From Our Blogs

Whether you love him or hate him, German artist-director Achim Freyer is undeniably one of opera’s most talked-about talents these days.

His Los Angeles Opera stagings of Wagner’s “Das Rheingold” and “Die Walkure” this season have wowed critics, but many Culture Monster readers have had a serious bone to pick with his highly abstract (some would say highly obtuse) stagings.

Now Freyer is set to make waves yet again when France’s Opera de Rennes broadcasts a revival of his production of Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” in 3-D. That’s right: the medium long associated with B horror movies, kiddie flicks and rides at Epcot Center is now being applied toward the stratospheric heights of opera. The Rennes company is touting the project as the first of its kind in the opera world.

Freyer’s production of “Don Giovanni” (for which he also designed the sets) is being revived with English baritone Stephen Gadd in the title role and conductor Antony Hermus on the podium.

The live broadcast, scheduled for June 2, will be viewable only at venues in Rennes and Paris, but those of us on other continents can still get in on some of the action via the Internet.

Two websites, ville-rennes.fr and francemusique.com, have scheduled webcasts of the June 2 performance, offering both sound and image (though only in 2-D, alas). The cable channel Mezzo, which is available in 39 countries, will also carry a 2-D broadcast of the performance.

For those of us in California, the webcasts on the aforementioned sites will begin at 11 a.m. on Tuesday, June 2.

-- David Ng

From: Culture Monster: All the arts, all the time

For more, go to latimes.com/culturemonster

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BOOSTER SHOTS

Hopeful prostate cancer vaccine

A controversial prostate cancer vaccine produced by Dendreon Corp. of Seattle “significantly” improves survival of patients, the company said without releasing further details of the trial. The trial was designed to detect a minimum 22% increase in survival and experts speculate that it did at least that well. Further results of the trial will be released April 28 at a meeting of the American Urological Assn. If those findings are upheld, the vaccine, called Provenge, could be the first cancer vaccine approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

Provenge is a so-called therapeutic vaccine designed to treat the disease rather than prevent it from occurring. Physicians collect specialized immune cells called dendritic cells from the patient’s blood, mix them with proteins collected from the surface of tumor cells and inject them back into the patient in three doses at two-week intervals.

In an earlier study of the vaccine, the company found that it increased survival of patients with advanced prostate cancer that had spread beyond the prostate by 18 weeks compared to patients given a placebo. After three years, 34% of those in the vaccine group survived, compared to 11% of those in the placebo group. An FDA advisory committee recommended that the agency approve the vaccine for marketing, but the FDA disagreed, arguing that the study did not provide evidence that the vaccine slowed progression of tumors.

That decision provoked outrage among prostate cancer victims and advocates, who argued that the 18-week increase in survival was nearly double the 10-week increase seen with Taxotere, which had been approved. Three congressmen called for a probe of the agency, charging conflicts of interest among some members of the advisory committee.

The new trial in 512 patients was designed to overcome objections to the earlier study.

Although few details are available yet, Dr. Eric Small of UC San Francisco told the Associated Press that “this is an exciting result, demonstrating that harnessing a patient’s own immune system can successfully attack prostate cancer. Now we have more confidence that the initial results we saw were real.”

-- Thomas H. Maugh II

From: Booster Shots: Oddities, musings and news from the world of health

For more, go to latimes.com/boostershots

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DAILY DISH

It’s Grilled Cheese Month

April is the best time of year to get toasted, and we’re not saying that because of tax day. April is National Grilled Cheese Month, and here are a few places to celebrate:

You can now create your own custom grilled cheese sandwich for $4 at Patinette, the MOCA cafe. Their new Grilled Cheese Workshop lets you choose your bread (white, wheat, rye, walnut currant or ciabatta), your cheese (mozzarella, Gruyere, chipotle cheddar, Point Reyes blue, Fontina, Brie or goat) and your condiments (mustard, pesto, garlic or yuzu aioli). Extras will cost you $1. Patinette, 250 S. Grand Ave., L.A. (213) 626-1178.

During weekday lunch hours (11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.), Rush Street is serving a grilled cheese sandwich and a bowl of tomato soup for $6. Rush Street, 9546 Washington Blvd., Culver City. (310) 837-9546.

Registration is now open for the Grilled Cheese Invitational ( www.grilledcheeseinvitational.com) to be held April 25 at an as yet undisclosed location in downtown L.A.

Bring your creativity (but not your flame thrower) to this grill-off, which is divided into three categories:

The Missionary Position: bread, butter and cheese; the Kama Sutra: a free-for-all of savory ingredients; and the Honey Pot: dessert-style grilled cheese sandwiches. Only 300 competitors will be allowed to register and they must do so in advance. Judges, on the other hand, can only register on-site, and there’s room for 1,700 of them.

-- Elina Shatkin

From: Daily Dish: The inside scoop on food in Los Angeles

For more, go to latimes.com/dailydish