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| Image courtesy of the Long Beach Opera
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The Long Beach Opera is hosting a new production of Pauline Oliveros’ “El Relicario De Los Animales” later this month in Los Angeles, featuring an immersive soundscape exploring the complex relationship between humans, nature and animals, event organizers announced Friday.
Two performances are scheduled for Feb. 15 and 16 at the indoor-outdoor Heritage Square Museum, 3800 Homer St. in the LA’s Montecito Heights neighborhood.
Jamie Barton, who organizers called a “once in a generation mezzo-soprano superstar” and was hailed as “a leader of a new generation of opera stars” by the NY Times, makes her Long Beach Opera debut.
Brenda Rae, “a world-renowned soprano” and former resident artist at the Frankfurt Opera, also debuts at LBO as a singer-percussionist, organizers said. The Boston Globe praised Rae’s “acrobatic arias” delivered in her performance last fall in the Boston Lyric Opera’s “Mitridate.”
The event continues LBO’s 2024-25 “All Oliveros” programming, dedicated “to the radical work of legendary queer composer Pauline Oliveros,” according to the opera company. “Through this production, LBO deepens its engagement with the revolutionary queer and Mexican-American composer’s work, which remain daring catalysts for the art form.”
“El Relicario De Los Animales,” first released in 1979, progresses through several evocations, each channeling a different animal with sound textures and musical modes.
“As one of Oliveros’ scores with specific instructions for instrumentation, it incorporates a broad ensemble ranging from violin and percussion to unconventional surprises–including her signature conch shell,” according to the LBO. “The result is an immersive, layered soundscape that explores the complex relationship between humans, nature, and animals–ultimately aiming to promote healing and harmony with the natural world.”
Over 20 performers are featured on stage, and the piece’s improvisational nature is an indicator that the two presentations each will be unique.
“Our new team at Long Beach Opera is emphatically embracing the company’s early history as a provocative, innovative and excitingly irreverent place for all to experience new artistic ideas,” LBO Artistic Director & Chief Creative Officer James Darrah, said in a statement.
Darrah directs this new production of “Animales” joined by the company’s Music Director Christopher Rountree and emerging director-producer Anderson Nunnelley, who makes his company debut as associate director.
The production also features an installation by LA-based floral artist Juan Renteria, known as “El Creativo.” He has recently collaborated with brands including Neiman Marcus and Nike and “continues to produce work that is reinventing floral and natural materials as art,” opera organizers said. Renteria debuted with the opera as an actor, singer and visual designer in last season’s “Bye Bye Butterfly,” another Oliveros composition.
Pauline Oliveros, 1932-2016, was born in Houston, Texas. A “queer-identifying artist who engaged in multiple disciplines and styles, Oliveros maintained strong ties to California during her lifetime as a founding member of the San Francisco Tape Music Center, was a faculty member at both Mills College and the University of California, San Diego,” according to the LBO. She “expanded the concepts of sound with her potent, genre-defying approach to music, art and composition. As the visionary behind the philosophical approach ‘deep listening,’ her works and practice boldly explored new rituals of modes of music performance, the dynamics of ensembles and profoundly challenged and re-defined the inherited processes of making ‘new music’ for an entire generation.”
More information is at paulineoliveros.us.
The LBO self-describes as LA County’s “oldest and most historically provocative opera company.”
Tickets for performances and more information about the “Animales” production are available at longbeachopera.org.
