L.A. Opera Retires 63-Year-Old Curtain for Hand-Painted Artwork

A 70-foot-wide hand-painted canvas by Los Angeles artist Enrique Martínez Celaya will replace the starburst-patterned curtain that has hung at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion for 63 years when L.A. Opera opens its new season later this month.

The artwork, titled “The Things We Know,” abandons traditional theatrical motifs. Instead of imagery tied to a specific production or classical storytelling, the composition depicts a boy holding a caged bird and a girl carrying a fish tank beneath a halo of light. The figures are outlined in black against an off-white background. A secondary visual layer — featuring a cosmic scene overlaid with blooming flowers and splintered prisms — remains hidden until roughly four minutes before conductor Domingo Hindoyan begins the opening performance, unfurling only as the curtain rises.

Major American opera houses rarely commission standalone fine art for their main curtains. The Metropolitan Opera in New York relies on custom-designed curtains tailored to individual productions, while the Lyric Opera of Chicago and San Francisco Opera typically use solid-color drapes or architectural patterns. L.A. Opera Chief Executive Christopher Koelsch initiated this departure from convention approximately a decade ago after encountering Martínez Celaya’s work at an L.A. Louver gallery fundraiser. Koelsch provided no thematic parameters, requesting only a “radically large-scale painting” that reflected Los Angeles’ contemporary art landscape rather than the operatic repertoire itself.

Martínez Celaya and his team spent recent weeks painting the piece directly onto canvas-like fabric laid across the pavilion stage floor. While the original studio version was executed in oil, the theater curtain required acrylic and water-based paints to meet fire safety codes and accommodate the mechanical stress of repeated lifting. The shift between mediums introduced deliberate variations into the final execution.

The imagery carries deep biographical weight. The top half of the composition relates to the artist’s family history during their exile from Havana to Spain. The girl is modeled after his daughter, Natalia, while the caged birds reference his grandfather, who kept pets in cages. The boy is based on Martínez Celaya himself. He described the central theme as existing in the transitional space where “childhood ceases to be, and adulthood hasn’t come yet,” using the motif of containment — caged birds, tank-bound fish, children awaiting maturity — to contrast with the explosive release of the hidden lower panel as the curtain physically ascends.

This intersection of science, memory, and scale defines much of Martínez Celaya’s career. Now serving as provost professor of humanities and arts at USC, he initially trained as a physicist, earning a degree in applied physics with a minor in electrical engineering from Cornell University and a master’s in quantum electronics from UC Berkeley before abandoning doctoral studies to pursue a master of fine arts at UC Santa Barbara. His engagement with classical music dates back to 2004, when he created “Schneebett” (Snow Bed) for the Berlin Philharmonic. That installation, inspired by Ludwig van Beethoven’s final days in Vienna in 1827, featured a refrigerated metal bed continuously generating frost alongside writings and a forest painting rendered in tar, oil, and feathers. It now resides in the collection of the Pérez Art Museum Miami.

For the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion project, Martínez Celaya spent six weeks researching and conceptualizing before drawing a single line, questioning the fundamental nature of the stage, audience anticipation, and the civic identity of Los Angeles. Early sketches included a silhouetted figure overseeing scattered human limbs above sea foam, which eventually evolved into the current prismatic and floral elements.

L.A. Opera originally intended to cut the massive canvas into sections at the end of the season and sell them to raise funds. Those plans have since shifted. Koelsch stated the company is now working to preserve legible portions of the artwork intact following the significant labor and investment required to produce it, while simultaneously preparing to commission another new curtain for the 2027-28 season.