When the curtain — adorned with a newly commissioned 70-foot artwork titled “The Things We Know,” by Los Angeles-based artist Enrique Martínez Celaya — rises at Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Rihab Chaieb stands seductively at the top of a marble staircase, draped in an intricately patterned black-and-white ball gown, as pairs of flamenco dancers pose, stomp and wave their hands to the orchestral rhythms. She is Carmen: desirable, defiant and driven. Georges Bizet’s “Carmen” has been performed again and again all over the world, but not like this. Bizet’s masterpiece is the first production in LA Opera’s 2026-27 season, and it is the first conducted by LA Opera’s new music director, Domingo Hindoyan. It also happens to be one of his favorites.
“I have many favorites, but one of my favorite operas is what I’m doing now,” said Hindoyan from his office inside Dorothy Chandler Pavilion about 10 days before the first performance of “Carmen,” which opened Oct. 17. “I love the story. I love the music — how it’s put together with the drama. ‘Carmen’ is a very well-known opera, which also makes it a bigger challenge, because everyone knows it.”
Hindoyan is taking the baton from James Conlon, who led LA Opera for 20 years. And like another celebrated maestro, Gustavo Dudamel, who just left LA this year for the New York Philharmonic, Hindoyan also got his start playing the violin in El Sistema, the National Network of Youth and Children’s Orchestras of Venezuela. . . .
Read the entire article at LA Downtown News.
