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James Conlon, the music director of L.A. Opera, will look at these issues as they relate to Wagner’s time and ours. The event will be presented in conjunction with the USC Thornton production of the Wagner opera Das Liebesverbot.

James Conlon has cultivated a vast symphonic, operatic and choral repertoire and has developed enduring relationships with the world’s most prestigious symphony orchestras and opera houses. Since his New York Philharmonic debut in 1974, Conlon has appeared as a guest conductor with virtually every major North American and European orchestra and has frequently been a guest conductor at the Metropolitan Opera. In addition to serving as the music director of L.A. Opera, he is the music director of the Ravinia Festival (the summer home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra) and the Cincinnati May Festival.

In an effort to raise awareness of the significance of works of composers whose lives and compositions were suppressed by the Nazi regime, Conlon has also been devoted to extensive programming of this music in North America and Europe. At both the Ravinia Festival and the L.A. Opera, he continues to program works by these composers, including Alexander von Zemlinsky, Viktor Ullmann, Pavel Haas, Kurt Weill, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Karl Amadeus Hartmann, Erwin Schulhoff and Ernest Krenek.

In 2009, Conlon won two Grammy Awards (Best Classical Recording and Best Opera Album) for conducting L.A. Opera’s production of Kurt Weill’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. During the 2009–10 season at the L.A. Opera, Mr. Conlon will conduct Wagner’s Ring cycle, beginning this season with the first two installments of the cycle, Das Rheingold and Die Walküre. It will be Conlon’s first time conducting this work in the United States.