Devon Tines and Rod Gilfry reprise "Crossing" at L.A. Opera

Devon Tines and Rod Gilfry

The Los Angeles Opera will be presenting to concert-version performance of composer-in-residence Matthew Aucoin's opera Crossing at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts  in Beverly Hills. There will be performances on May 25 and 26, featuring barihunks Rod Gilfry as Walt Whitman and Devon Tines as the escaped slave Freddie Stowers.

The opera had its world premiere in May 25 at the Shubert Theatre in Boston with Gilfry and Tines in the cast. It has subsequently been performed at the National Opera Center in New York City and at the Brooklyn Academy of Music

The opera was inspired by the diary that poet Walt Whitman kept as a nurse during the Civil War. Crossing explores how the individual experiences of soldiers are remembered and told. As Whitman listens to wounded veterans share their memories and messages, he forges a bond with a soldier who forces him to examine his own role as writer and poet.

Tickets are available online.