Psycho

He famously employed a kind of psychological suspense in his films, producing a distinct viewer experience. Born in London in 1899, Alfred Hitchcock worked for a short time in engineering before entering the film industry in 1920.

He left for Hollywood in 1939, where his first American film, Rebecca, won an Academy Award for best picture. Hitchcock created more than 50 films, including the classics Rear Window, Vertigo, Rope, The 39 Steps and Psycho.

He received the AFI's Life Achievement Award in 1979. He died in 1980.

His music for Psycho (1960) has remained a paragon of suspense-film sound tracks. Herrmann was born into a family of Russian immigrants. While still a student at DeWitt Clinton public high school in the Bronx, he took composition and conducting classes at New York University. He continued his studies at the Juilliard School of Music (now Juilliard School), and in the 1930s he was one of a group of young composers associated with the composer Charles Ives.

In 1934 CBS radio hired Herrmann to work as a composer and arranger and to conduct the CBS Symphony Orchestra. At CBS he also worked on the radio show Mercury Theatre on the Air—directed by Orson Welles—for which he composed music in a wide range of styles to heighten the dramatic effect of the plays. When Welles signed a contract to write and direct a film in 1939, he brought many of his Mercury players and Herrmann along with him, thus launching Herrmann’s career in film music. Although his scores for Welles’s Citizen Kane (1941) and, subsequently, for William Dieterle’s All That Money Can Buy (1941, Academy Award) were highly acclaimed, Herrmann’s work with suspense-film director Alfred Hitchcock in the 1950s and ’60s won him the widest recognition. Among Herrmann’s most significant Hitchcock scores were those for Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959), and, especially, Psycho (1960).

Aside from his film scores, Herrmann wrote music for various television series, including Rawhide and The Twilight Zone. Herrmann also composed a variety of concert music, including, most notably, an operatic setting of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1943–51). Throughout his career, however, film and television scores remained the primary focus of his creative activity. Herrmann died in 1975, just one day after completing his score for director Martin Scorsese’s film Taxi Driver (1976).

Since his professional debut at the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma in 2019, Louis Lohraseb has quickly established himself as an exciting new conductor on the international stage, with subsequent debuts at the Semperoper Dresden, Los Angeles Opera, and Komische Oper Berlin.

Following his mainstage debut conducting Tosca at LA Opera, Mr. Lohraseb was immediately re-engaged for The Barber of Seville and La Traviata. Elsewhere in 2023/24, he debuts at Staatsoper Hamburg with The Marriage of Figaro and at Atlanta Opera with A Midsummer Night’s Dream and with the Peoria Symphony.

Recent seasons have included Semperoper Dresden (Carmen); Komische Oper Berlin (La Traviata); Opera Sarasota (Massenet's Thérèse); both La Rondine and Don Giovanni at Indiana University Opera Theatre; and gala concerts with Yale Opera and Summer Opera Tel Aviv.

An accomplished pianist, Mr. Lohraseb is a regular recital and chamber music partner collaborating with such artists as Erica Petrocelli, Liv Redpath, Charles Castronovo, Taylor Raven, Eric Silberger, Madalyn Parnas and Cicely Parnas. He studied piano with Findlay Cockrell and Kevin Murphy, and harpsichord and theory with William Carragan.

Mr. Lohraseb was a recipient of the prestigious Solti Foundation U.S. Career Assistance Award in 2022, and he includes among his mentors Lorin Maazel, James Conlon, Arthur Fagen, and Kevin Murphy. An alumnus of LA Opera's Domingo-Colburn-Stein Young Artist Program, he has served as assistant conductor to Music Director James Conlon for numerous productions since 2017 at both LA Opera and the Ravinia Festival with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Born to Iranian and Italian parents, Mr. Lohraseb graduated summa cum laude from SUNY Geneseo, where he was an Edgar Fellow. He has been a Conducting Fellow at the Yale School of Music, where he studied with Shinik Hahm and served as assistant conductor to Peter Oundjian, John Adams, and Krzysztof Penderecki, among others; with additional post-graduate coursework at Indiana University Jacobs School of Music.

Learn more at LouisLohraseb.com.

With Roberto Cani as concertmaster, the orchestra has a core roster of 61 players, augmented for each production according to the demands of the music. The LA Opera Orchestra players also fill principal positions in Southern California symphonies and chamber groups and record in Hollywood film, television and recording sessions.