Elizabeth Futral

One of the signs that a singer has established herself is when she's found a role to call her own, a signature character with which she's routinely associated. Yet it can be difficult to put a personal stamp on a role that generations of great artists have sung. That's why a new opera would seem to provide the perfect opportunity for a young singer to make her mark. But only rarely do things work out this way, in large part because fully produced new operas are few and far between.

Houston Grand Opera will stage the world premiere of Andre Previn's "Brief Encounter" as part of its 2008-09 season. Based on Noel Coward's one-act play "Still Life" and the screenplay he adapted for David Lean's 1945 film, the opera will star soprano Elizabeth Futral and baritone Nathan Gunn as the two married strangers who meet in a train station and fall in love. In Lean's classic film, those roles were played by Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard. "Brief Encounter," to run May 1-9, 2009, is Previn's second opera.

Houston Grand Opera will stage the world premiere of Andre Previn's "Brief Encounter" as part of its 2008-09 season. Based on Noel Coward's one-act play "Still Life" and the screenplay he adapted for David Lean's 1945 film, the opera will star soprano Elizabeth Futral and baritone Nathan Gunn as the two married strangers who meet in a train station and fall in love. In Lean's classic film, those roles were played by Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard. "Brief Encounter," to run May 1-9, 2009, is Previn's second opera.

Intimate, personal, touching drama, Verdi's "La Traviata" stands radically apart from Verdi's other middle-period operas, the pot-boiling "Rigoletto" and "Il Trovatore." The um-pah-pah still is there, and so are the grand opera gestures in not one but two party scenes. But we hang on one character, the consumptive courtesan Violetta Valery. We admire her vivacity, we respect her tenacity, and most of all, we learn to love her as she learns the meaning of love.

Intimate, personal, touching drama, Verdi's "La Traviata" stands radically apart from Verdi's other middle-period operas, the pot-boiling "Rigoletto" and "Il Trovatore." The um-pah-pah still is there, and so are the grand opera gestures in not one but two party scenes. But we hang on one character, the consumptive courtesan Violetta Valery. We admire her vivacity, we respect her tenacity, and most of all, we learn to love her as she learns the meaning of love.

Opera. The Los Angeles Opera production of Handel's "Julius Caesar," featuring Elizabeth Futral as Cleopatra and David Daniels as Caesar, ends its run Saturday with a noon performance in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. Sung in Italian with English supertitles. $28-$148. (213) 972-8001. * Movies.

John Mauceri has been tapped to lead the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra for two more years, Los Angeles Philharmonic Assn. officials announced Tuesday at a news conference detailing the Bowl's summer season. The season officially opens June 27, when PBS tenor Josh Groban joins Mauceri and the Bowl Orchestra for a Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame Gala program to benefit the Philharmonic's educational activities.

Museums The art of African music and its impact on other musical forms is explored in "Music in the Life of Africa" opening today at UCLA's Fowler Museum.

The 1999-2000 season of San Diego Opera will present five operas, in addition to recitals by opera singers Sylvia McNair, Galina Gorchakova and Simon Estes. The first opera of the Jan. 22 to May 24 season is Verdi's "Il Trovatore," in a new production designed by John David Peters in his San Diego debut, with costumes by John Conklin. Leading roles will be sung by Richard Margison, Sondra Radanovsky (debut), Kathryn Day, Richard Zeller and Brian Matthews (debut).

Opera Pacific will open its four-opera 1999-2000 season with Verdi's "La Traviata," Nov. 9-14, at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa. Elizabeth Futral, who recently sang Stella in Andre Previn's "A Streetcar Named Desire" for the San Francisco Opera, will sing her first Violetta. David Miller will sing Alfredo, and Louis Otey will sing Germont. John Mauceri will conduct. Linda Brovsky directs the 1987 San Francisco Opera production. Mozart's "Le Nozze di Figaro" is Jan.

One of the signs that a singer has established herself is when she's found a role to call her own, a signature character with which she's routinely associated. Yet it can be difficult to put a personal stamp on a role that generations of great artists have sung. That's why a new opera would seem to provide the perfect opportunity for a young singer to make her mark. But only rarely do things work out this way, in large part because fully produced new operas are few and far between.

Handel's most popular work during his lifetime was not "Messiah," but rather "Acis and Galatea," a masque derived from Ovid's "Metamorphoses" with a collaborative text by such luminaries as John Gay, Alexander Pope and John Hughes. Its Arcadian story of a shepherd's love for a nymph arousing the fatal jealously of a Cyclops seems pretty fanciful and remote from us today.

Movies Brendan Fraser, right, is a cartoonist who slips into a coma after a freak accident, and outwits not only Death (Whoopi Goldberg) but his own comic creation, "Monkeybone." Directed by Henry Selick ("The Nightmare Before Christmas"), the adventure mixes live action and animation. Opens Friday.