Operas

Two art museums are contributing to Los Angeles' Ring Festival with small exhibitions opening this month. At the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, "Myths, Legends, and Cultural Renewal: Wagner's Sources" (April 15-Aug. 16) looks at some of the artists who drew inspiration from the same sources as "Ring" composer Richard Wagner. At the Fullerton Art Museum at Cal State San Bernardino, "Timeless Enchantment: Richard Wagner's 'Ring of the Nibelung' in Visual Arts and Performance" (Thursday-July 31)

In a match made in what's surely somebody's idea of musical heaven, the Long Beach Opera will take a sidelong look toward the Grateful Dead with a Sunday screening of Jim Kohlberg's "The Music Never Stopped." The film, which was an entry in the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, acts as a sort of stage-setter for the company's production of Michael Nyman's "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat," an opera based on the work of Dr. Oliver Sacks by the same name.

Italian soprano Mara Zampieri, scheduled to sing four performances as Lady Macbeth in Los Angeles Music Center Opera's production of Verdi's "Macbeth," Dec. 11-21, has canceled her appearance here. Zampieri's U. S. manager, Alan Green of Columbia Artists Management Inc., said the soprano hurt her leg in an accident in her apartment in Venice, Italy. Her leg is in a cast and she will be unable to travel this month. Zampieri will be replaced in the four "Macbeth" performances (Dec.

Long Beach Opera's new production of Osvaldo Golijov's "Ainadamar" comes at an important time. The opera is a meditation on the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca's murder by the fascists during the Spanish Civil War, which is ever relevant, especially in the way the work echoes the current situation in the Middle East. But there is another reason why this opera matters right now, despite LBO's somewhat slapdash production at Terrace Theater Sunday night. Golijov has been going through a bad patch, and we need to be reminded why the music world would be unwise to lose faith in him. He has missed deadlines, including for a violin concerto that was to have been premiered by the Los Angeles Philharmonic a year ago. He has also come under attack for plagiarism by "gotcha" critics who miss the larger context of his work and what makes it so culturally rich and pertinent.

"If it must be Richard," a clever if unfriendly critic once wagged, "give me Wagner." "And if it must be Strauss," he added, "make it Johann." Conventional wisdom, only a decade or two ago, insisted that Richard Strauss managed to write a couple of terrific little shockers near the turn of the century--"Salome" and "Elektra"--and then peaked with the mock-Viennese nostalgia of "Der Rosenkavalier."

Helene Zaslove spent Friday afternoon like most Southern Californians--stuck in traffic. Having heard that patrons who arrived late at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion for the opera "Tristan und Isolde," would not be seated during the first act, Zaslove feared the worst as she crept on her way to downtown Los Angeles from Santa Monica.

Linda and Larry Boehm has sold the Old Town Music Hall in Monrovia for $237,000 to Will and Judy Lucas, who will rename it Old Town Theatre and use it for plays and operas. The sale was brokered by the Daum Corp.

Jose Carreras, who gained international fame as one of the Three Tenors with Luciano Pavarotti and Placido Domingo, told the Times of London that his opera career may be over. In an interview published Friday, the 62-year-old Spanish singer said he could no longer withstand the rigors of performing principal opera roles, unamplified. "If I can do concert recitals, adapting the repertoire to my needs, then no problem, that's good enough," he said. "But with operas, unless the right circumstances come up, my career is done."

D'ALBERT: "Tiefland." Isabell Strauss, Rudolf Schock, Gerd Feldhoff; RIAS Choir; Berlin Symphony, conducted by Hans Zanotelli. Eurodisc 7797-2-RG (two compact discs). Eugene d'Albert's one enduring contribution to the operatic literature is a bit of Teutonic verismo set in Spain, heavily indebted to Wagnerian and Straussian chromaticism and a bit too much of all of them.

Less than three months before the scheduled opening of the L.A. Music Center Opera production of "Queen of Spades," the company has announced that the Tchaikovsky opera will be replaced by Verdi's "Don Carlo," on the same dates in April. The late switch marks the first time that the 4-year-old company has changed productions on such short notice. Generally, opera productions are planned three years in advance.

  Los Angeles Opera can stop worrying right now. The Los Angeles Philharmonic's new production of Mozart's "Don Giovanni," which had its first of four performances Friday night at Walt Disney Concert Hall, is certainly getting all the attention at the moment and for all the obvious and all the right reasons. The hall's architect, Frank Gehry, has designed stunning sets. The fashion world, long enamored of Disney, is involved, with powerfully theatrical costumes from Rodarte and hairstyles by Odile Gilbert.

“The View” 10 a.m. Thursday, ABC: performance from “Once.” “Dudu Fisher: In Concert From Israel” Noon Thursday, KCET: Singer Dudu Fisher performs Broadway tunes and Israeli songs. “Open Call” 9 p.m. Thursday, KCET: "Kenny Burrell: Master and Mentor": Hosted by mezzo-soprano opera singer Suzanna Guzman, Open Call features a wide variety of productions from profiles of artists. “Soulful Symphony With Darin Atwater: Song in a Strange Land” Noon Saturday, KCET: Artistic director Atwater conducts an 85-member orchestra in compositions exhibiting styles ranging through gospel, jazz and symphonic music.

There've been commedia dell'arte versions of "Don Giovanni" and a 3-D version of "Don Giovanni. " Mozart's terminally debauched antihero has been reimagined as a kind of peruked Hugh Hefner and as a junkie with a hypodermic needle stuck in his arm and aMcDonald's hamburger on his breath. But when conductor Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic present a new, semi-staged production of "Don Giovanni" at Walt Disney Concert Hall for four sold-out performances starting Friday, the emphasis won't be on some radically high-concept re-invention of Mozart's 1787 masterpiece.

At the world premiere Thursday night of Anne LeBaron's darkly mysterious, troubling yet weirdly exuberant and wonderfully performed new opera "Crescent City," a young Reveler in the production frolicked a few feet from where I was sitting on a folding chair along the perimeter of the experimental art space, Atwater Crossing. She wore a skirt fashioned out of the Arts & Books section of this newspaper, and she was close enough that I could read a few crumpled lines. But she was hardly there to make me or any other Angeleno feel remotely at home.

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.

He had already been proclaimed "the Picasso of children's books" by Time magazine when Maurice Sendak, then in his 30s, wrote and illustrated "Where the Wild Things Are," a dark fantasy that became one of the 10 bestselling children's books of all time. Published in 1963, the book was a startling departure from the sweetness and innocence that then ruled children's literature. "Wild Things" tapped into the fears of childhood and sent its main character — an unruly boy in a wolf costume — into a menacing forest to tame the wild beasts of his imagination.

L.A. Opera's new production of Saint-Saens' "Samson et Dalila" (borrowed from San Francisco Opera) continues at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., Sunday and Sept. 26 at 2 p.m., Wednesday and Sept. 18, 21 and 24 at 7:30 p.m. Denyce Graves sings the role of Dalila at all performances. As Samson, Placido Domingo sings Sept. 18, and American tenor Gary Lakes takes the role Wednesday and Sept. 21, 24 and 26. Lawrence Foster is the conductor, Nicolas Joel the stage director.

"It's a completely new experience," said Matthew Zuber, a 21-year-old bassoonist studying at the Colburn School. "I've never done an opera before. " He was referring to his participation -- along with 21 other young musicians at the downtown conservatory -- in a new collaboration between Colburn and Los Angeles Opera's Domingo-Thornton Young Artist Program. That union gets its first showcase this weekend, when the combined forces present two one-act operas: Ernst Krenek's "The Secret Kingdom" and Viktor Ullmann's "The Emperor of Atlantis.

The merits of working with one's spouse can be debated endlessly, but few couples face the pressures of opera singers who share a life and sometimes a stage. In 2004, local music lovers were transfixed when two of opera's biggest stars, tenor Roberto Alagna and soprano Angela Gheorghiu, appeared in Herbert Ross' production of Puccini's "La Bohème" at Los Angeles Opera. That the singers were married to each other in real life made the experience, already rife with romantic pathos, that much more intense.

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.