LA's New Opera Company

WHAT would it look like if Hurricane Katrina blew across an Italo Calvino fable? We might be able to find out when Crescent City, whose creators call it a "hyperopera," comes to Atwater Crossing later this week.

Recently I visited the set, much of which was designed by local visual artists, and met with director Yuval Sharon and composer Anne LeBaron of CalArts. Here's my story.

Sharon, who used to run the edgy Vox series at New York City Opera, is one of the founders of The Industry, a new company that will put together experimental performances. He's a trip, and a lot of fun to talk to, expecially about Brecht and Wagner. If all goes well, he could inject some powerful energy into the local arts scene. He reminds me in some ways of David Sefton... Very much looking forward to catching Crescent City.

I'm also enjoying the arts-oriented warehouse complex Atwater Crossing itself, and had a good time there at party for Slake magazine over the weekend.

Great New Novel

THIS week the first novel by a former indie rock guitarist comes out on Crown. The novel, The Metropolis Case, has a lot to do with opera, though you don't have to be an opera fan to enjoy the book. If you dig Tristan und Isolde -- or have every been transported by music -- the novel will have special meaning and depth.

HERE  is my review from today's New York Times.

I pick up a lot of novels, old and new, with hopes of getting through them. In the case of The Metropolis Case, I was drawn into the characters' fates after a few pages.

The novel is also set more or less in the opera world, but you shouldn't let that scare you any more than the ballet in Black Swan: Gallaway writes as if those old anxieties surrounding "high" culture have worn themselves out.

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