Long Beach Opera Announces Woman-Centered 2024 Season

By David Salazar

Long Beach Opera has announced its 2024 season, which will center on women composers and librettists with two world premieres, and an opera film, among other offerings.

First up is Alyssa Weinberg and J. Mae Barizo’s “Isola.” George R. Miller directs and Lucy Tucker Yates conducts. Ariadne Greif stars. The work “engages questions and sensations of identity, multiplicities of self, distorted perceptions of time, processing, and healing through a poetic, non-linear series of vignettes.”

Performance Dates: Feb. 3 – 11, 2024

The company will also present a preview of a new edition of “Alcina” starring and developed by Tiffany Townsend.

Performance Dates: April 20, 2024

There will also be a workshop of Shelley Washington and Lisa Teasley’s “The Passion of Nell.”

Performance Dates: April 28, 2024

Next up is “IPSA DIXIT” by Kate Soper. The “philosophy-opera,” which was 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,” will receive its West Coast premiere under the baton of Christopher Rountree and direction of James Darrah.

Performance Dates: June 1 – 9, 2024

Next up is the world premiere of San Cha and McCall Cadenas’ “Asunción.” The “Telenovela opera” about a humble flower picker who must choose between her controlling and rich husband and a divine apparition that she falls in love with, will be presented at the Latino Theater Company and East LA Creative with Cadenas directing and San Cha making her operatic debut.

Performance Dates: July 13 – 21, 2024

Finally, Long Beach Opera will also present “Open Air,” an opera written for the screen and directed by James Darrah with music by Christopher Rountree. Measha Brueggergosman-Lee stars in the project, which features numerous opera excerpts stitched together by a newly composed piece.

The film will go into production in Spring 2024.

 

 

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