Archive for May 2013

LA Opera Off Grand stuns with super-retro ‘Dulce Rosa’ at the Broad Stage

Rosa (María Antúnez) and Tadeo Cespedes (Alfredo Daza). Photo by Robert Millard.

Rosa (María Antúnez) and
Tadeo Cespedes (Alfredo Daza). Photo by Robert Millard.

The world premiere of Dulce Rosa, by composer Lee Holdridge and librettist Richard Sparks. From a short story by Isabel Allende.

Currently playing at the Eli & Edythe Broad Stage in Santa Monica.

Superb singing and a fine production make some old ideas sound new

Review by David Gregson, May 30, 2013

I absolutely cannot remember when I last experienced a major contemporary opera as stylistically retrograde as Lee Holdridge’s Dulce Rosa, now playing through June 9 at the Eli & Edythe Broad Stage in Santa Monica. Musically it is difficult to conceive of a more backwards looking work; and as a melodrama, nothing about it is too lurid to have brought a blush to the cheeks of the young Verdi. With various arias and duets and other set pieces, including a rather impressive sextet, Dulce Rosa could safely claim to be a neoclassical work. Despite this, it is so utterly old fashioned as to be radically progressive. For the Los Angeles Opera Off Grand to stage something this palpably un-modern amounts to a revolutionary act: it is simply astoundingly derrière-garde. Read More