performance

With the ongoing fracas over President Trump’s demolition of the White House’s East Wing, a number of other Trump administration-led attempts to remake the architectural landscape of Washington, D.C., have flown largely under the radar. This includes the sale and possible demolition of the Wilbur J. Cohen Building, which was completed in 1940 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2007.

Part of what makes the building so beloved is a series of 1942 frescoes by Ben Shahn titled “The Meaning of Social Security,” commissioned as part of the Roosevelt administration’s robust New Deal art program. In a recent article in the New Republic, architectural historian Gray Brechin is quoted as calling the Cohen building, “a kind of Sistine Chapel of the New Deal.”

The structure, originally known as the Social Security Administration Building, has served as the headquarters for Voice of America since 1954. In March, Trump signed an executive order cutting funding for the agency that oversees VOA, and most of its staff was placed on administrative leave. In June, more than 600 VOA employees received layoff notices, and the service basically shut down.

At the beginning of this year, Congress agreed to sell the Cohen building, which had been suffering from major maintenance issues. The scope of the threat to the building became clear earlier this month when Bloomberg reported that “The White House is independently soliciting bids to recommend the demolition of the historic buildings [including the Cohen building], without the input of the General Services Administration, which maintains government buildings.”

A petition on Change.org now seeks to oppose the new “accelerated disposal” program.

“Federal properties can be sold quickly with limited public input. As powerful interests move in haste to sell this historic building, we call for the process to be paused and conducted with transparency, respect, and public participation,” the petition, which has garnered more than 4,700 signatures, states.

The Shahn frescoes aren’t the only precious New Deal artworks in danger. Other art housed in the Cohen building include murals by Seymour Fogel and Philip Guston.

I’m arts and culture writer Jessica Gelt wondering when enough is enough. Here’s your arts news for the week.

On our radar

Grant Gershon conducts the Los Angeles Master Chorale at Walt Disney Concert Hall.

(Jamie Phan / Los Angeles Master Chorale)

Disney Hall-e-lu-jah
It’s hard to imagine the holidays without music, and the Los Angeles Master Chorale has three days of caroling and chorusing that should lift anyone’s seasonal spirits. A new addition to the choir’s traditional offerings is the family-friendly “Carols for Kids” (11 a.m. Saturday. Walt Disney Concert Hall), featuring Youth Chorus LA and designed for even the squirmiest children, 6 and under. That will be followed by the “Festival of Carols” (2 p.m. Saturday. Disney Hall), a program of global holiday music. The group’s performance of “Handel’s Messiah” (7 p.m. Sunday. Disney Hall) is a worthy centerpiece of any celebration. If you’re ready to have your own voice be heard, “Carols on the Plaza” (6 p.m. Monday, across the street at the Music Center’s Jerry Moss Plaza), is your chance to join in on free outdoor caroling with family, friends and fellow Angelenos. Festivities conclude with the Master Chorale’s “Messiah Sing-Along” (7:30 p.m. Monday) back at Disney Hall where 2,000 voices will unite for the “Hallelujah Chorus.”
— Kevin Crust
Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave.; Music Center, 135 N. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. lamasterchorale.org

The week ahead: A curated calendar

FRIDAY
The Fruit Cake Follies
In its 27th year, this madcap holiday variety show promises “music, mirth and merriment.”
8:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, with dinner at 6:30 p.m.; 1 p.m Sunday, with brunch at 11 a.m. Catalina Jazz Club, 6725 Sunset Blvd. Hollywood. catalinajazzclub.com

Guadalupe Maravilla: A Performance
Expanding on his solo exhibition “Les soñadores,” the transdisciplinary artist creates a collective ritual combining sound, vibration and healers from around the world alongside L.A.-based artists.
8 p.m. REDCAT, 631 W. 2nd St., downtown L.A. redcat.org

Piotr Beczala
The Polish-born tenor, known for his work in opera and the classical vocal canon, performs, accompanied by conductor and pianist Kamal Khan.
7:30 p.m. Broad Stage, Santa Monica College Performing Arts Center, 1310 11th St., Santa Monica broadstage.org

“Wet” by Sahar Khoury at Parker Gallery, 2025

(Sahar Khoury / Parker Gallery)

Sahar Khoury
The interdependence of materials and their social and cultural environments inspired the sculptor’s newest solo exhibition, “Wet,” a series of pieces created from ceramic, steel, iron, brass and aluminum.
11 a.m.–6 p.m. Tuesday–Saturday, through Jan. 17. Parker Gallery, 6700 Melrose Ave. parkergallery.com

SATURDAY
Christmas Joy Concert
The free Third@First concert series continues with a program of carols, classic and new.
4 p.m. First United Methodist Church of Pasadena, 500. E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena. thirdatfirst.org

Sanaa Lathan and Omar Epps in the romantic drama “Love & Basketball.”

(New Line Cinema)

Love & Basketball
Writer-director Gina Prince-Bythewood marks the 25th anniversary of her modern romance classic, starring Sanaa Lathan, Omar Epps, Alfre Woodard and Dennis Haysbert.
7 p.m. Academy Museum, 6067 Wilshire Blvd. academymuseum.org

The cast of “Nutcracker! Magical Christmas Ballet.”

(Konstantin Viktorov / Nutcracker! Magical Christmas Ballet)

Nutcracker! Magical Christmas Ballet
This 80-plus city tour offers a distinct blend of classical ballet with avant-garde circus techniques and global influences, complete with 10-foot-tall animal puppets constructed by Roger Titley. For its 33rd year on the road, the production adds a new character: Sweets the Dog, created by Barry Gordemer of the award-winning puppeteer studio Handemonium.
— Ashley Lee
Noon, 4 and 8 p.m. Saturday. Wiltern Theatre, 3790 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles; and 1:30 and 6:30 p.m. Sunday. La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts, 14900 La Mirada Blvd. nutcracker.com

SUNDAY
Collecting Impressionism at LACMA
This new exhibition traces how the museum built its collection and its pursuit of legitimacy through early acquisitions of American and California Impressionism and donations of paintings by Edgar Degas and Camille Pissarro from major Hollywood collectors.
Through Jan. 3, 2027. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Resnick Pavilion, 5905 Wilshire Blvd. lacma.org

Actor Taylor Nichols, left, and director Whit Stillman at a 20th anniversary screening of “Metropolitan” at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival.

(Jemal Countess / Getty Images)

Metropolitan
It’s hard to believe that it’s been 35 years since the young socialites of the “urban haute bourgeoisie” entered our consciousness via filmmaker Whit Stillman’s delightfully droll film and its banter-driven, Oscar-nominated screenplay. Stillman and actor Taylor Nichols will be on hand for a Q&A with the screening.
2 p.m. Aero Theatre, 1328 Montana Ave., Santa Monica. americancinematheque.com

WEDNESDAY

Aloe Blacc and Maya Jupiter host the 2025 L.A. County Holiday Celebration.

(Music Center)

L.A. County Holiday Celebration
The Music Center’s annual spectacular features more than 20 local music ensembles, choirs and dance companies. The free, ticketed event will also be broadcast on PBS SoCal. Aloe Blacc and Maya Jupiter are this year’s hosts.
3-6 p.m. Dec. 24. Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. musiccenter.org

— Kevin Crust

Dispatch: A director with a human touch

Cameron Watson is the new artistic director of Skylight Theatre Company.

(David Zaugh)

Stage director Cameron Watson has one of the best batting averages in town.

His productions of “The Sound Inside” at Pasadena Playhouse, “On the Other Hand, We’re Happy” for Rogue Machine Theatre at the Matrix and “Top Girls” at Antaeus Theatre Company were morale-boosting for a critic in the trenches, offering proof that serious, humane, highly intelligent and happily unorthodox drama was alive and well in Los Angeles.

Watson’s appointment as artistic director of Los Feliz’s Skylight Theatre Company starting Jan. 1 is good news for the city’s theater ecology. Producing artistic director Gary Grossman, who led the company for 40 years with enormous integrity, built the small but ambitious Skylight into an incubator of new work that embraces diversity and the local community.

Developing new plays is fraught with risk. Watson has the both the artistic acumen and audience sensitivity needed to usher Skylight through this perilous moment in the American theater when so many companies seem to be holding on by a thread.

Watson, like Peter Brook before him, knows how to convert an empty space into a realm of magic and meaning. For Watson, the play’s the thing. But for the spark to happen, actors and audience members need a director as intuitively attuned to the uncertain human drama as Skylight Theatre Company’s new leader. (The director’s current production of “Heisenberg” at Skylight ends Sunday.)

— Charles McNulty

Culture news and the SoCal scene

Moving in stereo
The most Tony-nominated play in Broadway history, “Stereophonic,” is playing at the Hollywood Pantages Theatre through Jan. 2. Times theater critic Charles McNulty caught opening night and wrote that the first touring production fails to capture the high notes of the Broadway original. A few days later, I sat down for an interview at Amoeba Records with Will Butler, the former Arcade Fire multi-instrumentalist who wrote the music for the show. Our interview took place before Butler got onstage with the cast of the show for a short live in-store performance.

Live from L.A., it’s Ben Platt
McNulty also attended opening night of Ben Platt’s 10-day residency at Center Theatre Group’s Ahmanson Theatre, noting that Platt, “wears both his nervous diffidence and his blazing talent on his sleeve.”

Boiling in Brooklyn
Brooklyn was also on McNulty’s itinerary, where he saw Michelle Williams in the new revival of Eugene O’Neill’s “Anna Christie” at St. Ann’s Warehouse. “Michelle Williams seems to have unlimited emotional access. Her inner intensity expresses itself in a frenzy of volcanic feeling that can never be tamped down once it reaches its boiling point,” McNulty writes.

Zakir Hussain tribute
Times classical music critic Mark Swed headed to the Nimoy Theatre in Westwood to watch tabla player Salar Nader perform with the Third Coast Percussion ensemble. The show celebrated the group’s collaboration with the late Zakir Hussain’s “Murmurs in Time,” which was the tabla legend’s last work.

The name game
The Kennedy Center continued its Trump-era transformation Thursday after the board voted unanimously to rename the world-famous performing arts venue The Donald J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts. It remains unclear if the move is legal, or if the name change will need to be made official via an act of Congress.

Viva Las Vegas
I got a look at newly revealed architectural plans for the Las Vegas Museum of Art, which is expected to break ground in 2027. Pritzker Prize-winning architect Diébédo Francis Kéré is designing the city’s first freestanding museum and says his ideas were inspired by the red rocks and canyons of the desert surrounding Sin City.

LACMA United
Workers at Los Angeles County Museum of art voted to unionize Wednesday. The vote in favor was 96%, and came after LACMA rejected workers’ requests for voluntary recognition. Staffers have expressed disappointment in management over what they are calling its anti-union campaign.

La malchance
The Louvre is down on its luck. Maintenance issues have lately plagued the famous Paris museum, and then there was that infamous heist. Now workers have voted to strike over working conditions among other complaints.

— Jessica Gelt

And last but not least

Here’s a list that you will either love or hate (I love it): Here are the best tuna melt sandwiches in L.A. and Orange County.

Kathy Kanjo, the director and CEO of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, has been named the new director of the UC Irvine Langson Orange County Museum of Art. The news comes a little more than two months after UC Irvine announced it had acquired Orange County Museum of Art in a merger that created the new institution.

At that time, a rep for UCI said the hope was to announce a new director in the new year, so Kanjo’s appointment comes ahead of schedule. Kanjo has been at MCASD since 2016. Prior to that, she served as director of the University Art Museum at UC Santa Barbara.

When I first wrote about the merger, UC Irvine confirmed that it was taking over OCMA’s assets, employees and debt. A rep for UC Irvine declined to comment on a number, writing in an email that the budget for the new museum will come from university operating funds.

Kanjo inherits responsibility for a substantial collection of more than 9,000 artworks, including UC Irvine’s Gerald Buck Collection of more than 3,200 paintings, sculptures and works on paper by some of the state’s most important artists, including David Hockney and Ed Ruscha.

“The newly merged collection is both anticipated and underknown,” wrote Kanjo in an email. “I am eager to unveil and contextualize the artistic legacies of the Irvine, Buck, and OCMA collections from a particularly California point of view. Collected over time and together at last, these objects are an asset to be shared generously and supported by scholarly research. The constellation that is the UC Irvine Langson Museum offers a portrait of our state’s innovative artistic impulses.”

Kanjo also said the new museum would get a significant boost from UC Irvine’s research strength and commitment to public service.

“We will create rigorous and welcoming exhibitions that resonate with our region’s diverse audiences, young and old,” she wrote.

Despite the great fanfare of its opening in 2022, OCMA — with its 53,000-square-foot, $98-million Morphosis-designed building on the eastern edge of the Segerstrom Center for the Arts campus — never seemed fully realized. Problems were hinted at — but never explained — in April when CEO Heidi Zuckerman announced her intention to step down.

Meanwhile UC Irvine had been planning to construct a museum for its collection for quite some time. That, too, never really got off the ground. If there were ever a time to build consensus around a new mandate for the merged organizations, that time is now. Kanjo has a vision for the future that appears to center scholarship.

“I want to clarify the core identity of the collection and find connections back to campus and into the community,” she wrote. “The post is appealing because of its connection to UC Irvine, a leading research university, and the opportunity to work with the students within the Claire Trevor School of the Arts and all of the campus resources. The potential to foster innovation by working in a cross-disciplinary/cross-campus way is strong.”

I’m arts and culture writer Jessica Gelt, planning a drive to Orange County in the new year. Here’s your arts and culture news for the week.

On our radar

Broadway star Ben Platt will perform 10 shows at the Ahmanson starting Friday.

(Rob Kim / Getty Images)

Ben Platt: Live at the Ahmanson
The award-winning star of stage and screen hits town for 10 shows where he’ll sing his greatest hits and Broadway favorites. And where Platt goes, his big-time friends follow, so expect some great surprise guests each night.
8 p.m. Friday-Saturday and Dec. 19-20; 3 and 8 p.m. Sunday and Dec. 21; 7:30 p.m. Wednesday-Thursday. Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. centertheatregroup.org

“Holiday Legends” is this year’s seasonal performance by the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles.

(Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles)

Holiday Legends
The Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles’ annual celebration pays homage to the greats, including Mariah Carey, Irving Berlin and Johnny Mathis, plus traditional choral classics, pop Christmas anthems and Hanukkah favorites.
8 p.m. Saturday. 3 p.m. Sunday. Saban Theatre, 8440 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills gmcla.org

The Huntington in San Marino.

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

Stories from the Library: From Brontë to Butler
This series highlights the literary side of the Huntington and its world-class library. In the newest exhibition, journals, letters, photographs and personal items provide a behind-the-scenes look at two centuries of women writers bookended by Charlotte Brontë and Octavia E. Butler.
Through June 15. The Huntington, 1151 Oxford Road, San Marino. huntington.org

The week ahead: A curated calendar

FRIDAY
Holiday Soirée & Cabaret
Fountain Theatre celebrates the season with a live announcement of its 2026 season, a cabaret performance from Imani Branch & Friends, plus, a raffle and reception. There will also be two separate performances of the cabaret.
Soirée and cabaret: 7 p.m. Friday. Cabaret: 7 p.m. Saturday; 2 p.m. Sunday. Fountain Theatre, 5060 Fountain Ave. FountainTheatre.com

Violinist Renaud Capuçon.

(Los Angeles Philharmonic)

Mozart & Sibelius
Violinist Renaud Capuçon joins conductor Gustavo Gimeno and the L.A. Phil for a program that combines “Mozartian elegance with brooding Nordic drama.”
8 p.m. Friday and Saturday; 2 p.m. Sunday. Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. laphil.com

Santasia
The long-running holiday spectacle featuring broad comedy, musical parodies and old school claymation returns to L.A. for a 26th year.
Through Dec. 27. Whitefire Theatre, 13500 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks. santasia.com

SATURDAY

Laurel Halo performs Saturday at the Nimoy.

(Norrel Blair)

Laurel Halo
Currently based in L.A., the musician combines ambient, drone, jazz and modern sensibilities in new works for piano and electronics in a preview of her forthcoming album.
8 p.m. UCLA Nimoy Theater, 1262 Westwood Blvd. cap.ucla.edu

Sound + Source
Art meets music as DJs Novena Carmel, Francesca Harding and KCRW music director Ale Cohen provide a site-specific soundtrack to the exhibition “Corita Kent: The Sorcery of Images.”
11 a.m.-6 p.m. Marciano Art Foundation, 4357 Wilshire Blvd. marcianoartfoundation.org

Pacific Jazz Orchestra
The 40-piece hybrid big band and string ensemble, led by Chris Walden, presents its “Holiday Jazz Spectacular,” featuring vocalists Aloe Blacc, Sy Smith and Brenna Whitacre.
8 p.m. Alex Theatre, 216 N. Brand Blvd., Glendale. pacificjazz.org

Holiday Family Faire
Theatricum Botanicum’s annual daylong winter wonderland featuring performances, food and drink and a marketplace; followed by “It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play,” by Joe Landry, and starring Beau Bridges, Wendie Malick, Joe Mantegna and Rory O’Malley.
11 a.m. Family Faire; 5 p.m. “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum, 1419 Topanga Canyon Blvd, Topanga. theatricum.com

SUNDAY

The band Emily’s Sassy Lime in Olympia, Wash., circa 1995.

(Emily’s Sassy Lime)

Artist Talk
Emily Ryan, Amy Yao and Wendy Yao of the ‘90s Orange County riot grrrl band Emily’s Sassy Lime join artist-activist-musician Kathleen Hanna of the band Bikini Kill for a discussion of adolescence, creativity and community. The talk is part of the museum’s “2025 California Biennial: Desperate, Scared, But Social,” which closes Jan. 4.
2 p.m. UC Irvine Langson Museum/Orange County Museum of Art, 3333 Avenue of the Arts, Costa Mesa. ocma.art

English Cathedral Christmas
The Los Angeles Master Chorale brings the magic of Canterbury Cathedral downtown, reveling in the grand tradition of British choral works from the 16th century to the present..
7 p.m Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. lamasterchorale.org

TUESDAY
Aron Kallay
In “Midcentury/Modern,” the pianist performs works from world premieres by Michael Frazier, Zanaida Stewart Robles and Brandon Rolle, along with 20th century works by Grażyna Bacewicz and Sergei Prokofiev in a program presented by Piano Spheres.
8 p.m. Thayer Hall at the Colburn School, 200 S. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. pianospheres.org

WEDNESDAY
BOTH: A Hard Day’s Silent Night
Open Fist Theatre Company’s annual holiday charity concert benefiting Heart of Los Angeles, an organization that helps kids in underserved communities, infuses the music of the Beatles with Gospel flair to tell the Christmas story.
8 p.m. Wednesday-Friday; 3:30 and 9 p.m. Saturday; 3:30 and 7 p.m. Sunday. Atwater Village Theatre, 3269 Casitas Ave. openfist.org

Elaine May and Walter Matthau star in “A New Leaf,” which screens at the Academy Museum on Wednesday.

(Film Publicity Archive/United Archives via Getty Images)

A New Leaf
Elaine May made Hollywood history with this 1971 screwball noir as the first woman to write, direct and star in her own feature film. Walter Matthau co-stars as a playboy who has burned through his own fortune so plans to marry and murder May’s kooky heiress to get hers.
7:30 p.m. Academy Museum, 6067 Wilshire Blvd. academymuseum.org

Culture news and the SoCal scene

Architect Frank Gehry in his Playa Vista office in 2015.

(Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)

The world is mourning the death of legendary architect Frank Gehry, who died last Friday at age 96. Times classical music critic Mark Swed wrote a beautiful appreciation about how Gehry used his buildings — Walt Disney Concert Hall in particular — to transform music. I made a video appreciation that tried to encapsulate Gehry’s best work, and his deep connection to his adopted hometown, and L.A. Times contributor Sam Lubell compiled a list, with photographs, of Gehry’s finest buildings in L.A., and around the world. Deputy managing editor Shelby Grad wrote about the importance of the Gehry-designed Danzinger studio.

This week also marked the release of The Times best-of-2025 lists. These include Swed’s selection of the best of L.A.’s classical music performances; Times theater critic Charles McNulty’s pick of the best theatrical works;
and former (sob!) Times art critic Christopher Knight’s 10 best art shows at SoCal museums.

Swed also wrote a story that came out of a recent trip to Tokyo about Carl Stone, an L.A. based composer from the Japanese capital, who uses his laptop to record environmental sounds and transform them into sonic sculptures. “Stone’s iPad, with its open sonic complexity, created a sense of space, a roomy aural soundscape in which jazz and butoh became elements not egos, not larger than life, just more life, the merrier,” writes Swed.

McNulty wrote an interesting essay about characters breaking the fourth wall and how it can galvanize an audience. “Breaking the fourth wall is a tried-and-true method of calling an audience to attention. But a new breed of dramatist, writing in an age of overlapping calamities — environmental, political, economic, technological and moral — is retooling an old playwriting device to do more than inject urgency and immediacy in the theatrical experience,” McNulty writes.

I spent time in Palm Springs over the Thanksgiving break to cover the grand reopening of the Palm Springs Plaza Theatre, which recently underwent a $34-million restoration. To celebrate, it hosted an intimate show featuring actor, singer, songwriter Cynthia Erivo.

I also had the pleasure of sitting down for an interview with Broadway actor Ben Platt in advance of his 10-day residency at the Ahmanson Theatre. We bonded over being anxious people, and he shared that he keeps his anxiety in check through live performance.

Cameron Watson is the new artistic director of Skylight Theatre Company.

(David Zaugh)

Cameron Watson has been named Skylight Theatre Company’s new artistic director, beginning Jan. 1. He will replace Gary Grossman, who is stepping down after four decades at the helm of the Los Feliz-based theater, during which time he turned the company into one of the most respected small theaters in the city. “Cameron’s passion, his theatrical vision and his ability to lead, listen, nurture and mentor make him the perfect fit for Skylight,” Grossman said in a statement.

Earlier this week, philanthropist MacKenzie Scott gave $20 million to the Japanese American National Museum — the largest single gift in the organization’s history. Scott, the former wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, also gave the museum $10 million in 2021.

Hamza Walker, the Brick executive director who is behind the critically acclaimed “Monuments” exhibit at the Brick and MOCA, has been honored with the 2026 Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence, given by the Bard College Center for Curatorial Studies. “Hamza’s three decades of curatorial practice have brought forward voices and perspectives that challenge dominant narratives, create dialogue, and have left a lasting imprint on the field,” said Tom Eccles, executive director of the Center for Curatorial Studies, in a statement.

Sherman Oaks resident Kate Stermer won the National Portrait Gallery’s 2025 Teen Portrait Competition, alongside Matilda Myers of Towson, Md. The annual competition is open to teens ages 13 to 17, and the museum says it received more than 1,100 entries from 48 states, Guam, Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C. We here at Essential Arts are proud of you, Kate!

— Jessica Gelt

And last but not least

The Times this week released its annual list of the 101 best restaurants in Los Angeles. I plan to go to every one. Well, maybe, like 20. It could get expensive.

MILAN — The gala crowd at Milan’s Teatro alla Scala cheered the season premiere of Dmitry Shostakovich’s “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk’’ with a 12-minute standing ovation Sunday, as the storied theater synonymous with the Italian repertoire opened with a Russian melodrama for the second time since Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

The crowd of luminaries fully embraced stage director Vasily Barkhatov’s bold telling of merchant wife Katerina Izmajilova’s fall into a murderous love triangle against the backdrop of Stalin’s Soviet Union, right up to the jarring final scene with a Soviet truck barreling into a wedding party, and two characters perishing in a burst of flames.

U.S. soprano Sara Jakubiak was showered with carnations and cheers for her portrayal of Katarina, the title character, over the 2-hour, 40-minute opera, and the audience cheered its appreciation for conductor Riccardo Chailly, making his last Dec. 7 gala premiere appearance as music director.

“No one ever expects this,’’ Jakubiak said backstage of the enthusiastic reception. ”I am just so happy.’’

From ‘Boris Godunov’ to ‘Lady Macbeth’

Three years after the 2022 gala season premier of “Boris Godunov” drew protests from the Ukrainian community for highlighting Russian culture in the wake of Moscow’s invasion, the premiere of “Lady Macbeth” inspired a flash mob demonstrating for peace.

Shostakovich’s 1934 opera highlights the condition of women in Stalin’s Soviet Union, and it was blacklisted just days after Stalin saw a performance in 1936, the threshold year of his campaign of political repression known as the Great Purge.

A dozen activists from a liberal Italian party held up Ukrainian and European flags in a quiet demonstration, removed from the La Scala hubbub, that aimed “to draw attention to the defense of liberty and European democracy, threatened today by [President Vladimir] Putin’s Russia, and to support the Ukrainian people.’’

A larger demonstration of several dozen people in front of City Hall called for freedom for the Palestinians and an end to colonialism, but was kept far from arriving dignitaries by a police cordon. Demonstrations against war and other forms of inequality have long countered the glitz of the gala season premiere that draws leading figures from culture, business and politics dressed in their finest frocks.

Culture Minister Alessandro Giuli was joined by the senator for life Liliana Segre, a Holocaust survivor, and Milan Mayor Giuseppe Sala in the royal box. Italian pop stars Mahmoud and Achille Lauro were also among those in attendance.

Shostakovich’s journey to La Scala premiere

Chailly began working with Barkhatov on the title about two years ago, following the success “Boris Godunov,’’ which was attended by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, both of whom said they separated Russia’s politics from its culture.

Outside the “Godunov” premiere, Ukrainians protested against highlighting Russian culture amid a war rooted in the denial of a unique Ukrainian culture.

Chailly called the staging of Shostakovich’s “Lady Macbeth” at La Scala for just the fourth time “a must.’’

“It is an opera that has long suffered, and needs to make up for lost time,’’ he said at a news conference last month.

La Scala’s new general manager, Fortunato Ortombina, defended the choices made by his predecessor to stage both Shostakovich’s “Lady Macbeth” and Modest Mussorgsky’s “Boris Godunov” at the theater whose history is tied to the Italian repertoire.

‘‘Music is fundamentally superior to any ideological conflict,’’ Ortombina said on the sidelines of the news conference. “Shostakovich, and Russian music more broadly, have an authority over the Russian people that exceeds Putin’s own.’’

American soprano makes her La Scala debut

Jakubiak, 47, made her La Scala debut in the title role of Katerina, whose struggle against existential repression leads her to commit murder, landing her in a Siberian prison where she self-immolated to kill herself and her treacherous second husband’s new lover — deviating from the original story’s drowning. It’s the second time Jakubiak has sung the role, after performances in Barcelona last year, and she said Shostakovich’s Katerina is full of challenges.

“That I’m a murderess, that I’m singing 47 high B flats in one night, you know, all these things,’’ Jakubiak said while sitting in the makeup chair ahead of the Dec. 4 preview performance to an audience of young people. “You go, ‘Oh, my gosh, how will I do this?’ But you manage, with the right kind of work, the right team of people. Yes, we’re just going to go for the ride.”

Speaking to journalists recently, Chailly joked that he was “squeezing” Jakubiak like an orange. Jakubiak said she found common ground with the conductor known for his studious approach to the original score and composer’s intent.

“Whenever I prepare a role, it’s always the text and the music and the text and the rhythms,” she said. “First, I do this process with, you know, a cup of coffee at my piano, and then we add the other layers and then the notes. So I guess we’re actually somewhat similar in that regard.”

Jakubiak, best known for Strauss and Wagner, has a major debut coming in July when she sings her first Isolde in concert with Anthony Pappano and the London Symphony.

Stage direction highlights Stalin’s end

Barkhatov, who at 42 has a flourishing international career, said “Lady Macbeth” is a “very brave and exciting” choice for La Scala’s season opening.

Barkhatov’s stage direction sets the opera in a cosmopolitan Russian city in the 1950s, the end of Stalin’s rule, rather than a 19th century rural village as written for the 1930s premiere.

For Barkhatov, Stalin’s regime defines the background of the story and the mentality of the characters for a story he sees as a personal tragedy and not a political tale. Most of the action unfolds inside a dark restaurant appointed in period Art Deco detail, with a rotating balustrade creating a kitchen, a basement and an office where interrogations take place — all grim and dingy.

Despite the tragic arc, Barkhatov described the story as “a weird … breakthrough to happiness and freedom.’’

“Sadly, the statistics show that a lot of people die on their way to happiness and freedom,’’ he added.

Barry writes for the Associated Press.