Quando / Project "O"

Composer: Christoph Gluck, Giuseppe Verdi
Librettist: Francesco Maria Piave, Raniero di Calzabigi
Company: Long Beach Opera

Synopsis

Some of the most beautiful and famous music from the operatic canon becomes the landscape for this fierce social satire of sex, activism, and the performance of everyday life. Music from Giusseppe Verdi’s operas La Traviata and Don Carlo, and Christoph Willibald Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice are repurposed and refashioned into a 25-minute short film that follows a starry-eyed young couple as their night on the town unravels into a surrealist swirl of decadence, intrigue and, ultimately, vengeful justice.

The short film, a co-production with Heartbeat Opera in New York City and creatively produced by LBO’s own Derrell Acon, will be screened as is, and then followed by a second presentation that features live composer-performers actively disrupting and reconstituting the music from the score for a one-of-a-kind theatrical experience. No two performances will be the same, as the ending will change with each iteration of the live performances, and audiences will be challenged to re-examine their perceptions of art and its role in societal transformation.