Adams Didn’t Miss the Boat for ‘Gondoliers’ : Donald Adams Didn’t Miss the Boat for ‘Gondoliers’

“The Gondoliers’ used to be my favorite Gilbert and Sullivan opera,” says Donald Adams, sharing a naughty secret from his extensive D’Oyly Carte past. “It was the only one I wasn’t in. So when it played, I had the night off!”

With that admission the bluff, the good-natured singer winks--his round ruddy cheeks shining in a smile. After all, it’s “The Gondoliers” that brings D’Oyly Carte’s former principal bass to town: Saturday and Sunday he performs in Opera a la Carte’s new production of the work at Ambassador Auditorium.

Nor was it likely that the 60-year-old veteran of G&S; wars would switch to another career without packing that favorite “Gondoliers” role, Don Alhambra, into his portfolio. Never mind that Adams now travels the international circuit singing mostly buffo comprimario roles in grand opera, as opposed to his established specialty, operetta.

“I rather welcome this chance,” he says, leaning forward in a club chair at the Opera a la Carte headquarters, St. James’ Church in Pasadena. “It’s a refreshing departure from what I’ve been up to.”

Indeed, most of the G&S; repertory he has done lately bears little resemblance to the Savoyard tradition of which he is an exponent. Last year, Adams sang his first Pooh-Bah in the Music Center Opera’s “Mikado,” a black-and-white tap-dancing cross between Noel Cowardian chic and Marx Brothers merriment. It banished all traces of customary japonaiserie . There was not a fan or kimono in sight.

“I’m glad Jonathan (Miller) did not ask me to sing my usual role, the Mikado,” he says. “It was such a different concept. But I adored the whole marvelous thing. And playing Pooh-Bah--as a bloated British bureaucrat--was super. The name is even in the dictionary: ‘jack-of-all-trades, master of none.’ It was the first time the words ever made so much sense to me--thanks to Jonathan. Especially helpful was his cue, to keep George Sanders in mind.”

Adams joined the revival cast last fall in London where, he says, the show was “an enormous hit.” But, for him, it did not match the Music Center production “which gave me the chance to work with Dudley (Moore). He was divinely funny and a brilliant musician--one of the best Ko-Kos I’ve ever stood onstage with.”

He also appeared in another famously updated “Mikado,” the Peter Sellars production for the Chicago Lyric Opera.

“That one was set in modern corporate Tokyo with the Mikado sitting on the roof of a red Datsun. It was a great success, but it so offended an audience member that he hollered ‘rubbish’ and stormed out.

“It’s a strange thing. Although I respect the purists, I’m always sorry when they can’t appreciate the marvelous imagination at work. It seems they want things to stay as they remembered them.”

Where the directorial revolution is concerned, Adams sees little difference between G&S; and grand opera. Two weeks ago, for instance, he was singing Dr. Bartolo in Amsterdam for a “Barbiere” directed by the controversial Italian playwright Dario Fo.

“He took the opera back to its buffo beginnings,” says Adams. “There were mimes all over the place. The majority adored it, but not the purists.”

Always ready to jump into a joke, the singer mentions that he and Fo could pass for twins. “But he’s a little older,” Adams says with a laugh. “He’s 23.” Part of the good humor, he says, is natural. But much of it comes from “the sheer happiness of doing what I do.”

His horizons even go beyond comedy now--and include the disagreeable Dikoy in Janacek’s “Katya Kabanova” and the bank manager in Berg’s “Lulu,” for which he had as director Yuri Lyubimov. Next comes a major role--Baron Ochs (“Rosenkavalier”), which he is learning for the Welsh National Opera.

“Would you believe that I started out to be a straight actor?” asks the high-spirited Adams. “Luckily, I’m getting to retrace my steps, thanks to Matthew Epstein (a New York agent for opera singers). When he was a boy of 13 he became my Trilby. Now we’ve come full circle.

“The same goes for my marriage (to Muriel Harding, former principal soprano at D’Oyly Carte). We used to tour together in the beginning and now, once again, she’s goes everywhere with me. Just call us Darby and Joan. Here we are in the autumn of our years having this wonderful fling.”