Victor Michael Milenski (born 1941) founded the

Long Beach Opera Long Beach Opera is a Southern California opera company serving the greater Los Angeles and Orange County metroplex. Founded in 1979, it is the oldest continually running opera company in the L.A. area. In June 2019 LBO presented the world premiere ...

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 Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

, under Milenski’s direction the Long Beach Opera became the first professional

opera Opera is a form of History of theatre#European theatre, Western theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by Singing, singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically ...

company to take root in the modern era and survive. Having predated the formation of

Los Angeles Opera The Los Angeles Opera, originally called the Los Angeles Music Center 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 P ...

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 ...

is the

area's oldest standing professional opera company. Milenski was born in

Cortez, Colorado Cortez () is a List of municipalities in Colorado#Home rule municipality, home-rule municipality that is the county seat and the List of municipalities in Colorado, most populous municipality of Montezuma County, Colorado, United States. The ci ...

, 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 The San Francisco Opera (SFO) is an American opera company founded in 1923 by Gaetano Merola (1881–1953) based in San Francisco, California. History Gaetano Merola (1923–1953) Merola's road to prominence in the Bay Area began in 1906 wh ...

'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 novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée. The opera was first performed by the O ...

'' 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, a small town in the province of Parma, to a family of moderate means, receiv ...

'' La Traviata'' 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 In philosophy, deconstruction is a loosely-defined set of approaches to understand the relationship between text and meaning. The concept of deconstruction was introduced by the philosopher Jacques Derrida, who described it as a turn away from ...

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 ''Death in Venice ''() is a novella by German author Thomas Mann, published in 1912. It presents an ennobled writer who visits Venice and is liberated, uplifted, and then increasingly obsessed by the sight of a boy in a family of Polish tourist ...

'' and Monteverdi's '' Coronation of Poppea'' starring

Catherine Malfitano Catherine Malfitano (born April 18, 1948) is an American operatic soprano and opera director. Malfitano was born in New York City, the daughter of a ballet dancer mother, Maria Maslova, and a violinist father, Joseph Malfitano. She attended the ...

established the

as a maverick presenter of alternative artistic vision. As a producer, Milenski was an

iconoclast Iconoclasm ()From . ''Iconoclasm'' may also be considered as a back-formation from ''iconoclast'' (Greek: εἰκοκλάστης). The corresponding Greek word for iconoclasm is εἰκονοκλασία, ''eikonoklasia''. is the social belie ...

, remaining apart from the American operatic establishment.

Los Angeles Philharmonic The Los Angeles Philharmonic (LA Phil) is an American orchestra based in Los Angeles, California. The orchestra holds a regular concert season from October until June at the Walt Disney Concert Hall and a summer season at the Hollywood Bowl from ...

executive director

Ernest Fleischmann Ernest Martin Fleischmann (December 7, 1924 – June 13, 2010) was a German-born American impresario who served for 30 years as executive director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which he upgraded to become a top-ranked orchestra. A talented ...

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'' in a 2001 production at the

Getty Museum The J. Paul Getty Museum, commonly referred to as the Getty, is an art museum in Los Angeles, California, United States, housed on two campuses: the Getty Center and Getty Villa. It is operated by the J. Paul Getty Trust, the world's wealthies ...

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

References

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 American opera managers 1941 births Living people Musicians from Long Beach, California People from Cortez, Colorado