Long Beach Opera

Long Beach Opera turned 30 on Saturday night. It is older than Los Angeles Opera (born 1986) and Orange County's recently deceased Opera Pacific (1985-2008). Begun as Long Beach Grand Opera, the company soon got over its "grand" pretensions and discovered its plucky essence. It has led a scrappy existence ever since, unearthing neglected treasures, presenting recent works and reimagining everything it touches, new or old. It cheerfully courts controversy; scrapes by, perpetually on the brink of financial disaster; and deserves a medal for its unequaled history of operatic innovation in America.

We may look these days at Mexico as a place of peril, what with drug trafficking, kidnapping and wanton murder. But we ignore Mexico as an arts center at our own peril. When it comes to classical music, we might not recognize our own music had we not once had inspiration and help from south of the border. Do we need now to be reminded that Mexico City has been an opera center a lot longer than Southern California has been - and that it still is one? We do. Fortunately, Long Beach Opera has done the reminding with its most gratifyingly ambitious undertaking in quite a while: what it is calling the U.S. premiere of what it is calling Gabriella Ortiz's "Camelia la Tejana: Only the Truth.

Andreas Mitisek has plenty of reasons to be nervous: It's just a few minutes before he'll vault onstage to talk about "Medea," the bloody, extreme opera he's distilled and remade. And it's only an hour before the boyish 47-year-old will conduct the orchestra during a performance of the piece. Mitisek also designed the production's stark lighting ? emitted eerily from below ? that had been sharply criticized in a review a few days before. But instead of composing himself in a green room, trying to control his anxiety while memorizing his speech or conducting, Mitisek is relaxing on an audience seat, discussing his love of putting on shows.

Like every other form of art, operas can be inspired by just about anything - historical events, myths, epic poems, plays, even movies. Often, such operas go on to eclipse their inspiration. Puccini's "Tosca," derived from a play by Victorien Sardou, is a good example; so is Verdi's "Rigoletto," based on a tragedy by Victor Hugo. But not all make that leap. Some remain in the shadow of their progenitors. How that affects an opera's appeal varies. But it's a topic worth raising as several such works are soon to be featured on Southern California stages, beginning Saturday with a production at San Diego Opera of Ildebrando Pizzetti's "Murder in the Cathedral," based on T.S. Eliot's verse play.

Long Beach Opera What: "Akhnaten" (March 19 and 27) and "Moscow, Cherry Town" (May 15, 18 and 22) Information: Locations and ticket prices at http://www.longbeachopera.org

In a match made in what's surely somebody's idea of musical heaven, the Long Beach Opera will take a sidelong look toward the Grateful Dead with a Sunday screening of Jim Kohlberg's "The Music Never Stopped. " The film, which was an entry in the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, acts as a sort of stage-setter for the company's production of Michael Nyman's "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat," an opera based on the work of Dr. Oliver Sacks by the same name. Also inspired by a case study by Sacks called "The Last Hippie,"  "The Music Never Stopped" is the story of a man who finds himself mentally stuck in the 1960s, a condition that results in his only being able to communicate while listening to the music of that era -- specifically his favorite band, the Grateful Dead.

Philip Glass is prolific beyond all understanding - and he keeps cranking out pieces at a clip that even his own record label, Orange Mountain Music, can't keep up with. What that means is that there are lots of opportunities for enterprising outfits large, small and in-between to sift through Glass' massive piles of score paper in order to score a regional premiere.   Glass is becoming a specialty of the house for Long Beach Opera, which presented the companion operas “The Sound of a Voice” and “Hotel of Dreams” in 2006, the mighty “Akhnaten” in 2011 and on Sunday introduced the chamber opera “The Fall of the House of Usher” to the West Coast in San Pedro's ancient, Art Deco Warner Grand Theatre.

MUSIC Neurology meets performing arts in the Long Beach Opera's staging of Michael Nyman's "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat," a work based on the book by Oliver Sacks published in 1985. With the central hero of Sacks' work essentially being music as a man struggles to make sense of the world while struggling with visual agnosia, the 1 hour, 15 minute production should be a sight to behold. Expo Building, 4321 Atlantic Ave., Long Beach. Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 7 p.m. Through June 24. $29-$150.

Eight Summer Olympics ago, it was Los Angeles' turn. We did well with the Games (traffic and weather cooperated). We built no monuments, no starchitect stadiums or the like. But a progressive Olympic Arts Festival gave a lasting boost to our modern dance and international theater scene and stimulated the creation of Los Angeles Opera. Then there was director Robert Wilson's "the CIVIL warS: a tree is best measured when it is down," the centerpiece of the festival. It was meant to be the grandest of grand operas and proved the Olympics' great letdown.

There are operas whose scores are hummable and whose tunes have worked their way into popular culture. And then there are operas that resist any sort of easy packaging -- operas that are, for lack of a better phrase, musical oddballs. Robert Kurka's "The Good Soldier Schweik" is considered by some opera scholars to be one of the oddest ducks ever to grace a stage. Those who prefer their operas to color within the lines should take heed: The spastic, constantly shifting style of "Schweik" is bound to keep even the most experienced listeners on their toes.

Mexican composer Gabriela Ortiz's "Camelia la Tejana," which will be performed  this month at Long Beach Opera, is actually three stories in one. First, there's the legend of Camelia la Tejana, a Mexican drug-smuggling queen who shot and killed her lover in a jealous fit - if, that is, she really existed. Then there's the tale of how Camelia's gruesome exploits were immortalized in the smash narcocorrido tune "Contrabando y Traición" (Contraband and Betrayal), which was written by Ángel González and definitively recorded by the superstar norteño band Los Tigres del Norte.

This post has been updated. "The Death of Klinghoffer," the controversial 1991 opera by John Adams, is scheduled to make its much-belated Los Angeles-area debut in March 2014. But the producing company won't be L.A. Opera, which was one of several groups that commissioned the piece. Long Beach Opera said it will present the work as part of its season next year, in a staging directed by James Robinson. The dates and venue for the performances have not been announced.  In April 2014, the production will be part of the Los Angeles Philharmonic's recently announced "Minimalist Jukebox" festival.

Philip Glass is prolific beyond all understanding - and he keeps cranking out pieces at a clip that even his own record label, Orange Mountain Music, can't keep up with. What that means is that there are lots of opportunities for enterprising outfits large, small and in-between to sift through Glass' massive piles of score paper in order to score a regional premiere.   Glass is becoming a specialty of the house for Long Beach Opera, which presented the companion operas “The Sound of a Voice” and “Hotel of Dreams” in 2006, the mighty “Akhnaten” in 2011 and on Sunday introduced the chamber opera “The Fall of the House of Usher” to the West Coast in San Pedro's ancient, Art Deco Warner Grand Theatre.

Eight Summer Olympics ago, it was Los Angeles' turn. We did well with the Games (traffic and weather cooperated). We built no monuments, no starchitect stadiums or the like. But a progressive Olympic Arts Festival gave a lasting boost to our modern dance and international theater scene and stimulated the creation of Los Angeles Opera. Then there was director Robert Wilson's "the CIVIL warS: a tree is best measured when it is down," the centerpiece of the festival. It was meant to be the grandest of grand operas and proved the Olympics' great letdown.

Classical music fans in Southern California have known for several years that Andreas Mitisek works minor miracles on a shoestring at Long Beach Opera. With limited financial resources, he has maintained the small company's reputation as a risk-taker, embracing experimental and unconventional works that major opera houses tend to ignore. Mitisek is among the 25 people  named this month by Opera News as part of its  "Next Wave" cover story. The venerated monthly, published by New York's Metropolitan Opera Guild, chose 25 individuals the editors believe "are poised to break out and become major forces in the field in the coming decade.

This spring, opera in Los Angeles has been winning praise for its daring and diversity. A boldly abstract version of "Don Giovanni" staged by the Los Angeles Philharmonic. An edgy multimedia opera, "Crescent City," presented by The Industry. Coming up: Benjamin Britten's "Curlew River," by the innovative music group Jacaranda, and a new chamber opera, "The Face," by two USC scholars. This operatic blossoming has been good for local audiences, but it has raised awkward questions and touched a sensitive nerve in the city's arts community.

Long Beach Opera has announced the postponement of Karol Szymanowski's "King Roger," which the company was scheduled to perform in February. According to general director Michael Milenski, the work "is not an easy opera to cast, and it finally became impossible to assemble the necessary singers for this season." Instead, the company will offer Strauss' "Ariadne auf Naxos" on March 1, 4, 6 and 8 in the Center Theater of the Long Beach Convention Center.

The fact that Michael Milenski, general director of Long Beach Opera, uses the terms opera and music theater interchangeably may be the key to the special nature of his company.

Of the many pieces performed at the overstuffed Ojai Music Festival recently, one song continued to run through my head the following week: a shockingly hard-hitting pop-rock-Minimalist treatment of Schumann's "Ich Grolle Nicht. " Saturday night, there it was again, this time courtesy of Long Beach Opera. The song happens to be the centerpiece of Michael Nyman's neurology opera, "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat," which is ending the company's 2012 season. Let Dr. Oliver Sacks explain that one. This important but neglected 1986 opera takes its impetus from the bestselling neurologist's poignant study of a singer suffering from visual agnosia, making him unable to interpret visual stimuli in the typical fashion.

MUSIC Neurology meets performing arts in the Long Beach Opera's staging of Michael Nyman's "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat," a work based on the book by Oliver Sacks published in 1985. With the central hero of Sacks' work essentially being music as a man struggles to make sense of the world while struggling with visual agnosia, the 1 hour, 15 minute production should be a sight to behold. Expo Building, 4321 Atlantic Ave., Long Beach. Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 7 p.m. Through June 24. $29-$150.