Planning My Trip Now

The scrappy L.A. Opera is the next place John Doyle will work his magic, in a February production of Brecht and Weill's Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny featuring Audra McDonald and Patti LuPone (not, I don't think, playing the tuba this time). The news takes me back; Mahagonny was one of the first things I wrote about for the Downtown News, in a 1989 production designed by Robert Israel, conducted by Kent Nagano, and directed by Jonathan Miller, who in a pre-show press conference memorably called Brecht "a great bully." (The translation was by Michael Feingold; I found an old NY Times review and even one in Time, which barely covers theatre in New York these days, let alone opera in L.A.) There's a good Variety bit from last June about the new production here; official link here.