Opera composed by Du Yun and Raven Chacon
with libretto by Aja Couchois and Douglas Kearney
directed by Yuval Sharon and Cannupa Hanksa Luger
The latest piece from LA’s The Industry, Sweet Land brings together composers Raven Chacon and Du Yun, librettists Aja Couchois Duncan and Douglas Kearney, and co-directors Cannupa Hanska Luger and Yuval Sharon. Together, they spin separate but interconnected narratives that re-imagine the founding of America and westward expansion in order to make visible the violence and erasure of American history.
Sweet Land weaves together several narratives simultaneously, opening with the arrival of a settler-colonial civilization—titled the “Arrivals”—in the home of an indigenous civilization, known as the “Hosts.” From here, the audience diverges into two distinct paths: a feast and a train. The feast imagines the first meeting of the "Host" community and "Arrival" community. The train imagines the “Arrivals” embarking on an uncompromising westward expansion, and its violent effect on people, land, and animals. As the story unfolds, the audience is guided through the physical space of the park; as it progresses, past scenes are left behind and erased, emulating the erasure of dissent against dominant historical narratives. As the audience revisits past scenes, they find them replaced with narratives that are whitewashed, heavily biased, and bear little resemblance to the truthful events on which they are based.
Central to the project is the diversity of its voices. Composer Raven Chacon is from the Navajo Nation and advocates for indigenous composers and musicians; he is a recent recipient of the Berlin Prize. Du Yun is a Chinese immigrant whose recent work is rooted in a lack of understanding and empathy around immigration. Her opera Angel’s Bone, which explores human trafficking, won the Pulitzer Prize for music. Librettist Aja Couchois Duncan is a mixed-race Ojibwe writer with a focus on social justice. Douglas Kearney is a poet whose writing, in the words of BOMB magazine, “pulls history apart, recombining it to reveal an alternative less whitewashed by enfranchised power.” Co-director Cannupa Hanksa Luger is a multi-disciplinary installation artist of Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, Lakota, Austrian, and Norwegian descent.
Photos by Casey Kringlen
Opera by Meredith Monk
Inspired by the life of explorer Alexandra David-Néel, Meredith Monk’s three-act “quest opera” uses Monk’s inimitable and hypnotic style to explore the loss and rediscovery of our inherent wonder. More than 20 years since Atlas first made its impact, Yuval Sharon conceived and directed this landmark new production at Monk’s request, the first outside producer of any of Monk’s works.
LA Phil New Music Group
Paolo Bortolameolli, conductor
Es Devlin, designer
Luke Halls, projection designer
Danielle Agami, choreographer
Emma Kingsbury, costume designer
John Torres, lighting designer
June 11, 12, 14 2019
Opera by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
This work, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s most famous opera by far, is also his most enigmatic. Prince Tamino falls in love with Pamina after only having seen a picture of her. But as her mother, the Queen of the Night, reports, Pamina is being held captive by Sarastro. At the queen’s behest, Tamino and his companion Papageno set off to free Pamina from Sarastro’s temple. But as soon as they arrive there, the question of which characters are good and which are evil arises. The only thing that seems clear is that Pamina returns Tamino’s affections, and in the end the two of them are united after difficult trials.
For 25 years, August Everding’s production of Die Zauberflöte has enchanted Staatsoper audiences of all ages. But now the time has come for Mozart’s complex masterpiece to be examined anew. And so American director Yuval Sharon carries away audiences to new worlds of images that are no less imaginative, yet aesthetically quite different from the previous production. At the heart of the production is the idea of a collage, analogous to that of Mozart’s music itself, oscillating constantly between the stylistic levels of singspiel and opera seria. Sharon, together with stage designer Mimi Lien and Belgian fashion designer Walter Van Beirendonck, takes this variety as an occasion to approach Mozart’s opera in a creatively playful and colorful way.
Alondra de la Parra, conductor
Mimi Lien, scenery
Walter Van Beirendonck, costumes
Reinhard Traub, lighting
Kwangchul Youn, Sarastro
Anna Prohaska, Pamina
Florian Teichtmeister, Papageno
Serena Sáenz Molinero, Papagena
February 17, 21, 23, and 28, 2019
March 1, 3, 6, 8, 10, 12, and 16, 2019
November 2018
SONY Studio
Culver City, CA
Opera by John Cage
The L.A.-born master’s 1987 opera – his first – uses fragments of arias and duets from 64 European operas as its source material. Performers sing fragments of between one and sixteen measures, sometimes solo and sometimes simultaneously. They compete for attention with a pre-taped mix of 101 layered fragments from other operas. And the whole thing is dictated by chance – a computer program meant to stimulate the I Ching’s coin oracle. The end effect is a moving portrait not only of operatic history, but of the passage of time itself, and Sharon’s production, a collaboration with The Industry, gives it a further Hollywood twist.
LA Phil New Music Group
The Industry
Yuval Sharon, director
John Lacovelli, scenic designer
Marc Lowenstein, music advisor
Chris Kuhl, lighting designer
Jody Elff, sound designer
Alexander Gedeon, associate director
Singers: Babatunde Akinboboye, Maria Elena Altany, Justine Aronson, Sarah Beaty, Cedric Berry, David Castillo, Ashley Faatoalia, Suzanna Guzman, James Hayden, Sara Hershkowitz, Laurel Irene, Jon Keenan, Joanna Lyn-Jacobs, John Matthew Myers, James Onstad, Colin Ramsey, Renee Rapier, David Williams
September 2018
Bockenheimer Depot
Frankfurt, Germany
Opera by Olga Neuwirth
Libretto by Elfriede Jelinek
The Austrian composer Olga Neuwirth and Elfriede Jelinek based this opera, first performed in 2003, on David Lynch's film, a fascinating combination of psychothriller, horror, and film noir. Throughout the "case study of a person who cannot cope with his fate" (Barry Gifford) runs very ambitious storytelling, which constantly leads to dead ends. Scene changes are feverish, time and space unstable, as are identities and sound worlds. Neuwirth's score is intermedial and full of complex notation: fadeouts are altered sound spaces, lavish live electronics and varied vocal expression are confronted with visual dimensions. The integration of video makes reality more virtual, leaving the protagonists and audience feeling as if they are being left at the mercy of something. The staging confronts the tension between extreme artificiality and hyper-reality.
Karsten Januschke, conductor
Jason H. Thompson, set, video, and lighting designer
Markus Noisternig and Gilbert Nouno, live electronics
Norbert Ommer, video
Doey Lüthi, costume designer
Stephanie Schulze, dramaturg
John Brancy, Pete
Hugo Armstrong, Fred
Elizabeth Reiter, Renee/Alice
David Moss, Mr. Eddy/Dick Laurent
Rupert Enticknap, Mystery Man
Samuel Levine, Andy/Warder/Arnie
Juanita Lascarro, Pete's Mother
Jörg Schäfer, Pete's Father
Nicholas Bruder, Ed/Detective Hank
Ensemble Modern
August 2018
Bayreuth Festival
Bayreuth, Germany
Opera by Richard Wagner
Yuval Sharon was the first American director to mount a production at the Bayreuth Festival, founded by Wagner in 1876. He directed Wagner's own Lohengrin, with stage design and costumes by Neo Rauch and Rosa Loy and lighting by Reinhard Traub.
Christian Thielemann, conductor
Eberhard Friedrich, choral conductor
Georg Zeppenfeld, Heinrich der Vogler
Roberto Alagna, Lohengrin
Anja Harteros, Elsa von Brabant
Tomasz Konieczny, Friedrich von Telramund
Waltraud Meier, Ortrud
Egils Silins, Der Heerrufer des Königs
Michael Gniffke, First Elder
Eric Laporte, Second Elder
Raimund Nolte, Third Elder
Timo Riihonen, Fourth Elder
March 2018
Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles, USA
Music by Andrew Norman
Direction by Yuval Sharon
Music Direction by Teddy Abrams
Los Angeles Philharmonic
Los Angeles Master Chorale
Los Angeles Children's Chorus
Inspired by Georges Méliès’ 1902 film A Trip to the Moon, Grawemeyer-winning composer Andrew Norman’s whimsical opera tells the story of a band of bumbling astronomers as they explore the moon, try to fix their broken rocket, and interact with a mysterious race of moon people who are facing a perilous threat of their own. Yuval Sharon directed the production of the premiere as part of his position as Artist-Collaborator at the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
November 2017
Walt Disney Concert Hall and streets of Los Angeles, USA
Concept, Direction, Text adaptation by Yuval Sharon
Music by Annie Gosfield
Music Direction by Christopher Rountree
Production Design by Calder Greenwood
Presented by the Los Angeles Philharmonic
Co-produced by The Industry and NOW Art
War of the Worlds is a new opera that eliminates the boundary between concert hall and the streets of Los Angeles. Three defunct air raid sirens located in downtown Los Angeles were re-purposed into public speakers to broadcast a live performance at Walt Disney Concert Hall, based on the infamous 1938 radio drama created by Orson Welles. It was performed simultaneously at Walt Disney Concert Hall and broadcast through the sirens onto the streets of Los Angeles, while performers stationed at the sirens sent their live report of the alien invasion back to the concert hall.
June 2017
Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles, USA
Music by Lou Harrison
Libretto by Robert Gordon
New Performance Edition by The Industry
Direction by Yuval Sharon
Music Direction by Marc Lowenstein
Presented by the Los Angeles Philharmonic
The Industry and Sharon created a new production of California maverick Lou Harrison’s sublime and sinuous, percussion-rich depiction of Caesar’s love for another man. The new performance edition fused Harrison’s original gamelan-inspired orchestration with his later, lush orchestral writing. There was also a recording of the live performance.
May 2017
Severance Hall, Cleveland, USA
Music by Claude Debussy
Libretto adapted from the play by Maurice Maeterlinck
Direction by Yuval Sharon
Music Direction by Franz Welser-Möst
Presented by The Cleveland Orchestra
Sharon's production with The Cleveland Orchestra of Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande used a glass enclosure to tell the enigmatic tale of characters who can be seen, yet are trapped and isolated from one another. The glass box filled with fog that at times obscured the actors. Projections and several other technologies gave the impression of a constantly shifting world surrounding the singer-actors.
March 2017
Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles, USA
Direction by Yuval Sharon
Scenic Design by John Iacovelli
Lighting Design by Christopher Kuhl
Costume Design by Judith Dolan
Wig and Hair Design by Carol Doran
Presented by the Los Angeles Philharmonic
This production placed 20th-century writer Samuel Beckett short plays alongside the music of his favorite composer, Franz Schubert. The evening-length performance explored the common ground between these two creators in a theatrical evening structured like a recital presentation. The aim was to unleash the music’s drama and the drama’s music and to explore how the austere theatricality of a single Schubert song can illuminate the sonorous beauty of Beckett’s taut prose.
The 2016-17 season at the Los Angeles Philharmonic
Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles, USA
Concept and Direction by Yuval Sharon
Music and Sound Design by Rand Steiger
Visual Realization by Patrick Shearn
Production Design by Ed Carlson and Danielle Kaufman
Recorded Performances by LA Phil Musicians —
Martin Chalifour, violin
Robert DeMaine, cello
Marion Arthur Kuszyk, oboe
Boris Allakhverdyan, clarinet
Andrew Bain, horn
Thomas Hooten, trumpet
Fallen Rising performed by sopranos Kirsten Ashley Wiest and Ashley Cutright
Activating an overlooked corridor of Frank Gehry’s magnificent concert hall, this visual and sound installation became a sonic “timepiece” for the building, accompanying visitors to the hall on their escalator ride through the building. Live performances activated the installation throughout the Los Angeles Philharmonic's 2016-17 season.
December 2016
Badisches Staatstheater, Karlsruhe, Germany
Opera by Richard Wagner
Direction by Yuval Sharon
Music Direction by Justin Brown
Set Design by Sebastian Hannak
Projection Design by Jason H. Thompson
Costume Design by Sarah Rolke
For the Karlsruhe Ring, four different directors presented diverging points of view on the cycle. For Walküre, Sharon created three worlds: the claustrophobic, linear world of the humans Siegmund and Sieglinde, an interminable corridor of doors leading into illusory realms; an endless moving stairway, where Wotan and the gods appear to continually climb upwards to glory without moving anywhere; and the rough, barren mountaintop where a snowstorm rages, and where Brünnhilde is frozen in an ice coffin to await Siegfried.
March 2016
Wiener Staatsoper, Austria
Opera by Peter Eötvös
Direction by Yuval Sharon
Music Direciton by Peter Eötvös and Jonathan Stockhammer
Set Design by Esther Bialis
Lighting and Video by Jason H. Thompson
Based on Chekhov’s Three Sisters, Peter Eötvös’s acclaimed opera made its Vienna State Opera debut in Sharon's production, under the musical direction of the composer. In an abandoned room, characters and environments are delivered via three constantly running conveyor belts. The non-stop movement created a floating world of dreams, recollections, and endlessly repeating images and actions.
October-November 2015
Los Angeles, USA
Music by Veronika Krausas, Marc Lowenstein, Andrew McIntosh, Andrew Norman, Ellen Reid, David Rosenboom.
Text by Tom Jacobson, Mandy Kahn, Sarah LaBrie, Jane Stephens Rosenthal, Janine Salinas Schoenberg, Erin Young
Concept and Direction by Yuval Sharon
Produced by The Industry
From the LA River to the Bradbury Building, from rooftops to abandoned parking lots, from inside an Airstream to the back of a limousine zooming through the unsuspecting city streets, The Industry’s audacious mobile opera Hopscotch took Los Angeles by storm in Fall 2015. With 24 cars, 126 diverse artists, 6 composers, 6 writers, and 1 unique architectural space where the entire piece was streamed for free, Hopscotch was a once-in-a-lifetime event.
An expansive recording of Hopscotch, now available on The Industry Records, showcases the diverse range of musical and theatrical ideas at the heart of the original production. The accompanying “Music of Hopscotch” concert, performed as part of USC’s Visions & Voices program in Newman Recital Hall January 2017, was a celebration of the contributions of the six composers while putting them in the context of the larger-scale narrative. This concert was preceded by an informative panel discussion of the creation and implementation of Hopscotch as well as reactions to the groundbreaking endeavor.
May 2014 and revived September-October 2017
Severance Hall, Cleveland, USA; and Musikverein, Vienna, Austria
Music by Leos Janáček
Libretto adapted from the comics of Rudolf Těsnohlídek and Stanislav Lolek
Direction by Yuval Sharon
Music Direction by Franz Welser-Möst
Presented by The Cleveland Orchestra
Sharon's made-for-Cleveland production of Leos Janáček's The Cunning Little Vixen, incorporates live singers with digital animation. Characters poke their heads through cutouts in the animated scenery, transforming themselves into cartoon characters. Doors in the set allow masked singers to pop onto the scene as forest animals. The orchestra took the production on tour with them to Vienna in October 2017, where it was the first fully-staged production in the Musikverein's history.
April 2014
Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, USA
Music by Terry Riley
Direction by Yuval Sharon
Music Direction by Marc Lowenstein
Performed with members of the Inspiravi Chorus and Ate9 Dance Company
Choreography by Danielle Agami
In C was a performance installation performed at Hammer Museum in 2014. Sharon presented an exuberant visualization of Terry Riley’s seminal minimalist composition as a four-hour installation for chorus, instrumentalists, and dancers. Using the undulating inflatable figures that adorn car dealerships, the museum’s courtyard was transformed into a wildly kinetic environment for audiences to wander through.
January 2014
Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe, Germany
Revived at the Teatro de Maestranza, Seville, Spain in March 2015
Opera by John Adams
Libretto by Peter Sellars
Direction by Yuval Sharon
Music Direction by Johannes Willig
Stage by Dirk Becker
Costume Design by Sarah Rolke
Animation by Benedikt Dichgans, Philipp Engelhart, Andreas Grindler
Dramaturgy by Bernd Feuchtner
Sharon received the Götz Friedrich Prize for best opera direction for this production of John Adams’s opera about the detonation of the atomic bomb. His staging featured two diverse aesthetics articulating the different acts: a comic book approach to the first act, with video projections and sliding panels offering quick shifts of perspectives and scale; and a larger-than-life blank page of graph paper, dwarfing the individual actors of history into a realm of possible outcomes.
October-November 2013
Union Station, Los Angeles, USA
Music and libretto by Christopher Cerrone
Based on the novel Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
Direction by Yuval Sharon
Produced by The Industry and LA Dance Project
Sound powered by Sennheiser
Invisible Cities, set in LA’s historic Union Station, allowed the audience to roam freely through an operating train station, pursuing individual characters or creating their own story. The audience experienced the live performance via Sennheiser wireless headphones surrounded by the uninterrupted life of the station.
Based on Italo Calvino’s beloved novel, Sharon's production of Christopher Cerrone's Invisible Cities immersed audiences in an unpredictable platform of everyday life, creating an “invisible” production that made each audience member the protagonist of the experience. With performers appearing and disappearing into the everyday fabric of the building, Sharon and choreographer Danielle Agami drew the audience into an uncannily intimate proximity to LA Dance Project and the singing ensemble.
May 2012
Atwater Crossing, Los Angeles, USA
Music by Anne LeBaron
Text by Douglas Kearney
Direction by Yuval Sharon
Produced by The Industry
Crescent City was the first production of The Industry and was instantly hailed as “changing the face of music-theater in this town overnight” (Out West Arts).
The opera tells the story of a mythical town loosely based on New Orleans. In the aftermath of Hurricane Belle, Crescent City is a lawless ghost town: marauding Revelers call the Junk Heap home, while drag queens, drug addicts, and a lone policeman try to survive. A disturbance in the air resurrects the voodoo queen Marie Laveau, who emerges from her tomb to discover that another hurricane threatens to destroy what little is left of Crescent City. Marie Laveau summons the voodoo gods and begs them to save the city. They agree to do so only if one good soul can be found remaining in the town. The opera becomes a travelogue, as the voodoo gods come down to the town to search for the city’s salvation. Anne LeBaron’s electronically-infused music weaves together zydeco, gospel, voodoo drumming, and ancient Korean traditions to create an unforgettably phantasmagoric score. The production was an immersive yet elusive multimedia spectacle, where every vantage point offered a unique perspective.
March 2012
San Francisco Symphony; UMS, Ann Arbor; Carnegie Hall, New York; USA
February 2013
New World Symphony, Miami, USA
Music by John Cage
Direction by Yuval Sharon
Music Direction by Michael Tilson Thomas
Projection Design by Jason H. Thompson
Set Design by Daniel Hubp
Performance by Joan LaBarbara, Meredith Monk, Jessye Norman
First presented by the San Francisco Symphony, Sharon’s staging of the Song Books presented a compendium of Cage’s musical ideas: his mini-dramas of intentional actions, both everyday and surreal; songs inspired by Erik Satie and Marcel Duchamp; and the writings of Henry David Thoreau.
