Long Beach Opera presents SoCal Premiere of Opera FRIDA

On June 17, 18, 23, 24, & 25, Long Beach Opera (LBO) will present five outdoor performances of the highly anticipated Southern California premiere of Frida. The opera celebrates the renowned Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, her vivacious spirit, sexuality, fragility, and her tumultuous life with muralist Diego Rivera. Robert Xavier Rodríguez' brilliant score captures Frida with music as rich and haunting as her art.

Puerto Rican mezzo-soprano Laura Virella makes her LBO debut as Frida Kahlo, while Venezuelan-American baritone Bernardo Bermudez makes his debut opposite her as Diego Rivera. Kristof Van Grysperre returns to the company as conductor. LBO's Artistic Director Andreas Mitisek will both direct and design the production.

"You learn much more about people by watching them not alone, but in conflict with others," says composer Rodríguez. "It's that fascinating and unpredictable through-line of their relationship that drives the action. Frida sings as she lived-against the tide from the very first note." In keeping with the Mexican setting of Frida, the score features mariachi-style orchestration, including authentic Mexican folk songs, dances and the composer's own "imaginary folk music."

Like Stravinsky, Rodríguez says, "I never borrow, I steal." Among the "stolen" musical fragments are such strange musical bedfellows as two traditional Mexican piñata songs ("Horo y fuego" and "Al quebrar la piñata"), two narrative ballads ("La Maguinita" and "Jesusita"), the Communist anthem ("L'Internationale"), Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony and Wagner's Tristan and Isolde.

Rodríguez' work has been described as "romantically dramatic" (Washington Post) and full of "the composer's all-encompassing sense of humor." (Los Angeles Times).

Saturday, June 17, 2017 at 8:00 PM, MOLAA

Sunday, June 18, 2017 at 8:00 PM, MOLAA
Friday, June 23, 2017 at 8:00 PM, Grand Performances, LA
Saturday, June 24, 2017 at 8:00PM, MOLAA
Sunday, June 25, 2017 at 8:00PM, MOLAA

Sung in English and Spanish. Performances will be outdoors.

Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA), 628 Alamitos Ave., Long Beach, CA. 90802

Grand Performances, 350 S Grand Ave. Los Angeles, CA. 90071

RUNTIME: 2 hours 20 minutes, including one intermission.

PRE-OPERA ACTIVITIES:

TWO HOURS before each performance at MOLAA, Frida ticket holders will have free exclusive access to the exhibit, "Frida Kahlo: Through the Lens of Nickolas Muray."

ONE HOUR before each performance, there will be a pre-opera talk with Artistic Director Andreas Mitisek.

TICKETS: Tickets for Frida range from $49 to $150 and can be purchased either by calling the LBO Box Office at 562.470.SING (7464) or by going online to https://www.longbeachopera.org/tickets. Student Rush tickets for $15 will be available space permitting.

CAST:

Frida: Laura Virella
Diego: Bernardo Bermudez
Man 1: Jonathan Lacayo
Man 2: David Castillo
Woman 1: AlejandrA Martinez
Woman 2: Joanna Ceja

CREATIVE TEAM:

Andreas Mitisek-Stage Director/Production Designer

Mitisek has been LBO's artistic & general director since 2003. He spent the last five years with Chicago Opera Theater (COT) as general director. Recent conducting credits include As One, The Perfect American, Thérèse Raquin, I was Looking at the Ceiling and then I Saw the Sky, The Death of Klinghoffer, Camelia la Tejana and The Fall of the House of Usher (co-production with COT). Other conducting credits include Joruri in Tokyo, Don Giovanni (Seattle Opera), Madama Butterfly (Orlando Opera), Jane Eyre (Opera Theatre of Saint Louis) and Eugene Onegin (Teatro Municipal in Santiago de Chile). Mitisek also conducted the Austrian and Italian premieres of Nixon in China. His recent directing credits at LBO include The Fairy Queen, Fallujah, The Difficulty of Crossing a Field, King Gesar, Macbeth, Nixon in China, Tell-Tale Heart, Van Gogh, The Paper Nautilus, Ainadamar and Maria de Buenos Aires.

Kristoff Van Grysperre-Conductor

Kristof Van Grysperre, a native of Belgium, most recently conducted productions of LBO's Fallujah, Candide, Hydrogen Jukebox, An American Soldier's Tale/Fiddler's Tale and The Difficulty of Crossing a Field. Hailed by the Orange County Register as "gifted and stylistically impeccable" and as "a conductor with pugilistic power and sensitivity," he has an international career as conductor, pianist, chamber musician and vocal coach. With a repertoire of over fifty operas, Van Grysperre has conducted performances for Opera Pacific, Baltimore Opera Studio, Intimate Opera Company, SongFest and USC Opera. He has collaborated with leading instrumentalists and singers, such as Angela Meade, Maria Newman, Philip Webb and Susan Mohini Kane, and is the artistic director of Angels Vocal Art.

BACKGROUND of the OPERA:

Music: Robert Xavier Rodríguez

Book by Hilary Blecher
Lyrics and monologues by Migdalia Cruz

SYNOPSIS: Sung in Spanish and English, Frida is the story of renowned Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, wife of Mexico's great muralist Diego Riviera. Her tortured life unfolds in a flowing succession of scenes, acted and sung by three woman and three men in a variety of guises-masked or plain-faced and as two-dimensional or three-dimensional puppets. Diego's preoccupation with art and other women shrivel Frida's soul and her demands for love drain him. Despite that, they need one another desperately. Divorce is imminent. Frida's health deteriorates: only painting permits emotional release, translating her agonies into a series of canvases. Her fate is to live alone, engulfed by pain, but her paintings live forever, reflecting hidden dreams and inspiring courage to transcend conventional boundaries. (Excerpted from http://www.musicsalesclassical.com/composer/work/1310/32071)

Frida was commissioned by the American Music Theater Festival (now Prince Music Theater) and premiered in Philadelphia in 1991, starring Helen Schneider as Frida. Revised in 1993, it has subsequently been produced at American Repertory Theater (Boston), the Brooklyn Academy Of Music, City Summer Opera (San Francisco), Houston Grand Opera, the Vienna Schauspielhaus, in Recklinghausen and Nordhausen (Germany) and by the Society for New Music (Syracuse, New York). In 2007, the opera was produced at the Festival de Mayo in Guadalajara in a Spanish translation by Josefina Garcia.

SPECIAL COINCIDENCE EVENT: "FRIDA KAHLO: PAIN AND PASSION"

On June 9, 2017, LBO and MOLAA join forces to present "Frida Kahlo: Pain and Passion," a celebration of the vibrant life of the renowned Mexican artist. Beginning at 7:00 PM at MOLAA, entertainment will include a sneak peek of Frida with leads Laura Virella and Bernardo Bermudez and a multimedia presentation of Kahlo's life by noted lecturer Gregorio Luke. Guests will have the added opportunity of viewing MOLAA's current exhibit, "Frida Kahlo: Through the Lens of Nickolas Muray." Advance tickets are $10 and available on LBO's website.

UPCOMING LBO PRODUCTIONS: In October 2017, the incomparable Patricia Racette stars in LBO's season opener The Consul, a timely, politically charged thriller. In January 2018, a musical mashup of contemporary songwriter David Sylvian and J.S. Bach tells Edgar Allan Poe's dark journey of The Black Cat, featuring the Musica Angelica Baroque Orchestra. Then in March, LBO travels to a remote island with the time-bending love story, The Invention of Morel, an LBO co-commissioned work by rock legend, Stewart Copeland. Closing the season in May, LBO is proud to present the Southern California premiere of Martin's The Love Potion, the epic story of Tristan and Iseult-fateful lovers who meet by deception, fall in love by magic, and pursue their love in defiance of heavenly and earthly powers.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: http://www.longbeachopera.org/2017-season/frida

MUSEUM OF LATIN AMERICAN ART:

The Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA) was founded in 1996 in Long Beach, California and serves the greater Los Angeles area. MOLAA is the only museum in the United States dedicated to modern and contemporary Latin American art. Since its inception, MOLAA has doubled in size and continues to expand its Permanent Collection, ranging from works by Rufino Tamayo and Roberto Matta to Carlos Cruz-Diez, Tania Bruguera and Ramiro Gomez Jr. With its physical expansion complete, MOLAA's focus is on strengthening its position as a multidisciplinary institution providing cross-cultural dialogue. MoLAA is open Wednesday through Sunday from 11:00 AM to 5:00PM with extended evening hours until 9:00PM on Fridays.

LONG BEACH OPERA: Long Beach Opera (LBO) is internationally known for its cutting-edge interpretations of unconventional repertoire. LBO creates immediate, inventive, and often boldly avant-garde productions for an adventurous audience and stands apart from most opera companies in the number of world, American, and West Coast premieres the company has staged. Founded in 1979, it is the oldest professional opera company in the Los Angeles/Orange County region with a performance history of more than 110 operas, ranging from the earliest works of the 17th century to operas of the 21st. LBO's ever?growing repertoire has provided stimulus for the subsequent founding of other local opera companies, catapulting Southern California into the spotlight as a major opera epicenter. LBO is a recognized and respected member of the U. S. cultural community, receiving funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, California Arts Council, the County of Los Angeles, and the City of Long Beach, along with generous support from individual donors, local businesses, public corporations and private foundations

Long Beach Opera is supported in part by a grant from the Arts Council for Long Beach and the City of Long Beach and, supported in part, by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission.