Chung May Take Post at Bastille Opera

South Korean pianist and conductor Myung-Whun Chung is the leading candidate to replace Daniel Barenboim as music director of the discord-plagued Bastille Opera, sources here said Monday.

If named as expected at a press conference scheduled for Thursday, 36-year-old Chung would become one of the youngest music directors of a major opera orchestra. Currently serving as music director of the Saarbrucken Radio Symphony Orchestra and principal guest conductor of Teatro Comunale di Fiorenze (Florence), Chung debuted as a pianist with the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra at the age of 7.

He served as assistant to Carlo Maria Giulini in Los Angeles and later as associate conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1980.

An aide to Paris Opera’s director Pierre Berge said Monday that Chung had a “very great chance” to be named to the new position. Ornella Cogliolo, the musician’s manager, confirmed by telephone from Rome that Chung would be in Paris this week but refused to confirm the appointment, saying “negotiations are still under way.”

Since Barenboim was fired by French culture officials in January, igniting a row over artistic freedom in the international music community, the government has searched for a replacement to direct musical programs at the glass-sheathed facility built on the square where the storming of the Bastille took place 200 years ago this July.

Several candidates are known to have turned down the job after the Barenboim flap. Barenboim has since been named successor to Sir Georg Solti at the Chicago Symphony.

The opening of the new $400-million opera house was to be one of the dramatic moments in the French bicentennial celebrations this summer but has turned into a major embarrassment for the government. In a recent interview with The Times, French composer-conductor Pierre Boulez, who resigned as vice president for artistic affairs at the new Bastille Opera in protest against the dismissal of Barenboim, said the opera orchestra has at least 44 vacancies, including several key soloists.

“Conditions could not be worse to begin an opera house,” Boulez said.

Attempting to relieve some of the pressure, haute couture magnate Pierre Berge, who serves as government-appointed president of the Paris Opera theaters, said Monday he would officially name a successor to Barenboim at a press conference on Thursday.

Berge, a businessman who directs the Yves Saint Laurent fashion house, was named to the opera job after raising campaign funds for the reelection of Socialist President Francois Mitterrand last year. However, he soon became embroiled in a heated conflict with Barenboim, ostensibly over music programs and the director’s $1.1-million annual salary.

News that a music director would be named to fill the vacancy left by Barenboim was welcomed tepidly in the bitterly divided Paris music community.

“I’m pleased they found someone after interviewing everyone under the sun,” an aide to a conductor said. “At last they found someone.”

In Los Angeles, Ernest Fleischmann, managing director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and in 1985 the intended general adminstrator and artistic director of the Paris Opera, said: “I’m a little surprised that Myung-Whun would accept it. He’s a wonderful musician, but this is a political hornet’s nest. . . . I hope that Chung hasn’t been chosen as a lamb who can be slaughtered at will. He is a highly gifted musician and a man of great integrity. I only hope that he and the administration he gets around him will be able to withstand the pressures there.”

In an attempt to salvage the prestige of the main opera house, Berge hopes to stage an evening of French opera arias at the facility on July 13, with George Bush and other international leaders in attendance. Also, Leonard Bernstein has been contacted to conduct the Schleswig-Holstein youth orchestra at the opera on July 16.

Born in Korea in 1953, Chung began his musical studies in his native Seoul. In 1968 he left for New York to study piano with Nadia Reisenberg and conducting with Carl Bamberger.

He has been guest conductor with important orchestras, including the Berliner Philharmoniker, the New York Philharmonic, Cleveland Symphony, Boston Symphony and Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam.

His opera experience includes guest performances at the San Francisco Opera, the Paris Opera, Geneva Opera and Opera of Monte Carlo. In 1986, he debuted at the New York Metropolitan with “Simon Boccanegra” and returned there in 1988 with “Madama Butterfly.”

John Henken in Los Angeles contributed to this article.