Roger Wagner, 73, Collapses While Conducting Concert

Roger Wagner, founder and music director laureate of the Los Angeles Master Chorale, collapsed on stage during a Saturday evening performance at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

Family members speculated he had suffered a heart attack or stroke.

Wagner, 73, was given doses of glucose and oxygen and was “revived somewhat” before being taken by paramedics to French Hospital in Chinatown, Robert Willoughby Jones, executive director of the Chorale, said. The hospital said he was in stable condition. It was while directing the final chorus of the first half of the program, Ainsi que la brise legere , from Charles Gounod’s Faust, that Wagner, appearing pale, began to lean on the music stand.

The white-haired musician was perspiring profusely, and took his eyeglasses off several times, mopping his forehead with a handkerchief. He began to conduct more slowly.

A woman from the chorus left the stage, then two women from the front row, one of them Wagner’s daughter, Jeannine, ran into the lobby. Stuart Canin, the concertmaster, motioned to the musicians to stop playing, although Wagner continued to conduct.

Then, Paul Geller, stage manager, and Canin stood up and held Wagner. He was very rigid, and began to lean forward. Doctors came on the stage from the audience and helped him to lie down on stage. Several men then carried him, unconscious, offstage to await the paramedics, and the program was concluded.

Jeannine Wagner said her father has been in poor health for a long time, but had been feeling better lately. Fred Crum, who has been in the chorus for 30 years, said Wagner had appeared fine during a rehearsal, but was appearing “gray” during the concert.

Wagner’s name has been virtually synonymous with choral singing for four decades. The Roger Wagner Chorale, founded in 1947, is considered one of the world’s great choral groups, and its early singers included such notables as Salli Terri and Marilyn Horne.

The Los Angeles Master Chorale has been a resident company of the Music Center since Wagner founded it in 1964, together with Z. Wayne Griffin and the Los Angeles Junior Chamber of Commerce.

Because of the group, Los Angeles has enjoyed a unique reputation as the first major city in the United States to have its own professional resident chorus in a regular annual series of programs.

In addition to performing its own concert series, the group also appears regularly with the Los Angeles Philharmonic both in the orchestra’s annual series at the Music Center and in the Philharmonic’s summer series at the Hollywood Bowl.

Because of a mandatory retirement policy, Wagner has been slowly phased out from the group. This season, he was forced to relinquish the title of music director, and he now serves as music director laureate.