Michael Milenski
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Victor Michael Milenski (born 1941) founded the Long Beach Opera in 1979, and was its general director for 25 seasons, retiring in 2004. Though local opera companies had been organized in the 1920s and 1960s in metropolitan Los Angeles, under Milenski’s direction the Long Beach Opera became the first professional opera company to take root in the modern era and survive. Having predated the formation of
Los Angeles Opera The Los Angeles Opera is an American opera company in Los Angeles, California. It is the fourth-largest opera company in the United States. The company's home base is the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, part of the Los Angeles Music Center. Leadersh ...
and Orange County's
Opera Pacific Opera Pacific was an opera company located in the Orange County, California, United States city of Santa Ana. It operated for 22 seasons before closing in 2008 after several seasons of deepening financial difficulties. History The first season b ...
, Long Beach Opera is the Los Angeles area's oldest standing professional opera company. Milenski was born in
Cortez, Colorado Cortez () is a home rule municipality that is the county seat and the most populous municipality of Montezuma County, Colorado, United States. The city population was 8,766 at the 2020 United States Census. History In 1886, the town was built t ...
, United States. A music graduate of the University of Colorado, he abandoned his doctoral work in Italian Studies at UC Berkeley to join the San Francisco Opera's Merola Training Program in the early 1970s. Rising through the ranks of the company's technical and production departments, he was tapped by the San Jose Symphony to produce Bizet's ''
Carmen ''Carmen'' () is an opera in four acts by the French composer Georges Bizet. The libretto was written by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the Carmen (novella), novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée. The opera was first perfo ...
'' in the 1977–78 season and
Verdi's Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi (; 9 or 10 October 1813 – 27 January 1901) was an Italian composer best known for his operas. He was born near Busseto to a provincial family of moderate means, receiving a musical education with the h ...
''
La Traviata ''La traviata'' (; ''The Fallen Woman'') is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi set to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave. It is based on ''La Dame aux camélias'' (1852), a play by Alexandre Dumas ''fils'' adapted from his own 18 ...
'' the following season. In the meantime, the management of the Long Beach Symphony invited Milenski to mount his ''Traviata'' production under the aegis of Long Beach Grand Opera in March, 1979. With the success of that venture, Milenski quickly established the company independent of the Symphony and undertook a trial period of presenting standard operatic repertoire. In the early 1980s, Milenski became more widely known to the American opera community for introducing revisionist and deconstructive opera productions into the United States, and for exploring repertory outside mainstream American operatic offerings. His 1983–84 productions of Britten's '' Death in Venice'' and Monteverdi's ''
Coronation of Poppea ''L'incoronazione di Poppea'' ( SV 308, ''The Coronation of Poppaea'') is an Italian opera by Claudio Monteverdi. It was Monteverdi's last opera, with a libretto by Giovanni Francesco Busenello, and was first performed at the Teatro Santi Giovanni ...
'' starring Catherine Malfitano established the Long Beach Opera as a maverick presenter of alternative artistic vision. As a producer, Milenski was an iconoclast, remaining apart from the American operatic establishment.
Los Angeles Philharmonic The Los Angeles Philharmonic, commonly referred to as the LA Phil, is an American orchestra based in Los Angeles, California. It has a regular season of concerts from October through June at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, and a summer season at th ...
executive director Ernest Fleischmann noted that Milenski established a benchmark for progressive programming and daring production that invigorated the entire Southern California performing arts community. Among his operatic legacies, Milenski stimulated the careers of stage directors Christopher Alden and Julian Webber, and he gave his daughter Isabel Milenski her directorial debut with Peri’s ''
Euridice Eurydice (; Ancient Greek: Εὐρυδίκη 'wide justice') was a character in Greek mythology and the Auloniad wife of Orpheus, who tried to bring her back from the dead with his enchanting music. Etymology Several meanings for the name ...
'' in a 2001 production at the Getty Museum commemorating the 400th anniversary of the “first” opera. Michael Milenski has been a proponent of composer Gian Carlo Menotti's opera The Saint Of Bleecker Street


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External links


Long Beach OperaGallery of Long Beach Opera productionsArticle on Milenski and Long Beach OperaArticle on Milenski's resignation as Long Beach Opera general director
{{DEFAULTSORT:Milenski, Michael American opera directors Opera managers 1941 births Living people Musicians from Long Beach, California