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This “Candide” by LA Opera is the freshest, liveliest production I have seen in recent memory... The music was nearly drowned out by thunderous ovation from the capacity crowd. For many, it was the best of all possible nights at the opera.
While works by Verdi, Mozart, Puccini and other operatic giants form the backbone of our company, LA Opera has a well earned reputation for presenting a remarkably wide range of repertory. The company premiere of Candide, celebrating the 100th birthday of composer Leonard Bernstein, illustrated this perfectly. Bernstein’s incredible artistic legacy encompassed both classical and popular music with equal dexterity, and his 1956 musical comedy is as much at home in the opera house as it is on Broadway.
Peabody Southwell most recently appeared with LA Opera as Paquette in Candide.
Peabody Southwell has established herself as a multifaceted artist in a range of creative endeavors. As a Grammy Award-winning mezzo-soprano recognized for her “stylistic mastery and ripe, sensual sound” (Opera magazine, UK), she has performed principal roles for LA Opera, Chicago Opera Theater, Carnegie Hall, Seattle Symphony, LA Philharmonic, New World Symphony and San Francisco Symphony and has been conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas, James Conlon, John Adams and Robert Spano.
She made her Metropolitan Opera debut in 2018 in Nico Muhly's Marnie.
A champion of new music, she is slated to premiere works for composers Ashley Fure, Ted Hearne, Laura Kaminsky and Jodie Landau. A native of Los Angeles, she frequently appears with LA Opera. Most notably, she performed the central role in the world premiere of David Lang's anatomy theater, in an "electrifying" (Wall Street Journal) performance, leading Musical America to note, "Southwell gave another demonstration as to why she has become one of the most fearless, versatile young singing actresses on the stage today." As a director, designer and dramaturg she prioritizes bold collaboration across the arts in productions, installations and experimental events described by the Los Angeles Times as "the future of classical music."
Acclaimed New York City-born baritone Theo Hoffman is an alumnus of LA Opera's Domingo-Colburn-Stein Young Artist Program.
In the 2019/20 season, he makes his first professional performances as Papageno in The Magic Flute at LA Opera under the baton of James Conlon, marking his eighth production with the company. Additionally, he debuts with Opera Philadelphia as Denis in the world premiere of Denis & Katya by Philip Venables, and will debut at Seattle Opera as Schaunard in La Bohème. Mr. Hoffman has been seen previously at Atlanta Opera, Opera Omaha, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, and Des Moines Metro Opera.
Mr. Hoffman has concertized with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Wiener Akademie and Il Giardino Armonico at the Salzburg Mozartwoche, Marlboro Music, Orchestre National de Lille, Grand Teton Music Festival, Portland Symphony Orchestra, and Chamber Music Northwest. He has appeared in recital at some of the world’s leading venues, including the Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, and Alice Tully Hall. He is the recipient of awards from the Richard Tucker Music Foundation, the Sullivan Foundation, the Gerda Lissner Foundation, The Kurt Weill Foundation, and was a Grand Finalist in the 2016 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. Mr. Hoffman is a graduate of The Juilliard School. (TheoHoffmanBaritone.com)
Mezzo-soprano Taylor Raven joined LA Opera's young artist program during the 2017/18 season and made her company debut as Vanderdendur in Candide.
Her mainstage appearances during the 2018/19 season include Tebaldo in Don Carlo, the Sandman in Hansel and Gretel and Annio in The Clemency of Titus. Additionally, she was the mezzo-soprano soloist for the world premiere of Joby Talbot's new score for Vampyr at the Theatre at Ace Hotel, and she appeared as Jocabed in the world premiere of Henry Mollicone's Moses at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. Her LAO appearances for the 2019/20 season included the Third Lady in The Magic Flute.
In March 2022, she will make her North Carolina Opera debut in Sanctuary Road by Paul Moravec and Mark Campbell. In the 2022/23 season, she will make her debut with San Francisco Opera as Charmian in Antony and Cleopatra, followed by appearances there as Sister Mathilde in Dialogues of the Carmelites and as Flora in La Traviata.
In the summer of 2019, she returned to Wolf Trap Opera Company as a Filene Artist to perform the roles of Rosina in The Barber of Seville and Concepción in Ravel's L’heure espagnole.
In 2018, she appeared with Wolf Trap Opera Company as Gertrude in Romeo et Juliette. Ms. Raven was a Pittburgh Opera Resident Artist in the 2016/17 season, where she performed as Oronte in Handel’s Riccardo Primo and as "Hannah after" in Laura Kaminsky's As One for its Pennsylvania premiere. In 2016, Ms. Raven performed in the Schwabacher Summer Concert with San Francisco Opera's Merola Opera Program. She recently performed the role of Marian Anderson in Deep River: Marian Anderson's Journey with Virginia Opera. As a Young Artist with Central City Opera in 2015, Ms. Raven was seen in scenes from Carmen, Street Scene and The Ballad of Baby Doe.
She earned her Master of Music degree at the University of Colorado-Boulder and her Bachelor of Music degree at the University of North Carolina. In 2015, Ms. Raven won both the Adelaide Bishop Award with Central City Opera and First Place in the Denver Lyric Opera Guild Competition. She won first prize in the 2018 Loren L. Zachary competition and is a recipient of the 2017 Sara Tucker Study Grant from the Richard Tucker Music Foundation.
James Conlon has been LA Opera's Richard Seaver Music Director since 2006.
Since his debut that year with La Traviata, he has conducted 67 different operas and more than 450 performances to date with the company. Highlights of recent seasons include the 2020 company premiere of The Anonymous Lover (L'Amant Anonyme) by Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, the 2021 company premiere of Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex, the 2022 company premiere of Bach's St. Matthew Passion and a 2023 production of Verdi's Otello.
(Click here to visit James Conlon's Corner, where you can find essays, videos and conversations he has created especially for LA Opera.)
One of today’s most versatile and respected conductors, James Conlon has cultivated a vast symphonic, operatic and choral repertoire. He has conducted virtually every major American and European symphony orchestra since his debut with the New York Philharmonic in 1974. He has conducted more than 270 performances at the Metropolitan Opera. Through worldwide touring, an extensive discography and videography, numerous essays and commentaries, frequent television appearances and guest speaking engagements, Mr. Conlon is one of classical music’s most recognized interpreters.
In 2021, he became Artistic Advisor of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.
He has been Principal Conductor of the RAI National Symphony Orchestra in Torino, Italy (2016–20); Principal Conductor of the Paris Opera (1995–2004); General Music Director of the City of Cologne, Germany (1989–2003), simultaneously leading the Gürzenich Orchestra and the Cologne Opera; and Music Director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra (1983–91).
Mr. Conlon has served as the Music Director of the Ravinia Festival, summer home of the Chicago Symphony (2005–15), and is now Music Director Laureate of the Cincinnati May Festival―the oldest choral festival in the United States―where he was Music Director for 37 years (1979–2016), marking one of the longest tenures of any director of an American classical music institution. As a guest conductor at the Metropolitan Opera, he has led more than 270 performances since his 1976 debut. He has also conducted at leading opera houses and festivals including the Vienna State Opera, Salzburg Festival, La Scala, Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, Mariinsky Theatre, Covent Garden, Chicago Lyric Opera, Teatro Comunale di Bologna, and Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino.
As LA Opera's Music Director since 2006, Mr. Conlon has led more performances than any other conductor in the company’s history—to date, over 450 performances of 67 different operas by more than 30 different composers. Highlights of his LA Opera tenure include conducting the company’s first Ring cycle; initiating the groundbreaking Recovered Voices series, an ongoing commitment to staging masterpieces of 20th-century European opera that were suppressed by the Third Reich; and spearheading Britten 100/LA, a city-wide celebration honoring the centennial of that composer’s birth. During the period in which Dorothy Chandler Pavilion was closed due to the pandemic, Mr. Conlon conducted LA Opera’s live-streamed, socially distanced production—staged at the Colburn School—of The Anonymous Loverby Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, a prominent Black composer in 18th-century France. The performance was presented as an online-only event in fall 2020 and marked the work’s West Coast premiere. The Pavilion reopened in June 2021 with Mr. Conlon conducting the company premiere of Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex, with which LA Opera became the first major American opera company to perform live in its own theater since the coronavirus outbreak. The performance was subsequently released online for at-home viewing. During LA Opera’s 2022/23 season, Mr. Conlon conducted two operas long absent from the company’s repertory, Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisandeand Verdi's Otello, along with a new production of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro.
Mr. Conlon’s first season as Artistic Advisor of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra includes three weeks of concerts, starting with an October 2021 program of music by historically marginalized composers. The featured works are Alexander Zemlinsky’sDie Seejungfrau (The Mermaid), which is the piece that sparked Mr. Conlon’s interest in suppressed music from the early 20thcentury, and William Levi Dawson’sNegro Folk Symphony, which reflects a theme that will recur throughout Mr. Conlon’s advisorship—the bringing of attention to works by American composers neglected due to their race. He returns in February 2022 for performances including Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony and the final scene of Wagner’sDie Walküre, with guest artists Christine Goerke and Greer Grimsley. The BSO season concludes in June 2022 with Mr. Conlon conducting an orchestra co-commission from Wynton Marsalis, Rachmaninoff’sRhapsody on a Theme of Paganiniwith Beatrice Rana, and Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony (“Leningrad”). As Artistic Advisor, in addition to leading these performances, Mr. Conlon will help ensure the continued artistic quality of the orchestra and fill many duties off the podium, including those related to artistic personnel—such as filling important vacancies and attracting exceptional musicians.
Additional highlights of Mr. Conlon’s season include Bach’sSt. Matthew Passionat Rome Opera, Wagner’sThe Flying Dutchmanat New National Theatre, Tokyo, the Paris Opera’s Gala lyrique with Renée Fleming, and concerts with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra (Dawson’sNegro Folk Symphonyand works by Beethoven and Bernstein), Gürzenich Orchester Köln (Sinfoniettas by Zemlinsky and Korngold), Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra (works by Shostakovich and Zemlinsky), and at Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. Mr. Conlon’s 2021/22 season follows a spring and summer in which he was highly active amidst the re-opening of many venues to live performance. These engagements included concerts with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Deutsche Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Orchestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna, and RAI National Symphony Orchestra. He also led a series of performances in Spain scheduled around World Music Day (June 21). In Madrid, over a period of two days, he conducted the complete symphonies of Schumann and Brahms in collaboration with four different Spanish orchestras: the Orquesta Nacional de España, Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia, Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León, and Joven Orquesta Nacional de España (JONDE). He subsequently conducted JONDE at the Festival de Granada and Seville’s Teatro de la Maestranza. Additional summer 2021 engagements included the Aspen, Napa, Ravello, and Ravinia Festivals.
In an effort to call attention to lesser-known works of composers silenced by the Nazi regime, Mr. Conlon has devoted himself to extensive programming of this music throughout Europe and North America. In 1999 he received the Vienna-based Zemlinsky Prize for his efforts in bringing that composer’s music to international attention; in 2013 he was awarded the Roger E. Joseph Prize at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion for his extraordinary efforts to eradicate racial and religious prejudice and discrimination; and in 2007 he received the Crystal Globe Award from the Anti-Defamation League. His work on behalf of suppressed composers led to the creation of The OREL Foundation, an invaluable resource on the topic for music lovers, students, musicians, and scholars; the Ziering-Conlon Initiative for Recovered Voices at the Colburn School; and a recent virtual TEDx Talk titled “Resurrecting Forbidden Music.”
Mr. Conlon is an enthusiastic advocate of public scholarship and cultural institutions as forums for the exchange of ideas and inquiry into the role music plays in our shared humanity and civic life. At LA Opera, he leads pre-performance talks, drawing upon musicology, literary studies, history, and social sciences to contemplate—together with his audience—the enduring power and relevance of opera and classical music in general. Additionally, he frequently collaborates with universities, museums, and other cultural institutions, and works with scholars, practitioners, and community members across disciplines. His appearances throughout the country as a speaker on a variety of cultural and educational topics are widely praised.
Mr. Conlon’s extensive discography and videography can be found on the Bridge, Capriccio, Decca, EMI, Erato, and Sony Classical labels. His recordings of LA Opera productions have received four Grammy Awards, two respectively for John Corigliano’sThe Ghosts of Versaillesand Kurt Weill’sRise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny.Additional highlights include an ECHO Klassik Award-winning recording cycle of operas and orchestral works by Alexander Zemlinsky; a CD/DVD release of works by Viktor Ullmann, which won the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik; and the world-premiere recording of Liszt’s oratorioSt. Stanislaus.
Mr. Conlon holds four honorary doctorates and has received numerous other awards. He was one of the first five recipients of the Opera News Awards, and was honored by the New York Public Library as a Library Lion. He was named Commendatore Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana by Sergio Mattarella, President of the Italian Republic. He was also named Commandeur de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture and, in 2002, personally accepted France’s highest honor, the Legion d’Honneur, from then-President of the French Republic Jacques Chirac.
Francesca Zambello is an internationally recognized director of opera and theater, as well as the General Director of the Glimmerglass Festival since 2010 and the Artistic Director of the Washingtion National Opera at the Kennedy Center since 2012.
She has also served as the Artistic Advisor to the San Francisco Opera from 2005-2011 and as the Artistic Director of the Skylight Theater from 1987-1992. In her current roles at the Kennedy Center and the Glimmerglass Festival she is responsible for producing 12 productions annually. She has begun major commissioning programs for new works in both companies that have resulted in productions of many large and small-scaled new works. Both companies have thrived financially and increased their national and international profiles as a result of her artistic vision and leadership.
Her American directing debut took place at the Houston Grand Opera with a production of Fidelio. She debuted in Europe at Teatro la Fenice in Venice with Beatrice di Tenda and has since staged new productions at major theaters and opera houses in Europe and the USA. She has worked at over 50 major opera houses including the Metropolitan Opera, La Scala, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Paris Opera, the Bolshoi, Munich State Opera, Covent Garden and the Australian Opera. Her work has also been seen at many of the world's major festivals. Collaborating with outstanding artists and designers and promoting emerging talent, she takes a special interest in new music theater works, innovative productions, and in producing theater and opera for wider audiences.
Francesca Zambello has been awarded the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French government for her contribution to French culture, and the Russian Federation's medal for Service to Culture. Other honors for her work include three Olivier Awards from the London Society of Theaters and two Evening Standard Awards for Best Musical and Best Opera. She has also received the award for Best Company Achievement. The French Grand Prix des Critiques was awarded to her twice for her work at the Paris Opera. Other awards include Best Production in Japan, the Palme d'Or in Germany, the Golden Mask in Russia and the Helpmann Award in Australia.
Francesca Zambello's most recent opera projects have included the Ring cycle and Aida for the San Francisco Opera and Washington National Opera, and Porgy and Bess and Show Boat for commercial DVD release. Musical and theater projects have included developing Voigt Lessons with Terrance McNally and Debbie Voight; Rebecca for Vienna's Raimund Theater, Stuttgart's Palladium Theater (presented by Stage Entertainment), and in St. Gallen, Switzerland; The Little Prince with Oscar-winning composer Rachel Portman; Napoleon in the West End; The Little Mermaid for Disney on Broadway; a musical adaptation of The Little House on the Prairie for national tour; The Master Butchers at the Guthrie Theater; and Aladdin in Disneyland. Film works have included Menotti's Amahl and the Night Visitors for BBC Television; a new film for the BBC, Sony and PBS of The Little Prince; and West Side Story for the floating stage in Bregenz.
Ms. Zambello has also served as a guest professor at Yale University. An American who grew up in Europe, she speaks French, Italian, German, and Russian. She attended Moscow University in 1976 and graduated cum laude from Colgate University in 1978. She began her career as an Assistant Director to the late Jean-Pierre Ponnelle. Francesca Zambello lives in New York with her wife, Faith Gay, a founding partner at Selendy and Gay, and step-son, Jackson.
Mark McCullough has designed lighting for LAO productions of Porgy and Bess, Lohengrin, Rigoletto, Florencia en el Amazonas, Nabucco and Candide.
Originally from Charlotte, North Carolina, he collaborates frequently with the Glimmerglass Festival, where he has designed more than 20 productions. Other highlights include the lighting designs for The Marriage of Figaro at the Metropolitan Opera; Cyrano de Bergerac at La Scala, The Queen of Spades at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Norma at the Ópera Nacional de Chile and The Pearl Fishers at Houston Grand Opera.
From: Alhambra, California. LA Opera: Resident Conductor from 2012 to 2022, he made his LAO conducting debut with La Traviata (2009). He has conducted 15 productions to date including, most recently, The Magic Flute in December 2019.
Hailed for his adventurous and bold artistic leadership, and for eliciting technically precise and expressive performances from musicians, Grammy Award-winner Grant Gershon celebrated his 20th anniversary as Kiki & David Gindler Artistic Director of the Los Angeles Master Chorale in the 2021/22 season. The Los Angeles Times has said the Master Chorale "has become the most exciting chorus in the country under Grant Gershon,” a reflection on both his programming and performances. During his tenure, Gershon has led more than 200 Master Chorale performances at Walt Disney Concert Hall in programs encompassing a wide range of choral music, from the early pillars of the repertoire to contemporary compositions. He has led world premiere performances of major works by John Adams, Louis Andriessen, Eve Beglarian, Billy Childs, Gabriela Lena Frank, Ricky Ian Gordon, Shawn Kirchner, David Lang, Morten Lauridsen, Steve Reich, Ellen Reid, Christopher Rouse, Esa-Pekka Salonen, and Chinary Ung, among many others.
Gershon is committed to increasing representation in the choral repertoire, and in 2020 he announced that the Master Chorale will reserve at least 50% of each future season for works by composers from historically excluded groups in classical music. In July 2019, Gershon and the Master Chorale opened the famed Salzburg Festival with Lagrime di San Pietro, directed by Peter Sellars. The Salzburg performances received standing ovations and rave reviews from such outlets as the Süddeutsche Zeitung, which called Lagrime “painfully beautiful” (Schmerzliche schön). Gershon and the Master Chorale debuted the production in Los Angeles in 2016 and began touring the world with it in 2018. In its review of the premiere of Lagrime, the Los Angeles Times noted that the production “is a major accomplishment for the Master Chorale, which sang and acted brilliantly. It is also a major accomplishment for music history.”
He was the Resident Conductor of LA Opera from 2012 to 2022, and in this capacity conducted the West Coast premiere of Philip Glass’s Satyagraha in November 2018. He made his acclaimed debut with the company with La Traviata in 2009 and has subsequently conducted productions including Il Postino, Madama Butterfly, Carmen, Florencia en el Amazonas, Wonderful Town, The Tales of Hoffmann andThe Pearl Fishers. In 2017, he made his San Francisco Opera debut conducting the world premiere of John Adams’s Girls of the Golden West directed by Peter Sellars, who also wrote the libretto, and made his Dutch National Opera debut with the same opera in March 2019. Gershon and Adams have an enduring friendship and professional relationship which began 27 years ago in Los Angeles when Gershon played keyboards in the pit for Nixon in China at LA Opera. Since then, Gershon has led the world premiere performances of Adams’ theater piece I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky, premiered his two-piano piece Hallelujah Junction (with Gloria Cheng), and conducted performances of Harmonium, The Gospel According to the Other Mary, El Niño, The Chairman Dances,and choruses fromThe Death of Klinghoffer.
In New York, Gershon has appeared at Carnegie Hall and at the historic Trinity Wall Street, and he has performed on the Great Performers series at Lincoln Center and the Making Music series at Zankel Hall. Other major appearances include performances at the Ravinia, Aspen, Edinburgh, Helsinki, Salzburg, and Vienna festivals, the South American premiere of LA Opera’s production of Il Postino in Chile, and performances with the Baltimore Symphony and the Coro e Orchestra del Teatro Regio di Torino in Turin, Italy. He has worked closely with numerous conductors, including Claudio Abbado, Pierre Boulez, James Conlon, Gustavo Dudamel, Lorin Maazel, Zubin Mehta, Simon Rattle, and his mentor, Esa-Pekka Salonen. His discography includes the 2022 Grammy Award-winning recording of Mahler's Symphony No. 8 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic as well as Grammy–nominated recordings of Sweeney Todd (New York Philharmonic Special Editions) and Ligeti’s Grand Macabre(Sony Classical); six commercial CDs with the Master Chorale, including Glass-Salonen (RCM), You Are (Variations) (Nonesuch), Daniel Variations (Nonesuch), A Good Understanding (Decca), Miserere (Decca), and the national anthems (Cantaloupe Music); and two live-performance albums, the Master Chorale’s 50th Season Celebration recording and Festival of Carols. He has also led the Master Chorale in performances for several major motion pictures soundtracks, including, at the request of John Williams, Star Wars: The Last Jediand The Rise of Skywalker. Gershon was named Outstanding Alumnus of the Thornton School of Music in 2002 and received the USC Alumni Merit Award in 2017.
Kai Harada made his LAO debut with Candide in 2018.
He has created sound design for Broadway productions of Head Over Heels, The Band’s Visit, Amélie, Sunday in the Park with George, Allegiance, Gigi, Fun Home, On the Town, First Date, Follies (for which he received Tony and Drama Desk nominations) and Million Dollar Quartet. He was the sound designer for A Legendary Romance, Poster Boy (Williamstown), Beaches (Drury Lane), Brooklynite (Vineyard), Little Dancer and First You Dream (Kennedy Center), Zorro (Moscow; Atlanta), Hinterm Horizont (Berlin), Sweeney Todd and Man of La Mancha (Portland Opera) and She Loves Me (Oregon Shakespeare Festival).
Principal Ensemble Eboni Adams, Tom Berklund (Lisbonite), Tucker Reed Breder, Tim Campbell (Jan 27-Feb 8: Bavarian Captain, Second Inquisition Agent, Señor, Surinam Slave), Abdiel Gonzalez (Feb 11-18: Bavarian Captain, Second Inquisition Agent, Señor, Surinam Slave), Katherine Henly (Bavarian Corporal, Sheep), Amber Liekhus (Lisbonite, Queen of Eldorado), Danny Lindgren (King of Bavaria, Lisbon Sailor, Mondevideo Priest), Amanda Compton LoPresti, Robert Norman (Holland Minister, Don Issachar, Señor, King of Eldorado), Steve Pence (Baron, First Inquisition Agent, Galley Captain), Michelle Siemens (Minister's Wife)
