The Long Beach Opera remains the coolest opera company in SoCal, and it’s because they do things like this: screen Steven Soderbergh’s Oscar-winning drug smuggling masterpiece Traffic by way of introducing performances of the opera Camelia la Tejana—Only the Truth (Unicamente la Verdad) by Mexico’s foremost female composer Gabriela Ortiz, which is also about drug smuggling. An opera about drug smuggling. That’s one you don’t want to miss no matter how low-brow you might be. Before raising your standards at the opera next month, however, be sure to prep yourself with the cinematic version of narco-busting at the Art, if only to swoon over Benicio del Toro once again, and remember when Catherine Zeta Jones could act.
Sat., Feb. 23, 11:30 a.m., 2013
