DRAMA’S KEY TO OPERA FOR WANAMAKER

Sam Wanamaker is not your typical opera director. Unlike those who apprentice at an early age to master the baroque mysteries of operatic production, Wanamaker was lured into directing rather late in his career. The 67-year-old American stage actor, producer and movie and television director does not even consider himself to be an opera buff as such.

“In my teens, I saw a terrible production of ‘Die Walkuere,’ ” said Wanamaker. “To a person of 15, it was just awful, and it put me off for many years. Eventually I became an opera-goer, if not an opera buff.”

Wanamaker is in town to direct Puccini’s ever-popular “Tosca,” which opens San Diego Opera’s season Saturday at the Civic Theatre. His first attempt at opera direction was more adventurous: a production at Covent Garden of Michael Tippett’s thorny, contemporary opus, “King Priam.”

“When they asked me to do ‘King Priam,’ I thought it was because they could not find an established (opera) director to do it,” he said. The contemporary British composer’s earlier opera, “The Midsummer Marriage,” had been a failure when it was first mounted at Covent Garden, and there was little enthusiasm among directors for undertaking another project by Tippett, according to Wanamaker.

“But I took ‘King Priam’ because it was an exciting work, based on the ‘Iliad,’ which worked on stage because it was a very visual, very theatrical, dramatic piece.”

Not only was Wanamaker’s production of “King Priam” a critical success, but the opera has become one of Tippett’s most praised compositions.

Wanamaker’s passion for the dramatic integrity of theater has brought him into conflict with certain operatic conventions. His pet peeve is the superstar who panders to the audience’s mania for high notes with little concern for dramatic verisimilitude.

“Having done a couple of operas with (Carlo) Bergonzi and (Luciano) Pavarotti--who are non-actors by choice and don’t really give a damn about acting--you find it very frustrating,” he said. “They know that people come just to hear their voices and don’t care about acting their roles. The singing actor is rare, although (Maria) Callas was one of the great actresses of our time, singing or not.”

It was a new production of Verdi’s “La Forza del Destino” at Covent Garden that brought Wanamaker and Bergonzi together. While Wanamaker agonized over his directorial chores, the temperamental tenor arrived at the last possible moment, then “took ill” and was unable to attend all but the final rehearsals.

“On opening night, he simply ignored any of the staging and walked down to the footlights to sing his arias,” said. “The audience went crazy, of course. While he got rave notices, the production was criticized for one thing and another, mainly about Bergonzi’s lack of proper stage direction. At that point, I despaired of ever doing another opera again!”

But Wanamaker’s despair over opera directing was only temporary. He accepted San Diego Opera director Ian Campbell’s invitation to direct the company’s “Tosca,” a production that features Metropolitan Opera soprano Marilyn Zschau in the title role, Russian tenor Vladimir Popov as her lover, Cavaradossi, and American baritone George Fortune as the villainous Baron Scarpia. Like Wanamaker, each principal singer is making his San Diego Opera debut.

Puccini’s musical transformation of playwright Victorian Sardou’s late-Victorian vehicle for Sarah Bernhardt is not known for its dramatic sophistication, but Wanamaker is convinced of the opera’s emotional truths. In a San Diego Opera Town Hall lecture last week, he compared “Tosca” to the television series “Dynasty” and “Dallas”:

“Each has a gripping effect on the general public because they deal with basic human emotions: jealousy, love, lust, hate and violence.”

He readily admitted that “Tosca” is a melodrama, less than subtle in plot and characterization. “It is the composer’s music which is meant to accomplish the psychological and emotional elements in the character,” Wanamaker said. “The only thing that I can contribute as director is to work with the performers in a way that brings out the drama.”

Wanamaker is comfortably modest about his own self-definition. For someone who has pursued such a variegated career in the theater, movies and television, he has no use for the tired “Renaissance man” label that might easily be applied.

“I’ve had a curiosity to work in the different aspects of the medium,” said the native Chicagoan who has spent most of his career in England. “I became a producer because of projects I wanted to pursue and develop as a director or actor. I have no preference--I enjoy the differences of the disciplines.”

After his stint with San Diego Opera, Wanamaker is Hollywood-bound to make a couple of films.

“I need to make some money,” he said unabashedly. “Then I’ll go back to London to work on my Old Globe project.”

One of Wanamaker’s money-making ventures was “Berrenger’s,” an NBC television series that aired mid-season in 1984-85. In it he played a ruthless tycoon, the board chairman of a successful New York City department store, although the “Dynasty” spin-off did not ring up fantastic sales with either viewers or critics.

“I made a lot of money on that series--I have to do that occasionally,” he said. “But I thought what I did on it was OK. I was not embarrassed by it.”

Wanamaker’s $18-million London project to build a replica of Shakespeare’s Old Globe Theatre on its original site along the Thames River represents Wanamaker’s idealistic side. The 17-year-old project has attracted the support of such diverse types as the late Princess Grace of Monaco, industrialist Armand Hammer and actor Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Wanamaker now expects to break ground for the project next summer.

“Since the theater is going to be reconstructed in the techniques of joinery craftsmanship as it was before, it will take longer to make,” he said. “It will be a complex of buildings, not just the Globe, with a major permanent exhibition of the Elizabethan theater. This museum will open first, while the Globe is being built, so that people can come and view its construction.”