Beth Morrison News

This week, Los Angeles Opera's website features a wonderful recital by the renowned bass who has portrayed so many great characters in that house, Morris Robinson.

San Diego Opera has announced its 2020-2021 season, after the premature ending of the Company's previous season this winter in response to the global coronavirus pandemic.

Opera Philadelphia's adaptation of Lars von Trier's searing, Oscar-nominated 1996 film Breaking the Waves made its world premiere in September 2016. It has since earned the Music Critics Association of North America (MCANA)'s inaugural Best New Opera Award, an International Opera Award nomination for Best World Premiere.

Music Academy of the West extends Remote Learning Institute through July 25; first four weeks previously announced have been extended for two more weeks

Now that the Metropolitan Opera has had a major success with its At-Home Gala, there are other opera companies with similar ideas. The Florence May Festival, (Maggio Musicale Fiorentino), will offer its presentation on Friday, May 1, 2020, at noon. P.D.T. Since many opera lovers are working from home, the audience should be enormous. 

During its unplanned hiatus from public performances, LA Opera has created an extensive array of online programming under the banner LAO at Home. Here's what's on tap for next week.

Angel's Bone, the Pulitzer Prize-winning opera by composer Du Yun and librettist Royce Vavrek that was to have been a highlight of LA Opera's Off Grand programming for the spring of 2020, will instead be made available for online streaming on May 1.

A new report published today by the Center for an Urban Future finds that small and mid-sized arts organizations across New York City are facing unprecedented financial challenges, with many independent theatres, nightclubs, galleries, museums, and performance venues teetering on the brink of insolvency.

Compiled by the New York Opera Alliance, with support from OPERA America, opera fans can turn to NYoperafest.com, a complete list of events hosted by local, New York City-based opera companies. More than 40 virtual events are scheduled for the month of April alone (scroll below for complete calendar).

A group of over 50 other New York City artists-including Tony Award, Pulitzer Prize, MacArthur Fellowship and OBIE Award winners spanning numerous disciplines-have launched The Trickle Up, a subscription video service to help artists hurt from the COVID-19 shutdown.

San Diego Opera's upcoming performances of Aging Magician have been cancelled. The performances were to be held Friday, March 13 and Saturday, March 14 at the Balboa Theatre. Aging Magician was being produced by Beth Morrison Projects.

On Wednesday, March 25 at 7:30 p.m. in Zankel Hall. Grammy Award-winning new music choir The Crossing, led by Donald Nally, performs the New York premiere of Michael Gordon's Travel Guide to Nicaragua with cutting-edge cellist Maya Beiser, a work co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall as part of its 125 Commissions Project.

Grammya"?-winning new-music choir The Crossing, led by Donald Nally, gives the world premiere performances of Michael Gordon's Travel Guide to Nicaragua with cellist Maya Beiser in presentations by co-commissioners, the Annenberg Center on Sunday, March 22, 2020 at 7:00pm in Philadelphia and Carnegie Hall on Wednesday, March 25, 2020 at 7:30pm in New York City. Before the Carnegie Hall performance on March 25, Donald Nally and Michael Gordon will have a 6:30pm pre-concert conversation with John Schaefer, host of WNYC's New Sounds and Soundcheck.

Guerilla Opera's season starts Saturday, March 14, 2020! Experience a showcase of five world premiere one-act operas written by composers from Guerilla Opera's inaugural Emergence Composer Fellowship in Slosberg Recital Hall at Brandeis University in Waltham. Featured composers and librettists include: Leah Reid, Caroline Louise Miller, Daniel Reza Sabzghabaei (دانیال رضا سبزقبایی) and Mina Salehpour (librettist), Jeremy Rapaport-Stein, and Niko Yamamoto and Athanasia Giannetos (librettist).

San Diego Opera's 2019-2020 season continues with Aging Magician a hybrid opera/theatre piece that combines singing, choral work, puppetry, and performance art to create an incredibly unique event for the West Coast premiere of this haunting and beautiful work. Produced by Beth Morrison Projects, one of the most influential and innovative taste makers on the forefront of the 'indie opera' movement, Aging Magician opens on Friday, March 13, 2020 at 7:30 PM at the Balboa Theatre. Additional performances are Saturday March 14 at 2 PM and at 7:30 PM, 2020.

As the Earth crumbles around us and we continue to kill everything in our path, it is time we face the paradoxic integration of evils within ourselves: sterility and garbage, meaninglessness, sexuality as the sin of origin, the contradictory drives of human things. KOSMOS INVERS is the creation of two inverse planets filled with bizarre otherworldly puppets: one, an Edenic parallel of our green earth; and the other, its tentacled pink opposite. Strange fragments of stories coalesce through the contours of different biomes piecing together a patchwork of utopian armageddon and weird psychological metaphors with a green cosmic bent.

'10 Days in a Madhouse' will be having an industry staged reading Monday, February 10th in preparation for its Off-Broadway premiere in January 2021.

The Eli and Edythe Broad Stage in Santa Monica is proud to present the Southern California Premiere of HOME, created by Geoff Sobelle. The show is a house party where the whole audience is invited. HOME will have six performances from March 4 through March 8, 2020 (press opening is March 5). HOME, directed by Lee Sunday Evans, who won a 2018 Bessie Award for Outstanding Production.

Each spring HERE offers a window into the creative process of their nationally recognized HERE Artist Residency Program (HARP). For 21 years, this exploration of new work in development, previously known as the Culturemart Festival, has blurred the boundaries between theatre, music, dance, new media, and visual art. The 2020 edition, which runs February 23-March 1, not only features seven daring workshop presentations but a new name that better captures the essence of the experience: HERE RAW / Resident Artist Works.

The Annenberg Center will present Grammya"?-winning new-music choir The Crossing in the premiere of a newly staged theatrical production, Knee Plays, on Friday, February 21, 2020 at 8pm and Saturday, February 22, 2020 at 8pm at the Harold Prince Theatre. The program, part of the Center's #GLASSFEST celebration, features a rare opportunity to hear Knee Plays from Philip Glass's Einstein on the Beach and David Byrne's New Orleans-inspired contribution to Robert Wilson's large scale project, the CIVIL warS. The premiere will be narrated by popular Philadelphia actor Dito van Reigersberg.