Los Angeles Music Center Opera Company

For two months, about 40 students at Phoenix Academy, a residential school and drug rehabilitation center, have built sets, designed costumes and rehearsed scenes and choral numbers for a performance of "Journey to Cordoba" planned for today at Fenton Avenue Elementary School in Lake View Terrace.

The Los Angeles Music Center Opera's 11th season, announced by company General Director Peter Hemmings on Tuesday, includes one world premiere, three productions new to Los Angeles and three revivals. Among the highlights of the seven-opera, 47-performance season, from Sept. 4 through June 21, 1997, will be the opening production, a brand-new "Pagliacci" by Franco Zeffirelli in which company advisor Placido Domingo will sing the role of Canio.

Alone in the soft sallow light of her last day, the woman reaches heavenward and in a gesture of anguish and submission, plucks the ornaments from her hair and turns to leave, her voice rising from the sudden dark veil. The sticks fall unnoticed to the floor. Cio-Cio San has once again lost her love, her pride and now her child. Soon, Puccini's most tragic heroine will take her own life. But even at this bitter end, her hair is holding up beautifully. It should.

Speaking about his operatic career, the conductor declares, "Step by step, day by day, we just keep going." The Italian musician may be too humble. Now conducting Donizetti's "Don Pasquale" for L.A. Music Center Opera at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion (opening today and closing April 1), Evelino Pido has every reason not to be impatient. He acknowledges as much in an interview outside a rehearsal room at the Pavilion, 11 days before the opening.

Picture this: a neo-swag fixture that resembles a Hershey's Kiss or a monochromatic Wayne Thiebaud cake painting come to life. It weighs 150 pounds, measures 3 feet high and nearly 5 feet in diameter, and has a steel armature covered with aluminum. And one more thing: This lamp can serve as a roosting place for singers. You won't find it at IKEA, though, because this is an Achim Freyer original.

The 2000-2001 Los Angeles Opera season, to be unveiled today, was largely designed by departing general director Peter Hemmings, but Placido Domingo will mark his arrival at the helm next season with appearances both as conductor and singer. In announcing the program, Hemmings and L.A. Opera artistic director-designate Domingo acknowledged that the season had been planned well in advance of Domingo's appointment, which was made public in 1998 and is set to begin in July.

During an early February rehearsal, a slightly rumpled fellow with an Aussie accent and an easy laugh walks up to the tenor playing the Duke of Mantua in the upcoming Los Angeles Opera production of "Rigoletto." What, inquires the singer, is my state of mind in this scene? The director, a stickler for behavior and body language, warms to the question. "You're irritating everyone in the room--but no matter," he replies. "You're the big cheese and everyone's inhibited by your fame.

The Los Angeles Opera and Pasadena's Armory Center for the Arts are the top Southland recipients of National Endowment for the Arts grants in the federal arts agency's second round of fiscal year 2000 grants, announced today. The opera company received $100,000 for its Educational Continuum program, and the Armory Center was given the same amount for two curriculum-based educational programs.

Peter Hemmings has not stopped surprising the local opera scene since he made his presence known in 1984, founding Los Angeles' own opera company. But after 43 years of dedicating his life to mentoring young opera singers, Hemmings will retire. But not before receiving one more recognition from Cal State Northridge.