‘AH!,’ ‘Siegfried’ and Dudamel are among Southland’s fall delights

LOCAL

‘AH!’

Late in life, Wagner contemplated writing an opera on the life of Buddha. Late in life, John Cage contemplated writing a “Noh opera,” applying Zen Buddhist principles. Now the highly versatile composer David Rosenboom and the equally versatile stage director Travis Preston have come up with what they are calling an “opera no-opera” based on the Buddhist Diamond Sutra. Attached through devices of non-attachment will be interactive stories and music from around the world in what promises to be something completely new in music theater by two artists with impressive track records. More new West Coast opera follows a few days later when Steven Schwartz’s “Seance on a Wet Afternoon” premieres at Santa Barbara Opera on Sept. 26 and Evan Zipporyn’s “A House in Bali” opens the same day at UC Berkeley.

REDCAT, Wednesday

--

‘Siegfried’

The third of the four “Ring” operas is no one’s favorite Wagner. This talky, testosteronic, lung-punishing endurance test for the protagonist heldentenor can also be a tribulation for the sitzfleisch. A real woman doesn’t appear until you’ve already been on the premises for more than four hours. Does this scare you off? If so, ye fidgeting operatic faint of heart, “Siegfried” is not for you. But patient listeners with ears of iron, active imaginations and behinds of leather get rewarded with some spectacular music and one of the most ecstatic of all love duets. And there’s a dragon. Besides that, Achim Freyer’s production, we are promised, will be the most elaborate of his “Ring” productions so far, which means five potentially glorious hours in the land of phantasmagoria.

Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Sept. 26

--

Gustavo Dudamel

If you’ve attended a concert conducted by the 28-year-old Venezuelan wonder, then you already know why this city is in a tizzy about his debut as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic this fall. If you have yet to catch Dudamel and have enough curiosity to be reading this, you surely must want to know what all the fuss is about. After Dudamel’s Oct. 8 inaugural gala at Walt Disney Concert Hall (which will have a delayed television broadcast Oct. 21 on PBS and a Nov. 23 DVD release), he has 19 regular subscription concerts this fall. Many have already sold out, but don’t forget that the chorus bench seats behind the orchestra go on sale for $17 two weeks before most concerts. Only the TV cameras and the musicians get better close-ups of the conductor.

Walt Disney Concert Hall, Oct. 8

--

‘Ancient Paths Modern Voices: A Festival Celebrating Chinese Culture’

The Philharmonic Society of Orange County is bringing to Costa Mesa a good chunk of an extensive China festival that Carnegie Hall is mounting this fall. China old and new, esoteric and pop, will be covered. Two events stand out as best for a quick immersion. On Oct. 27, the eloquent pipa player, Wu Man, noted for extending her traditional lute from intended Chinese folk purposes to the needs of international avant-garde music, hosts a program exploring a variety of Chinese traditions. On Nov. 3, Lang Lang is the host for Chinese and Western chamber music.

Orange County Performing Arts Center, Oct. 11

--

‘West Coast, Left Coast’

Having had a runaway success curating the Minimalist Jukebox festival three seasons ago, John Adams this time takes on his adopted state as the focus of his next Los Angeles Philharmonic festival. The West Coast sound isn’t easy to localize given that it includes the beat of the Beats, Central Avenue jazz, the beginning of world music from Henry Cowell, the beginnings of percussion music from Cowell’s pupil John Cage, as well as the Romantic lushness and noir darkness of the Hollywood greats. Terry Riley has something new for the Kronos Quartet to open the festival. Adams’ “City Noir,” which will have its premiere at Dudamel’s gala, will be given a reprise, this time at popular prices. Not to be missed will be the out-there Italian pianist Marino Formenti taking on Lou Harrison’s irresistible Piano Concerto.

Walt Disney Concert Hall, Nov. 21

OUT OF TOWN

‘sacrum+profanum sensations’

Warsaw has lately gained the reputation for being a new arts center, but gorgeous Krakow has hardly lost its luster as Poland’s most alluring arts destination. And Krakow’s annual “sacrum+profanum” festival is unlike any new music event anywhere. Among the venues are the production hall of a Soviet realist chemical tinning plant that is said to be a great environment for electronic music, as electronica star Aphix Twin hopes on Saturday to prove when it ends this year’s weeklong event.

Various locations, Krakow, Poland, begins today

--

Alan Gilbert

This season, 42-year-old Alan Gilbert becomes the first New York-born music director of the New York Philharmonic. The New York press has been screaming that the nation’s oldest orchestra must catch up with the times, and that is precisely Gilbert’s goal. But he’s got his work cut out for him. The players happened to be quite happy under the veteran Lorin Maazel. The conservative audiences were content with the flashy and great playing under Maazel. Gilbert, a highly capable but charismatically challenged conductor, puts out the challenge from the get-go: He opens his gala Wednesday with a new work by the Modernist Finnish composer Magnus Lindberg, whom he has appointed the New York Philharmonic’s composer in residence. He even has Renee Fleming to sing Messiaen instead of Massenet, although he ends with a crowd-pleaser (Berlioz’s “Symphonie fantastique”). The program can be seen on PBS.

Avery Fisher Hall, New York, Wednesday

--

‘Le Grand Macabre’

Gyorgy Ligeti’s apocalyptic farce, which premiered in 1977 and was revised two decades later, begins with a fanfare for car horns and gets only weirder and creepier as it continues with its dazzling Hieronymus Bosch vision. English National Opera will mount it in a production by the equally weird and creepy Catalan collective La Fura dels Baus. These makers of “total theater” are known both for a kind of primordial acrobatics and bizarre futurist technology in which cyberman meets ape. Good luck trying to figure out what they’re up to. And good luck trying to take your eyes off of what they come up with or getting the imagery unstuck from your memory.

English National Opera, Thursday

--

‘Otello’

Dallas Opera daringly has invited the British sometimes-bad boy and politically controversial director Tim Albery to stage Verdi’s “Otello” to open the company’s new home -- the Margo and Bill Winspear Opera House, designed by another Brit, Norman Foster. Albery’s recent Scottish Opera production of Wagner’s “Ring” was updated to Tony Blair’s England and interpreted as a scathing political commentary. Two questions loom: What does Albery have in store for politically conservative Texas society, which will undoubtedly show up in full, bejeweled glory? And does Clifton Forbis, who struggled through the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s “Tristan Project” four years ago, have the vocal stamina for Verdi’s most dramatic tenor role?

Dallas Opera, Oct. 23

--

‘From the House of the Dead’

Lindberg is Esa-Pekka Salonen’s close friend, and Salonen will have plenty of time to visit him in New York, since he makes his Metropolitan debut this fall conducting Janacek’s last opera, based upon Dostoevsky’s prison novel. The production by the celebrated French director and filmmaker Patrice Chereau was created for the Vienna Festival and Festival in Aix-en-Provence, France, two years ago. This dark opera is Janacek’s most profound work, and Chereau’s production, which can been seen on video with Pierre Boulez conducting, is intense, probing theater. And while in Manhattan, you can hop across the East River for Philip Glass’ new opera, “Kepler,” which will have its U.S. premiere in a concert performance at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on Nov. 18.

Metropolitan Opera, New York, Nov. 12

--

mark.swed@latimes.com