STORY AND LINKS: LA Opera announced 2012-2013 season

By Robert D. Thomas

Music Critic

Pasadena Star-News/San Gabriel Valley Tribune/Whittier Daily News

 

With three big anniversaries occurring in 2013 -- the bicentennials of the births of Giuseppe Verdi and Richard Wagner and the centennial of Benjamin Britten -- hopes were high that Los Angeles Opera's 2012-2013 season might move beyond the current one, which continues with Verdi's Simon Boccanegra, opening Saturday night in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

 

No such luck. The upcoming season will have 37 performances of six operas, the same as 2011-2012 and down considerably from the 2006-07 high of 10 productions and 75 performances. Unlike the previous two seasons, there will be no Britten operas next season and LAO's "Recovered Voices" project of music and composers suppressed and/or murdered by the Nazis remains on hiatus (although a version of the latter surfaced at The Colburn School earlier this year). The company also added some details to its new "dynamic pricing policy.

 

LAO continues to cite the economic downturn and the financial effects of its production of Wagner's Ring cycle in 2009 as reasons for its cautious stance "Our mission to present world-class performances is matched by our need to be fiscally sound," says CEO Stephen D. Rountree in the media release. "We have been conscientious about maintaining our artistic standards while adhering strictly to our budgets. We have even been able to repay--a year ahead of schedule--half of the Bank of America loan, guaranteed by the County of Los Angeles, that helped to stabilize the Company during the worst part of the economic downturn."

 

Also continuing a recent trend, five of the six 2012-2013 productions will be imported from other companies -- Lyric Opera, Chicago, San Francisco Opera, Houston Grand Opera figure heavily into the mix. The one "new" production is the opening opera, Verdi's rarely heard The Two Foscari (l Due Foscari), which is a coproduction between LAO and companies in Valencia (Spain, not Calif.), Vienna and London. The opera offers Plácido Domingo another baritone role suited to his age (the character is described as "an aging head of state). James Conlon will conduct, one of four productions he will lead next season. Thaddeus Strassberger makes his company debut directing.

 

The Two Foscari (which will be sung in Italian with English supertitles) will open on Sept. 15 in the first of six performances. It will run in tandem with Mozart's Don Giovanni, which will open Sept. 22 and run for seven performances. Conlon will conduct the first five performances and Domingo will conduct the last two. The production is from Lyric Opera, Chicago, first seen in 2004.

 

Other offerings are:

• Puccini's Madama Butterfly, beginning Nov. 17 for six performances. Soprano Oksana Dyka (Tatiana in this season's production of Eugene Onegin) sings the title role. The other notable cast name is Eric Owens (Grendel in 2006) as Sharpless. Grant Gershon, who was recently promoted to LAO's resident conductor, will lead the LAO orchestra for six performances beginning Nov. 17. Ron Daniels directs a production he created originally for San Francisco Opera.

 

• Wagner's Der Flieglende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman) opens March 9, 2013, for six performances. Conlon conducts and, rather than exhume its own Julie Taymor-created production, LAO is importing one from San Francisco Opera. Icelandic baritone Tómas Tómasson makes his company in the title role, Elisabete Matos (also in her LAO debut) will portray Senta and, most interestingly, Jay Hunter Morris, who has sung the role of Siegfried in the Met's current Ring cycle to great acclaim, returns as Erik.

 

• Rossini's La Cenerentola (Cinderella), which begins March 23, 2013 and runs for six performances. Conlon conducts and, again, rather than use its own previous production (which, unlike Taymor's Flying Dutchman, was very well received when it appeared in 2000) will import one, this time a co-production of Houston Grand Opera and Gran Teatro de Liceu of Barcelona directed by Joan Font. Perhaps it's cheaper to rent than renovate.

 

• Puccini's Tosca opens May 18 and plays (somewhat surprisingly for such a warhorse) for just six dates. Sondra Radvanovsky will perform the title role and Domingo conducts. Again bypassing its own production, this one will come from Houston Grand Opera, first seen in 2007.

 

The company will also present soprano Renée Fleming and mezzo-soprano Susan Graham in recital on Jan. 19 but at Walt Disney Concert Hall rather than the Pavilion, which will host all of the operas.

 

LAO also formally announced several new pricing initiatives. The company is remapping the Pavilion's seating plan to make more seats available at "affordable" prices (described in the release as $99 or less). The statement also said that the number of tickets priced at $50 or less has been increased by 10 percent, although it did not give an actual number. LAO is also instituting a program where seats are allocated for every performance for students, seniors and "underserved groups" so they can attend at "minimal cost."

 

On the other side of the coin (literally and figuratively), the company will institute a "demand-based pricing" system whereby when ticket sales reach certain unspecified levels, prices will be reset upward (the release used as an example popular Sunday matinee performances). However, prices will not be lowered if a particular performance tanks in ticket sales (although venues such as Gold Star often offer discounted ticket prices). "Season subscribers will always pay the lowest ticket prices," the release emphasized, "at a discount from the base price."

 

Subscriptions are now sale; single tickets will go on sale later in the year. Information: www.laopera.com

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(c) Copyright 2012, Robert D. Thomas. All rights reserved. Portions may be quoted with attribution.