 7, 2024; Sunday, September 8, 2024; Saturday, September 14, 2024; Sunday, September 15, 2024; Saturday, September 21, 2024; and Sunday, September 22, 2024 at Kings Road Park in West Hollywood, CA. All shows will take place at 4PM. This outdoor production is directed by Jack Zager and features music direction by Yumi Hashimoto.

Cinderella Story tells the tale of Cinderella through arias and showtunes from three previous works of musical storytelling: Rodgers & Hammerstein’s 1957 musical Cinderella, Rossini’s 1817 opera La Cenerentola, and Massenet’s 1899 opera Cendrillon. Cinderella Story is a part of the City of West Hollywood’s Free Theatre in the Parks Series, one of many programs offered by the City of West Hollywood’s Arts Division. POP worked with the City of West Hollywood last year in producing a free, hour-long version of Englebert Humperdinck’s Hansel & Gretel, which was staged at Kings Road Park and Descanso Gardens.

POP’s partnership with the City of West Hollywood in presenting free, accessible opera works continues POP’s mission to reach and inspire young audiences in Los Angeles, especially those who rarely have the opportunity to attend opera or musical theater performances. These free performances supplement POP’s many education and community programs, which includes POPeretta!, their three-week summer opera program for kids and teens, and POP’s year-long partnerships and workshops with schools in Los Angeles County.

Cast members for the production include soprano Christina Pezzarossi (Pensacola Opera, Central City Opera) as Cinderella; soprano Emily Scott (New Zealand Opera, Long Beach Opera) as Clorinda; mezzo Lydia Brown (Beth Morrison Projects) as Thisbe; mezzo Jessica Gonzales-Rodriguez (Opera Santa Barbara) as the Fairy Godmother; tenor Dominic Salvati (Opera San Luis Obispo) as the Prince; baritone Byron Mayes (Opera Santa Barbara, Opera in the Heights) as King Dandini; and baritone Christopher Walters as Cinderella’s Father.

Cinderella Story is free to the public and does not require a reservation. Learn more information at pacificoperaproject.com/cinderella-story.

CALENDAR EDITORS PLEASE NOTE:
PACIFIC OPERA PROJECTS & THE CITY OF WEST HOLLYWOOD PRESENT CINDERELLA STORY
Who: Pacific Opera Project & the City of West Hollywood
When: Saturday, September 7, 2024 at 4PM; Sunday, September 8, 2024 at 4PM; Saturday, September 14, 2024 at 4PM; Sunday, September 15, 2024 at 4PM; Saturday, September 21, 2024 at 4PM; & Sunday, September 22, 2024 at 4PM
Where: Kings Road Park; 1000 N. Kings Road, West Hollywood, CA 90069
Cast: Christina Pezzarossi as Cinderella, Emily Scott as Clorinda, Lydia Brown as Thisbe, Jessica Gonzales-Rodriguez as the Fairy Godmother, Dominic Salvati as the Prince, Byron Mayes as King Dandini & Christopher Walters as Cinderella’s Father.
Creative Team: Jack Zager, Director; Yumi Hashimoto, Music Director; Sarah Sturdevant, Production Manager

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 LA Times music critic Mark Swed 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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