Santa Monica

DRKnight66: Inception comes out today!

RollinWitNolan40: Oh man, it’s gonna be so sweet.

DRKnight66: It’s gonna be like The Dark Knight meets Memento meets awesome!

RollinWitNolan40: Are you taking your girlfriend?

DRKnight66: What girlfriend?

RollinWitNolan40: Oh yeah I forgot. Jenni dumped you after you bought that fully-outfitted Batman morotcycle.

DRKnight66: Still don’t regret the purchase.

RollinWitNolan40: Yeah, screw girls. Emily doesn’t even wanna see Inception. I mean, come on…

Sure, Inception does look cool. But let’s face it: if you’re looking to really impress a girl (or guy), get to know them on an intimate level, there’s better date movies out there than some half-cocked, Joseph Campbell-ian, Matrix mash-up with a stoner philosophy major’s view of the world. In fact, if you’re trying to instill that subtle sense of intellectual, yet sexy flirtation into a budding relationship, that essential, fuckable French-ness, you can’t do much better than Eric Rohmer.

The one-time critic and writer for the French New Wave became best known for his series of films known at the “Six Moral Tales.” But these movies are, at their core, anything but moral. They instead dissect the sub-textual and sub-sexual complexities inherent in male-female relationships—often allowing two actors to discuss mathematical theories at great length—until the primal, erotic tension bubbles to the immediate surface. Rohmer is more than partly influential in the emergence of the “mumblecore” movement, but where many of those movies tend to float in a likable though detached uncertainty, his films are like finely cut incisions into the layers of romantic attraction.

Two of Rohmer’s most famous “Moral Tales,” My Night At Maud’s and Claire’s Knee, as well as a short-film of the series, “The Bakery Girl of Monceau,” are playing for a one-time-only triple-feature at the Aero Theatre this Friday, July 16^th at 7:30 PM. My Night at Maud’s, absolutely one of the sexiest movies I’ve ever seen, tells the story of Jean-Louis and his enveloping fascination with a divorcee named Maud, a seductive though prudish woman he spent a night with in deep conversation. Claire’s Knee also explores quiet male obsession, but goes the Lolita route, and follows newly-engaged Jean-Claude as he fixates upon the sight of a young girl’s bare knee. Both films restrain themselves from any graphic sexuality, but opt instead for the Kundera-version of flirtation: “…a behavior leading another to believe that sexual intimacy is possible, while preventing that possibility from becoming a certainty. In other words, flirting is a promise of sexual intercourse without a guarantee.”

I suppose what I’m saying is that if you want to see a movie to g-chat about with your nerdy friend, then see Inception. But if you want to get laid, see some Eric Rohmer, and catch up with the Christopher Nolan piss-contest next weekend.

- By Joshua Morrison

Note: If you do score off of the first two “Moral Tales,” make sure to see the rest at the next night’s triple-feature, Rohmer’s La Collectionneuse and Chloe in the Afternoon, along with the short, “Suzzane’s Career.” All at the Aero Theatre, Saturday, July 7th starting at 7:30 PM. For more information, please visit www.americancinematheque.com.

Why Shakespeare? Why read him in high school, and teach him in college, and perform him in the park? Why not Marlowe? Or Chekhov? Ibsen? Why not go back further, and read Euripides or Sophocles? Why Shakespeare?

Some would say it’s due to his undeniable talent as a playwright and illuminator of the  human soul. Others might simply attribute his omnipresence to the best marketing team in the history of the world. Me—in case you were wondering—I think it’s the elasticity inherent in his work. Pretty much anyone could read his best plays, and get anything they want out of them. Othello, for example, could easily be read as a neo-Nazi call to arms. And I won’t even get into The Merchant of Venice.

But seriously, Shakespeare is, if nothing else, adaptable—and on every level, from script to cast. This is why we see mix-gendered versions of Romeo and Juliet, and high school-set films of The Taming of the Shrew. And this seems to be the impetus behind actress, director, and producer Lisa Wolpe’s newest venture, The Wicked Wilde Shakespeare Festival. It’s a five-week long summer theatre extravaganza of adapted Shakespeare works (with one Oscar Wilde piece thrown into the mix), playing at the Miles Memorial Playhouse in Santa Monica from May 29^th through June 7^th.

Wolpe is the founder and artistic director of the Los Angeles Women’s Shakespeare Company, an outfit dedicated to reversing the tradition of the old Globe Theatre, and casting all women. For this festival, however, Wolpe has included the male persuasion in her own adapted and directed material, while still maintaining her playful sense of gender confusion that already runs deep in much of Shakespeare.

The fest opens with A Tyrant’s Tale, Wolpe’s abbreviated take on A Winter’s Tale, with only seven actors (the original Shakespeare version has seventeen characters and spans sixteen years). Much like Othello (but funnier), the play concerns a jealous leader—King Leontes—and the borderline paranoia he suffers over his wife’s possible infidelity. The part I’m looking forward to, though, is how Wolpe interprets one of the most famous stage directions in all of theatre: “Exit, pursued by a bear.”

Macbeth3, the next in the wicked, wilde lineup, is Wolpe’s highly acclaimed post-apocalyptic adaptation of Macbeth. This reworking incorporates a whiff of Hamlet into the mix as well, with the character of Satan visiting Macbeth, and leading him into his tragic torment. Why the number 3 added to the title? You’ll just have to find out.

The festival also includes a gender-bending variation of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, as well as the anthologized Lovers and Madmen, an all-female grab-bag of Shakespeare scenes. But for now, FineArtsLA is giving away a pair of tickets to just the first two shows: A Tyrant’s Tale and Macbeth3 for this Sunday, May 30^th. The double-bill begins at 2 PM at Miles Memorial Playhouse.

If you’re a regular viewer of the site, you know the rules: simply enter your first name, last name, and e-mail address into the form below, and you will eligible to receive tickets to the first half of The Wicked Wilde Shakespeare Festival, and as an added bonus, you will be automatically entered into the running for our next three ticket giveaways (hint: The Importance of Being Earnest is on the list). Why Shakespeare? Why not? Especially if it’s free.

For more information about The Wicked Wilde Shakespeare Festival, or to find out how to buy the tickets on your own, please visit their site at www.lawsc.net.

From May 15 to May 30, the Los Angeles Ballet finishes its fourth season with the unveiling of four contemporary world premieres by acclaimed guest choreographers Mandy Moore, Travis Wall, and Sonya Tayeh of the FOX hit, So You Think You Can Dance, and LA’s Josie Walsh. Titled “New Wave LA,” the program presents cutting edge, innovative movement from some of the brightest beacons on the choreographic horizon.

LAB Artistic Directors Thordal Christensen and Colleen Neary have commissioned new works each season – but presenting four world premiere dances on a single program is all but unheard-of for a classical ballet company. That three of the four young choreographers featured in LAB’s production come from the hit TV show, So You Think You Can Dance is no accident. In 2008, dancers from Los Angeles Ballet made an impressive appearance on the series, and last July, Thordal Christensen choreographed the first-ever classical ballet piece for the show. That some of the show’s resident choreographers return the favor seemed natural.

Mandy Moore’s caffeine-infused, witty “Wink” opens the show. Moore was inspired by “the world of Internet dating – profiles, coffee dates, second dates,” she writes in her program notes,”and all the awkwardly beautiful moments along the path to finding true love.”

In an early rehearsal at the company’s vast West Side studios,  two dancers catch each other’s eyes in passing and chuckle, and Moore hollers, “Keep it!”  Her rehearsal is focused and disciplined, yet full of humor. “Dance is so silly to me when people don’t react to each other,” she tells her dancers. “Don’t just ignore them – especially if they’re cute!” One of the choreographers for Celine Dion’s “Taking Chances” World Tour, Moore’s eclectic style has delighted viewers regularly on So You Think You Can Dance and American Idol.

Down the hall in another studio, Los Angeles native Josie Walsh is working with another group of dancers. Walsh danced with the Joffrey Ballet, Zurich Ballet, and Oregon Ballet Theatre, before returning to LA to found MYOKYO Renegade Rock Ballets in 2000. Her ballet, “Transmutation,” was developed from a piece originally commissioned for LAB’s first choreographic workshop last summer. It evokes the visceral interplay between “the male and female archetypal energies,” she explains, “the friction of opposition creating balance. If we didn’t have opposition, we’d be looking for it, for the wisdom of the middle road.”

Walsh creates movement organically, empathically on the dancers, making changes as she works to achieve integration of body, mind, and spirit. “I don’t like to dictate,” she says. “I use what IS, in the moment. My intention is to cultivate the Presence of each individual dancer.” The music – specially created for this ballet by Walsh’s husband Paul Rivera, Jr – inexorably throbs and pounds, ultimately leading to transcendent stillness. Award-winning contemporary choreographer Travis Wall left home at 12 to appear in The Music Man on Broadway. Runner-up on season 2 of So You Think You Can Dance, Wall later returned to the show as a featured choreographer. This year he was assistant choreographer and dancer for the Academy Awards show, and created a piece featuring New York Ballet principal ballerina Tiler Peck for ABC’s Dancing with the Stars.

Wall’s “Reflect. Affect. Carry On…” for LAB is a bittersweet love story inspired by Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” U2’s “With or Without You,” and Sigur Ros’s “Samskeyti.” His unique style is a seamless hybrid, melding elements of classical ballet and contemporary dance. As he shares his very individual dance vocabulary with the dancers, I am struck with the sense that this remarkable 22-year-old may be the Bob Fosse of his generation.

Her stylized movement relying substantially on aggressive one-on-one physical contact, Sonya Tayeh directs “combat jazz” and contemporary dance as a choreographer on So You Think You Can Dance. Her dances incorporate a personal, quirky style with the essence of contemporary technique, producing startlingly original combinations.

In “The Back and Forth,” Tayeh has created a flamboyant, show stopping finale for “New Wave LA.” With huge appreciation for their virtuosity, Tayeh’s shrieks of “Yes!! Yes!!” goad her six dancers into reckless, dangerous flight to Piazzolla’s “Libertango.” She is completely collaborative with the three couples, igniting fire and passion in their dancing. “When the matador meets the bull, the back and forth begins,” she says.

- By Penny Orloff

Performances of “New Wave LA” are on Saturday, May 15 at 7:30 pm at the Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center; Saturday, May 22 at 7:30 pm at Glendale’s Alex Theatre; and Saturday, May 29 at 7:30 and Sunday, May 30 at 2 pm at the Broad Stage in Santa Monica. For more information, please visit www.losangelesballet.org or call 310.998.7782.

On an overcast Tuesday afternoon, when the traffic from the nearby 10 and 405 freeways is just starting to pack in, Bergamot Station in Santa Monica looks and feels more like an industrial depot center than one of Los Angeles’s prime gallery  hubbubs, and local art-dealer hot-spot of international acclaim. The parking lot if half-empty. Lonesome employees rumble by with crates full of water-cooler jugs. Sporadic patrons drift in and out of massive gallery spaces. On the whole, the place seems cold, even uninviting.

That is unless you accidentally stumble into the hallway of the Santa Monica Museum of Art—denoted only by a metallic sign that says “Museum”—and find yourself wondering what all the small, clay objects are doing strung up on the wall, as if hanging from massive, marker sketches of keys, backpacks, doorknobs, and necklaces. It’s this quaint collection of colorful figurines which, from first sight, breathes humanity into an otherwise blue atmosphere. For good reason too: every ornament on the wall is made by an artist below the age of 18—mainly ranging from 5-years-old to 10.

It’s called Wall Works: Project Icons and is the brainchild of clay and found-object artist Anna Sew Hoy. In collaboration with SMMA and six participating schools from around the Los Angeles area, Hoy asked children from kindergarten through 12^th grade to describe their personal wishes, and transform them into pocket-sized “talismans” to help visualize their fulfillment. The wishes themselves, as written in the kids’ own handwriting, and paired with photographs of their corresponding talismans, can be viewed in conjunction with the exhibition. And all it takes is a quick glance at one or two of these wishes to get you digging through them like a treasure chest filled with jewels of innocent brilliance.

“I wish for a talking star to play with me,” writes Karina, who’s  yellow clay star sports sunglasses and a full rack of teeth.

“I had a limen tree so I can have limen juice,” says Megan. And no, this is not simply poor spelling, because Megan’s talisman is neither a lemon nor a lime. Not yellow nor green. It’s in between. It’s a limen. Why no sports drink has come up with this word combination before is beyond me.

It’s interesting: most of the younger kids’ wishes have to deal with fruit, or animals, mice in particular. And the pocket icons they create to represent these wishes are all courageously distorted versions of reality—imperfect, and yet lovely. Only when the children and their respective handwriting grow older, more refined, do the wishes become more realistic and abstract at the same time. Earnestness and anxiety replace playfulness.

“To be good at soccer,” one boy announces. “To be a better basketball player.” “To have a bigger garden.” “To be an architect.” Most all are sports and career related, with the occasional plea for world peace thrown in the mix. The older kids’ clay talismans also become more defined and mimetic, while losing some of the accidental whimsy of of their younger counterparts.

Extrapolating the results—or at least my observations—of Hoy’s project into the greater art-world, I can see how a place like Bergamot Station can seem so cold, the warm humor of its art lost in the jumble of warehouses and parking spaces. It’s the fulfillment of those older childens’ wishes for bigger and better things taking over the goofy vitality of those younger, fruit-and-mouse wishes.

And yet still, when you look at the wall of hanging talismans, they all pretty much look alike, old and young together. Each one the subject of natural distortion—due to the imperfect nature of clay-work—and each one something more than just a good luck charm. They are tactile. You can feel the wishes with your fingers. You can see it. It’s not just an airy idea. It’s a creation.

Anna Sew Hoy’s Wall Works: Project Icons can be viewed at the Santa Monica Museum of Art in Bergamot Station until May 31. For more information, please visit www.smmoa.org, or call (310) 586-6488.

Wagnerite or not, the Ring Festival is upon us.  Let me explain.  If you haven’t heard, LA Opera spent $32 million on producing the ultimate Ring Festival that not only presents Richard Wagner’s infamous Ring Cycle, but also features an array of events, lectures, and concerts offering tons of things to do for German-loving Angelenos.  Starting this evening alone, one can find a visual exhibit on Maria Callas at the Italian Cultural Institute in Westwood, a Ring Cycle discussion panel chatting on “From Nietzsche to Star Wars: The Wagnerian Power of The Ring,” and at Los Angeles Conservancy, see the German influence on Los Angeles’ mid-20th-century landscape.  Who knew Wagner made such an impact on so many aspects of our lives?

There’s one truth I’ve yet to unveil.  I’m not really a Wagner fan.  Yes, Wagnerites, Tristan und Isolde is undeniably gorgeous and the famous aria at the end, “Liebestod,” is truly glorious.  But his Ring Cycle, which features four full-length operas from Das Rheingold to Gotterdammerung, is simply not my cup of tea.  Putting personal preference aside, though, LA Operas tour de force Ring Festival is a triumph of peering into what makes such an infamous piece of classical music tick.  There will be, over the course of the next few months (now through June 2010), lectures detailing Wagner and his influences paired with art exhibits, free film screenings “for opera lovers,” and of course, full length masterful productions of Wagner’s Ring Cycle.  In full.

The Cycle itself is four operas, each longer than the last.  There’s Das Rheingold and Die Walkure, which LA Opera produced during their 2008/2009 season and Siegfried and Gotterdammerung which both go up this season in June, finishing out the Cycle.  All four productions were designed by the controversial and avant-garde set director Achim Freyer and will be performed under the very accomplished tutelage of conductor James Conlon.

The Ring Festival is a huge accomplishment for the arts in Los Angeles.  Not only will it bring arts lovers of all shapes and sizes to our fair city, but it also derives its allure from many of LAs various attractions from food trucks (like Let’s Be Frank hotdogs) to the Hammer Museum and from LACMA to Griffith Park Observatory.  There’s rarely a better reason to cross the city in a German-and-opera-filled fury as there is now.

The show on at the Geffen Playhouse, Nightmare Alley, is also connected to the Ring Festival.  Running now through May 23, the show is based on the 1946 Gresham novel about the dark, wild world of “carnies, cons, and clairvoyants.”

The full schedule is about as long as a novel, proving again that LA Opera has gone above and beyond with this Festival.  Ticket prices range from free to $10 to $2000 (for really good front orchestra seats at the opera itself, calm thyself).

Regardless of my personal relationship with Mr. Wagner, when I say enjoy the show, I really do mean it. Really. Enjoy… Just make sure you bring your flask.

The Ring Festival has begun! Click here for more information on the Festival and click here for information on the Cycle itself. Click here to see the LA Times’ complete guide to the Ring Festival.

“For better or worse, we all have parents.” These are the words of filmmaker Cindy Kleine on her newest documentary film, Phyllis and Harold, a deeply personal, haunting portrait of her own parents’ 59-year-long marriage, produced by Andre Gregory (of My Dinner With Andre fame) and featuring the whimsical, surrealistic animation of award-winning artist, Lisa Crafts. Combining home-video footage, family photographs, hours of direct interviews that were originally meant for an earlier documentary, and a unique, dream-like sensibility, Kleine tells a story she had to wait for her father’s death to unveil. It’s a story of love (both forgotten and returned), abuse, disaster, mental illness, and finally, her own childhood.

Kleine’s past films, mainly short, experimentally-inclined documentaries, have mostly all been about her own relationship to art, which, for her, is intrinsically connected to one’s personal—often familial—history. Her 1996 film Holy Matter, for instance, stems from the belief that her three-year cinematic block was in some way connected to a repressed, fecal block of her youth. She thus sets out to interview a cache of other artists to find out whether or not they too share similar toilet-themed memories. Inside Out, her most recent film before Phyllis and Harold, expands on her theory of starting from within the tucked-away corners of one’s own psyche and venturing outwards to investigate the American artistic landscape as a whole. Here, she travels the entire country to capture the lives  of six different “outsider” artists—from a man who carves bizarre, wooden totem poles by hand to a woman who creates enormous, colorful collages of words, masks, and actual paintbrushes.

In a particularly special sneak preview, Phyllis and Harold screens tomorrow, Thursday April 8^th, 7:30 PM, at the American Cinematheque at the Aero Theatre. Both Cindy Kleine and Andre Gregory will be present for a discussion following the film. Cookies and champagne will be served. What better way, after all, to get to know an artist like Kleine than to see her work, and talk with her in person? It is she—along with her parents—who’s the true subject.

The American Cinematheque at the Aero Theatre is located at 1328 Montana Avenue at 14th Street in Santa Monica. Cindy Kleine’s Phyllis and Harold screens at 7:30 PM on Thursday, April 8^th. For tickets or more information, please call (323) 466-FILM, or visit www.americancinematheque.com.

Skateboarding Chihuahuas, muscle-bound men in thongs with snakes around their necks, people dressed as trees, people smoking trees, tie-dye trailer homes with the words ‘Raw Not War’ painted on the back—we’ve all been to the whimsical world of the Venice Beach boardwalk to observe the regulated chaos that ensues. However, this Saturday the Venice boardwalk hosts a different scene: a major opening at the Julia Dean Gallery. Located on the boardwalk, this fabulous gallery opens it’s doors to a new show titled 4×14: Uncommon Imagery.

14 emerging Southern California photographers who have had exhibits nationwide, and been published in major magazines around the country all come together to show 4 of their newest pieces. Photographic mediums and images run the gamut—in the most specific sense of the word—but the link through them all is the passion they posses. It’s all kicking off tomorrow night, Saturday, March 20th, from 6-9pm at the Julia Dean Gallery, which is located about a block past the two-headed squirrel museum, across the street from the off-beat drum circle, and just to the right of that creepy clown guy with the noodles on his head.

- By Gray Malin

In actuality, the Julia Dean Gallery is located at 801 Ocean Front walk, Studio 8, Venice, CA 90291 (About 150 feet south of Brooks Ave). The show runs from March 20th-May 28th, 2010, tying in with Month of Photography LA. For more information, please call (310) 392-0909, or visit www.juliadean.com.

“Talk about surround sound,” the woman sitting behind me whispered to her date as men clad in all black made their way down the aisles of The Broad Stage playing violins.  In complete darkness, they maneuvered onto the stage and took their places in anticipation of the man we were all there to see – Ludovico Einaudi.  Already a very well known and celebrated pianist in Europe, Einaudi came to perform two concerts in the US promoting his latest album Nightbook – one at the Broad Stage in Santa Monica and one in San Francisco.   Masterful on the piano and as a ringleader of sorts for the other musicians on stage, Einaudi’s music is experimental without being too esoteric.

The Broad Stage billed the performance as Ludovico Einaudi joined by guest artists playing pieces from his forthcoming album.  But these guest artists seemed less like individuals who came to perform a song or two with Einaudi.  These musicians were more like his pupils whose playing only enhanced the pianist’s compositions; worshippers in the house of Einaudi, if you will.  There were five of them: Federico Mecozzi, likely the youngest on stage playing violin, electric guitar, and acoustic guitar, Robert Lippok merging all the sounds together with live electronics, Svetlana Fomina on viola, Mauro Durante playing the violin and percussive instruments with particular intensity, and Marco Decimo, a virtuoso on the cello.

Each piece started off deceptively calm and as they made their subtle crescendo, you suddenly became aware that the sounds were washing over you; that your temperament had shifted away from hunger pangs and daily stresses almost as if in a trance.  The stage was dark, everyone dressed in black, and they only sparingly used any sort of lighting design, but the bare production left room for the music to take over – and it did.  Having been associated with such musicians as Erik Satie and Sigur Ros, you can imagine the brand of simplicity on offer with Einaudi.  It’s less minimalist-like-Eyes-Wide-Shut and more just familiar, beautiful tones that, upon hearing them, transport you.  His piano is lyrical and expressive and while it would be quite enough on its own, it also provides a canvas on which the accompanying instruments shone.

It’s easy to be largely unable to categorize Einaudi’s music.  Saturday evening’s concert was squarely “post-classical,” or experimental classical music, but his compositions have made their way into a plethora of film and TV scores, including The Reader, and even into the realm of the NBA.  At the very least, newcomers to Einaudi’s music have a new name to remember and Italian-Angeleno imports felt as if they’d tasted a bit of home.

From the first standing ovation to the fourth (yes, fourth) encore, Einaudi seemed humbled but unsurprised by the audience’s reaction.  He has carved a place for himself in the wide spectrum of musical styles and genres where lyrical and emotional expression meet simple, relatable beauty.  It seems like an obviously covetable spot, really, but it would take someone as innovative and multi-faceted as Einaudi to find it and make it his own.

Click here to learn more about Ludovico Einaudi and his album, Nightbook.

I recently found myself sitting on a couch in a dark room inside the Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts at USC watching a play-test of a brand-new interactive video game.  I use the term ‘interactive,’ because it was less like your typical Nintendo or PlayStation proceeding, and more akin to one of those ‘choose your own adventure’ movies, only digitalized, intricately detailed, and not a little influenced by the likes of Spielberg or Christopher Nolan.  The game takes place in a slightly futuristic society, and at one point, the protagonist, a detective, is sitting in his beat-down, windowless office going over clues, when he puts on a pair of special sunglasses.  These sunglasses allow him, and by proxy, us, the audience, to perceive his spacial environment as a pristine mountain-top, or a Redwood forest.  The effect is novel, and provokes a round of ‘wouldn’t-that-be-cool’ comments from anybody who’s watching, yet it also brings up an interesting, modern phenomenon.  I call it the ‘it’s not to you’ syndrome, and it works like this: you’re sitting in a beat-down, windowless office, but…it’s not to you.

Don’t get me wrong, this syndrome is hardly new or original, although it is intensifying in our digital age.  And one person who’s exploring this intensification is artist Jeffrey Wells with his newest exhibit Seeing While Seeing at the Bergamont Station Arts Center, a part of the Santa Monica Museum of Art.  Wells attempts to recreate the optical illusions of everyday life—the after-image of an exit sign, the undulating intersection of two vertical walls that meet at a right-angle—using video projections.  Thus the viewer is left questioning whether or not an illusion is physical or digital.  Both are percepts, separate from what some would call “objective reality,” but only one is an intentionally manipulated percept.

What Wells—along with the interactive video game, to a certain extent—may be attempting to illustrate is the danger of the ‘it’s not to you’ syndrome.  Because how do you really know what is?  Or who’s presenting what to you, for that matter?  And as the line between what is and what is to you gets smaller and smaller, what becomes of you?

Jeffrey Wells’s Seeing While Seeing is on view until April 17th at Project Room 1 in the Bergamont Station Arts Center, a part of the Santa Monica Museum of Arts.  Bergamont Station is located at 2525 Michigan Ave, Building G-1.  For more information, please call (310) 586-6488, or visit www.smmoa.org.

American composer Robert Kurka’s only opera, Good Soldier Schweik, began life in 1956 as a six movement suite based on characters from the popular Czech antiwar novel of the same name, by Jaroslav Hask. New York City Opera became interested in turning the suite into an opera and Kurka expanded the orchestra from his original scoring for 7 woodwinds, to 16, plus brass and percussion, and began working with librettist Lewis Allan – a songwriter known for the celebrated anti-lynching song, “Strange Fruit,” and the Frank Sinatra hit, “The House I Live In,” but chiefly, as the adoptive father of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg’s sons after the couple had been convicted of espionage and executed.

Kurka died in 1957 at the age of 35, four months before the opera’s successful NYCO premiere. Within the next 40 years, Good Soldier Schweik had seen over one hundred productions throughout the world, and been translated into 12 languages.

The work combines elements of American musical theatre, jazz, and Czech folk music, to underscore an explicitly anti-war story. The Long Beach Opera company’s cast of singing and dancing actors – led by tenor Matthew DiBattista in a powerhouse performance – delivered the goods in director Ken Roht’s dazzling multi-media production at Barnum Hall in Santa Monica. The orchestra – well, band, in this case – played with stylish pizzazz under Conductor/Artistic Director Andreas Mitisek.

Ably realized through Dan Weingarten’s inspired lighting and Justin Jorgensen’s novel set design, the production utilized scrims, projections, choreography, and outlandish props to whisk the plot from scene to scene at a breakneck pace, so that the audience was as disoriented as Schweik by the experience.

The house – mostly all long-time Long Beach Opera fans, and mostly very elderly – was packed, attesting to their pleasure at not having to endure a schlep to Long Beach. This brings me to my only gripe with this enterprise: somehow, LBO’s marketing missed the mark, hugely. Where was the large, 20-to-30-something demographic that would have been enraptured – and captured – by this stunning example of what opera has become in the 21st century?

- By Penny Orloff

To see Long Beach Opera’s full calendar, please click here.