In the Wings

BLO welcomed dozens of students to the Final Dress Rehearsal of SCHOENBERG IN HOLLYWOOD, the World Premiere composed by Tod Machover. A unique fusion of opera, theater, film, and electronics, this opera illuminates the iconic 20th-century composer Arnold Schoenberg at a crossroads in his life. Here's what our student audience had to say.

The title of Tod Machover’s new opera, Schoenberg in Hollywood, will likely be reframed as a question by many audience members, e.g. “Schoenberg in Hollywood?” What could the inventor of the musical revolutions of atonality and twelve-tone music possibly have to do with Hollywood?

Tod Machover, the composer behind Schoenberg in Hollywood, wrote this fascinating and insightful note for the program book of the opera's World Premiere production with Boston Lyric Opera. Read on to learn more about Machover's inspiration, process, and the personal meaning behind this new work.

Karole Armitage, stage director of Schoenberg in Hollywood, has spent her entire career re-inventing herself ... “I never sought to have a ‘career,’” she says. “Instead I always follow my curiosity and I’ve always been willing to try something no one else was doing.”

Schoenberg seriously considered a career as a painter. This aspect of a protean talent (he was also a renowned teacher, critic, and an important writer on music theory) opens new and revelatory insights into the complexities of this iconic creator.

Schoenberg juggled multiple national and religious identities during his long creative life: Austrian, German, Jewish, Protestant, American. Through all these dizzying dislocations and re-identifications, however, Schoenberg retained his single most important identity: as a composer.

Around 400 high school and college students across greater Boston attended BLO’s Final Dress Rehearsal of The Barber of Seville. For many, it was their first experience with opera. Many of the students were surprised and delighted that it was laugh-out-loud funny!

Get to know the World Premiere opera, SCHOENBERG IN HOLLYWOOD by composer Tod Machover.

In January, 1816, Rossini was up against a wall, and the person who put him there was himself. At the end of 1815, the composer was in Rome and the director of Rome’s Teatro Argentina asked him on short notice to compose a new opera for February: the opera that would become The Barber of Seville.

“Rosina is an old friend, but she never gets boring,” says mezzo-soprano Daniela Mack. “To sing the same part all the time would get boring if nothing ever changed, but each new production, each new director, each new concept makes everything different.”