Vacations are winding down, students are heading back to school and opera is back on our stage. We hope that your summer, like ours, was filled with great memories. While our stage may have been dark ahead of the new season, the LA Opera Connects team was busy making a splash. Let us take you down memory lane.
Arts and Health Week
The beginning of June saw our sophomore Los Angeles County Arts and Health Week Summit take place. LA Opera Connects partnered with LA Opera's Special Projects Advisor Renée Fleming, the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture, and the World Health Organization's Healing Arts Initiative to explore the connections between arts, wellness and recovery. Not only did this event take place following Renée Fleming's appointment as a WHO Goodwill Global Ambassador, but it also featured Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda L. Solis, Dr. Maria Rosario Jackson (Chair of the National Endowment for the Arts), and numerous LA County leaders in arts and health.
This year’s Summit included music, painting and dance experiential sessions specifically designed for people living with Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease, and panel discussions about creative aging and arts and wellbeing.
Photo Credit: Monica Almeida
BambinO
At LA Opera, we truly believe that this art form deserves to be enjoyed by all ages. That’s why we toured the delightful BambinO, an opera made specifically for babies, across LA County. A new generation of opera lovers was treated to a 40-minute interactive show with bright colors and thrilling singing—the perfect starting point for those just learning their first notes. Add the fact that performances were entirely free, and you can see why parents and children alike proved to be big fans. Seeing the happy faces of future opera lovers was a definite summer highlight for us, and one we’ll think about throughout our season.
Opera Camp
One of our favorite summer traditions is our annual Opera Camp, which we were thrilled to see return to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion this year for the first time since the pandemic began. Opera Camp brought together 40 students, ages 9-17, for two weeks of rehearsals with our own talented teaching artists, culminating in a performance in Eva and Marc Stern Grand Hall at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. This year, the students presented Hans Krása’s Brundibár, which is most notable for having been performed more than 50 times at Terezín during the Holocaust. If BambinO creates future opera fans, then Opera Camp creates future opera stars. We’re already counting down the days to next year’s show and the remarkable young talent that will grace us with their artistic presence. 
Photo Credit: Taso Papadakis
