The Passion of Nell
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Program
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Shelley Washington The Passion of Nell
Workshop
About
A new LBO-commissioned opera inspired by the tragic true story of model Nell Theobald and her obsession with soprano Birgit Nilsson, with music by Shelley Washington and a libretto by Lisa Teasley. Wild Up joins Opera UCLA for this work-in-progress showing.
About Endless Season
Art in LA has long been about freedom and a rich rejection of history. With intersecting methods and intentions, it is humble yet aspirational, creating a city that appeals to the aesthete and mystic in all its citizens. Here, famous artists also double as street-side sign painters, our finest restaurants are located in strip malls, and our landmarks are more geographical than architectural or fleetingly experiential rather than permanent monuments to their lineages. Here, our religious and secular musics sound the same.
Endless Season revolves around these distinct West Coast traits. These programs mark a new chapter, focusing on sustainability and place, and investing in the artists and audiences who make our city vibrant. Together, we encourage, question, reinterpret, and challenge the past, modality, and genre. We hold a space for intersectionality and dialogue surrounding every aspect of our work.
More about Endless SeasonEndless Season 2026–2027
Wild Up continues to explore music as a social practice: a way of listening, learning, and rehearsing our collective life together. Across Los Angeles and beyond, Endless Season 2026–2027 brings audiences into concerts, festivals, workshops, participatory performances, and large-scale collaborations that ask what an orchestra can be now: a space for civic engagement and imaginative practice shaped by the people who make it together.
The season begins with Democracy Sessions, returning as an expanded, multi-venue festival at MOCA Geffen, REDCAT, and additional partners to be announced. Timed to lead up to the 2026 US midterm elections, the festival brings together artists, audiences, and communities for concerts, performances, participatory actions, and public dialogue on democratic practices.
Throughout the year, Wild Up moves through projects that trace connection in many forms: continuing our work at the intersections of jazz, improvisation, and contemporary classical music at The Nimoy; bringing Meredith Monk’s immersive Indra’s Net, a vast meditation on interdependence, to Walt Disney Concert Hall; developing two new operas — Shelley Washington’s The Passion of Nell with Long Beach Opera and Ted Hearne and Chana Porter’s The Dispossessed, set to premiere in 2028; and carrying Julius Eastman’s music onto the international stage with performances at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg.
This season, The Collective Orchestra deepens its role as a gathering place for community music-making, bringing together participants for multiple projects within the Democracy Sessions festival and for our annual performance of Gavin Bryars’ Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet.
Together, these projects imagine music as a living practice: a way to rehearse cooperation, make room for many voices, and build new ways of being together.