OPERA PACIFIC PRODUCTION : ‘WEST SIDE STORY’ GOES UPSCALE AT COSTA MESA

When is a Broadway musical an opera? Apparently, when an opera company decides to stage one.

Opera Pacific, based in Santa Ana, launches a 19-performance run of Leonard Bernstein’s “West Side Story” at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa tonight. And company general director David DiChiera is offering no apologies.

“I get lots of lectures on what is opera and what is musical theater,” DiChiera said. “The argument doesn’t interest me. I’m interested in the quality of the work itself.”

For DiChiera, Bernstein’s opus is one in a series of works “regardless of what we call them-- Singspiel, opera comique or ballad opera--that have competely spoken dialogue and that balance music and speech. Out of that tradition, some exemplary works rise up.”

DiChiera gave as examples Mozart’s “Die Zauberfloete,” Beethoven’s “Fidelio,” Weber’s “Der Freischuetz” and Bizet’s “Carmen.”

Does he put “West Side Story” in such company?

“Well, no. But I consider ‘West Side Story’ a major work of the American musical theater. It shows a synthesis of European operatic elements and American theater elements. And Bernstein is a composer of genius.”

According to DiChiera, “West Side Story” contains “one of the most fabulous closing-act ensembles” in the “Tonight” quintet, which musically weaves together a series of conflicting emotions. Moments such as that “give you a few goose bumps,” he said.

“I would never do (Anthony Newley’s) ‘Stop the World--I Want to Get Off,’ for instance, because I don’t feel it has enough musical-theatrical values,” he said. (Newley’s musical was presented at the Orange County Performing Arts Center earlier this month.)

But DiChiera would consider mounting Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Carousel,” Cole Porter’s “Kiss Me, Kate”--and “virtually all of Sondheim,” he said. “They are all inspired works of the American musical stage.”

However, he would not necessarily cast the same artists he uses in opera in musical theater because musicals require “other elements besides voice--acting and dancing.”

The Opera Pacific production re-creates the “West Side Story” staged by DiChiera’s Detroit-based Michigan Opera Theatre in 1985. Why? “Opera Pacific at this point is not planning to undertake new physical productions for the first couple of years. It’s too expensive,” he said.

“I consider this an Opera Pacific production because this company is bringing all the singers and the orchestra. The principals are from around the country, but chorus members and subsidiary roles have been recruited from Southern California.”

The production, according to stage director Michael Montel, is “fluid and continuous.

“It’s more of a dance drama all the way through (than the original stage production), with image after image emerging and cross-fading,” Montel said.

“But we don’t endeavor to be realistic. The set consists of unit towers that look like city buildings but are abstract. They revolve and form different parts of a city. It’s a tale told about Maria and Tony by the inhabitants of the city.”

“We had nothing against the original production. This is just how we wanted to do it.”

DiChiera believes that his mix of opera and musical theater is the wave of the future.

“By the turn of the century, I believe the face of opera companies will be very different,” he said. “You may have several that are repositories of great traditional works, but many others will be doing more contemporary repertory, musicals, operettas, both classical and mainstream.

“I find it fascinating that European opera companies over the past four or five decades have found it absolutely natural to produce (such works) in their opera houses. We get up tight with our own heritage. Europeans are more comfortable with it.”