FOSS SET TO SPIN GHOST TALES FOR ‘LIGHTHOUSE’

During Tito Capobianco’s heyday as general director of the San Diego Opera, he persuaded the two reigning international divas--Beverly Sills and Joan Sutherland--to appear together in an opera for the first time. But artistic collaboration between the opera company and other San Diego arts organizations eluded even the diplomacy of Capobianco.

If San Diego Opera’s production of Peter Maxwell Davies’ “The Lighthouse,” which opens tonight at the Old Globe Theatre, is a long-overdue collaboration, at least it’s a promising beginning. Old Globe artistic director Jack O’Brien will direct Davies’ thriller of a chamber opera, assisted by Old Globe colleague Kent Dorsey, who has executed the scenic and lighting design.

The San Diego Opera team includes associate conductor Karen Keltner leading the opera orchestra, as well as baritone Harlan Foss, who has sung 10 operas with the local company since his San Diego debut in 1981.

Davies’ opera, a dramatic account of the unexplained disappearance of three lighthouse keepers off the Scottish coast in 1900, made an acclaimed debut at the 1980 Edinburgh Festival. According to New Yorker music critic Andrew Porter, “The Lighthouse” is one of the most successful recent operas and has been widely performed in Europe. The San Diego production marks the work’s West Coast premiere.

“In many ways, it’s a ghost story,” Foss said. “Jack O’Brien told us it reminded him of sitting around a campfire as kids, telling ghost stories. No matter how many summers you go to camp, the same old ghost stories always get you. We want the show to have that kind of feeling.”

When Ian Campbell, the present San Diego Opera director, asked Foss to sing the role of Blazes--the opera requires only three singers--Foss had heard the opera’s music, even though it had been performed but a couple of times in this country.

“A few seasons ago, I was singing with Boston Opera,” Foss said. “A cellist in the opera orchestra there told me about the Boston production of ‘The Lighthouse,’ which was directed by Peter Sellars, and loaned me a tape of the opera. I listened to it out of curiosity, without any idea of singing the role.”

Foss’ interest in contemporary opera, however, is more than idle curiosity. From the repertory of 20th-Century American operas, he has performed more than 20 works, many in their premieres. He explained his preference for contemporary opera, in terms of its concern with dramatic credibility.

“In a lot of operatic productions, especially much of the standard repertory, there is a tendency to slight almost everything but making a pretty noise, whether or not the people understand what you say or why you’re saying it,” Foss said. “If that’s all that matters, you might just as well go into a recording studio and put it on a piece of plastic. If we’re going to stage a work, please, let’s have the verisimilitude of theatricality.”

Foss arrived in San Diego last week from Amsterdam, where he sang the role of Abraham Lincoln in minimalist composer Philip Glass’ 1984 “The Civil Wars.”

“The reception of Glass’ opera was incredible,” said Foss. “Tickets were being sold on the black market, if you could believe backstage gossip. I do know, however, that people who wanted to see the opera and didn’t have tickets were advertising in the newspapers for spare tickets. We did 11 shows and received 11 standing ovations--and these people were not just standing up to leave the hall early.

“Of course, Robert Wilson directed it. Everyone calls it Glass’ opera, but it was Wilson’s idea originally. He took the libretto and concepts to Glass in the first place.”

In addition to Foss, the San Diego production of “The Lighthouse” will include tenor Michael Ballam and bass James Butler, both in their debuts here.

“We each play three different parts,” said Foss. “We open the show as mere observers, then enter the scene as the officers of the inquiry. In the second act we go into the characters of the lighthouse keepers themselves.”

While aficionados of 19th-Century opera are accustomed to soprano-mad scenes, Davies’ opera at long last gives males a chance to portray vocal derangement. “He gives each of the three guys--the tenor, the baritone and the bass--the opportunity to go crazy. Each singer has a little mad scene of his own,” Foss said.

Davies, a prolific 51-year-old English composer, has exhibited a penchant for the histrionic in his compositions. His best-known work is “Eight Songs for a Mad King,” an expressionist theater piece for baritone and ensemble based on the unstable 18th-Century British monarch George III.

According to Foss, “The Lighthouse” is dramatically intense and the musical idiom disjunctive. “I predict the audience will be on the edge of their seats--there’s nothing predictable about it. It’s not going to be an easy evening. There are a couple of chuckles in it, but believe me, they’re the dark side of chuckle.”

Additional performances of “The Lighthouse” at the Old Globe will be Wednesday through next Saturday, with a matinee May 18.