Omar Ebrahim (left), Jesse Darden (center) and Sara Womble (right) perform on stage during a production of “Schoenberg in Hollywood” at the Boston Lyric Opera in 2018. The opera, created by composer Tod Machover, will launch its West Coast premiere this week with a four-show run at the UCLA Nimoy Theater through Thursday. (Courtesy of Liza Voll)
A Hollywood story is being told in a new way with an opera’s West Coast premiere.
A production of composer Tod Machover’s piece “Schoenberg in Hollywood” will have a four-show run from today through Thursday at the UCLA Nimoy Theater. Presented by the Lowell Milken Center for Music of American Jewish Experience and the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, the opera tells the story of composer Arnold Schoenberg, who was a professor of music composition at UCLA from 1936 to 1944. Karole Armitage directed the opera’s premiere in Boston in 2018 and returned to direct this adaptation. Machover said several other elements of the project are remaining the same as the production shifts to the city where its events are set.
“Coming to LA, first of all, I’m so thrilled because it’s where the opera takes place, and it’s the story about Schoenberg coming to LA,” Machover said. “There’s so many people in LA who care about the context and care about Schoenberg.”
[Related: Chinese Cultural Dance Club cultivates ‘Flower of Youth’ at spring showcase]
Machover – who is the academic head and Muriel R. Cooper Professor of Music and Media at the MIT Media Lab – said his interest in Schoenberg’s music stems from his childhood, since his parents were avid listeners of classical music. It was the release of Alexander L. Ringer’s book “Arnold Schoenberg: The Composer as Jew” that prompted a greater interest in Schoenberg’s work, in particular the period of the musician’s life after he left Germany and relocated to Los Angeles, Machover said. For more than two decades, Machover held onto the idea of developing an opera about Schoenberg’s life, and he said he was able to pursue the concept after being asked by the Boston Lyric Opera to write an opera.
Schoenberg was not a natural fit for LA upon arriving in the 1930s because of his grumpy temper, Machover said, but he had also been polarizing for his compositions while living in Europe, where his challenging pieces were not warmly received in cities such as Berlin. Machover said “Schoenberg in Hollywood” narrows in on a meeting the composer had with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film executive Irving Thalberg. Despite Thalberg’s interest in bringing Schoenberg on to write the music for the film “The Good Earth,” Machover said Schoenberg’s exorbitant demands for compensation and stubbornness about wanting to control the audio for the entire film resulted in the collaboration’s failure.
“That story was described so well in the Ringer book that I just love this image of the uncompromising artist meeting the genius head of MGM, having this idea of writing a film score proposed and having it not work out,” Machover said. “And why was that? And why is it so hard to combine avant-garde, complex, artistic thinking with reaching a broad public? Because doing both of those is what everybody wants to do, and it’s not so easy. And I thought this was a perfect story to tell that.”
Professor Mark Kligman, the director of the Milken Center, said the idea of bringing “Schoenberg in Hollywood” to UCLA was suggested to him by professor and director of orchestral studies Neal Stulberg about a year ago.
Stulberg said Schoenberg is in UCLA’s DNA, with the music building bearing his name as one example. For UCLA’s production, Kligman said he oversaw the staff at the Milken Center through logistical organization for the event, such as negotiating contracts with the lead performers. He added that he also oversees the educational and curricular components offered in tandem with the opera, which range from teaching a Fiat Lux course with professor Joy Calico to coordinating informative programs last week to precede the opera.
“What we want is to educate people about Schoenberg and really look at the interesting contradictions and aspects of his life,” Kligman said. “And certainly the opera raises those questions, so we’re trying to have the scholarship and the performance to have some sort of conversation.”
[Related: United Khmer Students’ culture night remembers, reflects on Cambodian genocide]
After 11 years at UCLA, Kligman said he has noticed an enthusiastic response from Angelenos to programming related to Schoenberg and European exile, possibly because potential attendees feel a connection to this era. Despite Schoenberg not composing music for Hollywood film soundtracks, Kligman said the composer educated many people. Audiences today have grown more interested in Schoenberg’s story, Kligman added.
Machover said he identifies with Schoenberg’s story and the questions it stirs about the purpose of music and artistic expression. Since childhood, he said it has been important for him to consider the duality of being uncompromising in one’s art while reaching a broader audience. Schoenberg’s music and story reflect that these two goals do not have to be irreconcilable, Machover added.
“I believe deeply in Schoenberg,” Machover said. “I really believe that his story is so powerful, and part of the reason for writing the opera was I did want to make some little contribution in making people feel closer to him and to his music.”