Long Beach Opera resurrects a Vivaldi work

When they hear the name Vivaldi, most people no doubt think of "The Four Seasons." It seems safe to say that that quartet of Baroque violin concertos is among the most beloved "classical" works in the canon.

But by some accounts, Vivaldi also wrote nearly 100 operas, and one of them, "Motezuma," is about to receive its first staging in the Western Hemisphere -- by Long Beach Opera.

"Motezuma" (yes, that's the way Vivaldi's librettist spelled it) is loosely based on the story of Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortés and his relationship with the Aztec emperor Montezuma. But the operative word is "loosely." For one thing, it has a happy ending.

In this week's Arts & Books section, David Ng recounts the vicissitudes of "Motezuma," long thought to be lost, and how it wound up being produced in Long Beach. To find out why soprano Courtney Huffman's reaction to the production's concept was, "Oh, my God, I'm going to have to start learning to flip my hair more and act all princessy," go here.

-- Craig Fisher

Photo: Courtney Huffman, right, and Peabody Southwell rehearsing "Motezuma." Credit: Bob Chamberlin / Los Angeles Times

Karole Armitage: older, cool and sensual

In the '80s, her hair was spiky, and that -- combined with her fondness for hard-edge pop and the visual effect of her long legs extended even further by pointe shoes -- made it unsurprising that Vanity Fair declared her a punk ballerina.

But as choreographer Karole Armitage explains to Susan Reiter in the Arts & Books section, classical ballet was always what appealed to her. She just "wanted to communicate things about my generation."

In 1989, Armitage stopped dancing, and as Reiter reports, she spent the next decade and a half working primarily in Europe. It wasn't until 2005 that, back in the U.S., she felt compelled to form a troupe of her own again. Dubbed Armitage Gone! Dance, it will bring her to the Carpenter Center in Long Beach next weekend.

Armitage's recent work, Reiter says, is "intriguingly cerebral yet coolly sensual" -- which may speak to the fact that she recently turned 55. But she hasn't forgotten her roots: She's also the choreographer of the new Broadway production of "Hair."

-- Craig Fisher

Photo credit: Marco Mignani / Armitage Gone! Dance

L.A. Phil and London's Barbican strike a deal

Not only Angelenos, it seems, are excited about the approach of D-day -- that is, the day next fall when Gustavo Dudamel (right) will officially take up residence at Walt Disney Concert Hall as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Londoners apparently are also jazzed.

At any rate, the folks who run the Barbican Centre, the largest performing arts center in Europe, certainly are. They announced today that they have reached agreements with five foreign musical organizations to become its "International Associates" -- groups that will have ongoing relationships with the center and that will eventually be in residence there for a time. The five are the Manhattan-based New York Philharmonic and Jazz at Lincoln Center, Amsterdam's Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra from Germany and the L.A. Phil.

Plans call for the Phil under Dudamel to first appear at the Barbican during the 2010-11 season and to take up residence there in the 2012-13 season. Next season, though, the center's permanent resident band, the London Symphony Orchestra, will be playing John Adams' new "City Noir." That's the piece the Phil commissioned for Dudamel's gala opening concert in Los Angeles. On D-day.

-- Craig Fisher

Photo: Gustavo Dudamel conducts the Los Angeles Philharmonic at Walt Disney Concert Hall in November. Credit: Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times

 

For budding Mozarts ...

What do you do if you're a teenager interested in a career as a composer — of, you know, like, classical music? Well, if you live in the Los Angeles area, and you're lucky, you become part of the Los Angeles Philharmonic's Composer Fellowship Program, a two-year course of study that began in fall 2007.

As Karen Wada writes in the Arts & Books section, the four tyros who are the first of these fellows have had access to artists and performance opportunities that the finest conservatories would find hard to match. They've met with members of the philharmonic as well as its esteemed music director, Esa-Pekka Salonen. They've been mentored by Steven Stucky, the orchestra's Pulitzer Prize-winning consulting composer for new music. And this week, they will hear their own compositions, inspired by Walt Disney Concert Hall, played by the philharmonic.

This month, applications will go out for the next group of fellows. Maybe one or more of them, unlike in the first bunch, will be female.

— Craig Fisher 

Photo: Three of the first four members of the L.A. Phil's Composer Fellowship Program are, from left, Tim Callobre, Andy Alden and Saad Haddad. Credit: Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times

Monster Mash: Breaking news and headlines

Hot painter: The China-based Hurun Report says that based on auction prices, Zhang Xiaogang is China's most valuable living artist.

Sinking Sondheim: Atlanta's Alliance Theatre cancels its planned run of the James Lapine-conceived Stephen Sondheim revue, "iSondheim," after producers fail to raise half the $4.5-million budget.

Sushi stalemate: The Actors' Equity and Broadway League panel considering Jeremy Piven's departure from Broadway's "Speed-the-Plow" fails to reach an agreement.

Koshalek redux: Richard Koshalek, former president of Pasadena's Art Center College of Design, will become director of the Smithsonian Institution's Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.

Hammer hires: The Hammer Museum in Westwood is getting two new top curators, Douglas Fogle (from the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh) and Anne Ellegood (from the Hirshhorn).

White House whoop-de-dos: With successive appearances by Sweet Honey in the Rock and Stevie Wonder, the East Room of the White House is shaping up as the place to be on Wednesdays.

Classical Marsalis: The North Carolina Symphony has released its first recording, but jazz saxophonist Branford Marsalis gets top billing on the CD.

Funny White Way: Robin Williams plans to bring his one-man show to Broadway's Neil Simon Theatre for five performances beginning in late April.

Gavel woes: After setting a record with the first three quarters of 2008, Sotheby's saw sales fall 51.9% from a year earlier in the last quarter.

-- Craig Fisher

Photo: Zhang Xiaogang's "Big Family" (1996)

Oscar nominee James Newton Howard is moving beyond celluloid

When composer James Newton Howard's name is read out at tonight's Academy Awards ceremony — his music for "Defiance" is among the nominees for best original score — it will mark his eighth time as an Oscar hopeful. Unfortunately for him, the smart money's on Bollywood veteran A.R. Rahman to take home the statuette for his score for "Slumdog Millionaire."

In the scheme of things, though, this week may contain a more significant milestone for Howard than any Oscar would be, for he will also hear the premiere of his first composition for the concert hall. The 19-minute piece, titled "I Will Plant a Tree," was commissioned by the Pacific Symphony for the 2009 edition of the annual American Composers Festival. It will, in fact, receive four performances during the festival.

Composing "I Will Plant a Tree," Howard told Jon Burlingame for an article in the Arts & Books section, represented "a soul-cleansing process for me — to be able to write completely unrestricted, provide my own narrative and work with [music director] Carl St.Clair and an orchestra the caliber of Pacific Symphony."

The theme of this year's Pacific Symphony festival is "Hollywood's Golden Age," and among the other composers whose music will be played are three, all now deceased, whose output represents some of the finest of that era: Miklós Rózsa ("Ben-Hur"), Erich Wolfgang Korngold ("Kings Row") and Bernard Herrmann ("Vertigo"). All won Oscars. But then, at 57, Howard still has many more years to vie.

— Craig Fisher

Photo: James Newton Howard. Credit: Spencer Weiner / Los Angeles Times

Salonen, Domingo part of Metropolitan Opera's next season

In April, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and its admirers will bid a sad farewell to music director Esa-Pekka Salonen, who after 17 seasons is passing the baton to Gustavo Dudamel. But come November, Salonen seems likely to receive a glad welcome at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

In announcing its new season today, the Met confirmed that Salonen will be making his company debut next fall conducting Leos Janácek’s "From the House of the Dead" in a production, already much praised in Europe, that some worried might fall victim to the economic downturn. Director Patrice Chéreau will be making his Met debut with the production as well.

Also of special interest to Angelenos on the Met schedule: Los Angeles Opera general director Plácido Domingo, who achieved his fame as a tenor but has long said he wanted to return to his baritone roots at the end of his career, will sing the title role -- one of Verdi's greatest for baritone -- in a revival of "Simon Boccanegra."

Among the other highlights of the season, which includes eight new productions and 18 revivals: Karita Mattila performing the title role in "Tosca," the season opener, for the first time outside her native Finland, in a production directed by Luc Bondy; Verdi's "Attila" with costumes and sets by fashion darling Miuccia Prada collaborating with star architects Herzog & de Meuron; soprano Angela Gheorghiu tackling "Carmen" for the first time in a new staging by theater veteran Richard ("Mary Poppins") Eyre; and a new production of French composer Ambroise Thomas' "Hamlet," from 1868, starring Simon Keenlyside as the prince of Denmark and Natalie Dessay as his Ophélie.

Fans who loved the Broadway revival of "South Pacific," meanwhile, will be cheered by the news that one of its stars, Tony-winning baritone Paulo Szot ...

Andsnes and Tetzlaff: a duo with staying power

Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes and German violinist Christian Tetzlaff have flourishing careers as soloists. But for the last 17 years, they also have been a dynamic duo, playing together for recordings and in much-praised recitals such as the one that will bring them to Walt Disney Concert Hall this week.

As David Mermelstein reports in the Arts & Books section, their partnership didn't jell immediately, though. "It took us a few years to adapt to each other's personalities and ways of playing," Andsnes told Mermelstein. "We had a couple of tours where I remember feeling a bit of frustration that we didn't really click, but after a year or two of working together, it was fine."

In fact, the pair say they've become good friends as well as committed colleagues. For one thing, they share a passion for raw fish. "There was a certain time when we couldn't eat anything but sushi," Andsnes said. And then there's the highbrow-lowbrow humor of Peter Schickele, alter ego of the "forgotten" composer of the Bach family, P.D.Q. Bach.

Andsnes credited Tetzlaff with introducing him to P.D.Q. and said that when he visits Tetzlaff in Germany, they listen to Schickele recordings looking somewhat less dignified than they appear in the concert hall: "We lie on the floor laughing."

-- Craig Fisher

Photo: Christian Tetzlaff, left, and Leif Ove Andsnes. Credit: Alexandra Vosding

L.A. Phil whipping up excitement about Dudamel

Subscribers to the Los Angeles Philharmonic may have been surprised this month when they received a flier from the orchestra, emblazoned with a photo of new music director Gustavo Dudamel, informing them that they could renew their season tickets for 2009-10 online beginning this Thursday. To some, it seemed a bit early.  A hint of desperation in these economic times?

They may be happier, though, once they discover that details of the new season at Walt Disney Concert Hall are being announced Thursday   -- with Dudamel in attendance -- at an event the Phil plans to webcast live on its website at 1:30 p.m. It too is coming early. And the economy has nothing to do with it.

A Philharmonic representative explains that in recent years, the news conferences announcing new seasons have fallen between mid-January and late February, always contingent on the schedules of orchestra President Deborah Borda and music director Esa-Pekka Salonen. In 2008, a leap year, the event occurred Feb. 28 -- the one day the orchestra says worked for Salonen -- and made the papers on the 29th. 

It seems that this year, Dudamel's schedule was equally crowded -- but Jan. 22 worked for him.

As for tickets to the Phil next season, current subscribers will be able to renew until March 13. New subscribers will be able to sign up beginning March 25. And single tickets will go on sale Aug. 23.

Watch Culture Monster on Thursday for Times critic Mark Swed's report on the new season.

-- Craig Fisher

Photo: Gustavo Dudamel conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic at Walt Disney Concert Hall in December. Credit: Lori Shepler / Los Angeles Times

Carneiro is Berkeley Symphony's new leader

Another erstwhile assistant conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic has moved up.

Joana Carneiro, the Portuguese-born maestro who served with the Phil from 2005 to the end of last season, will succeed Kent Nagano as music director of the Berkeley Symphony beginning with the 2009-10 season. She will conduct four programs in UC Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall starting Oct. 15 and lead the orchestra's new music series, called Under Construction.

Carneiro will be the only the third music director in the history of the Berkeley band, which was called the Berkeley Promenade Orchestra when it was founded by Thomas Rarick in 1969; Nagano led it for three decades beginning in 1978. A native of Lisbon, she is currently the official guest conductor of the Gulbenkian Symphony in the Portuguese capital and previously served as assistant conductor of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and music director of the Los Angeles Debut Orchestra, as well as principal guest conductor of the Metropolitan Orchestra of Lisbon.

Nagano -- who also is former music director of Los Angeles Opera -- now serves as music director of the Montreal Symphony and the Bavarian State Opera in Munich. He will continue with the Berkeley Symphony, however, as conductor laureate and artistic director of Berkeley Akademie, a new program from the organization focusing on repertoire for small orchestra.

Among Carneiro's predecessors as an L.A. Phil assistant conductor, Alexander Mickelthwate is now music director of the Winnipeg (Canada) Symphony, and Grant Gershon is music director of the Los Angeles Master Chorale and associate conductor of L.A. Opera.

-- Craig Fisher

Photo: Joana Carneiro conducting at Walt Disney Concert Hall in March 2008. Credit: Lori Shepler / Los Angeles Times