Los Angeles Opera

Mark Swed's May 21 articles on Peter Hemmings and Los Angeles Opera provided well-merited coverage of a man and an institution that have changed the cultural landscape of Southern California. One aspect that Swed touched on but did not praise sufficiently is the company's commitment to developing young local artists. This is a mission Los Angeles Opera shares with the Opera Buffs Inc., which provides scholarships and performance opportunity to young singers in Southern California. Swed suggests that other companies have "stronger personalities" than Los Angeles Opera.

We all know reading is declining and we all know that video and the Internet have a lot to do with the reasons why. So too does the closing of bookstores, along with the downsizing of publishers, magazines and newspapers. Obviously, if you give people less to read, they will read less. Now the literary predicament has hit opera, where we are also faced with more screens and less access to printed text.

Conditions on the ground weren't ideal, and "The Flying Dutchman" did not achieve liftoff when Los Angeles Opera opened its gloomy new production of Wagner's gloomy early opera the second Saturday of March at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. But by the first day of spring, a little elevation, if not exactly winged victory, had become possible. As the curtain was about to rise on that uncertain opening night, Portuguese soprano Elisabete Matos felt suddenly unwell, giving her cover and former L.A. Opera chorus member Julie Makerov only 12 minutes to get costumed and made up (with no time left to fit her wig)

Los Angeles Opera will present the current touring revival of “Einstein on the Beach,” composed by Philip Glass and staged by Robert Wilson, as part of its 2013-14 season, the company is announcing on Tuesday. The company will   present a special slate of programs devoted to the centenary of composer Benjamin Britten. The season will also include tenor Plácido Domingo in the company premiere of Jules Massenet 's “Thaïs” and a new staging of Donizetti's “Lucia di Lammermoor.” “Einstein” will have three performances Oct. 11-13 at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

At one time, Los Angeles was Weimar on the Pacific: Numerous German-speaking émigrés put their stamp on the city to which they'd fled. What with directors such as Billy Wilder and Ernst Lubitsch, writers such as Thomas Mann and Bertolt Brecht, and assorted film composers and actors — many of whom gathered to express their love of German high culture and their hatred of fascism — it seemed at times that the Southland's intellectual life...

The Britten year in Los Angeles has begun with a bang. This weekend, you can hear Britten in Walt Disney Concert Hall, at Jacaranda in Santa Monica -- and most of all, in the Colburn School's Zipper Hall where the ever-on-the-move sparkplug James Conlon is presiding over an extraordinary marathon of songs and opera that rarely get a live hearing in this country. For starters Thursday night, in a setting that imaginatively re-invents the format of an art song recital, there was a long “prelude” of often stark songs by Benjamin Britten and others by his teachers Frank Bridge and John Ireland and his foremost predecessor in English opera, Henry Purcell.

The start of fire season and opera season in Los Angeles often coincide. It's weird - a scheduling remnant from the days when the Los Angeles Opera and Los Angeles Philharmonic shared the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and bickered over dates - but it works. The late-summer air is hot and dry, toxic with smoke. People are on edge. Sensitivities are heightened. Emotions flare. Jerks cut you off on the freeway. That's neither an improper apocalyptic atmosphere nor apoplectic state in which to receive opera.

"Artists and repertoire subject to change. No refunds or exchanges" reads the fine print on the Los Angeles Opera advertisement on Page 49 in the Aug. 11 Calendar. I ask you, would you put down money on next year's car knowing that the make, model and options would be subject to change, no refunds or exchanges? I do not think so. So why buy tickets in advance to the Los Angeles Opera? You have no choice of seating by phone or mail order, so best seat is not an option. Indeed, because they never really sell out, some of the best tickets are at the box office the night of performance.