Mark Your Calendar: LBO's Stunning 2024 Season Lineup Revealed
Long Beach, CA – Long Beach Opera continues to adapt, grow and innovate, embracing the company’s singular take on the myriad possibilities for opera in the 21st century. Long Beach Opera’s 2024 Season presents a fully staged season of new operas by female composers and librettists in unexpected locations throughout Los Angeles County.
The season features two world premieres and the filming of an original opera plus the return of trailblazing composer Kate Soper with the West Coast staged premiere of her masterpiece IPSA DIXIT, seen in a new production with the Martha Graham Dance Company. In Spring 2024, audiences will also have an opportunity to see the progress of new works from the inside with the return of the company’s LBO ON DISPLAY. The season features the LBO debuts of several young directors and designers being mentored by company Artistic Director James Darrah; LBO continues a commitment to providing pathways and forums for emerging voices and talent to debut, experiment, and define opera for a new generation.
The 2024 Season begins in February with the world premiere of the meditative opera ISOLA by composer Alyssa Weinberg with text by poet J. Mae Barizo, directed by George R. Miller. Performances are in the recently reopened Compound; an art gallery and wellness campus in Long Beach.
In April and May, LBO will produce several events as part of LBO ON DISPLAY. Designed to open up the creative process and invite audiences into the creation of new work, LBO ON DISPLAY will feature live performances of unique projects that continue to expand the operatic form. The mini-festival gives audiences a first look at some of the company’s most exciting projects in development. The series is anchored by a workshop presentation of LBO Composer-in-Residence Shelley Washington’s first opera THE PASSION OF NELL which delves into the true life story of aspiring model and singer Nell Theobald whose life became tragically intertwined with opera singer Birgit Nilsson. Washington is collaborating with acclaimed author and LA native Lisa Teasley in her operatic debut as a librettist.
Other works in progress include a preview presentation from a new performance edition of Handel’s opera ALCINA, starring and developed with soprano Tiffany Townsend. Townsend will work with director James Darrah to craft a new version of Handel’s glorious score, and LBO will debut the work in full in a feature season. LBO ON DISPLAY will also offer limited opportunities to visit the film set for the world premiere cinematic opera OPEN AIR, starring Canadian powerhouse vocalist Measha Bruggergossman-Lee as part of Darrah’s commitment to film and digital work bolstering the future of opera.
In June, LBO continues its relationship with composer Kate Soper in presenting her unique theater piece IPSA DIXIT in a new staged production directed by LBO AD James Darrah. The opera will be music directed by Christopher Rountree and marks the second company project with original choreography in partnership with Martha Graham Dance Company.
The season concludes in July in Downtown Los Angeles with the world premiere of ASUNCIÓN, created and performed by Latina electro pop star San Cha in her operatic debut. The opera, based on San Cha’s concept album “La Luz de la Esperanza,” will singularly encompass San Cha’s unique and potent voice in the musical art scene of Los Angeles. This production will be helmed by director, librettist and co-creator McCall Cadenas in her LBO directorial debut, and takes place at the Los Angeles Theater Center in collaboration with Latino Theater Company. The opera is co-commissioned by Performance Space NY, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, and Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana in San Jose, CA. Each museum/performance space will present the LBO production in the near future.
The 2024 Season continues to fortify relationships with emerging and established artists in multiple genres, and LBO remains focused on giving all artists an opportunity to create unique productions within the operatic realm. Commissioning, developing and premiering new works is an important cornerstone of LBO’s commitment to furthering the future of the operatic form, and it is proud to feature a season of live opera by all female composers and librettists. LBO is also renewing its role as an incubator of new works by presenting LBO ON DISPLAY, allowing audiences to gain insight into the creative process, and will continue robust collaborative partnerships with organizations. It enters year two of its relationship with the Martha Graham Dance Company, forms new partnerships with the Latino Theater Company and East LA Creative, and works collaboratively with two artist-led projects featuring a mini-residency for Tiffany Townsend and an opera written for the screen, for and with Measha Brueggergosman-Lee.
LBO Artistic Director James Darrah states: “In addition to the two world premiere operas from powerful voices that are newer to the operatic form, Alyssa Weinberg and San Cha, I’m also excited to continue to champion the astounding ideas and skills of artist Kate Soper with this new, fully staged production of IPSA DIXIT which signals our ongoing investment and belief in her creative talents as a major voice in the future of the operatic form.”
LBO General Director & CEO Jennifer Rivera shares: ”It’s exhilarating to be presenting a season with so many powerhouse women artists—some newly emerging into the opera field and others already trailblazing their way to new heights. In my career as an opera singer I never had the opportunity to perform a single opera by a female composer, so I feel grateful to be able to take part in the changes happening in the opera industry that are being reflected here at LBO.”
More about the 2024 Season
Music by Alyssa Weinberg
Libretto by J. Mae Barizo
WORLD PREMIERE
Compound, Long Beach
February 3, 4, 10, 11, 2024
George R. Miller Director
Lucy Yates Music Director
Ariadne Greif Soprano
ISOLA, a prismatic meditation on time, mental health and isolation, is by composer Alyssa Weinberg and poet J. Mae Barizo. The title is taken from the word Isola, at turns meaning isolation, an island, and the archipelago in the Pacific Ocean where Barizo’s parents emigrated from the year before her birth. Written by hand by Barizo in the Appalachians during the pandemic in 2020, the text hinges on the idea of distorted perception, both internal and external, viewed through the lens of isolation.
Composer Alyssa Weinberg sets the text using her unique aural color and texture to channel big emotions, creating an operatic experience that is “quite literally stunning” (Chicago Tribune). Weinberg is emerging as a major compositional voice and her music has been commissioned and performed by some of the most accomplished artists and ensembles around the world.
The world premiere production, staged by director George R. Miller in his LBO directorial debut, is part opera, part art installation, and utilizes surround-sound electronics, dance and light to activate the central character’s psyche and subconscious through a multitude of physical and sonic manifestations. Performed at Compound, a multi-disciplinary intimate gallery space in Long Beach, the opera will envelop audiences with surreal dreaminess. ISOLA earnestly engages questions and sensations of identity, multiplicities of self, distorted perceptions of time, processing, and healing through a poetic, non-linear series of vignettes.
Music by Kate Soper
With edits of texts by Guido d’Arezzo, Aristotle, Pietro Bembo, Lydia Davis, Michael Drayton, Robert Duncan, Sigmund Freud, Jenny Holzer, Plato, Sophocles, Kate Soper, Sarah Teasdale, and Ludwig Wittgenstein
NEW PRODUCTION
featuring MARTHA GRAHAM DANCE COMPANY
Art Theatre, Long Beach
June 1, 8 and 9, 2024
James Darrah Director
Christopher Rountree Music Director
Janet Eilber Choreographer
Premiered in December 2016 in New York and a finalist for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in Music, Kate Soper’s IPSA DIXIT, called a “philosophy-opera” by The New Yorker, will be presented in a new production at the Art Theatre in Long Beach the first two weekends in June.
IPSA DIXIT is a striking work described by the Pulitzer Prize committee as “a breakthrough work that plumbs the composer’s fertile musical imagination to explore the relationships between idea and expression, meaning and language.” The piece was created over the course of two years and contains a thrilling combination of texts stitched together by Soper into an engrossing ninety minutes. In IPSA DIXIT, Soper asks the question “How can I use music to explore something fundamental about being a thought- and language-user, with all the contradictions and paradoxes and limitations that thought and language (and music!) produce?” Soper uses her own words as well as edits of texts from Aristotle and other historic figures like Plato, Sophocles, Guido d’Arezzo, Pietro Bembo, and Freud to push the boundaries of the meaning of art throughout the work and break operatic conventions.
As the work plumbs the meaning, structure and ephemerality of art, director James Darrah will create a multi-disciplinary new staged production with LBO Music Director Christopher Rountree and feature dancers from the Martha Graham Dance Company with original choreography by the Graham Company’s artistic director Janet Eilber. The team will transform the historic Art Theatre cinema in Long Beach into a unique operatic performance space. This will be the third work by Soper at LBO, following Voices from the Killing Jar, presented in collaboration with the LA Phil at The Ford in 2021, and the widely acclaimed world premiere of The Romance of the Rose in 2023—deemed “an operatic triumph” by the Los Angeles Times and a New York Times critics pick directed by Darrah and conducted by Rountree.
Music and Concept by San Cha
Co-created by McCall Cadenas and San Cha
Libretto by McCall Cadenas
WORLD PREMIERE
Los Angeles Theater Center, Los Angeles
July 13, 20 and 21
in collaboration with Latino Theater Company
McCall Cadenas Director
Starring San Cha in her operatic debut
San Cha channels a wave of cultures to beautifully collide in a mix of genres that incorporates her heritage, her past, and a vision for opera that encompasses pop culture, Latin culture, and performance art. As eclectic in sound as she is in emotion and storytelling, at times haunting and full of ache, she remains an unstoppable dance force.
Hailing from the world of pop music, her first opera, commissioned by Long Beach Opera with co-commissioners PSNY, PICA and MACLA, will be based on her previously released album La Luz de la Esperanza. This album was released to much critical acclaim, with Pitchfork describing it as “a work of art that took her entire life to make, the synthesis of years of struggle and growth, a style forged on the ranches of Jalisco and in the queer clubs of San Francisco.” By subverting the tropes of popular culture from her Mexican roots to make something new, San Cha has managed to make an impact on the music world, thanks to a highly original sound that encapsulates who she is. This will be her first foray into opera, in which she will not only write but also perform.
ASUNCIÓN, a Telenovela opera, follows the story of Dolores, a humble flower picker on a hacienda. Salvador, the owner of the hacienda who falls in love with Dolores and promises her the world, convinces her to marry him. He soon becomes obsessed and controlling. In a moment of despair Dolores is greeted by a divine apparition named Esperanza whom she falls in love with. Will Dolores follow her heart and seek out Esperanza or will she stay in the wealth of her husband Salvador?
Director McCall Cadenas, who also created the libretto for ASUNCIÓN based on San Cha’s album La Luz de la Esperanza, will create this world premiere production for Long Beach Opera in July of 2024 at the Los Angeles Theater Center in partnership with the Latino Theater Company.
With LBO ON DISPLAY, the company continues to shine a light on new works by pulling back the curtain on the incubation and production period.
Featuring performance excerpts of multiple new works including:
OPEN AIR
A world premiere opera film
Written and Directed by James Darrah
Original Music and Score by Christopher Rountree
Developed with and starring Measha Brueggergosman-Lee
OPEN AIR first look and wrap party
TBA in 2024
ALCINA
Preview
Music by G.F. Handel
Starring and new edition developed
with soprano Tiffany Townsend
April 20, 2024
THE PASSION OF NELL
Workshop Preview
Music by Shelley Washington
Libretto by Lisa Teasley
April 28, 2024
OPEN AIR, a project in which LBO invites audiences to gain insight into the creation process, will be a world premiere operatic film that explores the juxtaposition and synthesis of the worlds of film and musical storytelling. Featuring a newly created screenplay by Long Beach Opera Artistic Director James Darrah, a new score composed by LBO Music Director Christopher Rountree, and the singular talents of soprano Measha Brueggergosman-Lee, OPEN AIR is likely to attract new audiences to the medium of opera by creating a stylistically opulent film featuring a distinguished contemporary operatic score.
Inspired by the opera-theater piece “Recital I (for Cathy)” created by Luciano Berio for his wife Cathy Berberian and premiered in the 1970’a, OPEN AIR will similarly become a vehicle for versatile soprano Measha Brueggergossman-Lee. “Recital I (for Cathy)” included numerous excerpts from operas wildly stitched together with a newly composed piece; OPEN AIR will similarly utilize excerpts from Ms. Brueggergossman-Lee’s wide ranging repertoire: opera arias to spirituals to jazz standards. The musical fragments will be arranged within Darrah’s original screenplay, forming a unique narrative story and original score which will also include newly composed music by the company’s music director Christopher Rountree.
Audiences will be granted limited access to the set of OPEN AIR, to be able to witness the creation of a world-premiere operatic film in real time as part of LBO ON DISPLAY.
Audiences will have the opportunity to take a first-listen to the work commissioned by LBO from LBO Composer-in-Residence Shelley Washington, entitled “THE PASSION OF NELL,” with a libretto by writer Lisa Teasley. THE PASSION OF NELL details the real-life true-crime story of Nell Theobald, a young model and singer who developed a life-long obsession with the opera star Birgit Nilsson after suffering a near-fatal bite from a lion on the set of a car commercial. The opera will present the sometimes unbelievable but true story of the lengths Nell went to get closer to her idol Nilsson, and will examine inner thoughts of a troubled but devoted young woman whose greatest passion was opera. The workshop will be presented with singers and orchestra, conducted by LBO’s own Christopher Rountree and directed by James Darrah.
The weekend prior, audiences can witness performances of selections from a new working edition of G.F. Handel’s ALCINA which LBO plans to present in a future season, with the title role performed by stunning soprano Tiffany Townsend, who will also take on an important role in the workshop performance of THE PASSION OF NELL. Townsend was last seen at LBO as Idleness in The Romance of the Rose in February 2023.
GALA 1979 will be a celebratory dinner party featuring an intimate not-to-be-missed performance by powerhouse vocalist Measha Brueggergosman-Lee. The evening’s multi-course meal will be created by one of Long Beach’s most popular restaurants, L’Opera, and is followed by dancing and dessert. There will be no tables for sale–only individual tickets–and all major fundraising will happen prior to the event in the form of underwriting for artists and production support.
Patrons can party like it’s 1979 and revel in the cultural moment of LBO’s founding, while simultaneously supporting a new era for the intrepid company. Included in the evening will be selections from Luciano Berio’s theater piece composed in the 70’s, entitled “Recital I (for Cathy),” performed by Measha Brueggergosman-Lee. This fanciful piece is the inspirational basis for LBO’s latest film project entitled OPEN AIR and will give LBO supporters an intimate look at the Canadian soprano’s formidable repertoire, abilities and talent. GALA 1979 is an opportunity to let loose and have a fantastic time while supporting the innovative future of Long Beach Opera for the 2024 Season and beyond.
Information about season tickets at longbeachopera.org.
LBO's 2024 Season supported in part by a grant from the Arts Council for Long Beach and the City of Long Beach.
Long Beach Opera events are supported, in part, by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission.
Long Beach Opera receives support from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Parsons Foundation, The Port of Long Beach, The Perenchio Foundation and Opera America.
Asunción: A Tele-Operetta is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation & Development Fund Project co-commissioned by Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana, Performance Space New York, Long Beach Opera, and NPN. The Creation & Development Fund is supported by the Doris Duke Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts (a federal agency).
