Director

Passion and politics collide in this star-studded production of Mozart’s rarely performed work. Against the backdrop of a raging war, the King of Pontus must put his family’s loyalty to the test. With a bristling score written by Mozart at the age of 14, Mitridate explores the tension of family ties amidst jealousy, aging, betrayal, and desire.

EPSG:4326

Mitridate, re di Ponto

Emerson Cutler Majestic Theatre

Kate Soper’s seminal “philosophy-opera” (New Yorker) with original choreography by the Martha Graham Dance Company

Ipsa Dixit New Production

Art Theatre of Long Beach

A rare opportunity to get a behind-the-scenes look at the creation process with 2023/24 Composer-In-Residence Shelley Washington

The Passion of Nell

Get ready to embark on a musical journey that combines George Frideric Handel's brilliance with Tiffany Townsend's "powerhouse vocal presence," leaving you eager for the full production in the seasons to come.

Alcina Preview

A celebratory dinner party featuring a performance by powerhouse vocalist Measha Brueggergosman-Lee and directed and hosted by James Darrah.

Gala 1979

L'Opera Italian Restaurant

Experience a cabaret set circa 1979, Laurel Canyon. This unique vocal journey features music from the legendary singer-songwriters of that iconic era.

Cabaret: 1979

Music Academy of the West

For its second annual LB Opera & Film Festival, LBO presents two full days of events that explore the intersection of film and opera with new live stagings and a robust and unexpected slate of filmic programming centered around historical art song and poetry. Anchoring the expanded festival is a new production and staging of Schubert’s 1823 song cycle Die Schöne Müllerin paired with the 2022 short film Christopher at Sea, which recently premiered at the prestigious Venice International Film Festival. Both are conceived by acclaimed British director, animator, and film festival darling Tom C. J. Brown. The new staging of the song cycle will be performed live in a new production co-directed by Brown and Raviv Ullman. In order to make Christopher at Sea, Brown lived in his film’s setting: on a large cargo vessel at sea and used historic recordings of Schubert’s song cycle as constant inspiration for the queer-focused intimate story, the score and the mood of his animated short. The LB Opera & Film Festival will present an original staged new production of the Schubert cycle followed by a screening of the film, uniquely linking these two works of art in two different mediums crafted 200 years apart.
The festival will also feature the world premiere of THE RECITAL, a new film inspired by Luciano Berio’s wild 1972 work Recital I (for Cathy) with an original screenplay and new score crafted using pieces from the wide-ranging career of powerhouse singer Measha Brueggergosman-Lee. Written and directed by James Darrah, who the Wall Street Journal praised for his operatic film work that is “experimenting and forging a new art form” and premiering a new score composed by Christopher Rountree, THE RECITAL continues Darrah’s commitment to the exploration of operatic cinema at LBO and brings the singular talents of Brueggergosman-Lee to Long Beach in a unique filmic medium.
Additional programming for the full festival will be announced at a later date.

The Recital

The Art Theatre

The singular compositional voice of Kate Soper returns to LBO after Voices from the Killing Jar (2021) in a thrilling new world premiere production that blends an oft-neglected sense of comedy in opera with a genre-smashing adventure story of fantastical proportions. Soper herself sets the piece’s namesake 13th-century poem as a boundary-breaking, evening-length work that defies all categorization. In a thrilling opus that examines one Dreamer’s quest for a literal rose, The God of Love, Shame, Lady Reason and their cadre of followers lull the audience into a dreamlike world that deftly highlights the profound juxtaposition of beauty and absurdity in our own human folly.
Pulitzer Prize finalist Soper fills her newest opera with music that defies tradition and will envelop the theater in new ways with a blend of modernistic shrieks and wails, madrigalistic finery, auto-tuned didacticism, and lush Romanticism. The world premiere production, directed by James Darrah, will inhabit multiple spaces within the historic art deco Warner Grand Theater. Darrah, who is known for creating successful world premiere productions for composers including Ellen Reid, Missy Mazzoli, and John Corigliano, will be joined by conductor and LBO Music Director Christopher Rountree in guiding the orchestra outside of the normal pit and onstage into the show itself. THE ROMANCE OF THE ROSE freely beguiles, charms, and terrifies with no moral allegiances or moral compass and promises to lead audiences thrillingly astray.

The Romance of the Rose

Warner Grand Theatre

The originally devised cabaret of thrilling music+theater that transports audiences to 1922 in an original story inspired by the politically charged Weimar German Republic and Berlin cabaret culture. The production uses the hall’s new 2022 upgrades of enhanced video and lighting technology, generously funded by the Hind Foundation.

Lehrer Vocal Institute Series: Hahn Hall 1922-2022 An Original Cabaret

Granada Theatre

This new company program celebrates the artists that make LBO unique—giving audiences a close look at artists’ own mediums and personal creative practices in an intimate gallery setting, putting the artists’ work fully ON DISPLAY.
The Long Beach Museum of Art Downtown will be transformed into a two-day exhibition and immersive happening that allows audiences to parse the performances and pieces at will. Artistic Director, James Darrah, has curated current and past LBO artists and invited each to craft performances and unique visual art of their own design. The four artists performing throughout the event have been asked to devise and present a personal piece, show works in progress, and provide insight into their own unique process of creation. Many of the artists performing have worked with LBO in previous projects and this event highlights a side that many LBO patrons don't often see. The two days will vary in content—both will feature a merger of dancers, instrumentalists, and vocalists in shockingly close proximity—ON DISPLAY is an artist-forward expansion of the definition of opera through the creation of new cross-discipline pieces of artists’ own mediums and unique practices.

LBO On Display

LBMA Downtown

Directed by LBO’s Artistic Director and visionary James Darrah, George Frideric Handel’s glorious music and surprisingly relevant drama re-emerges as a site specific, cinematically driven, wildy raucous contemporary party. A story of ill-fated romance, long lost familial relationships and conquerors and their captors, LBO’s GIUSTINO will elevate the ambiguities of gender already present in baroque opera and examine how stereotypes can be shattered even in the most traditional stories. Darrah’s breakthrough stylistic hybrid of cinema-theater recontextualizes the salon-like qualities of Handel’s 18th century work to a transitory, temporal space, further challenging the current norms of 21st century classical music consumption.

The libretto and score will be taken apart and reassembled by Darrah, conductor Christopher Rountree, and exciting young composer Shelley Washington, and will be performed with both authentic baroque specialists as well as contemporary musical and dramatic updates. The action of the scenes will move amongst the audience and to different parts of the location, and will be live-filmed to create a movie within an opera playing at all times. And just as spectators did during the time of Handel, the audience will be encouraged to truly revel in the decadence and transcendence of Handel’s glorious music without the trappings of traditional, staid classical music performances.

Giustino

Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA)

The heart is an especially popular symbol as the physical locus of human feelings, longings, and pain. A man would like to live without the painful feelings in his heart; his lover wants to unite with his heart, while transcendental powers would also like to win it over. The composer Matthias Pintscher invents overwhelming and gripping sounds for the mysterious and strange events that take place in his opera Das kalte Herz (The Cold Heart).

Director

James Darrah

Events

Upcoming events

11 - 23 Jan, 2026

Das kalte Herz · Staatsoper Berlin

Past events

13 - 15 Sep, 2024

Mitridate, re di Ponto · Boston Lyric Opera

1 - 9 Jun, 2024

Ipsa Dixit New Production · Long Beach Opera

About

James Darrah hasn't added a bio