With David Hockney's passing, we have lost not only one of the defining artists of our time, but a radiant, generous spirit whose imagination simply changed the way we see the world. Through his singular vision, David conjured entirely new worlds and then generously invited us to inhabit them. To enter those worlds was to be transformed: to see color, space, beauty, emotion, and one another, anew

At LA Opera, this loss is felt especially deeply. We had the immense privilege of experiencing David’s imagination not as an abstraction, but as a living theatrical force: vivid, playful, expansive, and, ultimately, profound. He loved music, and he loved opera. He understood the stage as a place where color, sound, movement, and human emotion could merge, creating space to contemplate the deepest questions of our humanity.

David’s belief in LA Opera from its earliest days lent our nascent company immense credibility on the world stage and affirmed that something bold and consequential was being built in Los Angeles. A defining artist of this city, he became a defining figure in LA Opera’s own story.

Across his storied career, David’s generosity—artistic and personal alike—was itself an act of invitation, welcoming audiences and art lovers into a more expansive experience of beauty, feeling, and meaning. His joy in the work was infectious, but so was his seriousness of purpose: the rigor, craft, and relentless pursuit of truth that animated everything he touched. It is perhaps no surprise that his most celebrated work for LA Opera was Tristan und Isolde, a masterpiece whose closing Liebestod dissolves the boundaries between perception and transcendence. David spent a lifetime doing much the same—conjuring worlds of such beauty and generosity that we entered them one way and left them forever changed.