Free will and expression come from the composer and the composer alone. He asked that characters in “Oedipus,” whether staged or not, be masked (they weren’t) and treated as living statues, their movement restricted to head and arms. Stravinsky did not intend to display diversity. Opera’s welcome choice for artist-in-residence. Opera regulars have had a significant presence in the company’s programing that contends with diversity in opera and social justice throughout the last year. Stunning soloists - Russell Thomas, J’Nai Bridges and Morris Robinson - dominated.

It was performed though not staged - that is, presented as a stony oratorio, with video animations on screens as illustration. It chose Stravinsky’s plague-infested opera-oratorio, “Oedipus Rex,” which harps on the futility of it all. Opera had no intention of letting anyone off the pandemic hook. This was, we were told, the first time since the pandemic shutdown that a major American opera company was performing for an audience inside its opera house. Capacity was limited to 25% and seats were assigned, and the Music Center clearly meant it. The nonvaccinated were in balconies, where evidence of a negative COVID-19 test was required. Those seated in the orchestra section sported black wristbands signifying proof of COVID-19 vaccination. Our identity still partially in question. It was us, the music-deprived audience of Los Angeles Opera, who had changed.

The lobby’s busts of a brooding Beethoven and beloved cellist Gregor Piatigorsky appeared to have been carrying on their otherworldly dialogue unconcerned by pandemic. Whatever cobwebs might have flourished have been swept away. Nothing much has changed inside the center’s Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. The Music Center opened its doors to the public Sunday afternoon for the first time in nearly 15 months.

Oedipus rex la opera