Author Archives: Alan Rich

Photo by Robert MillardMUD AND SUGAR If there must be Gounod – a point I will argue – let it be thus. The mud and sugar of his Roméo et Juliette do not entirely disappear behind the splendor of the … Continue reading →

Photo by Robert MillardTHE THEATRICAL DIMENSION Nearly a century separates the two beguilements installed at the Music Center in recent weeks: Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida of the 1870s and Luciano Berio’s Laborintus II of 1965. Nobody would mistake the style or … Continue reading →

Photo by Alice Arnold Steve Reich’s You Are (Variations), the Master Chorale’s gleaming new acquisition unveiled at Disney Hall last weekend under Grant Gershon’s proud direction, starts off on congenial ground. We are immediately thrust among old friends: the Reich … Continue reading →

Every opera company needs Carmen as the “C” to complete the “A” (Aida) and the “B” (La Bohème) of the essential repertory; this season our local forces are providing the full complement. Do not mistake that out of hand, however, … Continue reading →

BY A COINCIDENCE of trifling importance, the Los Angeles Opera’s two music directors – Kent Nagano present and James Conlon future – turn up on disc releases this month. By further coincidence, both works are musical turkeys: clumsy, noisy choral … Continue reading →

ON A RECENT SATURDAY the euphoria downtown was something you could walk on: a ninth-inning grand-slam home run at Dodger Stadium, a brand-new bundle of organ pipes down the hill at Disney Hall. With the Dodgers’ joy, and their pipe-dream-come-true … Continue reading →

Inevitably, but at glacial pace, the art of Robert Wilson moves westward. In European theater, his work has exerted a volcanic influence over the past three decades. In New York, or at least in Brooklyn, he has maintained a stronghold … Continue reading →

Photo by Viaamse Opera, Annemie Augustijns Haydn at the Bowl on one balmy night, Mozart at the Music Center on another: The segue between seasons here is less a meteorological matter than sartorial, and the transition this time has been … Continue reading →

Nirvana looms for the organic crowd – not the veggies-and-sprouts folks this time, but the seekers of ecstasy in the sounds of the “world’s most perfect” (and, thus, least musical) instrument, the devotees of Diggle and Thistlethwaite. This is the … Continue reading →

The best thing about this job – one of the best things, anyhow – is the chance it affords me to write about Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, as often as I like. I got to write about it last … Continue reading →