It takes a village…a few BTS snaps of just some of the utterly incredible artists and production team that made “The Comet / Poppea” possible. Thank you all.
We had a good spin. ✨☄️♥️
The Comet / Poppea
An opera presented by MOCA and The Industry. Composed by George Lewis, libretto by Douglas Kearney.
Concept & Direction by Yuval Sharon. Starring (among many others!) Nardus Williams, Anthony Roth Costanzo, and the incomparable Davóne Tines.
Charli who? Surely the best thing to have happened this weekend in LA was the world premiere of The Comet/Poppea @industryopera Still circumnavigating around the celestial wonder of George Lewis’ new score with Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione. Double consciousness, a rotating stage and continuo, cosmically dismantling a genre to build a better world.
“I press you, I tie you to me in a knot”
Don’t miss Comet/Poppea by @industryopera and @yuvalsharon_la_detroit Sharon The mix of colliding centuries sounds very good. Elegant Classical baroque Roman Greek fantasy, and a stark dissonant-century of biting, thrilling sonorities. Monteverdi is one of my favorite opera composers because of all that wonderfully clear ‘word painting’. 💚Hearing that clarity fading in and out with a torrent of expressionistic Lewis is rewarding. And you can hear the 2 operas in rotation, one always sounding far away from you. I love this sense of music being far away, I’ve heard it used in dance to great effect. Musical distance like that opens up the perception of space and location.
The action was very tableau in Poppea and the Lewis opera sometimes had a claustrophobic Jordan Peele-ish troubled poise. This worked because the stage is constantly spinning. The speed of the rotating stage, not too fast or slow, was interesting because it created a kind of filmic edit speed that works. The singing is fantastic all around. Bravo! And that glorious duet we’re always waiting for at the end of Poppea ‘Pur ti miro’ is smartly dispersed between the casts. Elegant for sure, but this is also a chillin love duet between classical resolution and devastating tragedy. Just like the masks 🎭 👉Pur ti miro, pur ti godo, pur ti stringo, pur t’annodo. common translation 👉I adore you, I embrace you, I desire you, I enchain you.
Settling in to me. Blessed to do it with friends.
Thank you for this beautiful shoot @erinbaiano for @latimes for ‘The Comet Poppea’ by Monteverdi and George Lewis / @industryopera / @runningamoc
