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James Conlon, Los Angeles Opera’s ‘Ring’ master

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James Conlon is in a hurry. At a Grand Avenue crosswalk on a recent morning, he is repeatedly pushing the button to cross the street. Tap, tap, tap, tap. His efforts don’t make the lights change any faster. He has to wait like everyone else.

Conlon, who is the music director of the Los Angeles Opera, doesn’t like to stay still. Not even for a minute. He’s on his way to Starbucks for his morning cappuccino fix. It’s surprising that Conlon needs stimulants at all. The conductor is his own internal combustion engine, giving off sparks that can either dazzle or burn, depending on how close you want to get.

Since he arrived at L.A. Opera in 2006, Conlon has worked to put his personal stamp on the young company. His twin artistic obsessions — the music of Richard Wagner and composers suppressed by the Nazis — have become centerpieces of recent seasons. He also has become a familiar and accessible face to the city’s classical music fans, becoming a regular at cultural speaking events whenever he’s not otherwise occupied in the orchestra pit.

The current season is arguably the biggest of Conlon’s career. He will be leading performances of Wagner’s “The Ring of the Nibelung,” a massive endeavor that requires 15 hours of conducting for each cycle. (The company is producing three full cycles starting May 29.)

Conlon also turned 60 this year. “I certainly don’t feel 60,” he says. “I don’t know where the time went.”

Time is a scarce and slippery commodity in the Conlon zone. Spending time in Conlon’s shoes —following him around on one of his typically busy days — is a high-impact athletic event not meant for the weak, the thin-skinned or the easily flustered.

Crammed schedule

When Conlon enters a room, it’s perfectly clear who’s in charge. He’s physically compact, but he projects a brusque sense of authority. His small team of assistants is constantly swarming around him in a frenzied but ordered nimbus of activity. It’s all a variant on what Conlon knows best — conducting.

It’s a little past 11 in the morning. (In the classical world, days tend to start and end late.) Conlon is sitting in his plain, functional office at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion discussing his schedule with his assistant, Bill Gorin. There are no performances today but that doesn’t mean Conlon has the day off. Quite the contrary: His schedule is packed with meetings, a music class and an evening speaking engagement.

“Working with James is like competing in a triathlon — it’s all about focus, flexibility, patience and above all endurance,” says Gorin.

First up: An online video that Conlon wants to post on the opera’s website isn’t working correctly. Conlon is on the phone with the company’s head of marketing, who can’t get it to work either. Throughout the conversation, Conlon multitasks his way through a list of other chores: Lunch is ordered; BlackBerry messages are sent; a massage appointment for tomorrow is confirmed.

Conlon’s office is cluttered with books and scores. (He keeps his scores in a carry-on piece of luggage.) Three hefty volumes that represent the entirety of Wagner’s “Götterdämmerung” rest on top of an upright piano. On his shelf sit two Grammy Award trophies.

He likes to eat healthy — he often snacks on Balance Carb Well Bars and organic fruit — but he doesn’t go the gym. “‘Götterdämmerung’ is my workout,” he says.

The Internet video glitch persists but it will have to wait until later. Conlon has a master class to teach and he’s already running late. In the hallway, he pushes the button for the elevator. When it fails to immediately appear, he takes the stairs instead, leaving the rest of his team to catch up with him.

Master class

Conlon sits in a rehearsal room with seven aspiring singers who are part of the company’s Domingo-Thornton Young Artists Program. They each perform an aria which he then critiques in front of the entire class. He is blunt but never cruel. His criticisms are often delivered with a smile.

“I circled all the rests you didn’t do and then my hand got tired,” he tells one student.

“Vocally perfect, note perfect, but with no meaning at all,” he says to another.

“The intonation is simply not good enough for this,” he chastises yet another.

“More volume is not better, it’s just more,” he says to the entire class. “Sing within the conditions of your voice. Every forte has to be a dignified forte.”

At one point, he tells the class an anecdote about meeting the 100-year-old soprano Magda Olivero in Italy. The conductor explains that even at her advanced age, the singer still had formidable abdominal muscles.

“You don’t lose you voice as you get older. You lose these,” says Conlon, pointing to his own abdominals.

The singers behave deferentially to Conlon and some of them are visibly nervous, especially when the conductor approaches them to demonstrate a certain technique. “Don’t be terrified that I’m here and looking at your larynx,” he says.

After the class, Conlon returns to his office, where he looks over scores for his upcoming appearance at the Cincinnati May Festival, where he has served as music director for more than 30 years. He also holds the top musical post at the Ravinia Festival in Chicago and continues to serve as guest conductor around the world.

He converses in Italian with Ignazio Terrasi, his assistant who is in charge of maintaining and annotating his musical scores. (Conlon’s day requires him to shift between Italian, German and French. He can also make his way in Dutch, Russian and Spanish.)

His facility with European languages is a result of the few decades that he spent in Europe leading the Paris National Opera and the Rotterdam Philharmonic, as well as serving as music director for the city of Cologne, Germany.

“I love languages. They’re like music,” he says. Later, when reading a document aloud to an assistant, he has trouble saying the word “archetype.” He adds, “The downside of speaking multiple languages is that you forget how to pronounce certain words.”

‘I love L.A.’

It’s 3 p.m. and Conlon is, as usual, trying to do a number of things at the same time. He’s eating his lunch, which consists of a gourmet mozzarella sandwich from Mendocino Farms; he’s checking his e-mail; and he’s meeting with Christopher Koelsch, the company’s head of artistic planning, who is trying to finalize rehearsal times for a production of “Lohengrin” next season.

Later, Conlon drops in briefly on a rehearsal for “Das Rheingold,” which is being held in a room featuring a replica of the steeply raked stage set. Conlon greets bass Eric Halfvarson and mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung. He also confers with director Achim Freyer, who warns the conductor not to get too close because he is under the weather.

The atmosphere is friendly and laid-back. (It’s still a few weeks before two of the production’s lead singers publicly criticize the staging as being artistically flawed and dangerous for performers.)

Conlon returns to his office — taking the stairs once again — where he has to deal with a sensitive issue about an orchestra member. “You have orchestra personnel issues regularly,” says Conlon, who oversees an orchestra of about 60 musicians and this afternoon is discussing trading one to the L.A. Philharmonic on a temporary basis.

The afternoon is drawing to a close and Conlon’s staff briefs him on the evening’s speaking engagement at the Museum of Tolerance. Despite previously made plans, Conlon decides that he will drive himself to the event. The conductor prefers not to be driven — “I hate that” — and he currently gets around town in an Audi that was given to the company by a donor.

Just before he leaves, Conlon has 30 minutes of downtime, during which he answers questions (somewhat reluctantly at first) about his family and putting down roots in L.A. He initially stayed in a rented apartment but recently moved into a house with a two-year lease. The native New Yorker still maintains the same apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side where he has lived since 1977.

“I love L.A., which is surprising to me,” he says. “I feel very, very good here. And I haven’t loved every place I’ve lived.” (Conlon’s contract with the company lasts through the end of the 2010-11 season.)

The conductor has been married to opera singer and teacher Jennifer Ringo for nearly 25 years and they have two children — Luisa, 21, who is studying documentary filmmaking at New York University, and Emma, 13, who attends the Lycée Français de New York.

Emma moved briefly to L.A. but decided to return to New York, according to her parents. “It’s difficult to move a teenager,” says Ringo in a separate interview. The family now maintains a bicoastal existence, with the children making trips to L.A. during breaks in the academic calendar.

Wagner heckler

Conlon likes to talk. And talk and talk. (Anyone who has attended his pre-performance lectures at L.A. Opera already knows this.)

At the Museum of Tolerance, he’s giving an evening lecture on Richard Wagner that is long and erudite. The central theme is Wagner’s anti-Semitism and how it should be separated intellectually from his music. Conlon makes tony references to Theodor Adorno, Denis de Rougemont and Isaiah Berlin. His notes have been put together with the help of his assistants, but he appears to be talking extemporaneously in a kind of off-the-cuff, intellectual filibuster.

Near the end of his talk, a voice cries out from the back of the auditorium: “How can you compare Chopin to Wagner? I can hardly contain myself with these generalizations!”

The heckler berates Conlon for several minutes. The conductor initially appears flustered but he quickly regains his composure.

The voice of dissent belongs to Peter Gimpel, an L.A.-based Jewish American writer who has actively protested the Ring Festival L.A. — a countywide celebration of the arts tied to the “Ring” cycle — for its focus on Wagner.

Conlon never raises his voice and does his best to speak over the continued interruptions. Eventually, security guards are called in.

After the heckler is escorted out, Conlon finishes and mingles with the audience. “Are you kidding? That was nothing,” he says smiling, when asked how he handled the disruption. “Water off a duck’s back.”

Conlon’s staff hangs around with him. They look tired. Tomorrow is a rare day off for them, but today hasn’t finished yet.

The conductor continues chatting with audience members even though most people have already left the auditorium. It’s well after 10 p.m. and Conlon shows no signs of slowing down.

david.ng@latimes.com

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