Long Beach Opera Celebrates Iconoclasm

The fact that Michael Milenski, general director of Long Beach Opera, uses the terms opera and music theater interchangeably may be the key to the special nature of his company.

Now winding up its 10th year with four performances of Monteverdi’s “The Return of Ulysses” (which opened Friday in Center Theater at the Long Beach Convention Center, with repeats scheduled for Sunday afternoon, Thursday and May 29), Long Beach Opera has made its mark with innovative productions of standard and lesser-known repertory, in the process attempting to redefine the traditional concept of opera.

In the first U.S. staging of Szymanowski’s “King Roger” in January, the 12th-Century palace setting became a corporate board room. Offenbach’s “Tales of Hoffmann” two years ago portrayed the seamier side of 1980s life in New York’s East Village. And Monteverdi’s “The Coronation of Poppea,” given in 1984, combined the composer’s Baroque musical style with elements more closely akin to a New Wave rock video, according to stage director Christopher Alden.

Milenski, 46, has been the company’s general director since its inception, which coincided with the opening of the convention center’s 3,000-seat Terrace Theater and 800-seat Center Theater. He came south from San Francisco Opera, whose spring season regularly featured experimental small-scale productions, because he was attracted by the prospect of staging similar fare in the Center Theater.

“Actually,” Milenski recalled at his office, which is decorated with props from past productions, “when Long Beach Opera started, the goal was simply to produce opera in the Los Angeles area, rather than importing it from San Francisco or New York.

“The idea was to mount productions of operas that people related to, so as to help develop the foundations on which the company would build.

“So we didn’t start out immediately as an opera theater company. It took us three years to venture into the Center Theater.”

Since then, Milenski has had the company’s original name, Long Beach Grand Opera, changed to its current one, signed on Christopher Alden as resident stage director and musical director Randall Behr and hired a business manager to oversee a budget which has grown from $80,000 to nearly $900,000 this season.

While sets and costumes were initially obtained from other companies, for the past five years all productions have been mounted from scratch.

Along the way, the company has gained a reputation for risk-taking, an assessment with which Milenski only partially agrees.

“ ‘King Roger’ was risky, in terms of repertory and production and musical style. So was (the 1985 production of Tchaikovsky’s) ‘Eugene Onegin,’ which was a highlight for me even though it was absolutely vituperated by every critic.

“As we got braver, we got more comfortable in saying, ‘These are works of art, not simply music scores. Let’s interpret them, communicate to an audience that a trip to the opera means meeting up directly with some very basic parts of the human personality.’

“But with ‘Death in Venice’ (the Britten opera, given its Southern California premiere in 1983), ‘Poppea,’ ‘Ulysses,’ there’s no risk. These are great, powerful works of music theater--you can’t kill them.”

“The Return of Ulysses,” with Jake Gardner singing the title role and Cynthia Clarey playing Penelope, is staged by Alden, with Nicholas McGegan conducting.