THE BLUR: Or HOW TO MARRY A BILLIONAIRE By Peter Wing Healey Comes to The Mesopotamian Opera Company

The Mesopotamian Opera Company will present its new production, The Blur: or How to Marry a Billionaire, with words and music by melodic composer Peter Wing Healey. The opera is scored for piano, violin, viola, harp, and percussion with noted pianists Dr. James Lent and Milos Veljkovic as Musical Directors.

With many beautiful melodies, a virtuosic piano score, hilarious comedy, great singers, and a compelling narrative, this opera is not to be missed. Come see it at The Highland Park Ebell Club, 131 S. Ave 57, Los Angeles, CA 90042. Dates are Friday August 2, Saturday August 3, Wednesday August 7, and Saturday August 10. All performances are at 8PM.

Tickets are $30. Available online or at the door.

Maritza Plunck, a charming Vice President at Banco Popovaire in New York, declares that these days it's the "Buh buh buh of billions, not the muh muh muh of millions that sets wedding bells to ding dong dang." She will only marry a billionaire. When she hires a temp, Tad, for the week, she has no idea she is harboring the fugitive CEO, Lad Tusselhof, who built his company in a Chicago garage to a trillion dollars in just three months. Lad was famous for working so fast that photographs of him always came out as a blur. Nobody knows what he looks like.

His quest to regain his trillion dollars starts with hacking into Maritza's computer and bumping her salary up to 365 million dollars a year - throwing multitudes out of work, destroying countless lives in a matter of seconds. Maritza accepts the money reluctantly, turning a blind eye to its provenance. Will a Drug Cartel Gang, attempted human sacrifice, and a double shotgun wedding at an ancient Maya temple deep in the jungle lead to marital bliss?

Cast

Maritza, Catherine Antonia Samartin

Lad, Gabriel Manro

Sally, Jessica Mamey

Baron Vanderzoo, III, onathan Matthews

Minnie, Christa Marie Stevens

Moxie, Katharina Haberl

Mikey/Dagma , Jamie Sanderson

Manny/Tibby, Steve Moritsugu

Popovaire, Eric Castro

Dowager Empress, Camille Cardinale

Musicians

Violin, Greg Von Notias

Cello, Cindy Hickox

Harp, Jillian Lopez

Percussion, Mike Basak

Blüthner grand piano provided by Kasimoff-Blüthner Piano Co., Hollywood, CA

Production

Directed and Choreographed by Ataraxia Waldorf

Music Directors/Pianists, Dr. James Lent and Milos Veljkovic

Assistant Conductor, Kritika Malhotra

Assistant Director and Choreographer, Kenwa Newell

Costume Design, Claire Fraser

Set Design, Stewart Greg

Costume Assistant, Shon LeBlanc

Lighting Design, W. Alejandro Melendez

Peter Wing Healey, Writer / Composer

Peter Wing Healey is the founder and artistic director of The Mesopotamian Opera Company, Inc., Mr. Wing Healey attended Haverford College and The Boston Conservatory of Music. He began classical piano training at 6. At 13 he sang professionally with Christ Church Cathedral Choir in Vancouver, B.C. He continued his keyboard studies in Springfield, Mass. with Dorothy Guion, a protégé of Dame Myra Hess, and sang choral and operatic music under the direction of Alfredo Carbonell at Longmeadow High School. He studied music theory in Salzburg with the Foreign Study League. At 18 he studied baroque keyboard with Agi Jambor, concert pianist, head of the Music Department at Bryn Mawr College, and student of Edwin Fischer. In college, he turned to dance. In New York, he studied with Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, and Sara Sugihara. He studied classical ballet with Janet Panetta, soloist at American Ballet Theater and protégé of Margaret Craske, who was trained by Maestro Enrico Cecchetti, teacher of Anna Pavlova. He studied Sufi meditation, drumming, whirling, and trance dancing with Bagdad Sufi Master Adnan Sarhan for 10 years.

Mr. Wing Healey danced professionally in New York City from 1976 to 1996, with Daniel Lewis from the José Limón Dance Company, with Anna Sokolow, with Hannah Kahn, with Laura Dean Dancers and Musicians, and with The Mark Morris Dance Group. He performed all over the world. He danced as a soloist in Mark Morris's The Hard Nut at the Theatre Royale de la Monnaie in Brussels, Belgium, filmed for PBS's Great Performances, and later performed at The Edinburgh Festival Theater, at The Brooklyn Academy of Music and at Cal Performances Zellerbach Hall. Mr. Morris hired him as rehearsal director on The White Oak Project with Mikhail Baryshnikov and as balletmaster on the John Adams/Peter Sellars opera Nixon in China from its inception in 1987 at the Houston Grand Opera through re-stagings for the Los Angeles Opera, The English National Opera, The Dutch National Opera, The Greek National Opera, and The Metropolitan Opera.

As a composer, Mr. Wing Healey writes neo-classical music for a form of theater he calls "Nouveau Comique." He has presented his original operas in New York City and in Los Angeles, where he now lives and works. His lauded productions have received support from P.S. 122, American Opera Projects, TWEED Productions, The Howard Gilman Foundation, The Noah Wyle Foundation, The Center for the Arts Eagle Rock, The Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, and The James Irvine Foundation.

The Mesopotamian Opera Company

Making original, narrative Lyric Theater since 1985, Mesopotamian Opera Company is a nonprofit organization dedicated to further the teaching and employment, in live performance, of expressive performing arts techniques. The goal is to create work, employment when possible, and contemporary context for the arts of dance, song, recitation and role playing, and all the attendant arts; stage design, music composition, choreography, lighting design, conducting, playing of musical instruments and directing. This goal supports the infrastructure of teachers and coaches, university and college departments, that every year turn out aspiring talent in the field of live, expressive performing arts by laboring to provide another delivery platform for the many years of work and dedication represented in the lyric population. https://www.mesopotamianopera.org/

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