Worster Group’s La Didone – Sci-Fi Opera

Here is an eccentric, modern interpretation of an old opera that should appeal to cult movie fans. The Worster Group takes “La Didone,” a 17th-century opera by Francesco Cavalli, with a libretto by Francesco Busenello, and combines it with Mario Bava’s 1965 sci-fi horror film PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES (a.k.a. Terrore Nello Spazio). The production earned kudos in New York: Hullabaloo, a website normally devoted to politics, raved, “Somehow, it works – not as camp, not as some incomprehensible po-mo hogwash, but rather as a weird kind of apocalyptic draama in which the experience of falling in love is likened to an infection by an alien life form. It’s heartbreaking and genuinely disturbing.The parallels between the opera and the movie, which seem to have nothing in common, are uncanny.”

You can see a clip of the New York version at the Worster Groups’s website.

Location: Redcat – Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater in the Walt Disney Concert Hall – 631 W. 2nd Street, Los Angeles
Website: Click here
Dates: June 11 through June 21.
Times:  8:30pm Tuesday through Saturday, 7:00pm on Sunday.