Tag archives: James Darrah
“My favorite thing is having all the fellows show up to a rehearsal and not know what’s going to happen,” Artistic and Creative Director James Darrah told me this summer in an interview during the leadup for Hahn Hall 1922-2022: An Original Cabaret. He continued, “It also helps highlight where you can push and everyone […]
Concern for safety protocols with the ever-changing pandemic caused the Music Academy of the West to commit to converting its annual Opera Scenes production into an audience-free, socially distanced cinematic opus this summer. But for James Darrah, the creative director of Music Academy of the West’s Vocal Institute, Mirrorflores — a clever play on words […]
For its 2019 opera presentation, Music Academy of the West is providing the vocal and instrumental fellows the chance to take on a very modern work that has only had a handful of previous productions. Cold Mountain – the 2014 saga from the prolific composer Jennifer Higdon – is adapted from Charles Frazier’s epic Civil […]
In just his third season at the Music Academy of the West, Los Angeles-based director and designer James Darrah has already had a dramatic effect on the seven-decades-old summer festival – employing his unique collaborative focus and vision at a convergence of opera, classical music, and theater to the already well-respected program at the stunning […]
The endless inventive stage director James Darrah teams with conductor James Conlon for an all-new production of Mozart’s comic opera The Marriage of Figaro, the 220-year old opus on passion and commitment set against class struggles and obstacles. Darrah turned the Music Academy of the West community on its ear in early July with OperaFest, […]
Come Saturday and Monday, opera will be busting out all over the place at Miraflores. Rather than staging OperaFest – nee Opera Scenes – in its entirety in the cozy confines of Hahn Hall, where the Music Academy of the West (MAW) vocal Fellows are normally accompanied only by a single pianist, vignettes will be […]
