Bastille Opera Opens Tonight, Ready or Not : Music: Mitterrand appointee Pierre Berge will remain controversial even if there’s no glitch. He’s the man who forced out Daniel Barenboim and Rudolf Nureyev.

It is opening two months late, only two operatic productions have been scheduled and the state-of-the-art, computerized machinery for changing sets is not working properly--hardly an auspicious beginning for Paris’ new opera house at the Place de la Bastille. Yet open it will, tonight, with Grace Bumbry singing the role of Cassandra in Hector Berlioz’s “Les Troyens” (The Trojans).

The hulking glass structure, which has been variously described as resembling an ocean liner or an oversized Moby Dick, was designed by Canadian architect Carlos Ott and cost $400 million to build. Since 1982, when French President Francois Mitterrand announced that construction of a new opera would begin, the project has been a target for controversy and even ridicule.

“What is the difference between the Bastille Opera and the Titanic?” began a Paris joke in vogue last year, when the opera had yet to recruit its full complement of musicians. Answer: “The Titanic had an orchestra.”

The Bastille Opera’s musical director, the Korean-born conductor and pianist Myung-Whun Chung, told The Times on Wednesday that the company will have to work “until the last minute, until the curtain goes up” to be ready for Saturday’s opening.

Even if the Bastille Opera opening does go smoothly, it will be somewhat of a Pyrrhic victory for Pierre Berge, whom Mitterrand appointed president of the Paris Opera after his 1988 reelection victory. After all, Berge has weathered gale-force storms of controversy when he forced out the musical and artistic director Daniel Barenboim from the Bastille Opera and director of dance Rudolf Nureyev from the Paris Opera Ballet.

Mitterrand had no doubt hoped that Berge would steer this Bastille Opera ship safely into port, although during the last year he has often seemed less like a skipper firmly at the helm than a Captain Ahab lashed to the side. Berge, who is also chief executive officer of Yves St. Laurent, had been a vocal--and generous--supporter of Mitterrand during the campaign, and many in France’s cultural Establishment saw his appointment as the worst sort of political patronage.

Although the French press--which often seems as interested in the politics of the arts as in the arts themselves--continues to poke fun at the Opera’s misfortune, Berge claims to be philosophical about the criticisms.

“It is always the same in France with the creation of cultural buildings,” he said in a recent interview, conducted in a nearly bare office in the vast Opera building (his own office has yet to be completed).

“There was a terrible fight about I. M. Pei’s pyramid at the Louvre, the Pompidou Center, the Montparnasse Tower. French people love to do that. It’s not my favorite amusement, but what can I do? Of course, we have several problems here and there, but after all it’s a real opening, not just of a play or an opera, but of the house itself.”

Critics point out that it won’t be much of an opening season, featuring the premiere of “Les Troyens” and five performances of the already-staged “Kat’a Kabanova” with Karan Armstrong in the title role in May. In addition, there will be five concerts and three recitals running through June. Free concerts are scheduled for June 21 and, of course, July 14.

Although further announcements are pending, the season is far short of the 250 performances a year that Berge insisted upon and was one of the major clashing points with Barenboim.

Berge, 59, began his career representing French painter Bernard Buffet. In 1958 he met Yves St. Laurent, then at Christian Dior, and the two founded a fashion empire based on delivering ready-to-wear haute couture to the masses. Although both men became quite rich, Berge has adhered to the left-wing politics that absorbed him during his youth in the years after World War II. He supports a number of causes, including SOS Racisme, an organization formed to combat discrimination against North African immigrants in France, and, most important, President Mitterrand’s Socialist Party.

It was perhaps this combination of political sympathies and administrative acumen that led Mitterrand to entrust Berge with realizing the French president’s long-stated vision of an opera moderne et populaire .

“In the past,” says Berge, “opera was very often made for tuxedos and high society. I think that time is over. The atmosphere at Garnier (the old opera house at the Place de l’Opera, which is now reserved primarily for the Paris Opera Ballet) was very stiff, very chic, very intimidating, with its cold marble. I would like to welcome people who have never gone to the opera before.”

Berge admits that staging ‘Les Troyens’ was his own idea, which musical director Myung-Whun Chung agreed to after it was suggested to him “several times.”

Chung declines to discuss how the decision was made, saying only that the opera “was a clear choice for us all. The only question was whether it could be done or not . . . . There was no doubt that this was the appropriate opera to open the house with.”

Chung says that his relationship with Berge so far has been “very good . . . . He has been good enough to leave us pretty much alone.”

Meanwhile, for his part, Berge has recently been engaged in a round of fence-mending; for example, he has talked with Pierre Boulez, who in protest of the Barenboim firing joined a walkout of several other renowned musicians signed up for the Opera’s first three seasons. The Berge-Boulez talks were about composing some original pieces to be showcased in the Bastille Opera building’s salle modulable , an experimental hall that is scheduled to open in 1991.

And last month, the French press was buzzing over rumors that Berge and Barenboim might be reaching a reconciliation. Although Barenboim, now director of the Chicago Symphony, has denied that they discussed anything more than a settlement of Barenboim’s outstanding financial claims against the Opera, the Berge says the two have agreed to meet when the conductor returns briefly to Paris in May.

Joyce Idema of the Chicago Symphony said this week that Barenboim did not want to talk about the matter any more, and issued a terse statement on behalf of the pianist/conductor: “An agreement between the opera and myself has been reached on the settlement of indemnity. I have no wish or intention to conduct either opera or concerts at l’Opera Bastille.”

“The fight is over, finished,” Berge insists. “He is welcome at Bastille, and if he wants to come he can do what he wants, opera, symphony, piano. It’s up to him. . . . I don’t like to fight with artists.”