Magic Flute

Los Angeles Opera will complement its previously announced 2008-09 season highlights -- a first foray into the Wagner "Ring" cycle, a new horror film-based opera and the directorial debut of Woody Allen -- mostly with revivals, the company announced Monday.

The overture will be missing, and some familiar music will be omitted. Giggling children are likely to be in the audience. When the Metropolitan Opera says it is trying to lower the age of its audience, it really means it. Starting today, the company presents six performances of "The Magic Flute" trimmed to 100 minutes, aimed to attract families. These will be the first English-language performances of Mozart's masterpiece staged by the company at the Met since 1977.

In opera, as the old adage goes, it ain't over till the fat lady sings. But in a grand experiment, one Digital Age opera performance was almost over before the proverbial fat lady could be heard. The Metropolitan Opera's first live, high-definition transmission of Mozart's "The Magic Flute" to 100 movie theaters around the world went off with a few hitches Saturday morning.

Pacific Symphony music director Carl St.Clair will make his Opera Pacific debut conducting Mozart's "The Magic Flute" from Nov. 7-12 to kick off the Irvine-based company's four-opera season at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa. The company will present three other operas--including its first performances of Verdi's "Macbeth" and Strauss' "Der Rosenkavlier"--to complete its 2000-01 season.

She's been the voice of Betty Rubble on "The Flintstones" and hundreds of other goofy cartoon characters. Now, four-octave soprano B.J. Ward is having an animated good time with opera. Ward's live, one-woman show, "Stand-Up Opera," combines serious operatic renditions with a comedy routine that includes punch lines, pratfalls and an updated spin on the classics.

The brick walls in the music room at Hamilton High School were coated in lavender paint. Fliers announcing upcoming performances cluttered the bulletin board near the door. And musical instrument cases littered the carpet alongside scuffed amps. On this recent Monday afternoon, it was practice time at the music academy at Hamilton, a humanities magnet school on the Westside of Los Angeles. But this was no ordinary rehearsal for the group of about 80 student musicians.

"Back to the Future," which opens today across the country, officially launches TV star Michael J. Fox in feature films. But the feature he actually made first comes second. "Teen Wolf," a low-budget horror spoof in which Fox plays a timid teen-ager whose genetic clock turns him into both a werewolf and the high school hunk, was made just before "Back to the Future," but won't be released until Aug. 9, nearly five weeks later.

Kaaren Erickson, 44, a soprano with the Metropolitan, San Francisco and New York City opera companies. She studied at the Santa Barbara Academy of Music and made her debut in San Francisco in Massenet's "Cendrillon" in 1982. Two years later, she appeared with the New York City company in "Magic Flute." At the Met, she sang in "Falstaff," "Elektra" and Wagner's "Das Rheingold." In Maryville, Tenn., on Aug. 30 of cancer.