Home > News > Lorca, Child of the Moon, a World Premiere, Presented by Opera UCLA March 17-20

Lorca, Child of the Moon, a World Premiere, Presented by Opera UCLA March 17-20

“Lorca, Child of the Moon,” a world premiere full-length opera with music by composer Ian Krouse and libretto by Margarita Galban, will be performed at UCLA’s Freud Playhouse at 7:30 p.m. on March 17–19 and at 3 p.m. on March 20. Reserved seating is $20, and $10 for students and seniors. Tickets are available from the UCLA Central Ticket Office at (310) 825 2101. Parking is $7 and is available in Lot 3. Enter the campus at Hilgard Avenue and Wyton Drive.

In conjunction with the production of the opera, UCLA Extension is offering a full-day course, “Federico García Lorca: The Man in the ‘Child of the Moon,’” on March 5. The program is offered in cooperation with the department of music and the department of Spanish and Portuguese at UCLA. For further information, call UCLA Extension at (310) 825-2272 or log on to http://www.uclaextension.edu/.

The opera production, presented by the UCLA Department of Music’s Opera UCLA, will be performed with full symphony orchestra augmented by two onstage guitarists. Direction is by Margarita Galban and choreography is by UCLA alumna Mari Sandoval. Alumnus Jonathan Stockhammer takes the helm as conductor, assisted by graduate student Daniel Cummings. The production is made possible in part by the generous support of the Maxwell H. Gluck Foundation.

Composer Krouse is chair of the department of music at UCLA. His works have been performed and recorded by orchestras throughout the world. He has been given numerous grants and awards — by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Ford and Rockefeller foundations, among others.

Galban, artistic director of the Bilingual Foundation of the Arts in Los Angeles, has staged more than 180 plays. King Juan Carlos of Spain bestowed upon her the Cross of Isabel La Católica for her work as promoter and developer of Hispanic art and literature in the United States.

“Lorca” is a featured event of UCLA Year of the Arts. The new UCLArts Web site has a link to other UCLA Year of the Arts featured events and there is a general information line, (310) 825-8000. Log on to http://www.arts.ucla.edu/.

The compelling story of the opera — a compilation of Federico García Lorca’s “The Shoemaker’s Wife,” “El Romancero Gitano,” “Yerma” and “Blood Wedding” — traces the passions and the work of the famed Spanish poet and playwright as he steps into and out of the action of his own hauntingly beautiful fictional works. With Death, Fate, and the Moon as his constant companions and accompanied by driving rhythms and haunting music inspired by gypsy flamenco as well as the musical styles of his contemporaries, Lorca experiences for himself the humor, tragedy and raw passion conjured up from his surreal inner world, where the Moon is both muse and redemption, while Death is a constant reminder of our ultimate fate.

The opera has a common tragic theme as it focuses on the women in Lorca’s works, each of whom in her own way — despite or as a result of a strong personality and character — was a victim of the oppressive society and culture of her time.

Soprano Juliana Gondek, chair of the division of voice and opera studies in the music department, will be featured in the role of one of Lorca’s greatest creations — the mother from “Blood Wedding.” All but one of the other singers are vocal students in the department of music and are members of UCLA Opera Studio directed by Rakefet Hak. The cast includes Aren der Hacopian and Evan Hughes (Lorca), Rachel Evans (Fate), Kyung Chy (Yerma), Khori Dastoor (the Bride), Jesús León and Kalil Wilson (Leonardo and First Man), Karin Mushegain (Gypsy No. 1), Karen Vuong (Shoemaker’s Wife and Washerwoman No. 3), Ralph Cato and David Williams (Shoemaker, Second Man and Bridegroom), Clarissa Lecce (Leonardo’s Wife, Gypsy No. 2 and Washerwoman No. 1), Rose Beattie (Washerwoman No. 2), Lisa Hendrickson (Neighbor Woman) and Stephanie Reid (Washerwoman No. 5 and Bridesmaid).

Three of the cast members — Khori Dastoor, David Williams and Kalil Wilson — competed in the Western Regional Finals of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions last November, and Wilson was awarded second prize. Wilson, Williams, Karen Vuong and Evan Hughes won the top four prizes respectively at the Palm Springs Opera Guild of the Desert Competition last fall.

Flamenco dance will be performed by Mari Sandoval, the choreographer, and Blanca Aurora Montes, Oscar N. Reyna, Irit Specktor and Nicole Tafralian — all professional dancers.

Background
Dating back to his days as a doctoral student at the University of Southern California, composer Krouse began working on “Lorca, Child of the Moon” with three powerhouse Latinas who made up the Bilingual Foundation of the Arts. The foundation was founded in 1973 and incorporated in 1975 by Margarita Galban, Cuban-born actress and director recognized throughout the Americas; Argentinean-born Estela Scarlata, playwright and award winning set designer; and Carmen Zapata, Mexican American film, television and stage actress.


With extensive backgrounds in theater and television, these exceptional women formed the Bilingual Foundation of the Arts to promote and encourage Latino theater, producing all their own productions in Spanish and English. They began as an Equity-waiver theater in downtown Los Angeles, operating from various locations around Los Angeles until 1980, when the organization moved to its present home at the former Lincoln Heights jail, with a theater space that used to be the courtroom. Acknowledged as a major cultural institution in Southern California, the foundation has a total annual audience of 60,000. Artistically, it is recognized for its quality productions of classic Hispanic literature by such playwrights as Lorca, Lope de Vega, Fernando de Rojas and Pedro Calderón de la Barca.

Krouse met Zapata as a doctoral student when a call came into the music school at the University of Southern California for someone interested in setting some of Lorca’s poetry to music suitable for the theatrical stage. Krouse, at that time a noted guitarist as well as composer, collaborated on two initial projects, composing scores for Lorca’s play “Yerma” as well as “Blood Wedding,” both of which won numerous awards. On the basis of these promising early successes, the National Endowment for the Arts awarded three grants to the foundation, beginning in 1984, which provided funds for developing “Lorca, Child of the Moon” and for producing two workshops of the opera. From the outset, Los Angeles’ own Suzanna Guzman, for whose voice much of the most compelling music was fashioned, was a major force behind the evolution of the musical score. She attracted a lot of interesting “triple threat” talent that kept the project moving forward. Now in its most mature and beguiling evolution, Opera UCLA’s presentation is the first fully realized production of the work.

The department of music
Currently marking its 85th year, the music department prepares students for professional careers as performers and composers with degree programs that fully integrate academic and artistic excellence. Studies emanate from both the American and European music traditions with a strong focus on the international character of late 20th-century composers and performers.

The department has a long and rich tradition of opera. In recent years, Opera UCLA has mounted fully staged productions of works by Britten, Mozart, Ravel, Rossini, Stravinsky and Verdi, among others. Within the past year, UCLA voice students have been featured in solo performance at such prestigious venues as Los Angeles Opera, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the music festivals at Aspen, Ojai and Tanglewood.

Representative alumni include Brian Asawa, countertenor; Peter L. Atherton, singer and music educator; Gary Bachlund, opera singer; Tom Bopp, pianist and keyboard player; Carol Burnett, actress and comedienne; Johnnie Carl, composer/arranger; Matthew Cody, composer and conductor; Don Davis, film composer (“The Matrix” franchise); Michael Eagan, director and co-founder of Musica Angelica; Janice Foy, cellist; Joseph Julian Gonzales, composer; Ara Guzelimian, artistic administrator, Carnegie Hall; Jake Heggie, classical composer (“Dead Man Walking”); James Horner, Academy Award–winning film composer (“Titanic”); Laura Kuhn, director, John Cage Trust; Gregory Maldonado, founder of Los Angeles Baroque Orchestra; Kathleen Moon, harpist and executive secretary of American Harp Society; Randy Newman, singer, songwriter (“I Love L.A.”) and Academy Award–winning film composer (“Monsters, Inc.”); Carlo Ponti Jr., conductor; Lucas Richman, resident conductor of the Pittsburgh
Symphony; Peter Rutenberg, founder and director of the Los Angeles Chamber Singers; Erin Wood Schaefer, opera singer; Russell Steinberg, composer; Gordon Theil, head of UCLA Music Library; Raymond Torres-Santos, composer; and Chris Young, film composer.

UCLArts
Artists, architects, dancers, designers, musicians and scholars come to the School of the Arts and Architecture at UCLA to draw on its unique curriculum, which interweaves work in performance, studio and research studies, providing them with a solid creative, artistic and intellectual foundation as well as a liberal arts education from one of the country’s finest research universities. Our students gain a global view of the arts while integrating contemporary practice and theory in their chosen discipline.

Providing a full range of course offerings and degree programs, the school comprises six degree-granting units — architecture and urban design, art, design | media arts, ethnomusicology, music, and world arts and cultures; two centers — the Center for Intercultural Performance and the Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts; two museums — the Fowler and the Hammer; and a major performing arts program, UCLA Live.

UCLA
As a major research university, UCLA explores a broad range of subjects essential to creating real-world advances in health care, education, science, commerce, the arts and culture, scholarship, and community service. The wealth of cultural treasures and programs — museums and concert halls, theaters and dance studios, galleries and sculpture gardens, libraries and archives — makes UCLA a leading arts and cultural center of the West and the flagship arts campus of the University of California system.

(Note to Editors: Press kits are available upon request. Electronic images are available online and may be downloaded from http://le-duc.arts.ucla.edu/pio/Lorca/.
Spanish-speaking artists are available for interviews.)

Carolyn Campbell, ccampbel@arts.ucla.edu For Immediate Use
(310) 825-6540 Feb. 10, 2005
Kathleen Moon, kmoon@arts.ucla.edu
(310) 825-4760