LA Opera Launches Digital Shorts Series With THE FIVE MOONS OF LORCA

LA Opera has announced that the new Digital Shorts series will launch with The Five Moons of Lorca (Las cinco lunas de Lorca) by composer Gabriela Lena Frank and librettist Nilo Cruz, streaming online from December 11 through 25.

Part of the LA Opera On Now platform of digital programming, Digital Shorts pairs today's most in-demand composers with visual artists. To date, ten new works have been commissioned for the series. The first of them, The Five Moons of Lorca, is a newly commissioned revision of a 2016 piece by Ms. Frank and Mr. Cruz about the assassination of poet Federico García Lorca at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War.

The Five Moons of Lorca conveys the beauty of García Lorca's life as well as its tragic end, while serving as a commentary for the dangers of political and cultural intolerance.

"The music gives equal importance to the piano and the voices, lending the feeling of a mini-opera," said Ms. Frank. "It is regal and proud, quintessentially Spanish in that way, before bursting into its full strength and power in the fiery middle, and then lyrically poignant in the dying moments of the finale. Throughout, there is virtuosity, whether suppressed or unleashed."

Directed by filmmaker Matthew Diamond, The Five Moons of Lorca was filmed at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, marking LA Opera's first performance on that stage since March. The piece features solo dancer Irene Rodríguez, who is also the choreographer. Countertenor Jacob Ingbar and pianist Nicholas Roehler, members of the company's Domingo-Colburn-Stein Young Artist Program, are heard in the performance, along with members of the LA Opera Chorus.

Presented free of charge, the stream will be available for two weeks only, beginning at 11am PT on December 11 and running through December 25. For details, visit LAOpera.org/Lorca.