COVID-19 seems to have only increased Long Beach Opera’s (LBO) penchant for avant-garde performance. In its first post-pandemic live show performed last weekend—Philip Glass’s “Les Enfants Terribles”—LBO ingeniously blended live and digital art, opera and film, and even orchestrated an audience both there and not.
Staged on the top floor of a parking garage at 2nd and PCH in Long Beach, the performance consisted of three pianos, a conductor, and—in an especially innovative move—new LBO Artistic Director James Darrah following and filming eight performers to project simultaneously on large screens placed at intervals in the garage.
Audience members—seated in cars or in chairs between cars—watched through windshields both the live performance and, on the screens, the intricately filmed version Darrah provided through his hand-held camera, often both at once and from different angles.
The result is a multidimensionally immersive artistic experience—seeing and hearing Glass’s ethereal music live and listening to it through the radio; experiencing opera live and like a drive-in movie; and the added thrill of watching Darrah—also a filmmaker—capture movement details and close-up facial expressions in real time as performers moved around the “stage,” sometimes literally running up and down parking aisles.
Darrah’s filmmaking during the performance is fitting since Glass based his libretto on a 1929 Jean Cocteau novel that became a film of the same name in 1950. Glass’s 1996 opera for three pianos emphasizes dance, here choreographed by Chris Emile, with music conducted by Christopher Rountree. Pianists Stephen Karr, Vicki Ray and Sarah Gibson brought to life Glass’s rhythmic yet melodic score divided among their three instruments.
The performers—four singers and the four dancers who shadowed them—also brought incredible energy and verve, even with an audience of mostly cars. The tale centers on two siblings—the “terrible children” of the title—and their two friends who become entangled in an ultimately tragic love story.
Anna Schubert, a soprano, is luminously expressive as the highly emotional and dramatic Elisabeth, who plays a secret psychological game with her teenaged younger brother Paul. Voiced by Edward Nelson—somewhat surprisingly a baritone—Paul is sulky and fragile. Joining them are friends Agathe, voiced by the striking Sarah Beaty—who also plays Dargelos, a childhood frenemy of Paul’s—and Orson Van Gay II as sensitive Gérard, who grows to love Elisabeth.
Dancers Joe Davis, Shauna Davis, Samantha Mohr and Maleek Washington lithely echoed the singers’ gestures and emotions as they performed, sometimes countering them, highlighting the choreographic dimension and magnifying the story’s already highly charged emotions. Colorful costumes (Camille Assaf) and clusters of props arranged in different parts of the garage floor (Yuki Izumihara) artfully assisted in creating the siblings’ world.
Ensconced in cars or huddled in chairs beside them, with windows down and the radio on, performers sometimes directly in front with Darrah filming close by—often right next to a digital screen—the audience could feast on the opera’s aural, visual, digital, gestural and emotional richness, even in a parking garage.
This first live production of the season bodes well for LBO’s future productions under Darrah’s artistic direction. With Darrah on board until at least 2024—following, most recently, Andreas Mitisek and interim director Yuval Sharon—LBO is poised to take a filmic turn in what Darrah describes as “operatic cinema.”
Executive Director Jennifer Rivera commends Darrah’s commitment to cultural inclusiveness and a musical sensitivity to match his “bold” digital vision.
“The future of opera is both cinematic and live,” Darrah says. “These unprecedented times call for unprecedented action, and the team at LBO is ready to innovate, evolve and explore new territory for the operatic form.”
Next up from LBO is a double bill of Arnold Schoenberg’s surrealist “Pierrot Lunaire” and Kate Soper’s kaleidoscopic “Voices from the Killing Jar” on Aug. 14 and 15 at The Ford open-air theatre in Los Angeles. For tickets and more information, visit LongBeachOpera.org.
