LA Opera’s world premiere production of Il Postino offers up the latest iteration of a work that seems destined to become an enfant d’oré of the modern cultural lexicon. Based on the 1985 book Ardiente Paciencia by Chilean author Antonio Skármeta, it tells the story of Mario Ruoppolo, a lovelorn mailman on a small island, [...]
With the recent closing of LA Opera’s Götterdämmerung, the circus has packed up and left town. But like a classic rocker’s farewell tour, this motley crew will soon be back for an encore performance — despite the grumbles of ‘good riddance’ that lately have been ricocheting around town from more than a few opera fans. [...]
For some years now, the Da Camera Society has been presenting Chamber Music in Historic Sites, where pre-modern music is performed in distinctive venues from Pasadena to the Westside. On March 10, Angelenos were treated to Catalan violist extraordinaire Jordi Savall performing solo at the Doheny Mansion. If you can find any excuse to wander [...]
“Il Barbiere di Siviglia” is undoubtedly the most popular comic opera of all time. Gioachino Rossini’s 1816 Bel Canto-style opera buffa was the first Italian opera ever performed in America (in New York in 1825) and made its composer into a household name worldwide. When a production gets it right, as LA Opera’s version has, [...]
Scheming dwarves, obscene fertility goddesses, floating eyeballs and comic book heroes — what more could one ask for in an evening of light entertainment?
Just kidding about the light entertainment part. “Siegfried” is the third of four operas in Richard Wagner’s gargantuan Ring cycle, and LA Opera’s ambitious new staging takes viewers another step deeper into [...]
The beginning of another opera season is upon us, and LA Opera has just the thing to banish those end-of-summer, mid-recession blues — its 2009/10 season opener, “The Elixir of Love,” is a frothy funfest that is as refreshing as a lemon gelato on a hot summer day. One of the most crowd-pleasing of the [...]
What becomes a legend most? In the case of Marina Poplavskaya, the Russian soprano performing the lead role in LA Opera’s “La Traviata,” it would seem to be simply her talent plus the right publicist. Two years ago, Poplavskaya was an unknown 29-year-old beginning her first season at London’s Royal Opera House. Just two months [...]
LA Opera’s production of “Die Walküre” is a creative, invigorating and altogether splendid realization of Richard Wagner’s idea of a gesamtkunstwerk, a complete artwork synthesizing music, drama, poetry, painting, sculpture, and architecture. Berlin-based director Achim Freyer has succeeded in giving us a fresh and radical rethinking of Wagner’s 1854 meisterwerk, an overhaul the master himself [...]
