The Journey of a Soprano

THIS week my Influences column looks at opera soprano Ana Maria Martinez, who started out as a West Side Story loving kid in Puerto Rico and became a star who sings all over the world. (She's also won a Latin Grammy and been dubbed "the most beautiful voice in Latin America."

HERE is my conversation with Martinez, who had a fortuitous early meeting with Placido Domingo, who would go on to become a mentor of sorts.

She sings the female lead in Verdi's Simon Boccanegra, which goes up at Los Angeles Opera on Saturday.

Long Beach Opera on the Edge

WHEN you do what I do, you hear a lot of arts advocates and administrators talk about "reaching out," finding "new audiences," "making connections," and so on, and it gets tiresome. In part that's because it seems so calculated, in part because it usually means watering down programming to make it safer and more familiar.

LBO's next opera: Philip Glass's "Akhnaten"

But Andreas Mitisek, the Austrian conductor who runs Long Beach Opera, has revived the fortunes of the once- struggling little company by redoubling his commitment to its avant-garde point of view. Whether he's putting on opera in swimming pools or furniture stores, or offering premieres of new and challenging work, he's found -- and grown -- and audience that will follow him.

One of his goals, ironically, is to make audiences uncomfortable. “The very first time I suggested doing opera in parking garage, there was some eyebrow raising,” he says of “The Diary of Ann Frank.” “But the response shows it was the right place for the right piece.”


HERE is my piece from Sunday's LA Times on this remarkable group's past and future.

The Germans are Coming

IN the years just before, during and after WWII, the flow of exiles and emigres from fascist Germany to Los Angeles became so strong that an injection of wit and decadence transformed parts of the city. 

I wrote about this period -- and a present where German culture exists mostly in dispersed form -- in Sunday's LA Times. 

Here is my piece, which looks at both the era where Marlene Dietrich, Thomas Mann and Bertold Brecht came here and the present. The story is pegged to the Los Angeles Opera's Ring Cycle, which concludes shortly.

This is a rich chapter of California history which I keep returning to. Speaking of returning, I hope to get back to Villa Aurora, Lion Feuchtwanger's old mansion in Pacific Palisades -- the mind boggles to think about what those parties must have been like.

Photo of Villa Aurora by Karin Appolonia Mueller

Wagner's Ring Cycle vs. The Gods

ON wednesday night -- that's wotan's day to those of you who speak norse -- i caught "das rheingold," the los angeles opera's take on the first of wagner's ring cycle. it's directed by the avant-german achim freyer and has received quite mixed reviews in my circle. i found it intriguing in parts, hard to fathom in others; my former colleague mark swed mostly admired the production, here. and my friend tim mangan, here, liked it so much he wished it were longer! (yikes -- not without a break for the bathroom or bar.)

BUT speaking of long, outsiders probably dont realize how long this baby has been in the works -- a quick recounting makes it sound like the gods themselves have been conspiring against it.  i remember sitting, in spring or summer of 2001, in the wonderful downtown LA japanese place, R-23, while LAO publicist gary murphy and opera boss edgar baitzel talked about how excited they were to have just hired conductor kent nagano (the globe-trotter who baitzel had finally pinned down to take the job, as memory has it, in some european airport) to lead the company, and that they had george lucas interesting in designing a blowout "ring" that would show the world what california culture and technology could do. 

it would be "the 'star wars' ring," some said later, which is appropriate since wagner's work inspired not only tolkien's ring trilogy but the star wars franchise as well.

since that meeting, a lot has happened. a few months later, new york was attacked by terrorists. a few days after that dark day, nagano conducted a stunning production of wagner's "lohengrin" that is my first good memory of post-9/11 life -- it was soothing (and french-toned, actually) if either of those things can be said about the lugubrious saxon... a truly spiritual experience.

we got involved in two wars that cost a lot and let to a little recession.

somewhere in here the george lucas connection fell apart, probably because of money. 

a few years later, the graceful nagano left the company. after that, the man who ran the opera, edgar baitzel, a restrained german who i'd really gotten to like, died suddenly.

and last year the entire world market tanked. (i'd been hired to work at the LATimes in part on the evidence of my nagano story; last year i lost that job.) this couldn't have helped the funding for such a gargantuan project.

what did i think of the first installment of the "ring," which will continue over this and the next season? i'm still not sure. but with that backstory, i'm thanking the gods, norse and otherwise, that we have it at all.

Photo credit: Superstock