LA Opera's Costume Rare Tag Sale TODAY ONLY (Cinderella Costumes Included)

Doing some promo footage for the 2015 LA Opera Costume sale for KTLA Morning News

Looking for a Cinderella shoe, or broom? How about a Papageno mask, or a handmade stepsister wig? Today - Saturday March 28th - might just be your lucky day. The LA Opera Costume Shop is having a public tag sale (today only).
 


The LA Opera Costume shop is cleaning house in prep for moving their location and having a rare "tag sale" of about a thousand items worn on stage in numerous productions, including more than a few worn by the world's greats (think Placido Domingo). Fairy tale costumes will be included in the selection of course!

The L.A. Opera's costume shop, pictured in 2013 during the tailoring of outfits for "The Magic Flute," is moving -- so an estimated 1,000 costumes are being put up for sale. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

From the LA Times and ArtsBeatLA:

Think late 19^th century bustles and flouncy panniers; handmade shoes and masks; military garb and gladiator gear; period wigs and accessories. The items for sale are from productions such as “Cinderella,” "Aida," “The Grand Duchess,” “Lucia di Lammermoor” and “The Turn of the Screw.” Prices start at $25 for complete costumes and $2 for individual pieces. 

One-of-a-kind items such as handcrafted hats, uniquely designed shoes, numerous masks, theatrical jewelry, period wigs, gladiatorial armor and even slave cuffs will be laid out on tables alongside the racks.  Also for sale will be bolts of unusual fabrics and faux fur, as well as buttons, belts, floral hair pins, bustles and panniers. 

   

Costumes available for sale will include items from Aida, The Barber of Seville, The Birds, The Broken Jug, Cinderella, The Grand Duchess, Lucia di Lammermoor, Orfeo ed Euridice, The Queen of Spades, Salome, The Turk in Italy, The Turn of the Screw and Vanessa, among others.

A special “diva rack” will have the high-end items, $1,000 to $5,000, worn by stars such as Jennifer Larmore, Kiri Te Kanawa, Bryn Terfel and Deborah Voigt.

You can see a slideshow of some of the available costumes HERE and

If you're in the neighborhood, go check out the 90 clothing racks at:
330 South Alameda Street in downtown LA (parking lot)
10:30am to 4pm
Saturday March 28th ONLY 

It's a public event and you can browse for FREE!

If you go, don't forget to take your camera. We want to see the goodies please!

Buster Keaton Meets David Lynch in LA Opera's New "Magic Flute" (Multimedia-fest & Silent Era Tribute Spectacular!)

If Mozart's fairy tale opera, The Magic Flute was a silent film, animated by David Lynch it might look rather like LA Opera's special production Magic Flute...

I LOVE this! Coming from theater, I can't help but get excited by innovative staging and multimedia presentations of old works. When it freshens a fairy tale I'm about ready to do backflips!

This production, currently being premiered and performed by the LA Opera, originated with the Komische Oper in Berlin and uses silent film devices, projected animation for the artists to interact with, a lot of humor and parodies the pre-talkie era with great panache. 

The concept for the production was developed by Australian director Barrie Kosky and the British theater company 1927, founded by animator/filmmaker Bill Barritt and writer/performer Suzanne Andrade. Emerging in 2005 from the London cabaret scene, 1927 specializes in mixing live performance and music with pre-recorded animation and film. The company's aesthetic has been described as "a perfect combination of all the things worth loving: silent movies, Weimar cabaret, David Lynch and the Brothers Grimm" (The Guardian, UK - quoted on the official video)

Take a look at this wonderful trailer showcasing some of the inventiveness of the production:

✒ ✒  ✒ (click the "Read more" link below this line for lots more pics & a review excerpt) ✒ ✒ ✒  ✒ 

Quick Blog Update & Brief Notes on Mozart's "The Magic Flute"

Papagena by Erin Kelso (aka Bluefooted on deviantArt)

 Why have I been so quiet on the blog? We've had a few rather stressful things come up, the major one right now being that we have to move before the end of the month and, due to various other emergencies (like cars insisting on retiring and furry kids needing surgery, we haven't yet found anywhere. (Eek!)

Papagena by Anne Smith

So I am splitting my time between doing a lot of driving, a lot of searching and spending a lot (a lot!) of time on the phone (my ear folds are hurting!). Any down time goes to "toss or pack" so I haven't had much time to blog. I have found, however, that Pinterest is REALLY easy to explore and play around with while being put on hold or when telling the 40th person the same information. Again.

So the Once Upon A Blog boards on Pinterest have expanded quite a bit over the past few days and there's plenty of luscious new fairy tale-like images to explore now. I've added some more tale-specific boards, expanded the ones already there, expanded the creature/folk boards and added two more fashion-focused boards, but with a twist. They are "Dressing the Seelie Court" and "Dressing the Unseelie Court" - a fun theme I haven't seen people do yet. (I've also added some "peoples of the world boards" - I'm so inspired to see the environments tales and variants come out of!) There are so many awesome fairy tale themed boards on Pinterest, including by readers of this blog and other fairy tale bloggers, I try not to replicate what others are doing too much and hopefully you'll discover some new and fun things there, as well as discover more fairy tale people too.

Papageno by Kurt Wenner

It's actually been good visual therapy for coping with the current argh! here so if you'd like a hit of delectable fairy tale visuals feel free to visit. You can find the Once Upon A Blog Boards HERE.

I'll do my best to keep blogging when I can (I have so much I want to blog on!) but I'm guessing posts will remain light to scarce over the next few days - at least until we secure a place to go. For some reason, trying to find a place is like a fulltime job with extra duties this time round.

Wish us luck and good fortune would you?

PS Heidi: I COMPLETELY relate to your wish for a Baba Yaga house-on-legs right now!

Papagena by Hans Reiser

PPS In case you didn't get the hint, one of the new boards is for The Magic Flute - a fairy tale opera story I can't quite believe hasn't been tackled by mainstream filmmakers (Lotte Reiniger and Kenneth Branagh being the exceptions - anyone seen the 2006 Branagh film set during WWI?).

So much good stuff in that tale. It's been called Mozart's Wizard Of Oz (re quest, fantasy and individual character trials) so you may find some interesting parallels if you're not already familiar with it.

Personally I think it could use a lush animation treatment.