'La Commedia,' at National Gallery, opens Louis Andriessen festival

"La Commedia," by Louis Andriessen, is one of the most important operas written in the past 20 years. It won a Grawemeyer Award, one of composition's plum prizes, three years after its 2008 premiere. Although the opera has been seen in Los Angeles and New York, Washington has not had a presenting organization that would bring this kind of eclectic, patchwork piece, conceived as a "video opera" with the director Hal Hartley, to this city.