Group Still Loses $19,000 : Opera Pacific’s Amplification Denial Accepted

Allegations that singers’ voices were electronically amplified in Opera Pacific’s January production of “Aida” seem to have been put to rest by the California Arts Council, but the controversy has still cost the Costa Mesa-based organization about $19,000 in state grant money.

The council, meeting at the Orange County Performing Arts Center on Wednesday, voted unanimously to elevate Opera Pacific’s grant rating, on a scale of 1 to 4, from 3 to 3+, effectively accepting the organization’s repeated assertions that no amplification had been used.

“It would seem that the accusations of vocal amplification are false,” wrote Tere Romo, a council grants manager, in her recommendation to uphold the organization’s grant appeal. There was no council discussion of the issue.

However, a decision to give Opera Pacific about $19,000, an amount commensurate with the higher rating, was tabled until July, as there are no funds left in the current council budget.

The council will study whether to reserve a portion of each year’s budget to provide for successful grant appeals made by large-budget organizations, such as Opera Pacific, the first group of its size ever to win an appeal.

“I welcome this opportunity to lay to rest today the issue that has clouded thinking about our company during these past months,” said David DiChiera, Opera Pacific’s general director. “Opera Pacific has never engaged in vocal amplification of our opera productions; nor is it our intention to do so.”

At the council’s annual evaluation of musical organizations this May in Sacramento, a council advisory panel recommended a $32,000 grant for Opera Pacific for the 1988-89 season. A council official said the group would have received $51,000, but the amount was reduced because panelists were “distressed to learn that amplification was used in the performances of ‘Aida’ ” at the Center in January of 1988.

According to Elliot Klein, the council’s music administrator for major organizations, the allegation of amplification was first raised by panelist Ian Campbell, general director of the San Diego Opera.

Klein, who called Campbell’s allegation “an honest misunderstanding,” said in a report prepared for Wednesday’s meeting that he would have “queried Mr. Campbell further” during the May meeting except that Times reporter Chris Pasles seemed to corroborate Campbell’s allegations.

Klein wrote: “From his seat on the sidelines, Mr. Pasles indicated to the panel that the stories of amplification were true. . . . In Opera Pacific’s case, the presence of a local reporter from the applicant’s home turf made the unfortunate difference. Had it not been for (Pasles’) contribution, it is conceivable that we would have called the applicant for verification on the amplification issue.”

After Wednesday’s meeting, Klein said Pasles nodded his head during the panel meeting in agreement with Campbell’s observations and “said a word or two” indicating that amplification had been used during “Aida.”

Pasles said Wednesday that he attended the May panel meeting to write a story for The Times. “I don’t recall having said anything during the meeting,” Pasles said, “but I may have nodded my head during the discussion, showing that I agreed with Campbell’s comments regarding amplification, and I may have spoken to panel members during breaks or afterwards.”

Pasles said he had based his observations of the “Aida” production on attendance at two performances and on a review by Times music critic Martin Bernheimer.

In his review, Bernheimer wrote: “Singers whose vocal output seems modest in other houses boomed and bellowed here with staggering, echo-ridden resonance. This, apparently, was a roster of fuzzy laryngeal giants on a distortion crusade. One kept wanting to get up and turn down the volume.”

Bernheimer wrote that Opera Pacific officials, asked about amplification during an intermission, “swore with wide-eyed, passionate urgency, up and down on a stack of scores and on their collective mothers’ sacred memory, that the sound was pure, unadulterated, natural.”

Bernheimer also wrote that voices had been amplified during an earlier Opera Pacific production of “La ‘Boheme.” He said the assertion was based on an “admission” by DiChiera, who Thursday denied any such statement.

In a letter attached to its grant appeal, Opera Pacific’s chairman of the board of directors, Floss Schumacher, and DiChiera wrote that the allegation of amplification of “Aida” is “unequivocally false.”

In another letter attached to the appeal, Philip A. Mosbo, director of theater operations for the Orange County Performing Arts Center, wrote that with two exceptions, there had been no amplification of “Aida.” The two exceptions were the amplification of a harp solo played backstage “for a single effect,” and “the monitoring of the orchestra to the stage so that the singers could adequately hear their accompaniment.”

Bernheimer said he had been told by a Center official that the microphones used in “monitoring” the orchestra may have inadvertently picked up and amplified the voices of the singers. DiChiera confirmed this Wednesday.

Such “monitoring” could have caused “some enhancement in some way” of singers’ voices, he said, “but that’s a very different sound than amplification, and it is standard practice” for opera companies.