If Los Angeles has a status for opera, it’s as an outlier, a metropolis free of encrusted custom and desirous to invent. Lengthy Seashore Opera, the Trade and the Los Angeles Philharmonic have collectively created an enviable engine for remaking opera.
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3:43 p.m. Nov. 8, 2024An earlier model of this text misstated the title of Yuval Sharon’s ebook as “A New Philosophy of Art.” The right title is “A New Philosophy of Opera.”
Within the lately printed “A New Philosophy of Opera” by Trade founder Yuval Sharon, two chapters titled “Toward an Anti-Elite Opera” and “Breaking the Frame” provide a wonderful introduction to opera L.A. model. However so, in a surprisingly completely different method, did three extra mainstream L.A. opera firms that lately introduced a trio of mid-Nineteenth century operas.
The operas — Russian, French and Italian — are out of the extraordinary. The venues, bare-bones to grand. The geography, Westside to East.
In a neighborhood room at St. Andrew’s Lutheran Church in the Sawtelle district, Impartial Opera on Friday gave the West Coast premiere of Alexander Dargomyzhsky‘s “The Stone Guest.” Left unfinished at the composer’s loss of life in 1869, it was a very powerful opera of final weekend and delivered in far and away the least ornamental method.
Impartial Opera was fashioned in 2012 by Ukrainian conductor, pianist and all-around powerhouse Galina Barskaya to carry out operas not usually heard in L.A., irrespective of how modest the means. Friday evening, the viewers sat on 4 dozen folding chairs. Singers stood, themselves stone friends of kinds, at music stands. Barskaya accompanied on the piano. Regardless of, it was a revelation.
Dargomyzhsky is understood, if recognized in any respect exterior Russia, for this opera and for PDQ Bach’s 1970 unmissable parody album, “The Stoned Guest.” The true opera units Pushkin’s play, which was written as a response to Mozart’s “Don Giovanni,” phrase for phrase. Barskaya advised the viewers that she will’t keep in mind whether or not, rising up in Kyiv, she heard “The Stone Guest” or Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” first, so seminal is the work to the event of Russian opera.
Composed with out arias or set items, Dargomyzhsky’s rating illuminates Pushkin’s phrases and paves the way in which for the really Russian opera, nonetheless grander, of Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov. The opera has a special tackle Don Juan than does Mozart’s opera. Pushkin’s womanizing protagonist is extra a romantic than a cad, and his servant, Leporello (a deep bass within the opera), darker and unfunny.
Dargomyzhsky died leaving solely a piano rating, which Rimsky-Korsakov splendidly orchestrated, however listening to “The Stone Guest” sung with out theatrical or orchestral trappings made a strong case for the sheer musical energy that may be invested within the Russian language and Pushkin’s textual content.
Not one of the score-bound younger singers have been Russian-speaking however they remained a proficient and convincing forged, headed by TJ Simon (Don Juan), Michael Payne (Leporello), Shannon Moore (Donna Elvira) and Ariel Pisturino (Donna Anna).
Amina Edris as Juliet and Duke Kim as Romeo within the Los Angeles Opera manufacturing of Gounod’s “Romeo et Juliette” on the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.
(Corey Weaver / L.A. Opera)
Saturday evening on the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Los Angeles Opera revived a lavish manufacturing of Gounod’s “Romeo and Juliet,” written two years sooner than “The Stone Guest.” Right here have been all the trimmings of grand opera and not one of the substance. Aside from a few good tunes and a single in style aria, this vapid setting of Shakespeare’s play makes it one of many least notable works in the usual operatic repertory and the least worthy “Romeo and Juliet” adaptation I do know, Baz Luhrmann’s “Romeo + Juliet” included.
Even so, and with the assistance of an Ian Decide manufacturing, L.A. Opera bought away with utilizing Gounod to characteristic sensation-making younger singers: at least Anna Netrebko and Rolando Villazón in 2005, Vittorio Grigolo with Nino Machaidze six years later.
I had figured by now the Lego-like set would have lengthy been recycled, and that was that. However depart it to L.A. Opera. It’s gotten away with it once more — this time with the corporate debuts of a good-looking, exhilarating pair of lovers, tenor Duke Kim and Amina Edris.
Taking up the unique manufacturing, choreographer Kitty McNamee, in her first try at opera course, introduced a breath of contemporary air by shifting everybody onstage, together with the refrain, with grace and flare. Regardless of the operatic odds on this work, the lovers offered consuming rapture. The struggle scenes dazzled.
Better of all, the corporate had a conductor of exceptional eloquence who understood motion in all its musical elements. Domingo Hindoyan, the Venezuelan chief conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, is a rising star. His Liverpool recording of Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony, launched within the spring, has a glow and grandeur that permits it to face out in a really crowded subject. Hindoyan’s 4 performances with L.A. Opera run by way of Nov. 17 and are his solely ones within the U.S. this season — a coup for the corporate. (Lina Gonzalez-Granados takes over the ultimate two performances.) Does this sign that he’s a candidate to succeed Music Director James Conlon, who steps down in 2026?
Not all Parisians have been taken in by Gounod’s opera, hit although it was on the Théâtre Lyrique. A parody, “Rhum et Eau en Juillet” (‘Rum and Water in July”), was summarily staged at a competing Paris theater. It would be nice to know what that was like.
Continuing eastward to the Garibaldina Society in Highland Park on Sunday afternoon, I caught Pacific Opera Project’s newest goofy providing, Antonio Cagnoni’s “Don Bucefalo.”
Right here was a parody opera for actual. This obscure and hilariously outrageous takeoff on the style of Italian opera buffa, written in 1846, turned out to be the hit of the weekend. Because the director, designer and POP founder Josh Shaw reminded the viewers, the ultimate performances this weekend most likely have been the one probability to see this opera.
“Don Bucefalo” is obscure for a cause. It is filled with in-jokes of the period, however with sly and not-so-sly gusto together with a gifted forged, Shaw turned this into riotous supper-club opera. POP appeared to begin as a goof in 2011 — a peripatetic firm making foolish opera in corny, campy productions in unpredictable locations such because the Highland Park Ebell Membership, the Forest Garden cemetery and Occidental Faculty. It has grown to have a big following. POP has given necessary premieres, resembling the primary skilled Los Angeles staging of Stravinsky’s “The Rake’s Progress,” which was written in L.A. Final summer time, Dvorak’s “Rusalka” was a delight staged at Descanso Gardens.
However POP could by no means have been goofier than with “Don Bucefalo,” carried out within the Italian historic society based in 1877. The stage was arrange in a big room with tables coated by red-checkered tablecloths. Pasta with meatballs was out there, as was Italian wine.
The set is nutty. The costumes are nutty. The opera, which revolves round an opera composer making an attempt to placed on a live performance, is past nutty. The semi-talented Don Bucefalo, and different suitors together with a semi-talented tenor, try to make like to a newly widowed, younger, semi-talented soprano. Chaos, musical in addition to romantic, ensues. There are Rossini jokes and Mozart jokes. Composer jokes included an arresting scene of this Don writing an aria worthy of PDQ Bach.
The most important joke of all is on us. The music is definitely fairly good. The singers are too. As is the small chamber orchestra and the conductor, Kyle Naig. As Bucefalo, baritone Armando Contreras winningly overplayed the virtuoso farce, which was neither too lowbrow nor too intellectual. It will go down as one of many performances of the 12 months.
He was surrounded by ready singer-comedians, amongst them Véronique Filloux, Eric Botto, Dominic Salvati, Joel Balzun, Erin Alford and Mariah Rae, all of whom excellently mastered roles they doubtless won’t ever have a possibility to sing once more. However in doing so, they’ve admirably lived as much as Sharon’s anti-elite L.A. opera splendid of big-time breaking the body.
L.A. Opera and Pacific Opera Challenge
‘Romeo and Juliet’The place: L.A. Opera, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 Grand Ave., L.A.
When: Via Nov. 23
Tickets: $33.50-$400
Working time: About 3 hours, 10 minutes (one intermission)
Information: (213) 972-8001, laopera.org
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‘Don Bucefalo’
The place: Pacific Opera Challenge on the Garibaldina Society, 4533 N. Figueroa St., L.A.
When: 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday
Tickets: $15-$65 ($400 for a entrance desk with 4 seats)
Working Time: 2 hours, quarter-hour (two intermissions)
Information: pacificoperaproject.com