Sun & Sea at Los Angeles MOCA
(Picture: Elon Shoenholz)A crowded beach. A day not so much languorous as sweltering. About 20 people cram onto a small square of sand, among them a fidgety workaholic, unable to relax; a wealthy mum with barely half an eye on her kid; a long-distance couple snatching a few hours together before tomorrow’s parting flight. Underneath the glare of the sun - and of an audience - they break into song.
This is opera, but not as we know it. Sun & Sea (Marina) opens at the Albany in Deptford this week and is an unlikely smash-hit work of - what? I guess, performance art? A 70-minute non-narrative live opera on a four-hour loop, it won the Golden Lion, the highest award at the Venice Biennale when it premiered there for Lithuania in 2019, and generated three-to-four-hour-long queues throughout that summer, just to get in to see it.
