An opera with at least five morals

You remember Æsop. Most of us know him from the simplified life lessons told to children, ending with “the moral of the story…” He was a slave in 5th-century BCE Greece who devised animal-populated fables that entertain while cleverly offering life lessons in disguise. The Boy Who Cried Wolf and The Tortoise and the Hare are both attributed to Æsop, as well as more than 600 other stories. (An extensive online collection is available here.)

The fact is, fables are a time-honored method of teaching problem-solving, ethics, even psychology, and it’s unclear whether Æsop actually composed all of the extant fables from that period, or whether he actually existed at all. But the stories survive, and composer Jonathan Price, with librettists Jeff Goode and Jan Michael Alejandro, have created a new chamber opera from these teaching tales with a very modern twist, addressing topics “from political apathy to gay rights”. Directed by Kirk Arnold-Smith & Alison Eliel-Kalmus, and under the music direction & piano accompaniment of Leonardo Sciolis, the production taps the talents of several local singers and promises a challenge to the mind as well as music for the soul. Performed just one night only at Pasadena’s historic Blinn House, call for reservations now. Once you get there, you might even learn something.