In what could be considered the end of an era, the Industry on Thursday announced that Yuval Sharon will step down as artistic director of the groundbreaking L.A. opera company.
The company’s executive director, Tim Griffin, who came on board in summer 2023, will expand his title to become both executive and artistic director. The Industry’s co-artistic directors, Ash Fure and Malik Gaines, who joined forces in an artistic director cooperative with Sharon in 2021, will form a new artistic advisory council. Its goal, the company said, will be to encourage dialogue about opera across the arts and help Griffin select future artists-in-residence.
Sharon will need to spend more time in New York City, where earlier this year the Metropolitan Opera announced that Sharon would direct its next “Ring” cycle beginning in 2028. He’s set to make his debut with the company next season with a new production of “Tristan und Isolde.”
In 2012 Sharon landed the Industry on the map with an exuberantly unconventional new opera by Anne LeBaron called “Crescent City.” When the show premiered at an experimental art space in Atwater Village, Times Classical Music Critic Mark Swed wrote: “LeBaron’s opera is the first project of an industrious, and potentially groundbreaking, new enterprise called The Industry that was founded by Yuval Sharon, a young director with his fingers in many of L.A.’s different and distinctive art pies.”
The prescient headline to that review? “Industry’s remarkable ‘Crescent City’ reshapes L.A. opera.”
In the years that followed, the Industry didn’t just reshape the city’s opera scene, it radically transformed it. Sharon rose to become a major star of a cadre of artists working to disrupt the art form — to make it less refined and restrictive, and more responsive to the changing landscape of the 21st century. Sharon also sought to broaden opera’s tent, to welcome in young, diverse audiences and to expand opportunities for women and artists of color. He won a MacArthur genius grant in the process and penned the book “A New Philosophy of Opera,” which detailed a thriving future for the changing genre.
Kelci Hahn, center, and other performers with the Industry rehearse a scene from, ”Sweet Land,” under the artistic direction of Yuval Sharon, right, in February 2020.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Among Sharon’s most memorable — and mind-bending — accomplishments was his 2015 opera “Hopscotch,” which took place in 24 vehicles driving on the roads of L.A. The logistics were staggering, and when naysayers said it couldn’t be done, Sharon became fond of asking, “why not?”
If “Hopscotch” seemed tailor made for the fast-moving age of social media, 2020’s “Sweet Land,” staged at Angeles State Historic Park, plunged into deeper water. By exploring themes of immigration, displacement and the genocidal conquest at the heart of the American origin story, the production earned rave reviews before closing early as COVID darkened stages across the country.
That same year, Sharon expanded his reach by signing on as artistic director of Detroit Opera and quickly making a splash with a drive-through production of Wagner’s “Götterdämmerung” in a parking garage. His contract with the company was recently extended through 2028. Sharon also has worked with Berlin State Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago and Santa Fe Opera.
Fans of the Industry will no doubt wonder if last summer’s “The Comet/Poppea” was the last show that Sharon directed for the company. The announcement Thursday about Sharon’s transition to the title of founder notes that he will “continue supporting The Industry’s next steps, attending upcoming performances and conceiving future projects unique to The Industry’s identity.”
Sharon and the Industry will celebrate the company’s legacy and future on Jan. 30 at downtown’s Bradbury Building with a Decade Party. Tickets can be purchased, at theindustryla.org.