Out West Arts: Performance at the end of the world

How many Foscari does it take to screw in a light bulb? This is just one of dozens of questions left unanswered in Verdi’s I due Foscari (The Two Foscari), an early relative rarity that has made its way to the stage of Los Angeles Opera for the opening of the 2012/2013 season this weekend. And while the opera isn’t a comedy, it is in need of just such a punch line to spice up one of the more tepid season openers in Los Angeles in quite a while. Foscari is LA Opera’s big ticket production of the season. It’s the only new production and the only off the beaten path offering for a company still being careful about its footing in these turbulent economic waters. The reason for the show’s existence right now is much easier to answer. LAO General Director Placido Domingo is the star, and the opera features a juicy baritone role for him. It’s his 140th role and fits in with his current desire to sing many of Verdi’s baritone roles as he has already done with some success in Simon Boccanegra all over the world. LAO’s new production of I due Foscari directed with all the placidity one could imagine by Thaddeus Strassberger, will also tour the world with stops in Valencia and the Royal Opera House in London. But despite some world class performances from Domingo, Music Director James Conlon, and one soprano spitfire by the name of Marina Poplavskaya the show is mostly a dud.

At the very core of the problem is the opera itself. An early effort with a libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, Verdi certainly had some of his core obsessions about fathers and their children sorted out for the stage, but despite the success of both Nabucco and Ernani which preceded it, dramatic narrative is largely absent from Foscari. As the opera opens, the elderly Venetian Doge, Francesco Foscari, played by Mr. Domingo, finds himself in a tough spot as his son, Jacopo Foscari, the handsome Fracesco Meli, has returned from an exile to stand trial again on new charges of treason and murder that are never explained in any concrete way. Members of the Doge’s ruling council have it out for the younger Foscari and convict him despite his innocence and sentence him to further exile. The rest of the opera consists of Jacopo’s wife, Lucrezia, a radiant Poplavskaya, begging and pleading for this second exile not to happen or for her at least to be allowed to go with him while the father wrings his hands over his inability to do anything about it. Most operas rest comfortably on a certain amount of fait accompli, but I due Foscari ends more or less right where it begins three acts and three hours later.

Along the way there is some lovely singing. Mr. Domingo amazes again with his tenor interpretation of a baritone role. His stage presence and ability to deliver a nuanced complex performance is still unparalleled. He’s a living breathing master class onstage. And when he's performing, he continues to serve as more than enough justification for reviving this piece and giving it a brand-spanking new production. Poplavskaya does crazy like nobody else, and her Lucrezia is delicious to watch despite having little to do. Her tone was patchy in the upper registers early on, but by Act II she had settled in and was bright and penetrating. Francesco Meli made his local debut as the wrongly accused son and gave a reliable if not always completely assured vocal performance. It you’re no fan of tenors, this may be the opera for you in that Mr. Meli is forced to appear either caged or chained under the threat of violence throughout the whole evening including a rather inexplicable Act I aria in which his cage is lowered down from the fly space above, eventually making its way through the stage floor below. Conlon made the best case for Verdi’s zesty score and tapped into all those things that made the composer great even in his earlier years on Saturday. Clearly a little more rehearsal time with the principals was needed, however, as things went awry on more than a few occasions despite a stunner of an Act II trio.

But perhaps the biggest misstep here was the almost absent production directed by Strassberger with set designer Kevin Knight. The principals appear and disappear on a series of elevated wooden plank walkways that extend and retract surrounded by giant stone walls whose lower regions have crumbled and remain standing through a series of what look to be metallic supports. Despite costumes that reference 15th-century Venice, the whole thing feels like David McVicar’s vision of Fire Island at times. A walk way above provides space for the chorus to enter and leave along the way, but visually there isn’t much going on in this dark, static space even when a fire breather arrives briefly for a festival at the start of Act III. And in another odd twist, projected video used to open each act is covered with several screens of brief explanatory text as if the production team was worried that the libretto wasn't going to be able to quite make sense of it all. They were right, but the text also gave off the air of a B-movie growing tiresome by the start of Act II where the audience is reading over Verdi's beautiful opening score. The show never feels as menacing or conflicted as its characters are inside and it passes without much of an emotional bump. Still it's another chance to see the incredible Mr. Domingo do things that really nobody else in the opera world can which may be reason enough to go before the show closes on October 9.

Labels: LA Opera 12/13

The performing arts season shifts gears here in Los Angeles and around the country as we move into the summer. But a couple of recent personnel changes at Los Angeles’ biggest performing arts institutions in the last few months invite thinking ahead to coming seasons, particularly in corners hardest hit by the economic downturn of recent years. One face, certainly fresh if not in any way new to his organization, is Christopher Koelsch who was announced as the new President and CEO of Los Angeles Opera beginning at the start of the 2012/2013 season. Following the economic downturn and the financial strain of an artistically groundbreaking Ring cycle in 2010, LAO has been digging itself out of a hole in the last few seasons with a reduced schedule heavily oriented towards crowd-pleasers and lower amounts of artistic risk. These developments closely followed the death of the company’s former CEO Edgar Baitzel in 2007. Since then the day-to-day operations of the company that has been headed by General Director Placido Domingo and Music Director James Conlon, has fallen to interim management from other players including LAO Board President Marc Stern and Music Center president Stephen Rountree. Rountree in particular has played a pivotal role as LAO's CEO from 2008 forward managing to complete many of Baitzel’s projects and stabilize the company’s finances in the subsequent economic downturn.

Meanwhile, Koelsch has been working his way up through LAO’s ranks since 1997 when he joined the company under the tenure of founding General Director Peter Hemmings. He’s served as the Vice President of Artistic Planning and in 2010 he became the Chief Operating Officer overseeing the non-financial aspects of the company’s management. His appointment to the top post under Domingo and Conlon is a big step and very good news for a number of reasons. Not only does he have a long history with the company throughout most of its history, but he represents the board’s move towards a stable future after a period of some struggle. Koelsch has taste and vision, which will serve the company well, particularly in the ensuing years, which promises even further changes. For those of you playing along at home, you may recall that 2013 is the year that the contracts of both Domingo and Conlon with LAO will expire. They may or may not stay on board, and even if they do, its highly likely the company will have to make new decisions about its artistic leadership somewhere in the not too distant future. Having Koelsch on board in the top day-to-day financial and operations spot buys the company core stability to ride with whatever punches may come along artistic leadership lines. Here’s wishing him the best and bringing the company back to a bigger and more adventurous seasons in the near future. (And how about a revival of that Ring cycle while we’re at it?)

On the other side of town a new director with an even bigger task ahead has come to the performing arts series at UCLA. Kristy Edmunds was named the new Executive and Artistic Director of the series last spring following the precipitous departure of former director David Sefton in 2010. Again dwindling resources were to blame both internal to the University and in the community at large. Things quickly crashed and burned at UCLALive with just about everything adventurous in the once impressive series, including Sefton’s hallmark International Theater Festival, going out the window for very small amounts of the predictable, tried and true.

But in comes Edmunds to revive this moribund organization with an impressive track record both in Portland where she founded the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art and the Time-Based Art Festival, and in Melbourne, Australia where she was head of the Melbourne International Arts Festival for four years. She’s a leader with connections and ideas and she began showing some of those off just last week when she welcomed former subscribers and donors to Royce Hall to announce plans for the coming season at UCLA. She wasted no time with some new initiatives. She quickly suggested that the series completely re-brand itself with a new name and logo replacing UCLALive with the awkward and unwieldy name of The Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA (CAP UCLA). As she explained, while the name seems an odd choice, it’s meant to reflect a new emphasis on the series, functioning in the broader context of an interdisciplinary academic institution where the university community’s access to the study and act of performance is tantamount. This commitment is further reflected in two initiatives that will bring in new and established artists to the UCLA campus often in multi-year terms to develop new work and interact with others in the academic community. There will be CAP UCLA Artist Fellows, who initially will include both Laurie Anderson and Robert Wilson developing new projects during a multi-year commitment at the University, and then there are CAP UCLA Residencies from artists including Meredith Monk, Barak Marshall and Lars Jan. The residencies are already under way, and Monk’s work on campus earlier this year will inform her new piece On Behalf of Nature, which will receive its premiere at CAP UCLA in early 2013.

Edmunds should be cheered for shifting the emphasis of CAP UCLA toward developing more new work over just importing the latest and greatest from elsewhere, which dominates programming from similar presenters around town. But CAP UCLA isn’t out of the woods yet by any means. The fiscal picture, though improving, is still bleak, particularly for the state and University even if they represent only a small portion of the overall CAP UCLA budget. Edmunds introduced an expanded and certainly more diverse program last week than in the last few years that even included an albeit small return of three or four theater events. But the program overall is still heavily weighted toward one-off performances from world, folk, and roots based music outfits and the most familiar of faces. Classical music is particularly hard hit in the schedule with CAP UCLA relying nearly exclusively on the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra for their programming. LACO is a great ensemble and cross promotion that gets more people into their shows is a good thing to be sure. But outside of promoting the Sunday evening programming LACO has typically offered at Royce Hall over the last several years, CAP UCLA will only offer three other “classical” performances including the Monk premiere, an evening with violinist Hahn-Bin, and an appearance from the great Anonymous 4 which will include the premiere of a piece from David Lang, love fail. The dance programming is more promising with visits from Ultima Vez and several programs revisiting the groundbreaking work of the Trisha Brown Dance Company, some of which will take place out of the theater and in the community around UCLA.

Wisely CAP UCLA has done away with any of the specific genre based subscription packages of recent years favoring an almost entirely design-your-own format for people requesting tickets in advance this year. There are signs of life here in the ashes of UCLALive, and one hopes Edmunds finds the support and resources to bring one of Los Angeles’s former premiere performing arts institutions back from the brink in seasons to come.

Labels: CAP UCLA, LA Opera 12/13, UCLA Live

Music lovers in Los Angeles got an earful of the near future this week as two of our major local companies announced what they hope to bring to the stages over the next year a half. Both the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Los Angeles Opera revealed seasons that contained surprises both good and bad. The Los Angeles Philharmonic unveiled their most exciting post-Salonen season to date with more great evenings on offer than I care to count. I for one have spent a lot of time fretting on these pages about the orchestra’s commitment to new and recent music in the last few seasons. And while there are few things in the world that are likely to shut me up, this upcoming season prospectus has.

Where to begin? The most exciting event is undoubtedly a week of programming in January 2013 devoted to Peter Eötvös whose opera Angels in America will be presented as part of the Green Umbrella series with, among others, Measha Brueggergrosman as Harper Pitt. Later that week Eötvös will premiere a new violin concerto written for Midori with both evenings conducted by Pablo Heras-Casado. And then there are a pair of programs in April featuring works by several of the much talked about cadre of young composers currently living and working in Brooklyn. Alan Pierson will lead an evening of works by Samuel Adams, Tyondai Braxton, and Matt Marks to be followed that weekend by a new work from Ted Hearne. Meanwhile, Esa-Pekka Salonen will return to the house he built in November for two weeks of programs featuring his own music as well as that of Lutoslawski, Bruckner, and Magnus Lindberg. Of course the hottest ticket with Salonen’s name on it may actually be his one-night-only appearance with his new outfit, the Philharmonia Orchestra, who’ll perform a concert version of Wozzeck on Nov. 13.

Of course, John Adams will be in town leading another Green Umbrella Program including work from Nico Muhly and Icelandic composer Daniel Bjarnason on the 16th of October. And as much as I’ve not been a big fan of music director Gustavo Dudamel, he will have a significant hand in the new(er) music programming this year with such works occupying nearly a third of his over two dozen appearances. He’ll lead a new commission from Unsuk Chin as well as Oliver Knussen’s treatment of Where the Wild Things Are. He’ll also open the season with a new work from Steven Stucky and reprise this coming spring’s performances of Adams’ The Gospel According to the Other Mary but with a full staging directed by Peter Sellars the second time around. There are many big stars and plenty of wonderful old music, as well that I won’t go through here, but the Countess of Dorothea Röschmann opposite Christopher Maltman in the company’s concert version of Le Nozze di Figaro in May is an absolute highlight.

With all of this good fortune across the street, it’s hard not to be disappointed by one of the softest Los Angeles Opera seasons in years, which was announced by General Director Placido Domingo on Thursday. (In fact taking the four operas mentioned above plus performances of Falla's La vida breve under Fruhbeck de Burgos with the L.A. Phil and you already have a superior opera season to what LAO has planned.) I suppose the glass-half-full way to look at things is that after some tough economic times, L.A. still has an operational opera company producing quality work and is managing to resolve its debts. The casting is reasonable and the season will kick off with the unquestionable highlight of the year, a new production of Verdi’s I Due Foscari with maestro Domingo doing his baritone trick for the second time in L.A. in 2012 in a new role for him. James Conlon will conduct four of the six productions again including Foscari as well as less ambitious Wagner (Der Fliegende Hollander), and requsite bel canto (La Cenerentola). The other half of the company's 36 performances however will be dedicated to three operas they have overly relied upon over the last decade: Puccini’s Madama Butterfly and Tosca both of which were last seen in 2008 and Mozart’s Don Giovanni, which last appeared in December of 2007. To their credit, none of the season's operas will be seen in prodcutions Los Angeles has staged before, but its hard to see the attraction in these plans for longer-standing subscribers who will udnoutedly be struck with a been-there, done-that feeling. With only six operas on the budgetarily constricted schedule, every show carries more weight and while these six operas might seem like a good basis for an 8 opera season, they seem like boilerplate introduction to opera fare as the only six.

But perhaps the bigger question facing the company isn’t just finances or programming, but what this season might suggest about the company’s near future. Given that the contracts of both Placido Domingo and music director James Conlon expire in 2013 the questions remains whether or not this schedule is exit music for the current administration, or if it’s an economic blip for an organization that has abandoned plans as quickly as they’ve made them around the operas of Benjamin Britten or James Conlon's "Recovered Voices" project. Hopefully the new season will seem attractive to new audience members who may be drawn by works they've heard of and a new pricing scheme that makes more affordable seats available than ever before.

Labels: LA Opera 12/13, LA Philharmonic 12/13