Long Beach Opera Presents West Coast Premiere Of Kate Soper's IPSA DIXIT With Martha Graham Dance Company

Long Beach Opera continues its 2024 season with the staged West Coast premiere of trailblazing composer Kate Soper's IPSA DIXIT, a 90-minute performance that explores the integration of music, drama, and rhetoric, and was a finalist for a 2017 Pulitzer Prize.

The work blends aspects of monodrama, Greek theater, and screwball comedy in a musical journey that examines the treachery of language and the questionable authenticity of artistic expression. Performances take place June 1, 8 & 9 at the historic Art Theatre cinema in Long Beach. A reception for all follows each performance.

The brand new production represents a continuation of LBO's relationship with Soper, having most recently presented the world premiere of her opera The Romance of the Rose in 2023 to rave reviews. Notably, it also marks a role debut for the luminous soprano and frequent Darrah collaborator Anna Schubert, recently voted Best Opera Singer in 2023 San Francisco Classical Voice Awards, and whose LBO credits include The Romance of the Rose and Les enfants terribles. 

James Darrah, LBO's Artistic Director & Chief Creative Officer, directs – integrating opera, film, text and dance to craft an overlapping and multi-sensory experience. Darrah's new production of IPSA DIXIT will feature star dancers from the iconic Martha Graham Dance Company (marking their second appearance as LBO's official artistic partner). Soper's work will for the first time be complemented by original choreography based on unique fragments of Martha Graham's works, choreographed and devised by the Graham Company artistic director Janet Eilber.  

Guided by LBO Music Director Christopher Rountree and staged with instrumentalists, dancers and film in a transformed former 1924 silent movie theater, the evening also draws unique visual and thematic juxtapositions to Soper's text by featuring an overlapping screening of Carl Theodor Dreyer's pivotal 1928 silent film The Passion of Joan of Arc, here manipulated and re-created by filmmaker Adam Larsen. LBO's production of IPSA DIXIT evokes Soper's poignant inquiry into how art transforms across contexts and languages at every turn and Darrah says, “The show promises to be an avant-garde layered experience unlike any other we've produced—one that furthers our company's dedication to groundbreaking art that evolves the boundaries and definition of the operatic form.”

IPSA DIXIT has captivated audiences since it first premiered in New York in December 2016. Composed over six years, and unfolding over the course of ninety minutes, Soper uses the piece to boldly question, "How can music unveil the very essence of being a thinker, a language-wielder, with all the glorious contradictions and limitations language itself brings?" To answer, she weaves her own words with excerpts from luminaries spanning disciplines and eras, from Aristotle to Freud to Lydia Davis. 

Soper said in The New York Times, “I grew up in a thinky house. My dad's a philosopher; my mom has a Ph.D. in French. So there was a lot of discussion of ideas, which affected me as a musician. I was always really interested in the life of the mind. And then in my music, I'm interested in the limits of that. You can be going as deep into an idea as you can, and then someone breaks into song and your attention is diverted to emotion.”

After IPSA DIXIT premiered in New York, Alex Ross wrote in The New Yorker: “Soper is both brilliant and funny—a combination that is always in short supply … a twenty-first century masterpiece.” Zachary Woolfe gave it a Critic's Pick in The New York Times and wrote: “This ambitious, ingenious piece…is a rangy yet elegant rumination on the power of language, artistic control, mortality, influence, integrity and Aristotle…This heady mixture isn't in the least pretentious or ponderous, but rather sweet, searching and deeply intelligent.”

STAGED WEST COAST PREMIERE & BRAND NEW PRODUCTION

Music and Libretto by Kate Soper
With edits of texts by Guido d'Arezzo, Aristotle, Pietro Bembo, Lydia Davis, Michael Drayton, Robert Duncan, Sigmund Freud, Jenny Holzer, Plato, Sophocles, Kate Soper, Sarah Teasdale, and Ludwig Wittgenstein

Art Theatre of Long Beach
2025 E 4th Street, Long Beach, CA 90814
Saturday, June 1 at 7:30pm
Saturday, June 8 at 7:30pm
Sunday, June 9 at 2:30pm

Tickets & information
Longbeachopera.org

CAST:

Anna Schubert, soprano
Martha Graham Dance Company
Leslie Andrea Williams, dancer
Anne Souder, dancer
Mona Tian, violin
Sidney Hopson, percussion
Rachel Beetz, flute

CREATIVE TEAM:

Kate Soper, Composer and Librettist
James Darrah, Director
Christopher Rountree, Music Director
Janet Eilber, Choreographer
Jordan Moore, Production Designer
Molly Irelan, Costume Designer
Adam Larsen, Filmmaker/ Video Designer
Kaitlin Trimble, Lighting Designer
Benjamin Maas, Sound Designer

Long Beach Opera

Established in 1979, Long Beach Opera (LBO) stands as the longest-running opera organization in the greater Los Angeles region. Having presented well over 100 productions in that time, LBO has carved out its space as a leader in innovating opera from its founding through the 21st century. With repertoire ranging from the early Baroque to the commissioning of contemporary works and world premieres, the company boldly embraces the idea that no experience will be standard or traditional. Full company overview here.

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