Music Center Opera

I generally agree with Falkenhagen that a season of relatively unknown and/or obscure operas will not attract many opera-goers, but I disagree with him as to why people did not flock to see "Macbeth." Musically, "Macbeth," sung by competent singers in good voice, is quite wonderful. The Los Angeles production was dreadfully sung and staged, and a poor review along with word of mouth rightfully kept the masses away. TOM LAWSON Long Beach

Ten years ago, we called it Music Center Opera. Ten years ago, we had no way of knowing whether a new opera company, even with the institutional support of the Los Angeles Music Center, could thrive in the operatic desert where no company had ever managed to take root. Ten years ago, we wondered whether Placido Domingo, brought in for resident star power and artistic advice, could keep up his unprecedented tenorial pace.

Complete casts for the 1987-88 season of seven operas, plus a tentative schedule of eight productions--including Rossini's "Tancredi," with Marilyn Horne in the title role--for the 1988-89 season, were released by Los Angeles Music Center Opera on Wednesday.

For purely selfish reasons, I was saddened to learn The Times will lose the regular services of Martin Bernheimer ("Times Critic Bernheimer to Leave Post After 30 Years," Calendar, Feb. 15). His reviews were consistently characterized by a felicitous combination of erudition, historical perspective, wit and plain common sense. His persistent prodding of the local musical establishment was undoubtedly of singular importance in the successes and growth of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Music Center Opera and other artistic enterprises during his tenure.

The 1991-92 Music Center Opera schedule and castings in the major roles: * "Madama Butterfly" (Puccini). Maria Ewing, Placido Domingo/Jorge Antonio Pita, Thomas Allen/John Atkins; conducted by Randall Behr; directed by Ian Judge. Sept. 12, 15, 18, 21, 24, 29. * "Les Troyens" (Berlioz). Nadine Secunde, Carol Neblett, Gary Lakes; conducted by Charles Dutoit; directed by Francesca Zambello. Sept. 14, 17, 20, 22, 25. * "Don Giovanni" (Mozart).

There's just a little pomp and circumstance about opera. So, it's hardly unusual that in many major cities, the opera signals the traditional opening of the Fall Social Season. Capital letters. Los Angeles is no exception. The Los Angeles Music Center Opera's second season opens Sept. 8 with a production of Puccini's "La Boheme" starring Placido Domingo (the opera company's artistic consultant).

Tuesday night, with a little help as usual from some British friends, the Music Center Opera attended brilliantly to the glorious Baroque excesses of Handel's "Alcina" amid the glorious Deco excesses of the Wiltern Theatre. "Alcina," you may recall, is a masterpiece of its kind that makes frequent appearances in history books, infrequent ones in opera houses.

The Music Center has always had a strange relationship with that wondrous, irrational art known as opera--a relationship predicated on false promises, pretension, mismanagement and neglect. Twenty years ago, before we opened our most vaunted theatrical palace in the performing-arts shopping mall downtown, the powers-that-were promised grand grand-opera as a regular, on-going part of our cultural diet.

New productions of "Cosi fan Tutte" and "Wozzeck," and the premiere of a new critical edition of an old favorite mark the 1988-89 season for the Music Center Opera, as announced Tuesday. Plans for the 1989-90 season include five new productions and a revival of the "Falstaff" produced by the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1982. The first performance of a new edition of "Les Contes d'Hoffman," opens the next season, replacing the "Cavalleria Rusticana" and "Pagliacci" bill previously announced.

The setting is Rehearsal Room 3 at the Music Center Pavilion. Dr. Miracle, the sinister, Mephistophelean figure, and Antonia, the consumptive ingenue languishing for her true love, are locked in a clinch. As the music soars passionately and its song throbs, she clings to and entwines him--like a thin wet leaf sticking to a pavement. Seduction is the name of this game. Forget the usual encounter between these two characters in Offenbach's "Les Contes d'Hoffmann."

Southern California followers of the American mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade are accustomed to hearing her live at least once a year--she last appeared here at the Hollywood Bowl in July. So they were no doubt disappointed when the singer canceled her scheduled appearance in Mozart's "Cosi fan Tutte," opening at L.A. Music Center Opera, Feb. 27. At least some of her fans can take heart, however.

Enacting more an American sweetheart than an Italian bombshell, Theodora Hanslowe took over the title role of Rossini's "L'Italiana in Algeri" Wednesday at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Making her first appearance with Los Angeles Music Center Opera, Hanslowe conscientiously went through (on how little stage rehearsal?) director Alain Marcel's vampish rituals, but her heart didn't seem in them, and she did not dominate the stage dramatically or vocally, especially in ensembles.

The Los Angeles Music Center Opera's 11th season, announced by company General Director Peter Hemmings on Tuesday, includes one world premiere, three productions new to Los Angeles and three revivals. Among the highlights of the seven-opera, 47-performance season, from Sept. 4 through June 21, 1997, will be the opening production, a brand-new "Pagliacci" by Franco Zeffirelli in which company advisor Placido Domingo will sing the role of Canio.

It was a happy, sad, frustrating, exhilarating, discouraging, encouraging, soothing, frazzling, stimulating, depressing, uplifting, bracing, painful, provocative, dull, exciting, lackadaisical, exceptional, humdrum year. Just like 1994.

You wouldn't call it typecasting, but Greg Fedderly is a particularly apt choice to play the role of Tom Rakewell, the country rube hero of Stravinsky's "The Rake's Progress." Both Fedderly and Rakewell are young, personable lads who hail from small towns, and both have ventured to the Big City, therein to find all manner of new and strange things. But the best reason for Fedderly to portray Rakewell is, of course, his much-praised tenorial timbre.

Peter Hemmings sees the 10th-anniversary season of the Los Angeles Music Center Opera--the company he has headed from the start nine years ago--as "an opportunity to look back, look forward and celebrate in between." The actual 10th-anniversary performance won't take place until next October. But everybody loves a festive occasion in this town, and who's counting? Not the general director. He brushes aside an invitation to assess his past achievements and failures.

Inside the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on Tuesday, the Music Center Opera opened its fifth ambitious season with the glorious pathos of "Fidelio." Outside the Pavilion, the performance-artist Tim Miller and numerous colleagues, all clad in striped prison garb, staged their own ironic overture to Beethoven's ode to freedom. It was an agitprop demonstration protesting governmental interference in the arts.

The fifth Music Center Opera season opens Sept. 4 with a new "Fidelio," produced with the Canadian Opera. Staged by Gotz Friedrich and conducted by Jiri Kout, Beethoven's only opera will enlist Karan Armstrong in the title role, opposite Gary Bachlund as Florestan. For the first time, company artistic consultant Placido Domingo will not perform in the season opener.

POP/ROCK Spacey Idea Shot Down: A national nonprofit group called the National Space Society said Friday that it was launching an effort to help place the remains of Grateful Dead leader Jerry Garcia, who died Wednesday, in "eternal earth orbit." The Washington-based group said it would ask its 25,000 members, many of whom are Deadheads, to help fund the project. However, Grateful Dead spokesman Michael Eckenberg said that the group's idea would end up lost in space.

Vladimir Bogachov. Remember the name. Saturday afternoon, he took over the title role in "Otello" at the Music Center Opera. It is a daunting assignment under any circumstance, but it must have seemed doubly daunting on this occasion. A little-known tenor from Moscow was following in the formidable footsteps of Placido Domingo.