“What the opera designer does is analogous to a film composer, but in reverse,” David Hockney once said. “I create what you see to enhance what you hear.” Last summer, Hockney’s three-decade old designs for Richard Strauss’s Orientalist fantasy Die Frau ohne Schatten—the last of the artist’s 10 productions for the stage—dazzled San Francisco Opera with its swirling forms and lavish palette. Now, LA Opera follows suit with Giacomo Puccini’s swan song Turandot, the Orientalist fantasy that is ninth on Hockney’s list. In both cases, peppy, museum-quality costumes by Hockney’s talented late friend and protégé Ian Falconer (author and illustrator of the children’s classic Olivia) complete the gorgeous pictures. Angela Meade stars as the Chinese princess who stumps suitors with her riddles and then delivers them to the axe of the royal executioner. Russell Thomas, who has been rewriting the rules for Black tenors in repertory from Mozart to Verdi and Wagner, is onboard as Calàf, the prince from afar who melts her icy heart, and his hit number, “Nessun dorma,” will stop the show or else. (Please don’t sing along.) Though Hockney worked with some star directors in his time, it was his stamp that dominated. The San Francisco Frau was staged from scratch, very ably indeed, by the staff director Roy Rallo. Garnett Bruce, who now directs Turandot, will presumably have an equally free hand. James Conlon conducts. —Matthew Gurewitsch