Pacific Opera Project to Present Los Angeles Premiere of SCALIA/GINSBURG in Double Bill with TRIAL BY JURY

Pacific Opera Project will give the LA premiere performances of Scalia/Ginsburg in a double bill with Gilbert & Sullivan's Trial by Jury on November 17, 2023 at 7:00 p.m.; November 18, 2023 at 7:00 p.m.; November 19, 2023 at 3:00 p.m.; November 24, 2023 at 7:00 p.m.; November 25, 2023 at 7:00 p.m.; and November 26, 2023 at 3:00 p.m. at The Highland Park Ebell Club with food and wine at table seating.

Hailed as "a dream come true" (Ruth Bader Ginsburg), a "perfect...jewel" (Opera Today), and "the kind of opera that should be everywhere" (OperaWire), Scalia/Ginsburg is a one-act operatic comedy by composer-librettist Derrick Wang about the unlikely friendship between U.S. Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia - and the pivotal moment that would change the Supreme Court for years to come. Artistic Director Josh Shaw's new libretto for Trial by Jury moves the setting from England to a 1980s divorce court.

Scalia/Ginsburg cast members include tenor Robert Norman (POP, Opera Santa Barbara) as Scalia; soprano Rachel Policar (The Why Collective, Anchorage Opera) as Ginsburg alongside her role as Angelina in Trial by Jury; bass Paul An (LA Opera, Chicago Opera Theater) making his debut with POP as The Commentator in Scalia/Ginsburg and also as The Usher in Trial by Jury. Additional Trial by Jury cast members include Todd Strange (LA Master Chorale, LA Opera) as Edwin; William Grundler (Opera Santa Barbara, Opera San Luis Obispo) as The Judge; David Harrington (Mission Opera, Lyric Opera of Orange County) as The Foreman; and Christine Li (recently Gretel in POP's Hansel and Gretel) as The Council. Caleb Yanez Glickman conducts this production directed by POP's Founding Artistic Director, Josh Shaw.

Settling into the new POP HQ AKA "The POPera Shop," POP launches PARS - The POP Artists Recital Series this fall at its new Highland Park headquarters, featuring intimate performances by POP singers and instrumentalists. This follows the new POPeretta summer camp, in addition to POPs wide range of digital and in-school educational programming including My First Opera for kids in grades K-12, and Opera Explorers for kids in grades K-5.

Performance Information

Scalia/Ginsburg (LA Premiere) & Trial by Jury
Pacific Opera Project
November 17, 2023 at 7:00 p.m.
November 18, 2023 at 7:00 p.m.
November 19, 2023 at 3:00 p.m.
November 24, 2023 at 7:00 p.m.
November 25, 2023 at 7:00 p.m.
November 26, 2023 at 3:00 p.m.
The Highland Park Ebell Club | 131 S. Avenue 57 | Los Angeles, CA 90042
Tickets: Single tickets $15-$35; Tables from $85-$220
Link: https://www.pacificoperaproject.com/scalia-ginsburg-trial-by-jury

Scalia/Ginsburg Cast
Robert Norman, Antonin Scalia
Rachel Policar, Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Paul An, The Commentator

Trial by Jury Cast
Rachel Policar, Angelina
Todd Strange, Edwin
William Grunder, The Judge
Paul An, The Usher
David Harrington, The Jury Foreman
Christine Li, The Council

Staff
Josh Shaw, director
Caleb Yanez Glickman, conductor
Maggie Green, costume designer

About Pacific Opera Project

Founded in 2011, Los Angeles's Pacific Opera Project (POP) is dedicated to providing quality opera that is accessible, affordable, and entertaining in order to build a broader audience for the art form. LA Magazine writes "If you think you hate opera, you've probably never seen a Pacific Opera Project show." POP's regularly sold out performances take place in a wide variety of venues, from outdoors, to small clubs, big amphitheaters, and warehouses. LA Weekly named POP the "Best Opera Company in Los Angeles" in 2018, writing "making opera cool, affordable, accessible and enticing to young audiences is easier said than done. It's also something every opera company in the country is trying desperately to do... [Pacific Opera Project] is not trying desperately to be hip. It just is." In 2020, POP was awarded The American Prize in Opera Performance.

POP has presented more than 40 innovative new productions to date, including revolutionary drive-in productions of COVID fan tutte and the US staged premieres of two Gluck operas in November 2020, about which Opera Magazine wrote "Despite this plague year of postponements, POP has refused to bow to the pandemic or its restrictions...There is surely no opera company in this Covid-ravaged country with a better average for 2020." Other critically acclaimed productions include Mozart's Abduction from the Seraglio set as an episode of Star Trek; a "fan-tastic" (LA Daily News) Harajuku-themed Mikado; a Dick Tracy Don Giovanni; a Magic Flute inspired by 1990s video games, called "one of the freshest takes on Mozart's 1791 classic I have come across" (Operawire); and many more. POP's signature take on Puccini's La bohème, "AKA The Hipsters," set in modern day Los Angeles, has become a holiday tradition, returning year after year to sold-out audiences and called "riotous" (LA Weekly) and "an undeniably fun night at the theater that should not be missed" (Stage Raw). POP gave the world premiere of Brooke deRosa's The Monkey's Paw in 2017.

POP has been dedicated to reaching young audiences with performance and education since its inception, regularly performing for school-aged groups in family-friendly productions, including having a presence in 15 Title 1 schools. POP also partners with Bob Baker Marionette Theater, local YMCAs, and the Burbank Boys and Girls Club. During the COVID-19 pandemic, POP created interactive Education Packs appropriate for kindergarten to eighth grade students to accompany videos of POP's productions of The Magic Flute and Madama Butterfly.

In 2019, POP presented its most ambitious project to date: the first ever true-to-story bilingual Madama Butterfly performed in LA's Little Tokyo. A co-production with Houston's Opera in the Heights, the production featured a new libretto written by POP's Founding Artistic Director Josh Shaw and Opera in the Heights Artistic Director Eiki Isomura, presenting Puccini's story as if it actually happened and attempting to answer the question: "How would Butterfly and Pinkerton communicate?" All Japanese roles were sung in Japanese by Japanese-American artists and all American roles were sung in English. San Francisco Classical Voice described the production as "on a visual scale beyond anything it has taken on before - a sumptuously costumed, fully staged, bilingual co-production... Pacific Opera Project deserves a great deal of credit for making this concept into a reality... innovative, creative, and immensely successful."

POP presented the 2018 West Coast premiere of Giacomo Rossini's rarely performed 1816 opera, La gazzetta "The Newspaper." The first performances in the US were given in Boston at the New England Conservatory in 2013, and POP's production was only the second in North America. Opera Today raved about the premiere, writing "Director Josh Shaw has invested the proceedings with enough good comic ideas for at least three productions. Shaw has set the show in 1960's Paris, with eye-popping set elements and brilliant uses of color which add to the manic feel... Mr. Shaw has fashioned a take-no-prisoners approach to the staging, which was rife with clever touches... Pacific Opera Project has evidently hit on a winning formula for a night out, serving up food, drink and an operatic discovery in equal measure."

Learn more at www.pacificoperaproject.com.

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