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The Lowell Milken Center for Music of American Jewish Experience and the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music are proud to present the West Coast premiere of composer Tod Machover’s chamber opera, Schoenberg in Hollywood, May 18, 20 and 22, 2025 at the newly-renovated UCLA Nimoy Theater.
Please join us in celebrating Arnold Schoenberg by making a gift today to be a part of Schoenberg 150, the worldwide celebration of the sesquicentennial of his birth.
When you give today, you will help ensure that this opera is presented at the highest quality and production level to honor one of UCLA's most renowned professors.
Listen to Mingye W. '25 talk about his incredible experience performing for the Schoenberg Family earlier this year!
ABOUT THE PERFORMANCE
In presenting Tod Machover’s intriguing, exuberant opera about Arnold Schoenberg -- on the UCLA campus -- the Milken Center and Alpert School honor the artistry of two composers whose music resonates deeply with the American Jewish Experience, and celebrate the legacy of one of UCLA’s foundational musical giants.
Schoenberg in Hollywood is a high-spirited, affectionate homage to one of the most influential artistic figures of the 20th century, and UCLA’s revered professor of music composition from 1936 to 1944. It presents vignettes from Schoenberg’s life, seen through the aesthetic of the Hollywood film industry. It explores the complex relationship between uncompromising art and mass appeal, and whether—and how—art can change the world.
Born in Vienna, Schoenberg converted from Judaism to Lutheranism in 1898 during a period of intense antisemitism. “But then”, Machover notes, “he was kicked out of the Berlin Conservatory the day Hitler came in, and his music was banned in Germany.” In 1933, Schoenberg and his family fled the Nazi regime for Paris, where the composer reconverted to Judaism. In 1935, the Schoenbergs arrived in Los Angeles where the composer lived until his death in 1951. Schoenberg was among many intellectual émigrés who fled Nazi persecution and settled in California in the 1930s.
Schoenberg’s life in Southern California included friendships with George Gershwin, Charlie Chaplin, Harpo Marx and other Hollywood luminaries. It was Harpo Marx (who makes an appearance in Schoenberg in Hollywood) who introduced him to MGM’s legendary head of production Irving Thalberg in 1935. Knowing of Schoenberg’s eminence as a composer, Thalberg asked him to consider writing a score for MGM’s upcoming film, “The Good Earth.” Schoenberg felt conflicted about the offer, but eventually began negotiations with Thalberg, which included a proposed $50,000 fee and total artistic control of his music. He was not offered the job.
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