Opera like you’ve never experienced before…
The 2023 Season
Explore the lineup of operatic vision.
February 18, 19, & 25
Warner Grand Theatre
San Pedro, CA
music and libretto by
Kate Soper
The singular compositional voice of Kate Soper returns to LBO in a thrilling new WORLD PREMIERE production that blends a unique foray into comedy with a sonically genre-smashing fantastical adventure story. LBO’s own James Darrah directs and Christopher Rountree conducts what will surely be an unmissable Los Angeles area event.
March 4, 5, 11, & 12
Rancho Los Cerritos
Long Beach, CA
created by
Chris Emile
Choreographer and dancer Chris Emile returns to LBO with a newly devised ritualistic DANCE-OPERA combining exceptional choreography with the creation of a raucous, irreverent, captivating original score and soundscape by Cody Perkins and astonishing vocals by Alexis Vaughn. All are invited to witness and experience a shared catharsis.
May 20 & 21
Noguchi Garden
Costa Mesa, CA
music by
George Frideric Handel
In its first collaboration with the Martha Graham Dance Company and Jakub Józef Orlinski, LBO presents THE FEAST, a dance ritual and baroque banquet. James Darrah re-invents the baroque pastiche using vocal and instrumental music from several of Handel’s operas, including the seldom-heard Alessandro, to create a literal and figurative feast that will enthrall.
June 24 & 25
The Art Theatre
Long Beach, CA
co-curated by
Tom C. J. Brown & Raviv Ullman
The second annual Opera & Film Festival expands into a two-day event that continues to explore the intersection of film and opera. Featuring a new staging of Schubert’s DIE SCHÖNE MÜLLERIN, a screening of the animated short CHRISTOPHER AT SEA based on the Schubert cycle, and a vibrant collection of curated film and artistic materials to be presented as an expansion of operatic form.
2023 marks the start of establishing Long Beach Opera as a new creative home in Southern California where both established and emerging artists can come together to create, experiment, and push the form forward. It’s about recommitting to opera’s role as a bold merger of all of the arts and empowering the season’s artists to explore what “opera” can mean to them and their work. Each project is led collaboratively, curated and created by teams of culture makers who defy singular definition, but all grapple with questions of how continually evolving and intersecting artistic mediums shape and redefine their individual practices, expand the operatic form, and impact the world at large.
— James Darrah, Artistic Director & Chief Creative Officer
About the 2023 Season
Building on Long Beach Opera’s legacy of pushing operatic boundaries and boldly taking performance into uncharted territories, LBO’s 2023 season continues to bring new energy and relevance to the form with a series of surprising, immersive, and accessible operatic experiences. These new works and new interpretations of seldom-staged pieces from the repertoire see the company further exploring the currents of opera that leading composers/makers in the field are creating today, sparking a dialogue between opera and a diverse range of mediums, including dance, film, cuisine, live performance art, animation, and more. These mediums, folded into the fabric of the season, provide fruitful territory for a deeper collision with opera and emphasize the generative and often surprising results that arise when creating multimedia and multi-sensory artistic experiences.