A Brecht-Weill Veteran

Los Angeles isn’t exactly a major hub on the international opera circuit--not yet, anyway. So why is international opera star Julia Migenes living in Los Angeles?

“This is where my children (from her previous marriage) were growing up,” she says, “and where I met my current husband,” film director Peter Medak (“The Ruling Class”). It’s also not unwise, she suggests, to be close to the film industry. She co-stars with Raul Julia in “Mack the Knife,” Menahem Golan’s new movie adaptation of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s “The Threepenny Opera,” which opens Feb. 2.

Her opera-on-film debut opposite Placido Domingo in Bizet’s “Carmen,” as well as her rags-to-riches, New York streets-to-New York Met triumphs, first brought Migenes to the world’s attention. Brecht-Weill may seem a leap from Bizet, but it’s really a small hop for Migenes.

“Actually, I have 10 years of experience with Brecht-Weill,” says the singer-actress in her living room, proudly pointing to an award she received for her 1988 recording of the duo’s “The Seven Deadly Sins.” Lotte Lenya, the first great Brecht-Weill singer as well as Weill’s widow, once came backstage after a Migenes performance of “Mahagonny” and rewarded her with a rose.

“Carmen” occasionally beckons her--she was to rejoin Domingo for a recent production at an opera house deep in the Amazon but had to turn it down because of scheduling conflicts. “I’m booked two years in advance, and, if the opera world had its way, I’d be tied up for five years. But I refuse to do much Broadway or opera while my kids are young. And Peter and I are never more than two weeks apart from each other. There are good reasons for letting a marriage fall apart,” she says with a wink, “but uncoordinated travel plans isn’t one of them.”

Migenes will soon be reunited with Medak for his film version of Jean Cocteau’s “The Human Voice.” (“For once, I’m not playing a whore, a Gypsy or a maid. I’m a normal woman.”)

On the other hand, she enjoyed playing Jenny, a whore, to Julia’s Mack the Knife. “We have only two scenes together, but it was fun--Menahem was very jolly. He let us perform, which I like.”