MUSIC CENTER OPERA’S MAN IN CONSTANT MOTION

Quietly circumnavigating a read-through rehearsal of “Salome,” the executive director of the fledgling Music Center Opera Assn. is shuttling various singers between the main rehearsal room and a battery of radio interviews in a small room in the back of the hall.

He’s also managing to stop along the way to chat with an assistant, then confering with the rehearsal conductor, then--briefly--pausing to scan the various singers’ expressions.

When less than two weeks remain until the debut performance, when there’s a $5-million budget to keep an eye on and when your management staff is a less-than-awe-inspiring seven, one has to stay in motion--and executive director Peter Hemmings has his hands full.

In addition to making sure the company’s first season runs as smoothly as possible--no small undertaking in itself in these big-budget days--the 52-year-old Londoner and his staff are mapping out the company’s intended future.

“Our aim by September of 1988 is to do eight operas, one at a time, from the end of that month to the end of April, 1989,” said Hemmings, sitting back in his Bunker Hill office. “We intend to do five performances each of those eight operas, some of which will perhaps get an extra performance, based on demand, and one or so of which will be done in the smaller theater, which at this point is the Wiltern. And naturally--at least right here, at the beginning of things--many of those will be new productions or co-productions with other houses.”

By contrast, the San Francisco Opera and the Lyric Opera of Chicago will be presenting more than 70 performances each. Ten operas will be put on in San Francisco for a budgeted $20.7 million, while nine will be given in Chicago at a budget of $17.6 million.

Unlike those other established houses, the newborn MCOA is putting its show on with a tiny core staff (roughly one 10th of the size of the San Francisco or Chicago companies)--a situation Hemmings calls “tiring but workable.”

“What it means is that everybody has to shoulder a lot of responsibilities,” he said. “For instance, I not only make most of the executive decisions but I also do a lot of the fund-raising. John Howlett, who works here as public affairs director, handles public relations, some scheduling and a number of other things. We all of us wear a number of hats. But once we become established--and of that I have few doubts--we’ll hire a one or two more people.”

The permanent, full-time staff consists of Hemmings, Howlett, administrative director Suzanne Sty, development director Connie Morgan and technical director Wally Russell. By contrast, the San Francisco company employs more than 70 full-time staffers and the Chicago Lyric staff numbers 68.

Hemmings grinned. “It will never be easy, though.”

Thomas Wachtell, president of the MCOA board of directors, seconded that assessment. “Peter is responsible for everything that appears on the stage--the job basically entails everything within MCOA,” he said. “He confers with us often, and with his staff--but the man’s on point for the rest of us.”

The director’s job has been made easier, both men agreed, by the larger-than-life presence of supertenor Placido Domingo on the company’s stationery and--occasionally --in its offices. Though there lingers some confusion over exactly what Domingo’s responsibilities are--the tenor refers to himself as “music adviser,” though his official title is “artistic consultant”--there are no doubts chez MCOA as to the added managerial firepower the singer’s part-time help has provided.

“We are very fortunate that Domingo is prepared to be associated with us as artistic consultant,” Hemmings said. “He’s a very, very busy man--every day he’s on a different continent. He’s essential to the company in helping us with recruiting singing talent, both local and international, on casting choices and on bringing his considerable persuasive powers to bear on his fellow artists. And of course for helping us raise money for this venture. I couldn’t ask for a better colleague.”

But that stellar colleague apparently considers himself an eventual co-director of MCOA, telling Calendar last month that, “Ultimately I want to be the music director (of MCOA), modeled after (the Metropolitan Opera’s) Jimmy Levine.” Domingo, performing in Israel last week, was unavailable when Calendar attempted to reach him by phone.

Hemmings, a soft-spoken, diplomatic sort, couldn’t confirm such plans. “For him to undertake a permanent artistic directorial responsibility is impossible; he’s just got too many things going right now,” Hemmings said. “But he is prepared to give us an increasing amount of time; as we do more, and as he becomes more available, then his role with us will enlarge. But for the moment, he’s just a consultant. I deal with him on that basis.”

Added Wachtell: “Placido wants to settle down here and establish roots. But you don’t turn your star salesman into a sales manager overnight.”

Hemmings said he and Domingo also confer regarding the hiring of a number of young, mostly Los Angeles-based singers who will form a core of supporting--and occasionally leading--players, though he reaffirmed MCOA’s policy of “hiring the best singers--and I do mean international stars--available to us.”

But international stars demand international fees--a situation Hemmings, as one-time director of the Scottish Opera and manager of the London Symphony Orchestra, knows well--and MCOA’s financial status must keep pace with the company’s ambitious production plans.

“The cost of this year’s season is $5 million, and next year’s season will cost $6.5 million, with the added opera,” he said. “This year, we figure to get about $2 million from the box office--or about 40%, which is the American average. The rest will come from various sources: $1.5 million from the Performing Arts Council (the umbrella fund-raising organ of the Music Center), and about $400,000 from various fund-raising events.

“That left us with about $1.15 million to raise by ourselves, and we’ve gotten about $950,000 so far. The really exciting thing is that each of the three main donations have been $250,000 apiece, from the Irvine Foundation, from Gordon Getty and from Richard and Tara Culburn.” Hemmings added that MCOA has an understanding with the Performing Arts Council by which the opera company checks its potential donors with the parent organization’s board before soliciting for funds.

“And next year, and the year after that--things continue to improve,” he said. “There’s a real desire in this city to give money, to put money back into the community whence they got it.”

For the moment, however, this city’s major opera venue forms an overcrowded community of its own in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, which presently houses four companies: the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Master Chorale, the Joffrey Ballet and MCOA. Even with the probable departure of the Civic Light Opera after the 1987 season, the time-sharing situation is less than satisfactory to all parties--especially to the Joffrey, which may not renew its lease with the Music Center come 1987 (the ballet will have its six weeks per season through that year).

But Hemmings said MCOA will stand ready to pick up the slack. At this point, MCOA has three weeks in the Pavilion for this year and next, with performances in 1988 scattered throughout eight weeks, in shared time with the Philharmonic.

In a couple of years, Hemmings said, “that would mean that in any given week during the season in 1988, the Pavilion would see three concerts and two operas--a situation that well serves, I think, the local opera public, though it’s not much good for tourists, who will in all likelihood only get to see one opera. But then we’re not putting it on for tourists--we’re putting it on for what we think are about 10,000 opera lovers in Los Angeles.”

The emphasis on local opera also extends to the company’s artist roster. Hemmings said his plans for MCOA’s 10 contracted singers--Alice Baker, Gene Brundage, Angelique Burzinsky, Christopher Dane, Michael Gallup, Rodney Gilfry, Jonathan Mack, Steven Plummer, Ken Remo and Stephanie Vlahos--include a number of varying jobs within the local MCOA framework during their terms.

This season, by contrast, the San Francisco Opera keeps roughly 100 singers on its roster, and the Chicago Lyric maintains a list of 86.

Hemmings said that in addition to featured supporting roles such as Cassio and Emilia in “Otello” and Narraboth in “Salome” in the main productions, these singers--contracted to MCOA for three months this season, perhaps growing to 10 months by 1990--will perform lead roles in smaller-scale productions and also in some planned “community outreach”-style presentations to schools and senior citizen centers.

“We have in mind a three-tier educational plan,” Hemmings said. “Firstly, dress rehearsals at the Shrine Auditorium at reduced cost. Secondly, locally cast productions similar to Merola Opera in San Francisco. And lastly, a series of shorter pieces specially commissioned for this kind of performance situation, involving choruses and bands from the schools themselves.

“But we have to be careful,” he said, “because children over the age of 10 tend to be too involved with pop music--probably because they haven’t heard enough of anything else to choose. In any case, we have no intention of sending ‘bleeding chunks’ of opera out into the schools. I don’t think the composer, the singers or the audience is served by that strategy at all. You lose too much.”

Due to the lack of rehearsal time available at the Pavilion, MCOA has been forced to use the Shrine and its attached Exposition Hall as a rehearsal/performance space. But Hemmings chooses to call the situation a positive one, citing the many uses of the 60-year-old complex near USC.

“The Shrine is the only place in L.A. that has a stage as big as the Pavilion’s, and it also has an attached rehearsal hall,” he said. “So that way we’re able to have two weeks on the stage itself, transported from the set shop, and then 10 days on the stage in the Pavilion. The use of the Shrine also enables us to reach certain audiences we might not be able to otherwise, due to cost or level of interest.” Rehearsal time has thus been left up to the directors of the operas (within reason), and though the sets must be moved from one location to the other, it allows the company, Hemmings said, “to get all the rehearsal time we feel we need at this point.”

This last statement reinforces MCOA’s commitment to locally produced opera--a subject to which Hemmings said he’s given considerable thought (and practice) over the last 20 years, as an administrator and a fan in Britain.

“I think it’s a very good sign that each locale is growing, as it were, its own opera,” Hemmings said. “Even though that does mean you’re going to see a whole lot less of other companies, it’s a plus because opera should be an integral part of the metropolitan life of any great city. By that I mean that opera people--choristers, designers, orchestral players, and the like--should live in the city they perform in. If you have a neighbor that sings in the choir, you’re a lot more likely to go to hear him or her sing than if you witnessed some touring company.”

He paused. “I’m well aware of the track record of resident opera here in Los Angeles, but at least we have the benefit of history on our side,” he said. “At this point we feel fairly confident that we’ve got the three main elements down: the audience, the money and the product--but that last one you’ll have to judge for yourself.”