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Photo by Mark Berndt UCLA
Today
"Lorca, Child of the Moon" composer Ian Krouse
(right) with singers Aren der Hacopian (left) and Evan Hughes
at a rehesarsal for the world premiere opera. |
Showcase for campus artists
UCLA to stage world premiere opera
by ANNE BURKE
ucla today staff
On March 17-20, audiences at the Freud Playhouse will be treated
to what is a rare event on any stage — the world premiere
of a new, full-length opera.
“Lorca, Child of the Moon,” a featured event of UCLA
Year of the Arts, is a collaboration between the university and
an impressive array of artists from Los Angeles and beyond.
The principal creative forces behind the three-act opera are the
composer, Music Department chair Ian Krouse, and the librettist
and director, Margarita Galban, the Cuban-born actress and director
familiar to Los Angeles theatergoers through her work with the Bilingual
Foundation of the Arts.
“Lorca” also draws on the remarkable talent of students,
past and present. Most of the singers and all the musicians are
currently enrolled Bruins, many of them music and voice majors headed
for theatrical and recording careers.
The Spanish-influenced choreography is by alumna Mari Sandoval,
a well-known Southern California flamenco teacher and dancer. Wielding
the baton will be alumnus Jonathan Stockhammer, who took time from
a flourishing career in Europe to lead the orchestra.
Krouse’s colleagues on the faculty are also getting in on
the act. Soprano Juliana Gondek, the UCLA voice and opera division
chair who has performed in many of the world’s major opera
houses, will lend her vocal abilities to the role of “The
Mother.”
“Lorca, Child of the Moon” is based on the life and
works of Federico García Lorca. Considered the greatest Spanish
poet and dramatist of the 20th century, Lorca was only 38 when he
was executed by fascist forces during the Spanish Civil War.
In Galban’s rendering of the Lorca story, the author steps
in and out of four of his best known works, the plays “Blood
Wedding,” “The Shoemaker’s Wife” and “Yerma,”
and the poem “El Romancero Gitano.”
The opera has been nearly a quarter century in the making. In the
early 1980s, Krouse was a doctoral student at USC when the actress
Carmen Zapata, producing director of the Bilingual Foundation of
the Arts, asked him to compose music for stage productions of Lorca’s
work.
The productions went on to win numerous awards. Based on these early
successes, the National Endowment for the Arts provided financial
backing for what would become “Lorca, Child of the Moon.”
While Opera UCLA’s presentation is the first fully realized
production of the work, some of “Lorca” may be familiar
to opera buffs. Los Angeles’ own Suzanna Guzmán, the
mezzo-soprano for whom Krouse fashioned much of his score, has sung
selections from “Lorca” on stage for years. Earlier
versions of the opera were performed in well-received workshop productions
in the ’80s and ’90s.
UCLA Extension will celebrate the world premiere on March 5 with
a full-day course, “Federico García Lorca: The Man
in the ‘Child of the Moon.’ ” The course will
feature lectures by Lorca experts and performances by cast members.
For information, visit www.uclaextension.edu.
“Lorca, Child of the Moon” will be 7:30 p.m.
March 17-19 and 3 p.m. March 20. Tickets are $20, $10 students and
seniors. More details: www.music.ucla.edu/Events.
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