LA’s freeways are notorious, yet they’re clearly an integral part of our identity. Case in point: The LA Opera has just commissioned The 110 Project, an opera about the interstate that runs from Pasadena to San Pedro. Music was composed by Laura Karpman, and the libretto was written by MG Lord and Shannon Halwes.

The 110 Freeway is part of the inspirational landscape of Los Angeles

Although the 110 is less celebrated than Route 66, and lacks the majesty of the Pacific Coast Highway, it is absolutely worthy of such a dramatic tribute. (It was, after all, the first freeway in the nation.) This opera takes you a trip down the length of the freeway (and through its history), including the development of the space program at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory near Pasadena, downtown in the 1950s, and the present day Port of LA in San Pedro. The music is inspired the familiar sounds of the freeway.

The 110 Project is still a work-in-progress, and is currently being workshopped in special performances (such as two recent ones at the California African American Museum and the Pacific Asia Museum). No word on whether or not the LA Opera will be performing the finished piece.

In other opera news, the Long Beach Opera announced their lineup for the 2010 season, and they will be showing one of my favorites!

Nixon in China, by John Adams. The aria “News Has a Kind of Mystery” was one of the last pieces we listened to in my sophomore year Music Humanities class at Columbia, and I was instantly struck by the unconventionality of the aesthetics and subject of the piece.  It’ll be playing in March at the Terrace Theater (300 E. Ocean Blvd, Long Beach). Below is a clip of this aria from a 1987 production in Houston.

Also planned is the West Coast premier of Robert Kurka’s The Good Soldier Schweik, a military satire based on a novel by Jaroslav Hasek. It will be performed at the Center Theater in Long Beach (300 E. Ocean Boulevard) on January 23, and at the Barnum Hall in Santa Monica (601 Pico Boulevard) on January 30.

Perhaps the most exciting show of the 2010 season will be Orpheus and Euridice by Ricky Ian Gordon. Staged at the Belmont Plaza Olympic Pool (4000 E. Olympic Plaza), the pool itself becomes the River Styx to set the stage for Orpheus’ descent into the underworld, where his music persuades Persephone and Hades to free his dead lover. Here’s a montage of the set from the 2008 performance:

The pool party happens January 11-13.