Operas by Piazzolla, Poulenc, Martinu, Golijov and Nyman will be performed as part of the 2012 season of Long Beach Opera — not bad, not bad at all.
I’ve only ever heard one of them. How refreshing.
What’s missing from the typically adventurous agenda, however, is a visit to opera-deprived Orange County. The company has brought a production to Irvine in each of the last two years.
The season is launched with two performances (Jan. 29 and Feb. 4) of Astor Piazzolla’s “Maria de Buenos Aires,” a “tango operita” first given its West Coast premiere by LBO in 2004.
A rare double bill of Poulenc’s comedic “The Breasts of Tiresias” and Martinu’s jazz-inflected and dadaist “Tears of a Knife” will be staged in March.
Osvaldo Golijov’s acclaimed “Ainadamar,” an opera based on the life of Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca, is presented in May in what is billed as the West Coast’s first fully staged production of the 2005 edition.
British minimalist Michael Nyman’s “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat,” based on Oliver Sacks’ famous neurological study, winds up the season in June.
As in recent seasons, the company will present performances in a number of venues, some of them unusual, including the Warner Grand Theatre in San Pedro, a former movie palace, the Press-Telegram Building in Long Beach, and the EXPO Building in Long Beach, a former furniture store. Casting has yet to be announced, but I’m sure we can count on LBO’s regular and superb stable of singing-actors to be part of the fun.
In the news release announcing the season, Long Beach Opera also reported an unspecified increase in ticket sales last season, a 20 percent growth in its subscriber base, as well as an “unprecedented” number of sold-out performances — and that for a season of operas by Cherubini, Shostakovich, Glass and Lang.
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