Long Beach Opera

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.

Andreas Mitisek has announced his first season as general director of the enterprising Long Beach Opera. There will be two operas -- "Maria de Buenos Aires," with music by Astor Piazzolla and libretto by Horatio Ferrer, and Richard Strauss' "The Silent Woman" -- plus a "Salute from Vienna" concert by the Wiener Salonorchester. "Maria de Buenos Aires," a chamber opera that debuted in the Argentine capital in 1968, will be performed June 12 and 19.

It's tough to be cool when it's steaming outside. Let's face it; summer makes geeks out of us all. Hair goes stringy and limp by midday, white shirts develop embarrassing yellow stains, and we hang our imperfect legs out of walking shorts. That black turtleneck will stay closeted until at least November. While we can't help you out of midsummer fashion faux pas, we can help you act cool.

Oct. 6, 1600, is the date we celebrate as opera's birthday, because that was when the first opera that has survived was performed at the Pitti Palace in Florence. Friday night, exactly 400 years later, Jacopo Peri's "Euridice" was revived at another, if more contemporary, extravagant art palace. But in a delicious irony, the J.

Long Beach Opera is moving productions to the Westside, beginning its 11th season with two chamber operas staged at the Backlot cabaret-theater in West Hollywood. Offenbach's "La Vie Parisienne," in a downsized, updated alternate version by Christopher Alden, opens Oct. 15, with nine additional performances through Oct. 30. Udo Zimmermann's "White Rose" receives its West Coast premiere Nov. 4, in a 10-performance run through Nov. 20.

Up-to-date as Long Beach Opera is in its attitude, it doesn't actually produce new work very often. But it has now decided to at least give aid and comfort to the struggling composers and librettists who do. As a first effort, the company is including the premieres of two operas by local composers as part of what it calls "Coincidences," events (usually pre-opera talks) surrounding its new production of Strauss' "Elektra."

Long Beach Opera, the provocative and enterprising small opera company founded by Michael Milenski in 1978, is canceling the rest of its season and finalizing plans to become the resident company of the Richard and Karen Carpenter Performing Arts Center on the campus of Cal State Long Beach next season. Until now, the company had independently produced all its programs at the Long Beach Convention Center, with most in the small Terrace Theater.

It's hard to be the little guy facing a giant. But Michael Milenski, director of the Long Beach Opera, is not cowed by the Music Center Opera. If anything, the size/budget disadvantage--his $900,000 season against MCO's $12.6 million--merely strengthens his resolve. "I don't want to be a poor second cousin not worth visiting," says the irrepressible impresario, who's been staging opera for more than a decade in Long Beach. "That's why we avoid recycling the standard masterpieces and look instead for new challenges."