Los Angeles Opera

When indefatigable Los Angeles Opera music director James Conlon began his engrossing pre-performance talk before "Siegfried" on Saturday, a blazing midday sun was directly overhead at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. By the time he finished conducting the long opera, day was done. The sky had reddened but not brilliantly enough to compete with the glow lingering from director Achim Freyer's carnival of light inside or from Wagner's music. Los Angeles Opera's ring around the "Ring" has come to the third opera of the tetralogy and the one most challenging to make convincing onstage.

With the sound of brass instruments coming from above, scenes of wreckage on the floor and an array of abstract sculpture in between, this warehouse space captures music, art and chaos all on a collision course. That's a fitting combination for a performance piece about post-Katrina New Orleans, but director Yuval Sharon wants to be clear: "Crescent City," the ambitious and unconventional "hyperopera" that opens this week at Atwater Crossing, both is and isn't about the hurricane-ravaged city.

Those who've been awaiting the L.A. debut of Ruggero Raimondi will have to wait a little longer. The venerable Italian bass was supposed to make his first appearance with the Los Angeles Opera as Doctor Dulcamara on Sept. 12 in the season opener, Donizetti's "L'Elisir d'Amore" ("The Elixir of Love"). But the company has just announced that the 67-year-old singer ruptured an Achilles tendon during rehearsal and must withdraw from the production. In his place, Italian baritone Giorgio Caoduro will assume the role of Dulcamara.

For the first time in five years, Los Angeles Opera will have one person overseeing both the company's artistic efforts and finances on a daily basis. The company's board of directors on Wednesday afternoon elected Christopher Koelsch to the position of president and chief executive officer. His appointment takes effect Sept. 15, at the start of the 2012-13 season. He will report to Plácido Domingo , who serves as L.A. Opera's general director. Koelsch will replace Stephen Rountree, who has pulled double duty in recent years as CEO of L.A. Opera and head of the Music Center.

For the first time in five years, Los Angeles Opera will have one person overseeing both the company's artistic efforts and finances on a daily basis. The company's board of directors on Wednesday afternoon elected Christopher Koelsch to the position of president and chief executive officer. His appointment takes effect Sept. 15, at the start of the 2012-13 season. He will report to Plácido Domingo , who serves as L.A. Opera's general director. Koelsch will replace Stephen Rountree, who has pulled double duty in recent years as CEO of L.A. Opera and head of the Music Center.

With the sound of brass instruments coming from above, scenes of wreckage on the floor and an array of abstract sculpture in between, this warehouse space captures music, art and chaos all on a collision course. That's a fitting combination for a performance piece about post-Katrina New Orleans, but director Yuval Sharon wants to be clear: "Crescent City," the ambitious and unconventional "hyperopera" that opens this week at Atwater Crossing, both is and isn't about the hurricane-ravaged city.

By the time Michael Kepler Meo takes the Los Angeles Opera stage on Saturday for "The Turn of the Screw," he will have ventured from his hometown of Portland, Ore., to perform in St. Louis; Vancouver, Wash.; and New York (at Carnegie Hall, no less), and it will be his third production of Benjamin Britten's opera. And he's just 12 years old. The boy's path to singing began when his parents suspected a special voice in their toddler's babbles. At 6, he joined the Portland Boychoir and scored his first opera role two years ago as Miles in the Portland Opera's staging of "Turn of the Screw.

In a rare public airing of artistic differences, the two leading singers in the Los Angeles Opera's costly and ambitious staging of Wagner's "Ring" cycle have harshly criticized the director, saying the production is artistically flawed and physically dangerous for performers. In separate interviews, British tenor John Treleaven, who plays the hero Siegfried, and American soprano Linda Watson, who plays Brunnhilde, said German director Achim Freyer's avant-garde staging — which features a steeply tilted stage, bulky costumes and oversized masks — interferes with their acting and singing and poses excruciating physical burdens.

I was lucky to have worked for Peter Hemmings at the Los Angeles Opera, where he was founding general director (obituary, Jan. 4). His brilliance, artistic taste, creativity and deep love of opera were equaled by his kindness and dedication to his staff and to the community of Los Angeles. His commitment to children led to the Los Angeles Opera becoming an international leader in opera education. I shall never forget the vision of this elegant and aristocratic gentleman attending operas about teenage immigrants or inner-city cricket teams performed by his beloved resident artists and schoolchildren at Manual Arts High School, or watching him squeeze into pint-sized auditorium seats at 168th Street Elementary.

Beren Harris, 65, booster and fund-raiser for Los Angeles opera. Harris served 12 years on the board of directors of the Los Angeles Opera League, the major support group for the 11-year-old Los Angeles Music Center Opera. He also established the Beren Harris Endowment Fund to benefit the league. Before the league was formed, he was active on the boards of two other support groups, Opera Associates and Opera Buffs.

The perfect "first opera" for a newcomer to the art form? Puccini's "La Bohème," of course. It is funny, it is sad. It is directly emotive, it is highly sophisticated. It is full of good tunes and doesn't go on too long. "La Bohème" appeals to young people who see themselves in the characters and to older audiences for whom it calls back the shadows of soirees past. We recognize its heroes and heroines: Didn't we just see poet Rodolfo in a Silver Lake cafe? Or philosopher Colline, buried in the stacks of the library?

On Saturday, Los Angeles Opera will be giving its first performance ever of Giuseppe Verdi's "Simon Boccanegra," a work that straddles a longer span of time in his extraordinary evolution than any other. The story of a seafaring adventurer who fathered a child out of wedlock and is elected the Doge (ruler) of Genoa amid a feud between the Patricians and the Plebeians, "Boccanegra" was originally written in 1857 in the center of his famous middle period but then extensively revised in 1881 just before his great final period.

Armani, Lagerfeld, Prada, Versace — some of fashion's leading designers have ventured into the world of opera, dressing divas and devils at venues such as La Scala and the Met. The trend, which began in the '80s, "has gone crescendo," says Helena Matheopoulos, who describes the couture-costume connection in the new book "Fashion Designers at the Opera" (Thames & Hudson). The London-based Matheopoulos, a former Tatler fashion editor and author of several opera books, focuses on a dozen designers.

Intimate Opera was a small company that got tired of bouncing around from one small San Gabriel Valley space to another and decided to shoot for something higher. A year ago, the company booked itself into the venerable Pasadena Playhouse, got some pros on board -- singer-turned-stage-director Stephanie Vlahos and a corps of friends from her Los Angeles Opera days -- and turned in a respectable, true-to-the-source production of Gian Carlo Menotti's short television opera "Amahl and the Night Visitors.

Nino Machaidze, the 28-year-old soprano from Tbilisi, Georgia, has only been singing professionally for a little more than four years, but the origin of her latest turn in L.A. stretches to 2005 and includes a few twists of fate. In January of that year, Los Angeles Opera's production of Gounod's "Romeo and Juliet" helped catapult into operatic superstardom young singers Anna Netrebko and Rolando Villazón. Soon these two were headlining at major houses and in 2008 were set to re-create their L.A. roles with a highly anticipated new production at the Salzburg Festival — until Netrebko dropped out due to a much publicized pregnancy.

When Ildebrando D'Arcangelo storms the stage in Mozart's "Così fan Tutte" at Los Angeles Opera, the bass-baritone singer projects a swaggering confidence and dangerous sex appeal that act like a powerful audience magnet. But please don't call him a bari-hunk. The 41-year-old D'Arcangelo, who is one of six members of the "Così" ensemble cast, has garnered fans around the world as much for his voice as for his model looks — tall, dark and handsome in an earthy way. Yet the singer appears uneasy with references to his status as a bari-hunk — the group of opera stars known for their pecs and neck size, as well as their deep, sonorous voices.

Until June, the Los Angeles Opera relied on the Center Theatre Group costume shop--where the Mark Taper Forum and Doolittle Theatre are wardrobed--for services. But when that operation was downscaled, the opera company opened its own costume shop in the refurbished Pabst Blue Ribbon Brewery downtown. Now, says costume director Kristine Haugan, there's space for the 500 pairs of shoes and boots that have piled up over the course of several seasons. She calls it "the Imelda Marcos room."

Call it the Placido Plan. Announcing a bold and ambitious design to bring Los Angeles Opera the kind of artistic identity it has lacked in recent years, the company's new leader, Placido Domingo, has unveiled his strategy for its next three seasons and beyond.

In general, Mark Morris tends toward the fiery and passionate expression of his opinions. But get him riffing on why he considers live music so essential to dance performance and be prepared for the choreographer and master of the sharply worded rant to take things up a notch. "Why do I use live music? I would turn that question around and ask why would you use recorded music. Why am I the freak? Live music is music. The fact that recorded music has become so acceptable is unacceptable to me. If you have to use recorded music, then don't do the piece," he says, noting he will boycott even the most highly acclaimed dance performances if they are bereft of live music.

The Mexican composer Daniel Catán — who died at 62 in his sleep over the weekend of as yet causes unknown — was a mensch. He made his name with opera, especially with his last work, "Il Postino," which the Los Angeles Opera premiered in September starring Plácido Domingo as the Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda. Like its composer, "Il Postino" proved warm and popular. Everyone — even singers and stage directors and opera administrators — liked him. Critics and some important people in the music business were put off by Catán's unabashed neo-Romanticism, but no one had a bad word to say about him. His students adored him. He always struck me as someone who cared about people and who cared about music and had no intention of letting one form of caring obstruct the other.