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Company premiere: Georges Bizet's The Pearl Fishers
"Come for the visual spectacle and very fine singers. Stay for the ideas. And while you’re at it, you will see, thanks to Penny Woolcock’s startling production, a little something about what’s wrong with our troubled world."
With the company premiere of The Pearl Fishers immediately following Carmen, audiences enjoyed a rare opportunity to experience back-to-back productions of Georges Bizet’s two best known operas. Far beyond its famous duet for tenor and baritone, the rarely performed earlier work offers numerous musical treasures including exquisite arias, wonderful choruses and highly imaginative orchestral writing. Director Penny Woolcock’s fascinating production deftly updated the setting to the present day, reminding us that the challenges faced by the opera’s characters are just as valid in our world today.
Mexican tenor Javier Camarena is the preeminent Mozart and bel canto specialist of his generation.
Praised for his burnished tone, gleaming high notes, flawless coloratura, and veracious portrayals, he regularly appears in leading roles alongside today’s foremost stars at the world’s top opera houses, and was the face of Opera News’s 80th anniversary edition this past January. Last season, as Ernesto in Donizetti’s Don Pasquale, he became only the second singer in Metropolitan Opera history to perform encores in multiple productions at the house, after the audience demanded a repeat of his aria “E se fia che ad altro oggetto.” This followed his triumph in 2014, when he became only the third singer in 70 years to give an encore on that stage, having stopped the house in consecutive performances of Prince Ramiro’s aria “Si ritrovarla io guiro” in La Cenerentola. Camarena went on to repeat the same feat in The Daughter of the Regiment at Madrid’s Teatro Real, marking only the second time that a singer had given an encore there since its reopening.
Javier Camarena started off his 2018/19 season at the Gran Teatro del Liceu as Arturo in I Puritani before returning to the Metropolitan Opera for The Pearl Fishers – which he also performed in Bilbao later that season – and The Daughter of the Regiment. At the Opéra National de Paris he performs Ernesto in Don Pasquale and stars at the Bavarian State Opera in Lucia di Lammermoor, having been highly acclaimed after his role debut at Teatro Real in June 2018. He ends the season at the Royal Opera House with The Daughter of the Regiment.
He continues his run of recitals with Ángel Rodríguez in great houses such as the Zurich Opera House or the Dallas Opera and will be seen on the concert stage in major cities in Spain and Mexico, as well as in New York and Paris.
In 2017/18 Javier Camarena sang his debut at the LA Opera as Nadir in The Pearl Fishers, followed by his role debut as Fernando in La Favorite and as Edgardo in Lucia di Lammermoor at Madrid’s Teatro Real. He then returned to the Metropolitan Opera for his role debut as Idreno in Rossini’s Semiramide. The 2016/17 season also brought a number of key firsts: he launched the season with his house debut at London’s Royal Opera House, singing Almaviva in The Barber of Seville, before reprising the Rossini role at the Met and Zurich Opera. At Barcelona’s Gran Teatre del Liceu, he gave his first performances as the Duke of Mantua in Rigoletto. He made his house debut at Spain’s Opera Bilbao as Don Ramiro, and made further house role debuts as Arturo in I Puritani at the Met and in Andreas Homoki’s production for the Zurich Opera. While in Zurich, he gave his recital debut on the house’s main stage, where recital partner Ángel Rodríguez joined him for a pairing of Donizetti and Rossini arias with Mexican song.
Bass-baritone Nicholas Brownlee was a member of LA Opera's young artist program from 2014 to 2017.
He is a first prize winner of the Hans Gabor Belvedere Singing Competition, winner of the zarzuela prize at Operalia, and a Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions grand prize winner. He is a member of the ensemble at Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe where he appears during the 2018/19 season in new productions of Der Freischütz (Kaspar) and The Tales of Hoffmann (Villains), as well as revivals of Simon Boccanegra (Paolo) and Anna Bolena (Enrico VIII). In his first season, he sang in new productions of Anna Bolena, Simon Boccanegra, Melisso in Alcina, and as Frère Laurent in Berlioz’ Roméo et Juliette.
Recently, Mr. Brownlee made his Metropolitan Opera debut as the First Soldier in Salome conducted by Johannes Debus.
His numerous appearances with LA Opera include Nourabad in The Pearl Fishers, the Speaker in The Magic Flute, the Bonze in Madama Butterfly and Captain Gardiner in Moby-Dick, all conducted by James Conlon. He also sang Colline in La Bohème conducted by Gustavo Dudamel at LA Opera, and he debuted at Atlanta Opera in the same role. He debuted at Teatro de São Carlos in Lisbon as Escamillo in Calixto Bieto’s production of Carmen. He has been seen at Santa Fe Opera singing the First Soldier in Salome and as Don Fernando in a new Stephen Wadsworth production of Fidelio conducted by Harry Bicket.
Mr. Brownlee debuted with the Houston Symphony Orchestra in Dvorák’s Te Deum conducted by Andres Orozco-Estrada and with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra in Verdi’s Requiem conducted by Kent Nagano. He made his Los Angeles Philharmonic debut under Gustavo Dudamel in Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy and returned for performances of a new multimedia staging by Netia Jones of Unsuk Chin’s Alice in Wonderland under Susanna Mälkki, which traveled to the Barbican in London with the BBC Symphony. Also with the LA Philharmonic, he was seen as the Doctor in Pelléas et Melisande with Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting. He sang Stravinsky’s Les Noces with the Los Angeles Master Chorale.
Mr. Brownlee received his Master of Music degree from Rice University where he studied with Dr. Stephen King. He was part of the inaugural Young Artist Vocal Academy with Houston Grand Opera, apprentice artist with the Wolf Trap Opera Company, and winner of the 2014 Palm Springs Vocal Competition. He was awarded the 2016 Sara Tucker Study Grant and 2017 Richard Tucker Career Grant from the Richard Tucker Music Foundation.
Plácido Domingo is recognized as one of the finest and most influential singing actors in the history of opera.
He has sung more than 150 different roles to date, with more than 3900 total career performances. An integral part of LA Opera since its earliest days, he served as the company's General Director from 2003 to 2019.
His more than 100 recordings of complete operas, compilations of arias and duets, and crossover discs have earned him 12 Grammy Awards, including three Latin Grammys, and he has made more than 50 music videos and won two Emmy Awards. In addition to starring in three feature opera films—Carmen, La Traviata and Otello—he voiced the roles of Monte in Beverly Hills Chihuahua and Skeleton Jorge in The Book of Life, and also appeared as himself on Sesame Street and The Simpsons. His telecast of Tosca from the authentic settings in Rome was seen by more than one billion people in 117 countries. He subsequently took the title role in a 2010 live telecast of Rigoletto from Mantua, Italy, the city in which the opera’s story takes place. In 1990, he and his colleagues José Carreras and the late Luciano Pavarotti formed the Three Tenors, performing with enormous success all over the world and attracted millions of new fans to opera.
He has conducted more than 500 opera performances and symphonic concerts with the Metropolitan Opera, Covent Garden, Vienna State Opera, Los Angeles Opera, Chicago Symphony, Vienna Philharmonic, Montréal Symphony, National Symphony, London Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic and Berlin Philharmonic. In 2018, he made his debut at the Bayreuth Festival as a conductor, leading performances of Die Walküre. In 1993, he founded the international voice competition Operalia.
He has received honorary doctorates from Oxford University and New York University for his lifelong commitment and contribution to music and the arts. He made his first stage appearances in a leading baritone role in 2009, performing the title role of Simon Boccanegra in Berlin. Since then, he has added several additional Verdi baritone roles to his repertoire, with appearances in Don Carlo, Rigoletto, The Two Foscari, La Traviata, Nabucco, Giovanna d’Arco, Il Trovatore, Macbeth, Ernani and Luisa Miller. He has also won acclaim in the baritone roles of Athanaël in Massenet’s Thaïs, the title role of Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, and Zurga in The Pearl Fishers (his 150th role, as of August 23, 2018, which he performed at the Salzburg Festival).
In addition to numerous concerts worldwide, his singing engagements for the 2018/19 season include Giorgio Germont in La Traviata at the Metropolitan Opera, La Scala, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, and the Royal Opera House Muscat; the title role of Gianni Schicchi with the Metropolitan Opera; Rodrigo in Don Carlo and Juanillo in El Gato Montés for LA Opera; the title role of Simon Boccanegra with the Vienna State Opera; the title role of Macbeth with Berlin’s Staatsoper Unter den Linden; and the title role of Nabucco with the Semperoper Dresden. Further engagements include Giorgio Germont in La Traviata at the Munich Opera Festival and Giacomo in Giovanna d’Arco with Madrid’s Teatro Real.
His conducting engagements for the season include a concert of Spanish music with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, a gala concert with the Vienna Philharmonic at La Scala in Milan, as well as productions of Aida for the Metropolitan Opera and of La Traviata for the Royal Opera House Muscat. (PlacidoDomingo.com)
From: Alhambra, California. LA Opera: Resident Conductor since 2012, 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.
He has additionally conducted LA Opera performances of Handel's L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato and Lee Holdridge's Dulce Rosa, as well as Madama Butterfly, Carmen, Florencia en el Amazonas, Gianni Schicchi, Wonderful Town, The Tales of Hoffmann, Tosca,The Pearl Fishers and Satyagraha.
Grant Gershon is hailed for his adventurous and bold artistic leadership and for eliciting technically precise and expressive performances from musicians. He has conducted Rigoletto, Tosca, La Bohème, La Traviata, Carmen and Madama Butterfly at Wolf Trap Opera with the National Symphony Orchestra; John Adams’ The Gospel According to the Other Mary at the San Francisco Symphony and Ravinia Festival; Vivaldi’s Griselda at Santa Fe Opera; and many concerts with the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
The 2019/20 season marks his 19th season as the Kiki & David Gindler Artistic Director of the Los Angeles Master Chorale. 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, he has led more than 200 Master Chorale performances at Walt Disney Concert Hall in programs encompassing choral music from the earliest writings and pillars of the repertoire through to contemporary compositions. He has led world premiere performances of major works by John Adams, Esa-Pekka Salonen, David Lang, Louis Andriessen, Christopher Rouse, Steve Reich, Morten Lauridsen, Ricky Ian Gordon, Gabriela Lena Frank, Shawn Kirchner, Ellen Reid, and Chinary Ung, among many others.
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 has conducted performances of Harmonium, The Gospel According to the Other Mary, El Niño, The Chairman Dances, and choruses from The Death of Klinghoffer. In New York, Gershon has appeared at Carnegie Hall and at the historic Trinity Wall Street, as well as 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 Il Postino in Chile, and 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 two Grammy Award-nominated recordings: Sweeney Todd (New York Philharmonic Special Editions) and Ligeti’s Grand Macabre (Sony Classical); and six commercial CDs with the Master Chorale. He has also led the Master Chorale in performances for several major motion pictures soundtracks including Star Wars: The Last Jedi at the request of composer John Williams. Mr. Gershon was named Outstanding Alumnus of the Thornton School of Music in 2002 and received the USC Alumni Merit Award in 2017. He is a member of the Board of Councilors for the Thornton School and the Board of Directors of Chorus America.
From: Alhambra, California. LA Opera: Resident Conductor since 2012, 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.
He has additionally conducted LA Opera performances of Handel's L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato and Lee Holdridge's Dulce Rosa, as well as Madama Butterfly, Carmen, Florencia en el Amazonas, Gianni Schicchi, Wonderful Town, The Tales of Hoffmann, Tosca,The Pearl Fishers and Satyagraha.
Grant Gershon is hailed for his adventurous and bold artistic leadership and for eliciting technically precise and expressive performances from musicians. He has conducted Rigoletto, Tosca, La Bohème, La Traviata, Carmen and Madama Butterfly at Wolf Trap Opera with the National Symphony Orchestra; John Adams’ The Gospel According to the Other Mary at the San Francisco Symphony and Ravinia Festival; Vivaldi’s Griselda at Santa Fe Opera; and many concerts with the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
The 2019/20 season marks his 19th season as the Kiki & David Gindler Artistic Director of the Los Angeles Master Chorale. 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, he has led more than 200 Master Chorale performances at Walt Disney Concert Hall in programs encompassing choral music from the earliest writings and pillars of the repertoire through to contemporary compositions. He has led world premiere performances of major works by John Adams, Esa-Pekka Salonen, David Lang, Louis Andriessen, Christopher Rouse, Steve Reich, Morten Lauridsen, Ricky Ian Gordon, Gabriela Lena Frank, Shawn Kirchner, Ellen Reid, and Chinary Ung, among many others.
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 has conducted performances of Harmonium, The Gospel According to the Other Mary, El Niño, The Chairman Dances, and choruses from The Death of Klinghoffer. In New York, Gershon has appeared at Carnegie Hall and at the historic Trinity Wall Street, as well as 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 Il Postino in Chile, and 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 two Grammy Award-nominated recordings: Sweeney Todd (New York Philharmonic Special Editions) and Ligeti’s Grand Macabre (Sony Classical); and six commercial CDs with the Master Chorale. He has also led the Master Chorale in performances for several major motion pictures soundtracks including Star Wars: The Last Jedi at the request of composer John Williams. Mr. Gershon was named Outstanding Alumnus of the Thornton School of Music in 2002 and received the USC Alumni Merit Award in 2017. He is a member of the Board of Councilors for the Thornton School and the Board of Directors of Chorus America.
Movement Director / Aerial Choreographer
Andrew Dawson
Andrew Dawson
Movement Director / Aerial Choreographer
Fight Choreographer
Austin Spangler
Austin Spangler
Fight Choreographer
Production made possible by generous gifts from The Alexander Furlotti Foundation, in memory of Alex's father Dr. Amato Furlotti, and from The Blue Ribbon.
A co-production of the Metropolitan Opera and English National Opera, originally created by English National Opera.
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