Live recording of Sunday October 29 7:30pm original cast of the Girondines Mission Opera West Coast Premiere production at Canyon High School Performing Arts Center in Santa Clarita, CA. Girondines shares six French Revolution women’s interconnected stories. Three are guillotined: radical murderess Charlotte Corday, moderate feminist writer Madame Manon Roland, and radical feminist writer Olympe de Gouges. Three survive political upheaval: prolific portrait-painter Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun; political theorist Madame Germaine de Staël; and inventive chemist Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze. Chamber opera for six voices, piano, electronics, cello, and violin.

The runtime of Girondines is approximately 90 minutes. Due to mature themes and content, this production is recommended for ages 13 and older.

Virtual Playbill/Program: http://bit.ly/48mczgS

Dr. Joshua Wentz moved to Los Angeles in 2016 to take a position as a music professor at Los Angeles Mission College, a Hispanic-serving institution of higher learning, in Sylmar. Almost immediately, he realized that the students coming into his music classes from the NE San Fernando Valley were seriously lacking in musical background, experience, and education. He wondered why students over the years were coming to college less prepared and struggling to do well academically. After some research, he realized that most of the feeder schools in and around Sylmar didn't have strong music programs — many had no music programs at ALL!

This was a major factor that helped Wentz realize the need for music education in the SFV and led to the creation of Mission Opera. This lack of music education, paired with the absence of performance opportunities and hands-on training for community college students, helped the realization that Mission Opera could target and help multiple disadvantaged communities. Mission Opera is a performing arts education nonprofit who produces 3-4 full, mainstage operas each year. Also, our Boxtop Opera Educational Outreach program serves part of our mission to go into low-funded schools in and around LA to teach children about opera and classical music, through live performances with three singers, a pianist and a sound tech with a "box" of props and costume pieces. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we had various types of instrumental and vocal music online programs and went into over a dozen local schools to assist teachers in teaching music - a hard-to-covert discipline - during the pandemic.

Mission Opera strives to produce high-quality, accessible opera and musical theater, to provide members of the community the opportunity to participate at all levels of these productions, and to afford both participants and audiences enjoyment and a deeper appreciation of opera and musical theater.