Tomorrow @ REDCAT Ah- Opera

A Counterpoint of Tolerance: AH!

Interactive Opera No-Opera

World premiere

A co-production of the The Herb Alpert School of Music at CalArts and the CalArts Center for New Performance, in cooperation with Idyllwild Arts

REDCAT transforms its flexible performance space into an immersive visual and sonic environment for the world premiere of this inventive international collaboration. Composed and performed by creators from around the globe, this pioneering collective work draws inspiration from the classic Buddhist text, the Diamond Sutra. With composer-performer David Rosenboom and award-winning poet Martine Bellen, the creative team has developed AH! as a celebratory passage across musical cultures and times: a polyglot clarion call for understanding and unity in today’s globalized, ever-more interconnected world. Spinning off a mandala of 13 extraordinary and ordinary modern-life stories, this spellbinding opera brings together an array of robotic and interactive musical technologies, ingenious stagecraft, and flights of phenomenal musicianship. In the theatrically heightened environment of AH!, everyday life is placed flush against esoteric and transcendent realities.

Performing live, Rosenboom and 10 composer-performers from across the Americas, Europe and East Asia are joined by an additional cast of musicians, theatermakers and interactive artists under the direction of Travis Preston, who stages this exceptional music event with production designer Christopher Barreca, choreographer Mira Kingsley and video designer Jeremiah Thies. The audience is invited to engage with and contribute to AH! before, during and after performances, via the website ah-opera, mobile media, and a magical multitouch screen at the theater. Arrive early and participate!

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At REDCAT

June 11-21, 2009
THE WOOSTER GROUP: LA DIDONE
West Coast premiere

The Wooster Group's production of Francesco Cavalli's La Didone takes up a work from the days when opera was an emerging art form, born out of the power of the voice and the lute in pure acoustic space, and sets it down in a new world splintered by telepresence and made brazen by the electric guitar.

Then, traveling further forward in time, and stirring another Italian cultural artifact into the mix, the Group brings into collision the ancient shipwreck tale of Aeneas with the crashed spaceships of Mario Bava's 1965 low-budget sci-fi horror film Terrore nello spazio (Planet of the Vampires).

The elements of this cult movie—the sleek matching leather space uniforms, the forbidding planetary landscapes, the battles with the walking dead over the all-important meteor rejector—come into unexpected synergy with the baroque textures of Cavalli's score and the classic themes of the Dido story: the loss of culture and family, the destructive (and redemptive) power of erotic passion, and the sheer tenacity of human nature in the face of annihilation.

With: Hai-Ting Chinn, Ari Fliakos, Jennifer Griesbach, Hank Heijink, Andrew Nolen, Kamala Sankaram, Scott Shepherd, Harvey Valdes, Kate Valk, David Walker, Judson Williams, and John Young-

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Opera Can Be Boring and So Can Being Dead

The conceit of Mark Morris’ production of Orfeo ed Euridice - currently playing at the Met and recently shown nationwide in HD, is that famous dead people spend eternity sitting around in the outfits and hairstyles they are best remembered for, observing the folly of the living. Abraham Lincoln is decked out in stovepipe hat and funky beard, Frederick Douglass looks dapper in his black tux and shock of white hair, Queen Elizabeth seems uncomfortable in her still high-collared royal finery and a bunch of random shirtless Indian chiefs wear loin cloths and feathered headdresses and wish their culture invented pants. It made me think of a few different things:

1. If I get famous, I hope I’m remembered for sitting on my couch wearing sweat pants and eating combos, so I can be comfortable in Celebrity Afterlife.


2. What’s to become of contemporary celebrities? Is Jason Preistly forever damned to strut about as Brandon Walsh and Paris Hilton dressed up for a slutty car wash? What about Danny Bonaduce? Does he get to be a red-haired bell bottom clad little moppet, or is he forced to exist forever as a muscle bound, alcoholic publicity-whore?


3. Surely any afterlife which serves as a physical manifestation of collective memory exists more to satisfy the vanity of the living than to reward the dead- since they would definitely have better things to do than sitting around, dressed to the nines, watching us make asses of ourselves for all eternity.

Anyhow, this type of speculation kept me conscious for most of the opera- though certainly not all of it. The production was beautifully sung, exquisitely produced and lovingly choreographed- and yet, I could barely keep my eyes open. The experience drove home the point to me that I’m not really a classical music or dance lover and that I need a little more theatre in my theatre to keep myself engaged. Still- for $22, it’s a great way to share in the incredible work at the Met without having to fly to New York or get dressed up.

Tickets to The Met: Live in HD are on sale now online and at select movie theatres worldwide. 2009 season will feature Lucia di Lammermoor by Donizetti, Madama Butterfly by Puccini, La Sonnambula by Bellini, and La Cenerentola by Rossini. For Los Angeles tickets and showtimes click here.