Santa Clarita Will Get Its Day at the Opera : Culture: The arts council will pay about $18,000 to host a touring version of “Carmen.”

On Sunday afternoon, for the first time, grand opera will come to the Santa Clarita Valley. It will arrive on a Greyhound bus, but it will not come cheap.

The opera is Georges Bizet’s “Carmen,” and the performers are members of Western Opera Theater, the touring company of the San Francisco Opera Center. The production, which is sung in English, has 17 singers, a 30-piece orchestra, a two-tier set, period costumes and a price tag of $15,000.

That’s how much the Santa Clarita Arts Council, a nonprofit group dedicated to bringing cultural events to the area, will pay the opera company for one performance at the William S. Hart High School auditorium.

In addition, the council will spend, according to one of its members, $3,000 to $4,000 to advertise the event, print tickets, prepare the auditorium and cover other costs.

Ruth Newhall, who is a member of the arts council, believes it’s money well spent. “I researched it and we’ve never had an opera here before,” said Newhall, who was editor of the local Newhall Signal newspaper for almost 20 years. “This is something big for the area.”

Council members are hoping that through ticket sales and donations they will at least break even on the event. It’s a bit of a gamble, especially considering that the arts council has existed for barely six months. “Carmen” is its first event.

“I’m sure there are people who think we should have started a lot smaller, with a chamber music concert or something along those lines,” said Jack Shine, the president of the arts council and chairman of the board of First Financial Group, a company that builds housing developments in the Santa Clarita Valley.

“But the Santa Clarita Valley is a very major area, and we are in this to do it right. We can demonstrate that for this area, this is a viable undertaking.”

“We could have gone in two directions,” said Alan de Veritch, first vice president of the council and president of the area’s board of Realtors. “We could have started out slowly and slowly built up an audience base, or we could put on the kind of event that would really reach out to the community and get us known right away.

“As it worked out, we took the second option, and I think it was the right move.”

If Shine and de Veritch are correct, the 1,000-seat auditorium at Hart High will be nearly full with paying customers (general admission is $20 a ticket) when the curtain goes up at 2 p.m. Sunday. But the council is not working without a net.

The Santa Clarita City Council gave the arts council $5,000 in start-up funds when it was formed and has additionally agreed to underwrite “Carmen” with a loan of as much as $15,000 in case ticket sales and donations do not cover costs.

Neither Shine nor de Veritch would comment on how many tickets had been sold as of 10 days before the event, when they were interviewed. But they insisted that they are not worried about getting a good turnout.

They preferred speaking about what cultural events could mean to the booming Santa Clarita Valley, which has had the greatest population growth of any area in Los Angeles County for four years running.

“We are trying to enable this community to become more secure in its own cultural abilities,” said de Veritch. “Our philosophy is that someone should not have to drive home at night from the city and then turn around and drive back in, just for cultural enhancement.

“We are trying to become more culturally independent.”

The booking of Western Opera Theater will bring to Santa Clarita a company of young but well-seasoned performers. It will be the troupe’s 40th stop on the “Carmen” tour, which began in September and has stopped at such spots as Moses Lake, Wash.; Manitowoc, Wis.; Zanesville, Ohio; New Bedford, Mass.; Opelika, Ala.; and Jacksonville, Fla.

And it is not nearly done.

After Santa Clarita, the bus-and-truck tour will continue to small cities and towns throughout the West, ending in Silver City, N.M., in mid-March. When completed, the tour will have covered almost 25,000 miles in four months (the company took a holiday break).

“As a singer you have to spend a lot of time away from home, but this tour is really the acid test,” said Hector Vasquez, 32, a bass with the company who lives in Brea in Orange County.

He was relaxing in the outdoor Jacuzzi of a motel in Victorville, north of San Bernardino, where the company stopped for a performance two weeks ago. “If you can get through this vocally, physically, emotionally, psychologically, and still want to do it, chances are you are in the right business.”

The tour is part of the singers’ training. All of them have been through the San Francisco Opera Center’s summer studies program, to which they gained entry by audition. In addition, several of them have sung with New York City Opera and other prestigious companies.

“One thing touring definitely teaches you is pacing,” said Kyle Marrero, 26, a baritone, as he sat in the empty auditorium in Victorville before a performance. That night, as he is scheduled to do in Santa Clarita, he sang the role of Morales. But casting often changes because of illness or other circumstances, and each of the 20 performers in the company has to be able to sing at least two of the “Carmen” roles.

“When you’re on the road, you find out in a hurry what you and your voice are capable of,” Marrero said. “How much you can really give during a performance, and then do it again tomorrow night in a different town, and then the next night and then the next.”

It also teaches them the basic lessons of opera company survival.

“It’s a stamina test to be in a situation with 30 to 60 people who you might not necessarily choose as friends,” said Debra Girard, 33, who drives one of the two trucks that carry the “Carmen” set from town to town. “The people who don’t survive are the people who fight it. But if you make it through, the road can be a great experience.”

Some experiences on the road are greater than others. Several singers mentioned the low point as being Caldwell, Ida.

“We had a day off there in the middle of absolutely nowhere,” Vasquez said with a laugh. “We had to go into Boise for a good time.”

The motel in Birmingham, Ala., where armed guards roamed the hall because of a labor dispute, was also mentioned as one of the least favorite spots.

There were also great times, even in remote places. Some of the best memories are of playing Sandpoint, Ida.

On this tour, the company has played several halls so small that two pianists, instead of an orchestra, played the score. In Sandpoint, however, the auditorium was so tiny that the cast had to use bathrooms in the bar next door and use a trailer parked outside for costume changes. Only a part of the set could fit onto the stage.

“Right before we began, one of the townspeople got up and said to the audience, ‘If any of you are free after the performance, why don’t you come up and help strike the set?’ ” said David Abell, 31, the conductor. “And they did! It was one of our best audiences. They applauded and laughed and really expressed themselves.”

One of the most positive aspects of the tour, according to the performers, is a steady income for a few months--especially important for young singers who have limited opportunities for work in their chosen field.

The singers all get the same salary and are paid union wages, said San Francisco Opera Center’s business manager, Russ Walton. The tour also takes along a five-person production crew: two truck drivers, a wardrobe-and-wig person, production manager and tour director.

Walton said the salaries account for about half of the tour’s approximately $1-million budget.

The tour is supported by presenters’ fees, which range from $9,000 to $16,200 per performance, depending on whether an orchestra is used, the size of the hall and the touring costs in a particular area, according to Robin Hodgkin, who books the tour for the company.

Western Opera Theater has its own orchestra that accompanies the singers for much of the tour, necessitating the chartering of an additional Greyhound. But in some places money is saved by using a local orchestra. In Santa Clarita, for example, the Inland Empire Symphony of San Bernardino will be in the orchestra pit.

“We try to save money wherever we possibly can to keep the cost to presenters down,” said Hodgkin, who added that Western Opera Theater has had a lot of experience in these matters. It has been sending out tours since 1967 and now mounts the most extensive tour, by far, of any professional opera company in the country, Walton said.

Hodgkin characterizes the fees charged to presenters as quite reasonable, considering the size of the production. “$15,000 is such a deal,” she said with a laugh. “Opera is the most expensive of the performing arts. You just can’t do it with quality any more reasonably than that on tour.

“It enables us to go to a place that has not had opera, like Santa Clarita, and perform there.”

For bass Ron Peo, who sang the key role of Escamillo in Victorville, playing towns that don’t usually get opera is one of the best things about the tour.

“Sometimes the audience in those places might be a little tentative, not know where they should applaud or laugh,” said Peo, 31, while sitting in the motel lounge with a few other performers after the show. His voice training was put to good use in his attempts to be heard above the lounge band. “But it doesn’t matter. It might be the first time some of those people have ever heard opera live.”

Western Opera Theater’s production of “Carmen” will be performed Sunday at 2 p.m. at the William S. Hart High School auditorium, 24825 Newhall Ave., Newhall. General admission tickets are $20. Tickets for $10 are available for seniors and students. For information , call (805) 259-2489.