L.A. Opera kicks off new season by unveiling its latest work: a 70-foot, hand-painted curtain

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Set us as preferred When the curtain rises on L.A.Opera’s new season at Dorothy Chandler Pavilion later this month, it won’t feature the usual starburst pattern that has greeted fans for the last 63 years.

That curtain has been swapped out for something entirely new: a design titled “The Things We Know,” featuring a pensive-looking boy and girl beneath a halo of light.The boy holds a caged bird; the girl, a fish tank.

Both are outlined in black on an off-white background.The 70-foot-wide curtain painstakingly created by L.A.artist Enrique Martínez Celaya is a surprising choice for a major opera house where one would expect a pattern or imagery related to storytelling.

A bold and offbeat move, it draws upon notions of art and its place in the human psyche.“I wanted an image that would not be related to any opera,” Martínez Celaya said during a preview of the curtain when it was still a work in progress.“I’m interested in both the coming-of-age aspect of these children and also the containment of these birds and these fish, and the children in relation to that containment.”Martínez Celaya added that he is particularly intrigued with the gray zone where “childhood ceases to be, and adulthood hasn’t come yet.”Another world is depicted beneath the children — one that won’t be seen until four minutes before conductor Domingo Hindoyan raises his baton and the curtain begins to rise.

Its unfurling will reveal an image of the cosmos overlain with blooming flowers and splintered prisms emanating rainbows.“It’s this containment here that then just breaks apart and opens up,” said Martínez Celaya.“What you’re going to have here is actually a performative aspect to the work.

But as it moves up, you try to hold on to that which is disappearing, and you cannot have both of these things at once.S...