When asked about the production’s logistical challenges, Mr. Sharon and his collaborators burst out laughing. The team worked closely with the Los Angeles Department of Transportation to engineer precise travel routes. Contingency paths were planned to account for street closings; composers built repeated vamping gestures into scenes, so that an extra red light wouldn’t disrupt the flow of the drama. Communication is key: Musicians standing on a street corner need to know exactly when a limo with audience members might drift by, so that they can begin a new chapter.

“Opera is so rarely spontaneous,” Mr. Sharon said. “Everything always seems incredibly fixed, and set. And this will never be that, ever.” Performances are limited to Saturdays and Sundays to assure that the city’s notorious traffic won’t stretch the opera to Wagnerian lengths.

Recent preview performances on two of the three routes were surprisingly smooth, a defamiliarizing and ultimately haunting journey through the cityscape. In more subdued scenes, you might ride alongside an older Lucha in the form of a pensive solo flutist, or be crammed next to three guitarists as a teenage Lucha celebrates her quinceañera with a simple song. But each route also includes several stunning set pieces: a thrilling drive alongside a riverbank, as Lucha sings while standing on the back of a Jeep; a psychedelic traversal of the landmark Bradbury Building, with dancers and musicians scattered among multiple stories; an elevator ride to a rooftop pool, where brass instruments trade antiphonal fanfares from atop neighboring buildings. As each trip yields only a third of the full story, it’s never quite clear how it all adds up, but “Hopscotch” leaves a powerful impression.

And the disorienting experience still feels operatic. Mr. Sharon cited as his model a lineage of opera that stretches back through Stockhausen and Cage, rather than Rossini and Puccini. “Opera is inherently this mix of media, in an incredibly unpredictable and unstable way,” he said. Snippets of Monteverdi’s “L’Orfeo,” from 1607, float through various scenes.

“I feel like I’m composing in three dimensions,” said the composer Ellen Reid, one of the collaborators. “I’m composing an installation, and motion, and using all of my senses, in a different way than it would be for a regular concert piece.”

For those dissuaded by the price of “Hopscotch” — tickets begin at $125 — there is also that Central Hub, outside the Southern California Institute of Architecture, free to enter, that simultaneously streams live audio and video from all 24 of the opera’s chapters in a circle of screens. The audience traveling the main routes are given hand-held cameras for several scenes, and can film the action themselves. The final performance of each day also concludes at the Hub, where limos take the audience and musicians for a shimmering final chorus.