Pacific Opera Project
Tickets Now on Sale for Pacific Opera Project’s Live, Drive-In Production of Covid fan tutte
Featuring a New English Libretto Set at a SoCal Golf Resort and Three Real-Life Opera Singer Couples Who Will Quarantine Together
Camarillo, CA (October 14, 2020) — Tickets are now on sale for Pacific Opera Project’s (POP) revolutionary new drive-in production of Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte, COVID fan tutte on Saturday, November 14; Sunday, November 15; and Sunday, November 22 at 5:30pm at Camarillo United Methodist Church.
The new production is set in 2020 at a SoCal golf resort with a new English libretto by Artistic Director Josh Shaw. The updated plot follows two girls who are spending their quarantine at a SoCal golf resort and the local caddies have won their hearts. Don Alfonso, a rich, meddling member of the resort, is looking for some fun and instigates a bet with the boys to see if their girls are truly faithful. Despina, a waitress from the clubhouse is there to assist Don Alfonso in the charade. The boys are furloughed rather than sent off to war and return in disguise to tempt their girlfriends. Personal protective equipment, facemasks, and social distancing will play a large part in the update, perhaps finally making the disguises and plot of Cosi fan tutte (almost) believable.
To ensure maximum safety and compliance, the cast features three outstanding real-life couples – Jamie Chamberlin and Nathan Granner (Fiordiligi/Ferrando), Christina Pezzarossi and Colin Ramsey (Dorabella/Guglielmo), and Ariel Pisturino and E. Scott Levin (Despina and Don Alfonso) – who will quarantine together before the performances. Kyle Naig will conduct a socially distant orchestra from the harpsichord.
The drive-in format allows 90 vehicles per performance, with the number of people in each car limited only to the number of seat belts. The show is approximately two hours long and will be presented within COVID guidelines with live video projected above the stage with supertitles and sound broadcast into the cars via FM radio. POP has temporarily relocated to Ventura County for performances, until LA County restrictions allow live performance. The venue is a short one hour drive from most points in Los Angeles and weekend shows have been scheduled just after sundown so attendees may travel up during the daylight and return home by 9:00pm.
POP Founder Artistic Director Josh Shaw says, “We saw an opportunity to do live performance, to give our artists work, to give our fans a show, and to prove that, as always, POP will do whatever it takes to make accessible, affordable, and entertaining opera. People say they want opera that is relevant – that it can and should speak to current events. Here we are in the midst of the most life changing event any of us have ever experienced. Should we act like it isn’t happening? I don’t think so. Should we wait five or ten years until the pandemic is more of a memory and we have some ‘distance’? Why? There was a time when opera was regularly written about current events. Granting organizations and patrons consistently state that they want opera that is about our time, our situations. Well, here’s a chance to make some opera about what is happening right now. Yes, it might be extra painful, but I think it will also be extra uplifting, extra humorous, extra cathartic – and I know for myself and many others on both sides of the curtain, it is extra needed right now.”
Future productions include a double bill featuring the US premiere stagings of two rare, one-act Gluck operas, the aptly named La Corona and Il Parnaso Confuso, on Friday, November 20 at 7:00pm and Saturday, November 21 at 5:30pm and the final iteration of La Boheme: AKA “The Hipsters” 2020 Edition on Thursday, December 10 at 7:00pm; Saturday, December 12 at 5:30pm; and Sunday, December 13 at 5:30pm.
Performance Information
COVID fan tutte
Camarillo United Methodist Church | 291 Anacapa Dr. | Camarillo, CA
Saturday, November 14, 2020 at 5:30pm
Sunday, November 15, 2020 at 5:30pm
Sunday, November 22, 2020 at 5:30pm
Tickets: $60 – $175 per car. Number of people in each car is limited to the number of seat belts.
More Information: www.pacificoperaproject.com/covidfantutte
Music by W. A. Mozart
Original libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte
English adaptation by Josh Shaw
Runtime: 2 hours and 10 minutes
Presented with orchestra, in English, with projected supertitles
Director/Designer: Josh Shaw
Conductor/Arranger: Kyle Naig
Costumer: Maggie Green
Assistant Director: Carson Gilmore
Stage Manager: Kourtni Dale-Noll
All tickets and programs will be virtual, for a contactless experience. There will be no intermission, but restrooms will be available. All state and county COVID guidelines will be strictly followed and enforced. Masks are required outside of cars. Concessions will not be offered, but picnicking in your car is encouraged.
About Pacific Opera Project
Founded in 2011 by Artistic Director Josh Shaw and Music Director Stephen Karr, Los Angeles’s Pacific Opera Project (POP) is dedicated to providing quality opera that is innovative, affordable, and entertaining in order to build a broader audience for the art form. LA Magazine writes “If you think you hate opera, you’ve probably never seen a Pacific Opera Project show.” POP’s regularly sold out performances take place in a wide variety of venues, from outdoors, to small clubs, big amphitheatres, and warehouses. LA Weekly named POP the “Best Opera Company in Los Angeles” in 2018, writing “making opera cool, affordable, accessible and enticing to young audiences is easier said than done. It’s also something every opera company in the country is trying desperately to do… [Pacific Opera Project] is not trying desperately to be hip. It just is.” In 2020, POP was awarded The American Prize in Opera Performance.
POP has presented more than 30 innovative new productions to date, including its critically acclaimed version of Mozart’s Abduction from the Seraglio set as an episode of Star Trek; a “fan-tastic” (LA Daily News) Harajuku-themed Mikado; a Dick Tracy Don Giovanni; a Magic Flute inspired by 1990s video games, called “one of the freshest takes on Mozart’s 1791 classic I have come across” (Operawire); and many more. POP’s signature take on Puccini’s La bohème, “AKA The Hipsters,” set in modern day Los Angeles, has become a holiday tradition, returning year after year to sold-out audiences and called “riotous” (LA Weekly) and “an undeniably fun night at the theater that should not be missed” (Stage Raw). POP gave the world premiere of Brooke deRosa’s The Monkey’s Paw in 2017.
In 2019, POP presented its most ambitious project to date: the first ever true-to-story bilingual Madama Butterfly performed in LA’s Little Tokyo. A co-production with Houston’s Opera in the Heights, the production featured a new libretto written by POP Artistic Director Josh Shaw and Opera in the Heights Artistic Director Eiki Isomura, presenting Puccini’s story as if it actually happened and attempting to answer the question: “How would Butterfly and Pinkerton communicate?” All Japanese roles were sung in Japanese by Japanese-American artists and all American roles were sung in English. San Francisco Classical Voice described the production as “on a visual scale beyond anything it has taken on before – a sumptuously costumed, fully staged, bilingual co-production… Pacific Opera Project deserves a great deal of credit for making this concept into a reality… innovative, creative, and immensely successful.”
POP presented the 2018 west coast premiere of Giacomo Rossini’s rarely performed 1816 opera, La gazzetta “The Newspaper.” The first performances in the US were given in Boston at the New England Conservatory in 2013, and POP’s production was only the second in North America. Opera Today raved about the premiere, writing “Director Josh Shaw has invested the proceedings with enough good comic ideas for at least three productions. Shaw has set the show in 1960’s Paris, with eye-popping set elements and brilliant uses of color which add to the manic feel…Mr. Shaw has fashioned a take-no-prisoners approach to the staging, which was rife with clever touches… Pacific Opera Project has evidently hit on a winning formula for a night out, serving up food, drink and an operatic discovery in equal measure.”
POP has been dedicated to reaching young audiences with performance and education since its inception, regularly performing for school-aged groups in family-friendly productions of The Mikado, The Barber of Seville, Sweeney Todd, Cosi fan tutte, Gianni Schicchi, L’enfant et les sortilèges, and La bohème. POP has ongoing internships with Occidental College and collaborates with their Glee Club every other year, as well as internships with The Waverly School and Orange County School of the Arts. POP also partners with the Burbank Boys and Girls Club. During the COVID-19 pandemic, POP created interactive Education Packs appropriate for kindergarten to eighth grade students to accompany videos of POP’s productions of The Magic Flute and Madama Butterfly. Learn more at www.pacificoperaproject.com.
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