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They left everything behind to be together. But the past has a way of catching up.
Violetta Valéry is the queen of Parisian nightlife for now, but she knows that life in the fast lane can't last forever. The arrival of a fresh-faced suitor offers her an unexpected taste of true love, until society’s disapproval threatens to tear them apart.
Rachel Willis-Sørensen, one of the most acclaimed American sopranos of her generation, returns as the glamorous Violetta, whose time is quickly running out. Rising star Liparit Avetisyan is the enamored Alfredo, with Kihun Yoon as his disapproving, controlling father. Verdi master James Conlon conducts one of opera’s most enduring tragedies in this vibrant and luxuriously rich new-to-L.A. production that shines the spotlight on Violetta’s tragic attempts to outrun her fate.
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A scene from Shawna Lucey's production of "La Traviata"
Cory Weaver / San Francisco Opera
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A scene from Shawna Lucey's production of "La Traviata"
Cory Weaver / San Francisco Opera
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A scene from Shawna Lucey's production of "La Traviata"
Cory Weaver / San Francisco Opera
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A scene from Shawna Lucey's production of "La Traviata"
Cory Weaver / San Francisco Opera
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A scene from Shawna Lucey's production of "La Traviata"
Cory Weaver / San Francisco Opera
“A beautiful new “Traviata” meant to last for decades…smashing,”
Rachel Willis-Sørensen “…one of the most gifted singers of our era…”
From: Tri-Cities, Washington. LA Opera: Desdemona in Otello (2023, debut); Violetta in La Traviata (2024).
American soprano Rachel Willis-Sørensen is known for her diverse repertoire ranging from Mozart to Wagner. A regular guest at the leading opera houses around the world, Le Monde enthused, "…the American soprano has without a doubt one of the most impressive voices in the opera world. The timbre, of marmoreal beauty, is striking, the projection telluric..." In 2021, Rachel signed a multi-record deal with Sony Classical. Her debut album was released on April 8, 2022.
Ms. Willis-Sørensen opens the 2022/23 season with a return to the Bayerische Staatsoper to perform the role of Ellen Orford in Peter Grimes which she debuted earlier in the year. She then makes her first role debut of the season, as Elisabeth in Verdi’s Don Carlos with Lyric Opera of Chicago. This season finds her performing two roles at the Wiener Staatsoper. Her first engagement in Vienna includes a return to the role of Rosalinde in Strauss’ Die Fledermaus, followed by Mimi in La Bohème. Returning to the Deutsche Oper Berlin, she then performs her second role debut of the season, the title role in Strauss’s Arabella. In the spring, she performs the role of Violetta in La Traviata at the Bayerische Staatsoper, and makes her house debut at LA Opera as Desdemona. She returns to the Royal Opera House to perform the role of Leonora in Verdi’s Il Trovatore. On the concert stage, she performs Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder in Copenhagen, Denmark, Beethoven's 9th Symphony with the Insula Orchestra in Linz, Austria, and an open air concert in Waldbühne, Berlin, alongside Jonas Kaufmann. Her second CD, Strauss: Vier Letzte Lieder, comes out March 10 on Sony Classical.
Previous engagements include Rusalka (Rusalka) at the San Francisco Opera and NDR Hamburg, Marschallin (Der Rosenkavalier) at Glyndebourne, Semperoper Dresden and the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Violetta (La Traviata) at Opéra national de Bordeaux, Marguerite (Faust) as part of the Royal Opera House’s tour of Japan, Elsa (Lohengrin) at Deutsche Oper Berlin, Opernhaus Zurich, and Oper Frankfurt, Desdemona (Otello) at the Wiener Staatsoper and the Bayerische Staatsoper, Mimi (La Bohème) at the Bayerische Staatsoper and Semperoper Dresden, Countess (Le nozze di Figaro) at the Metropolitan Opera and the Wiener Staatsoper, Donna Anna (Don Giovanni) at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Wiener Staatsoper, Houston Grand Opera and Semperoper Dresden, Hélène (Les Vêpres siciliennes) at the Bayerische Staatsoper, Valentine (Les Huguenots) at the Grand Théâtre Genève, Eva (Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg) at the San Francisco Opera and the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Ellen Orford (Peter Grimes) at the Bayerische Staatsoper, Rosalinde (Die Fledermaus) at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, Staatskapelle Dresden and the Wiener Staatsoper, Fiordiligi (Cosi fan tutte) at the Houston Grand Opera, Leonore (Fidelio) at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia, and Leonora (Il Trovatore) at the Teatro Regio di Torino and Gran Teatre del Liceu.
Equally at home on the concert stage, she has performed Strauss's Four Last Songs multiple times, including notably at Buckingham Palace for a Prince Charles birthday celebration, and joined Jonas Kaufmann in 2019 and 2020 for a multi-city European tour in support of his latest recording, Wien, on which she is featured. Other repertoire includes Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, Mahler’s 2nd, 4th and 8th Symphonies, Mendelssohn’s Elias, Dvořák Stabat Mater, and the Verdi Requiem.
Rachel was a member of the ensemble at the Dresdner Semperoper for three years, where she sang Hanna Glawari (Die Lustige Witwe), Fiordiligi (Così fan tutte), Vitellia (La clemenza di Tito), Elettra (Idomeneo), Diemut (Feuersnot), Rosalinde (Die Fledermaus) and Mimi (La Bohème). She won first prize at the 2014 Operalia competition in Los Angeles and at the 2011 Hans Gabor Belvedere Singing Competition, and she was a winner of the 2010 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. She holds both Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from Brigham Young University and is an alumna of the Houston Grand Opera Studio. An active presence on social media, she can be found on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok @rachewillissorensen and on Twitter under @RWSing.
From: Yerevan, Armenia. LA Opera: Alfredo in La Traviata (2024, debut).
Armenian tenor Liparit Avetisyan made his European debut in the autumn of 2016 as Fenton in a new production of Falstaff at the Cologne Opera and has since been acknowledged as one of the most exciting lyric tenors of his generation. After his debut in Cologne, other international debuts followed in rapid succession at such leading theaters as the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Berlin State Opera, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Zürich Opera, Opera Australia, Bayerische Staatsoper, Semperoper Dresden, Frankfurt Opera, Hamburg State Opera and Den Norske Opera in Oslo, Opera du Rhin in Strasbourg, Seattle Opera, Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, he was a guest artist of the Stanislavski and Nemirovich-Danchenko Theatre from 2017-2019. His roles have included Alfredo in La Traviata, Rodolfo in La Bohème, the Duke of Mantua in Rigoletto, Edgardo in Lucia di Lammermoor, Nemorino in L’elisir d’amore, Des Grieux in Manon, Don José in Carmen, Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni, Count Almaviva in The Barber of Seville, Vaudémont in Iolanta and Lensky in Eugene Onegin.
Avetisyan’s recent highlights include Alfredo and Duke of Mantua at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Vaudémont in Iolanta with the Berlin Philharmonic. Avetisyan made his house debut at the Easter Festival Baden-Baden as Vaudémont and at the Den Norske Opera in Oslo as the Duke. He will return to Dresden as Rodolfo in La Bohème and to Zürich as the Duke in Rigoletto.
Avetisyan recorded the role of Cassio in Verdi’s Otello for Sony Classical (2020) with Jonas Kaufmann in the title role, conducted by Antonio Pappano. The BBC Music Magazine wrote that Liparit Avetisyan as Cassio has the most exquisite youthful heroic tone one could wish for. The album is the Opus Klassik 2021 Award Winner. It has been named “Opera Recording of the Year” (up to the 19th century).
He also active on the concert stage in recent years, he has appeared at the XXI International Music Festival Stars of the White Nights in Saint Petersburg, Easter Festival in Moscow, Beethoven Fest in Poland, Mustonen Fest in Estonia, and Midem Fest in France. He also performed in benefit concerts dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide with Evgeni Kissin at Carnegie Hall and the Music Center at Strathmore in Washington.
The tenor has collaborated with the great conductors of our days including Sir Antonio Pappano, Daniel Oren, Kirill Petrenko, Fabio Luisi, Antonello Manacorda, Bertrand de Billy, the opera stars such as Pretty Yende, Federica Lombardi, Sonya Yoncheva, Lisette Oropesa, Ailyn Pérez, Placido Domingo, Carlos Álvarez, Jonas Kaufmann and many others.
Since 2016 Avetisyan has been a leading artist of the Armenian Opera and Ballet National Academic Theatre, he sang Alfredo, Don José and the young Gypsy in Rachmaninoff’s Aleko. He debuted as the Duke in Rigoletto, sang Rodolfo in La Bohème, Count Almaviva in The Barber of Seville as well as the tenor part in the Verdi and Mozart Requiems and Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde with the Armenian National Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of its artistic director and principal conductor Eduard Topchjan.
Born in Yerevan Liparit Avetisyan studied at the Tchaikovsky Moscow State Conservatory from 2008 to 2011, later he was transferred to the Komitas State Conservatory of Yerevan to study under the leadership of professor Rafayel Hakobyants. During his studies, Avetisyan won second prize in both the Maria Biesu International Singing Competition and the III Muslim Magomaev International Vocalists Contest. In 2017 he was awarded the prestigious National Theatre Award “GOLDEN MASK” as the Best Opera Actor for the role of Des Grieux in Massenet’s Manon, as well as the Onegin National Opera Award as the best guest artist (Saint Petersburg, 2016), Artavazd National Theater Award as the best actor of the year (Yerevan, 2016) and Swallow Music Awards as the best opera singer of the year (Yerevan, 2017). Liparit Avetisyan is the Honored Artist of the Republic of Armenia.
From: Seoul, South Korea. LA Opera: 12 roles to date including Sharpless in Madama Butterfly (2016); Scarpia in Tosca (2017); Marcello in La Bohème (2019); Germont in La Traviata (2024).. He was a member of the Domingo-Colburn-Stein Young Artist Program from 2013 to 2017.
Since the 2017/18 season, he has been an ensemble member of the Oldenburgisches Staatstheater. His appearances in Oldenburg for the 2022/23 season includeAlberich in Das Rheingold, Wotan in Die Walküre, the Wanderer in Siegfried,Gunther in Götterdämmerung,the title role of Mendelsohn's Elijah,Alfio in Cavalleria Rusticana, Tonio in Pagliacci and Herr von Faninal in Der Rosenkavalier.
In 2014, he made his Los Angeles Philharmonic debut under the baton of Gustavo Dudamel, as a soloist in Beethoven's Choral Fantasy. In 2015, he performed several roles in the U.S. premiere of Unsuk Chin's Alice in Wonderland with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. That same year, he performed Figaro in Giovanni Paisiello's 1782 The Barber of Seville, under the baton of James Conlon with the USC Thornton School of Music Orchestra. In 2016, he was featured as Delirio in the U.S. premiere of Florian Gassmann's 1769 comedy L'Opera Seria at Wolf Trap Opera. In 2014, he made his role debut as Escamillo in Carmen with the Aspen Opera Theater.
James Conlon has been LA Opera's Richard Seaver Music Director since 2006.
Since his debut that year with La Traviata, he has conducted 66 different operas and more than 435 performances to date with the company. Highlights of recent seasons include the 2020 company premiere of The Anonymous Lover (L'Amant Anonyme) by Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, the 2021 company premiere of Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex, and the 2022 company premiere of Bach's St. Matthew Passion.
(Click here to visit James Conlon's Corner, where you can find essays, videos and conversations he has created especially for LA Opera.)
One of today’s most versatile and respected conductors, James Conlon has cultivated a vast symphonic, operatic and choral repertoire. He has conducted virtually every major American and European symphony orchestra since his debut with the New York Philharmonic in 1974. He has conducted more than 270 performances at the Metropolitan Opera. Through worldwide touring, an extensive discography and videography, numerous essays and commentaries, frequent television appearances and guest speaking engagements, Mr. Conlon is one of classical music’s most recognized interpreters.
In September 2021, he became Artistic Advisor of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.
He has been Principal Conductor of the RAI National Symphony Orchestra in Torino, Italy (2016–20); Principal Conductor of the Paris Opera (1995–2004); General Music Director of the City of Cologne, Germany (1989–2003), simultaneously leading the Gürzenich Orchestra and the Cologne Opera; and Music Director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra (1983–91).
Mr. Conlon has served as the Music Director of the Ravinia Festival, summer home of the Chicago Symphony (2005–15), and is now Music Director Laureate of the Cincinnati May Festival―the oldest choral festival in the United States―where he was Music Director for 37 years (1979–2016), marking one of the longest tenures of any director of an American classical music institution. As a guest conductor at the Metropolitan Opera, he has led more than 270 performances since his 1976 debut. He has also conducted at leading opera houses and festivals including the Vienna State Opera, Salzburg Festival, La Scala, Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, Mariinsky Theatre, Covent Garden, Chicago Lyric Opera, Teatro Comunale di Bologna, and Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino.
As LA Opera's Music Director since 2006, Mr. Conlon has led more performances than any other conductor in the company’s history—to date, over 420 performances of more than 60 different operas by over 20 composers. Highlights of his LA Opera tenure include conducting the company’s first Ring cycle, recently re-aired in a marathon webcast celebrating the performances’ tenth anniversary; initiating the groundbreaking Recovered Voices series, an ongoing commitment to staging masterpieces of 20th-century European opera that were suppressed by the Third Reich; and spearheading Britten 100/LA, a city-wide celebration honoring the centennial of that composer’s birth. During the period in which Dorothy Chandler Pavilion was closed due to the pandemic, Mr. Conlon conducted LA Opera’s live-streamed, socially distanced production—staged at the Colburn School—of The Anonymous Loverby Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, a prominent Black composer in 18th-century France. The performance was presented as an online-only event in fall 2020 and marked the work’s West Coast premiere. The Pavilion reopened in June 2021 with Mr. Conlon conducting the company premiere of Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex, with which LA Opera became the first major American opera company to perform live in its own theater since the coronavirus outbreak. The performance was subsequently released online for at-home viewing. During LA Opera’s 2021/22 season, Mr. Conlon conducts three operas long absent from the company’s repertory: Verdi’s Il Trovatore, which opens the season; Wagner’s Tannhäuser; and Verdi’s Aida. He also conducts John Neumeier’s ballet adaptation of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, performed at LA Opera for the first time.
Mr. Conlon’s first season as Artistic Advisor of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra includes three weeks of concerts, starting with an October 2021 program of music by historically marginalized composers. The featured works are Alexander Zemlinsky’sDie Seejungfrau (The Mermaid), which is the piece that sparked Mr. Conlon’s interest in suppressed music from the early 20thcentury, and William Levi Dawson’sNegro Folk Symphony, which reflects a theme that will recur throughout Mr. Conlon’s advisorship—the bringing of attention to works by American composers neglected due to their race. He returns in February 2022 for performances including Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony and the final scene of Wagner’sDie Walküre, with guest artists Christine Goerke and Greer Grimsley. The BSO season concludes in June 2022 with Mr. Conlon conducting an orchestra co-commission from Wynton Marsalis, Rachmaninoff’sRhapsody on a Theme of Paganiniwith Beatrice Rana, and Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony (“Leningrad”). As Artistic Advisor, in addition to leading these performances, Mr. Conlon will help ensure the continued artistic quality of the orchestra and fill many duties off the podium, including those related to artistic personnel—such as filling important vacancies and attracting exceptional musicians.
Additional highlights of Mr. Conlon’s season include Bach’sSt. Matthew Passionat Rome Opera, Wagner’sThe Flying Dutchmanat New National Theatre, Tokyo, the Paris Opera’s Gala lyrique with Renée Fleming, and concerts with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra (Dawson’sNegro Folk Symphonyand works by Beethoven and Bernstein), Gürzenich Orchester Köln (Sinfoniettas by Zemlinsky and Korngold), Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra (works by Shostakovich and Zemlinsky), and at Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. Mr. Conlon’s 2021/22 season follows a spring and summer in which he was highly active amidst the re-opening of many venues to live performance. These engagements included concerts with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Deutsche Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Orchestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna, and RAI National Symphony Orchestra. He also led a series of performances in Spain scheduled around World Music Day (June 21). In Madrid, over a period of two days, he conducted the complete symphonies of Schumann and Brahms in collaboration with four different Spanish orchestras: the Orquesta Nacional de España, Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia, Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León, and Joven Orquesta Nacional de España (JONDE). He subsequently conducted JONDE at the Festival de Granada and Seville’s Teatro de la Maestranza. Additional summer 2021 engagements included the Aspen, Napa, Ravello, and Ravinia Festivals.
In an effort to call attention to lesser-known works of composers silenced by the Nazi regime, Mr. Conlon has devoted himself to extensive programming of this music throughout Europe and North America. In 1999 he received the Vienna-based Zemlinsky Prize for his efforts in bringing that composer’s music to international attention; in 2013 he was awarded the Roger E. Joseph Prize at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion for his extraordinary efforts to eradicate racial and religious prejudice and discrimination; and in 2007 he received the Crystal Globe Award from the Anti-Defamation League. His work on behalf of suppressed composers led to the creation of The OREL Foundation, an invaluable resource on the topic for music lovers, students, musicians, and scholars; the Ziering-Conlon Initiative for Recovered Voices at the Colburn School; and a recent virtual TEDx Talk titled “Resurrecting Forbidden Music.”
Mr. Conlon is an enthusiastic advocate of public scholarship and cultural institutions as forums for the exchange of ideas and inquiry into the role music plays in our shared humanity and civic life. At LA Opera, he leads pre-performance talks, drawing upon musicology, literary studies, history, and social sciences to contemplate—together with his audience—the enduring power and relevance of opera and classical music in general. Additionally, he frequently collaborates with universities, museums, and other cultural institutions, and works with scholars, practitioners, and community members across disciplines. His appearances throughout the country as a speaker on a variety of cultural and educational topics are widely praised.
Mr. Conlon’s extensive discography and videography can be found on the Bridge, Capriccio, Decca, EMI, Erato, and Sony Classical labels. His recordings of LA Opera productions have received four Grammy Awards, two respectively for John Corigliano’sThe Ghosts of Versaillesand Kurt Weill’sRise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny.Additional highlights include an ECHO Klassik Award-winning recording cycle of operas and orchestral works by Alexander Zemlinsky; a CD/DVD release of works by Viktor Ullmann, which won the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik; and the world-premiere recording of Liszt’s oratorioSt. Stanislaus.
Mr. Conlon holds four honorary doctorates and has received numerous other awards. He was one of the first five recipients of the Opera News Awards, and was honored by the New York Public Library as a Library Lion. He was named Commendatore Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana by Sergio Mattarella, President of the Italian Republic. He was also named Commandeur de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture and, in 2002, personally accepted France’s highest honor, the Legion d’Honneur, from then-President of the French Republic Jacques Chirac.
From: Rotterdam, New York. LA Opera: Psycho with the LA Opera Orchestra (2019); Tosca (2022, mainstage debut). He is an alumnus of the Domingo-Colburn-Stein Young Artist Program (2018-2020).
Since his professional debut in 2019 at the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, Louis Lohraseb is establishing himself as an exciting young conductor of both symphonic and operatic repertoire. His performances have garnered praise from Opera News, The Wall Street Journal, and others, with Classical Music Daily writing: “Teatro dell’Opera’s good orchestra was conducted with ability by Louis Lohraseb, who has, no doubt, a merit in making this premiere vibrant and full of tension.”
The 2022/23 season will see Lohraseb make his mainstage debut at LA Opera, where he will lead Tosca, starring Michael Fabiano and Angel Blue. He will also debut with Sarasota Opera, leading Massenet’s Thérèse, return to Indiana University’s IU Opera Theatre to lead Don Giovanni, and conduct at Yale University, leading Yale Opera’s annual Opera Gala.
Engagements in the 2021/22 season included debuts with the Komische Oper Berlin conducting La Traviata and with Semperoper Dresden leading performances of Carmen, as well Indiana University for IU Opera Theatre’s production of La Rondine. He also returned to LA Opera as assistant conductor to music director James Conlon, as well as assistant conductor to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for The Clemency of Titus in August. Mr. Lohraseb is a recipient of the 2022 Solti Foundation Career Assistance Award. Engagements in 2020 were to have included his LA Opera mainstage debut conducting Roberto Devereux, as well as a return to Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, but these were canceled due to the pandemic.
Maestro Lohraseb is proud to have among his mentors James Conlon, Lorin Maazel, Arthur Fagen, Kevin Murphy, and David Effron. He was selected as the 2016 Conducting Fellow at the Chautauqua Music Festival, where he conducted and assisted in both operatic and symphonic literature. In 2018, he was an assistant conductor at the Glimmerglass Festival, after which he joined the Domingo-Colburn-Stein Young Artist Program at LA Opera. A doctoral candidate at the Jacobs School of Music, he served as assistant conductor and opera coach for the IU Opera Theater. As the 2013 Conducting Fellow at the Yale School of Music, he studied with Shinik Hahm and served as assistant conductor to the Yale Philharmonia under such musicians as Peter Oudjian, John Adams and Krzysztof Penderecki. During his time at Yale, he founded the Amadeus Orchestra, served as music director of the Cheshire Symphony Orchestra, and was a conducting fellow at the Castleton Festival in Virginia in 2014.
Born to Iranian and Italian parents, he earned his Master’s Degree in conducting from Yale University in 2015 and graduated summa cum laude from SUNY Geneseo in 2013, where he was an Edgar Fellows honors student and a member of Phi Beta Kappa.
From: Houston, Texas. LA Opera: La Traviata (2024).
Shawna Lucey is an American theater and opera director based in New York City. She completed her undergraduate degrees in theater and Italian at the University of Texas at Austin. After working in the Barnard and Columbia Theater department, as well as at the world-famous Bread and Puppet Theater, she moved to Russia in order to pursue a master’s degree.
Her first project in Moscow was directing and designing a puppet version of Primo Levi’s If This is a Man, performed at the Moscow Art Theater and toured within Russia. During her five years in Russia, she pursued work with theater institutions while completing her MFA in directing and movement from the Boris Schukin Theatre Institute of the Vakhtangov Theater in Moscow.
She has since worked at the Santa Fe Opera, Houston Grand Opera, the Gran Teatre del Liceu, San Francisco Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Bolshoi Theater and Schauspiel Hannover. She has assisted esteemed directors, including Stephen Lawless, Lee Blakeley, John Caird, Peter Schumann and Francesca Zambello.
Upcoming directing projects include a new production of Tosca for the San Francisco Opera, Falstaff at Dallas Opera and The Pearl Fishers at the Santa Fe Opera.
From: London, England. LA Opera: La Traviata (2024).
Based in London, Robert Innes Hopkins is a multi-award winning international production designer and digital artist. He has designed opera, theatre and large scale events to critical acclaim in Europe, America and worldwide. Recent and upcoming projects include All’s Well That Ends Well (Royal Shakespeare Company); Tamerlano (Grange Festival); Die Fledermaus (Opera Theatre of St. Louis); Wagner's Ring cycle (Lyric Opera of Chicago); Rigoletto (Welsh National Opera); War and Peace (Welsh National Opera); L'Italiana in Algeri (Santa Fe Opera); Edmond de Bergerac (Birmingham Repertory Theatre); Belshazzar (Grange Festival); Casino Royale (Secret Cinema London and Shanghai); and Solar (Linz Klangwolke, Austria).
From: Houston, Texas. LA Opera: La Traviata (2024).
Michael James Clark is the Head of Lighting and Production Media for Houston Grand Opera. During the 2022/23 at that company, he serves as associate lighting designer for The Marriage of Figaro, Werther, and Tosca. Last season, he created the lighting design for the world premiere production of The Snowy Day, and he served as the assistant lighting designer for The Magic Flute and associate lighting designer for Carmen. He served as revival lighting designer for HGO’s production of Aida (2020) and designed lighting for mainstage and Miller Outdoor Theatre productions of La Bohème (2018-19) and the world premiere of The Phoenix (2019). He lit the HGO world premieres of Some Light Emerges (2017), After the Storm (2016) and O Columbia (2015); Otello (2014); Die Fledermaus, Aida, and Il Trovatore (2013); La Bohème, La Traviata and The Rape of Lucretia (2012); The Marriage of Figaro (2011); the world premiere of Cruzar la Cara de la Luna (2010); and numerous outdoor productions. He also has designed lighting for Teatro La Fenice, San Francisco Opera, the Canadian Opera Company, Stages Repertory Theatre, Theatre Under the Stars, Rice University, and the 2007 Prague Quadrennial. He holds a degree in lighting design from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.
Since joining LA Opera in 2007, he has served as associate chorus director (since 2011) and assistant conductor, and he has worked closely with the Domingo-Colburn-Stein Young Artist Program. Before becoming Chorus Director, he previously directed the LA Opera Chorus for the Plácido Domingo 50th Anniversary Concert (2017) and for The Clemency of Titus (2019). One of his generation’s most respected pianists and vocal coaches, he has collaborated with major opera houses throughout the United States. He has assisted in the preparation of operas and vocal chamber music at the LA Philharmonic. As a pianist, he has partnered with Sondra Radvanovsky, J'Nai Bridges, Eric Owens, Brandon Jovanovich, Rodell Rosel, Dolora Zajick, Kate Lindsey and Susan Graham. He accompanied Joyce DiDonato at the 54th Grammy Awards, the first time the ceremony featured a performance by a classical singer.
In partnership with the Getty Villa and LACMA in Los Angeles and the Phillips Collection in Washington D.C., he has curated multimedia recitals which draw connections between the classical vocal repertoire and special exhibits in the museums. He is a frequent collaborator at Wolf Trap Opera as an assistant conductor, chorus master and recitalist. He has been a guest coach at the Opernfestspiele St. Margarethen, in Esterhazy, Austria, and he helped prepare Seattle Opera’s Ring cycle in 2013. He has been a guest faculty member for young artist programs at Utah Opera and Seattle Opera, and he is a part-time lecturer in vocal arts and opera at the University of Southern California. (JeremyMFrank.com)
From: Brooklyn, New York. LA Opera: La Traviata (2024).
Originally from Anchorage, Alaska, John Heginbotham is a Brooklyn-based choreographer, performer and teacher. He graduated from The Juilliard School in 1993 with a BFA in dance, and was awarded the Martha Hill Prize for Sustained Achievement in Dance. He was a member of the Mark Morris Dance Group (MMDG) from 1998-2012, performing lead roles in L’Allegro, il Penseroso, ed il Moderato; The Hard Nut; Four Saints in Three Acts; and Romeo and Juliet: On Motifs of Shakespeare. During his time with MMDG, he toured across the United States and abroad alongside artists including Mikhail Baryshnikov, Yo-Yo Ma, Emanuel Ax, The Bad Plus, and Zakir Hussain, and performed with opera companies including the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera and the English National Opera.
He received a 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship and the 2014 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award in recognition of his unique choreographic vision and promise. He was a research fellow at the National Center for Choreography at the University of Akron (NCCAkron), was awarded a 2017/18 New York City Center Choreography Fellowship, was a 2016 Fellow at NYU's Center for Ballet and the Arts, and is a two-time recipient of the Jerome Robbins Foundation New Essential Works (NEW) Fellowship (2010, 2012).
In addition to serving as artistic director and choreographer for his own company, Dance Heginbotham, he is active as a freelance choreographer. He recently choreographed Episode 1, Season 2 of Netflix’s hit series Umbrella Academy. He created a new ballet, RACECAR, for the Washington Ballet as part of their NEXTsteps series in 2019. In 2015, he choreographed Daniel Fish's highly-acclaimed Bard SummerScape production of Oklahoma!, which received its New York City premiere at St. Ann's Warehouse in 2018, and opened on Broadway at Circle in the Square in 2019, for a limited engagement through 2020. Oklahoma! won the 2019 Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical and recently completed a national tour throughout the U.S. Oklahoma! enjoyed an acclaimed run in London at the Young Vic Theatre in 2022 and opened on London’s West End at Wyndham’s Theatre in 2023.
In 2016, he was invited to return to Bard to create the evening-length work Fantasque in collaboration with renowned puppeteer Amy Trompetter. Fantasque had its New York City premiere at the Skirball Center for the Performing Arts in 2018. In 2016, he was commissioned to create First for Juilliard Dance: New Dances. In 2014, he created his first ballet, Angels’ Share, for Atlanta Ballet’s Wabi Sabi Project. In 2013, he choreographed Isaac Mizrahi’s Peter & the Wolf for Works & Process at The Guggenheim, which has become an annual holiday event. His work has been featured in the music videos of Fischerspooner and NICKCASEY, and in the live performances of cabaret artists Lady Rizo and Our Lady J.
John’s growing list of opera commissions include La Traviata at San Francisco Opera (2022); John Adams’ Girls of the Golden West, directed by Peter Sellars, at San Francisco Opera (2017) and Dutch National Opera (2019); Candide with the Orlando Philharmonic (2016) and The Knights (2018, 2019); The Magic Flute at the Opera Theatre of St. Louis, directed by Isaac Mizrahi (2014); Handel’s Alceste with the American Classical Orchestra (2014); Macbeth with the Manhattan School of Music Opera Studies Department (2014); and Maria de Buenos Aires at the Cork Opera House (2013).
As a teacher, he offers dance master classes in the United States and abroad. He has taught at institutions including Princeton University, Barnard College, George Mason University, Laban Centre in London, School of Visual Arts, University of California, Berkeley, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the University of Washington. He was invited to give the keynote address to the Utah Dance Educator’s Conference in November 2016. He is the director of the Dartmouth Dance Ensemble, and is a founding teacher of Dance for PD®, an ongoing collaboration between the Mark Morris Dance Group and the Brooklyn Parkinson Group.
Act I Violetta throws a party attended by her “patron” Baron Douphol and by her friends, including Flora, a fellow courtesan, and Gastone, a young aristocrat. Gastone introduces Violetta to his friend Alfredo Germont, one of Violetta’s greatest admirers. Gastone invites Alfredo to offer a drinking song, and Alfredo sings the praises of wine and the love it inspires. Violetta joins him, urging everyone to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of love and life. As the guests move into the ballroom, Violetta has an attack of faintness, an unwelcome reminder of her quickly declining health. Alfredo urges her to abandon her exhausting way of life. He tells her that he has loved her since the moment he first saw her. Violetta tactfully suggests that she is not the kind of woman he should fall deeply in love with; nonetheless, she invites Alfredo to visit her again. When her guests have left, Violetta muses over his declarations of love. Disturbed to discover that her own emotions have been deeply stirred, she resolves to forget Alfredo and devote herself to the shallow pleasures of the courtesan’s world.
Act II Alfredo has been living for three months with Violetta in her country house. He is ashamed to discover that she has been secretly selling her possessions to meet their expenses.
Violetta receives an invitation from Flora to a party in Paris, a reminder of the life Violetta has left behind for Alfredo. An unexpected visitor arrives: Giorgio Germont, Alfredo’s father. Germont asks her for a great sacrifice: his daughter’s marriage prospects have been threatened by Alfredo’s scandalous association with Violetta. Germont convinces her that leaving Alfredo would be the most generous, selfless thing she could do for him. Violetta knows that because she is mortally ill, any future happiness is unlikely without Alfredo. She writes two letters: the first is an acceptance of Flora’s invitation; the second is addressed to Alfredo.
When Alfredo returns, Violetta attempts to disguise her agitation. Desperately assuring him of her love, she leaves for Paris. Alone, Alfredo reads Violetta’s letter, which informs him that she is returning to Baron Douphol. Germont returns to console his son, but Alfredo sees Flora’s invitation and, unaware of Violetta’s sacrifice, vows revenge for her apparent faithlessness.
That evening, Flora’s guests are entertained by masqueraders dressed as gypsies and matadors. Alfredo arrives, alone; Violetta enters shortly afterward with Baron Douphol. Alfredo goes to the card table, where he is soon joined by the Baron, but Alfredo’s good luck at gambling is unmatched. When the guests sit down to supper, Violetta privately begs Alfredo to leave. Furious, he insults her in front of everyone, throwing his winnings at her as “payment” for their time together. The elder Germont comes in, joining the assembled crowd in expressing their outrage.
Act III Violetta is near death, alone and impoverished. She reads a letter from Giorgio Germont: Alfredo had fled abroad after wounding Baron Douphol in a duel, but now that he knows the true circumstances of Violetta’s sacrifice, he is on his way back to her. When he returns, the lovers are reunited with tender words. Giorgio Germont also arrives, filled with remorse, but there is nothing to be done. Violetta feels a sudden rush of exhilaration as her pain disappears, and she dies.
Production new to Los Angeles
Sung in Italian with English subtitles
Running time: approximately two hours and 55 minutes, including two intermissions
