Long Beach Opera Announces Its 2019-2020 Season

LBO's 2020 season is tailor-made for curious minds and adventurous spirits. As always we bring a full season of the unseen and unheard, adding two new locations and a U.S. Premiere.

The season opens in January 2020 with the [World] Premiere of a new version of Henry Purcell's King Arthur. Andreas Mitisek is reimagining the original story into a superhero fantasy. Musica Angelica Baroque Orchestra will accompany the opera on period instruments at the Beverly O'Neill Theatre.

The newly built Pacific Visions 4D theater at the Aquarium of the Pacific will host opera for the first time in March 2020. Peter Maxwell Davies' The Lighthouse about the mysterious disappearance of three lighthouse keepers will have its LA Premiere in a fully integrative IMAX movie-like production.

The notorious Billy the Kid by Gavin Bryars - based on Michael Ondaatje's The Collected Works of Billy the Kid - will make its U.S. premiere in May 2020 under the stars in a site-specific production at the historic Sunnyside Cemetery.

Back by popular demand, LBO will revisit with Frida by Robert Xavier Rodriguez in the sculpture garden of the Museum of Latin American Art, with a corresponding art exhibit that patrons can enjoy before the performances.

LBO Brings Something New To Opera At A Time When You Might Think Just About Everything Imaginable Has Already Been Done. Mark Swed Los Angeles Times

Subscriptions to Long Beach Opera's 2020 season range from $98 to $600 and are available now at longbeachopera.org and at 562.470.SING (7464) x1. Individual tickets go on sale on October 29th, 2019.

LONG BEACH OPERA 2020 SEASON
KING ARTHUR - {world] Premiere Sung in English
Music: Henry Purcell
Artistic Concept and Adaptation: Andreas Mitisek
Venue: Beverly O'Neill Theater, Long Beach, CA.
Performance Dates: Sun. January 12th 2:30 PM, Sat. January 18th 7:30 PM, Sun. January 19th 2:30 PM

In LBO's reimagination King Arthur returns as a superhero that fights a mysterious, supernatural force that is attacking Earth and threatening life as we know it. Will he be able to save humanity? How will he stand up against a race of alien shape shifters who desire to conquer the galaxy? King Arthur's experience as a knight comes in handy as he rescues his beloved princess Emmeline. Purcell's most adventurous music will lead the way to space and back. A collaboration with MUSICA ANGELICA BAROQUE ORCHESTRA - LA's premiere Baroque orchestra - guarantees an authentic sound.

THE LIGHTHOUSE - LA Premiere Sung in English
Music and Libretto: Peter Maxwell Davies
Venue: Pacific Visions Theater at the Aquarium of the Pacific, 100 Aquarium Way, Long Beach, CA 90802
Performance Dates: Sat. March 21st 7:30 PM, Sun. March 22nd 7:30 PM, Sat. March 28th 7:30 PM, Sun. March 29th 7:30 PM

This haunting opera is an atmospheric combination of a detective mystery and a ghost story about the disappearance of three lighthouse keepers, mixing courtroom testimony and fantastical flashbacks. Three officers from a lighthouse ship report to a Court of Enquiry how they arrived to relieve the three keepers and found the place deserted. In flashbacks to the keepers, they are nervous and pass the time by singing songs.... Out of the fog, their past emerges to taunt them. Opening performances of the Aquarium's new cutting-edge, high-definition technology space with a breathtaking 32-foot-tall, 180-degree arc projection wall.

BILLY THE KID - U.S. Premiere Sung in English
Music: Gavin Bryars
Accounts taken from The Collected Works of Billy the Kid by Michael Ondaatje
Venue: Sunnyside Cemetery, 1095 E Willow St, Long Beach, CA 90806.
Performance Dates: Sun. May 3rd 8:00 PM, Fri. May 8th 8:00 PM, Sat. May 9th 8:00 PM, Sun. May 10th 8:00 PM

Drawing on contemporary accounts, period photographs and dime novels, this visionary opera traces the legendary outlaw's passage across the blasted landscape of 1880 New Mexico and The Collective Unconscious of his country. The Collected Works of Billy the Kid is a virtuoso synthesis of storytelling, history, myth and music by a writer and composer who bring us back to our familiar legends with
a renewed sense of wonder. I myself love Westerns. There's a powerful awareness of right and wrong, like in a morality play. - Gavin Bryars Presented outdoors in the historic Sunnyside Cemetery.

Frida - LBO Reprise Sung in English and Spanish
Music: Robert X. Rodr guez
Venue: The Museum of Latin American Art, 628 Alamitos Ave, Long Beach, CA 90802
Performance Dates: Sat. June 20th 8:00 PM, Sun. June 21st 8:00 PM, Sat. June 27th 8:00 PM, Sun. June 28th 8:00 PM

Back by popular demand. I never paint dreams or nightmares, I paint my own reality. Famed Mexican artist Frida Kahlo lived as she painted with pain and passion in bold, vibrant colors. This celebration of Kahlo's vivacious spirit, sexuality, fragility and her tumultuous life with muralist Diego Rivera is captured with music as rich and haunting as her art. Frida sings as she lived against the tide from the very first note....high drama ...conveys the radiance and explosive fury of the woman whose art was, in the words of Andr Breton, 'a ribbon around a bomb'. - Time Magazine