From ‘Queen of Spades’ to ‘Don Carlo’ : Opera: How Placido Domingo’s flu sent L.A., Moscow and Milan looking for remedies.

It was the flu bug that was felt around the world.

Placido Domingo fell ill in January, and as a result “Don Carlo” from the Lyric Opera of Chicago opens tonight at the Music Center in place of Tchaikovsky’s “Pikovaya Dama” (“Queen of Spades”). In Milan and in Paris, opera companies involved in the “Pikovaya Dama” co-production quickly revamped their planning, and in Milan scrambled to replace Domingo. And in the Soviet Union, with short notice, a new contingent of singers was recruited for “Don Carlo.”

The full impact of the switch in operas is still being calculated. Artistically and financially, it may never be fully known. The hectic work for Music Center Opera culminates tonight, but the ripples from the change continue to be felt through the increasingly interconnected world of opera.

The momentous changes were set in motion when Domingo informed the Music Center Opera that his sickness had ruined his efforts to learn the role of Ghermann in Tchaikovsky’s opera. Speaking for Domingo, Nancy Seltzer said that he “offered to be replaced.” MCO general director Peter Hemmings, however, decided to keep the tenor and replace the opera.

Both Domingo and Hemmings had seen the new “Don Carlo,” which the Lyric Opera had opened in November, and the Verdi hero is a role that Domingo already knew. The decision to rent that production was quickly made.

Implementing it meant standing the company on its head, however. “We went from this,” Robin Thompson, company manager of the Music Center Opera, says, dropping a folder thick with “Pikovaya Dama” contracts and schedules onto a table, “to this,” dropping a binder equally fat with “Don Carlo” paper work.

“We’d worked very hard on ‘Queen of Spades,’ ” Thompson says. “The design that was presented to us was much bigger than anything we had done before.”

The changes involved in personnel and scheduling--Thompson’s operational bailiwick--were enormous. The chorus grew by 25%, to 75 singers whose schedule had to be arranged 42 days in advance, by union rules. The orchestration is different, with “Don Carlo” featuring an offstage band, and a whole new set of parts had to be sent to conductor Yuri Simonov in Eastern Europe for marking. A dozen supernumeraries, which would have sufficed in “Pikovaya Dama,” ballooned to 56 for “Don Carlo.”

Some recasting was necessary, of course. “We had a ‘Posa-around-the-world’ search,” Thompson says, which eventually netted Vladimir Chernov as Rodrigo, the Marquis of Posa. He joins Natalia Troitskaya--a hold-over from “Pikovaya Dama”--Nina Terentieva and Barseg Tumanian in a Soviet contingent.

“That’s thanks to perestroika, “ Hemmings says. Opera singers are typically booked years in advance, but the opening of the Soviet Union has produced a supply of singers not yet carrying those years of contracts.

If the change brought in some new singers, it dispossessed others, notably Evelyn Lear and Thomas Stewart, as well as the dancers for the “Pikovaya Dama” ballet which has no counterpart in “Don Carlo.” Thompson says that financial arrangements would have to be made for them through negotiation with their managers, but nobody is giving specifics there.

The company maintains its commitments to artists in its financial statements, however. At the end of the 1988-89 season, it had artist contracts totaling almost $1.4 million for future productions.

In Milan, meanwhile, MCO’s co-producing partner La Scala says it was notified immediately that Domingo was too ill to learn the role and that “all support” for the opera was withdrawn.

Though most of the planning had already been done and scenery construction was not an issue, since the sets for La Scala and the Bastille would have been constructed in Europe in any case, that being much cheaper than shipping them from Los Angeles, the withdrawal of MCO from the project is keenly felt.

“This Los Angeles action has caused us a very big problem indeed,” says Cesare Mazzonis, artistic director of La Scala. “The cost was to be shared by three theaters, the Bastille Opera, Music Center Opera and La Scala. Now the Bastille Opera and La Scala will have to share the expenses from already limited budgets. This extra amount for La Scala will have to come from our federal government subsidy at the expense of some other project.”

Seven performances of “Pikovaya Dama” will be given at La Scala in June, with Soviet tenor Vladimir Atlantov cast as a replacement for Domingo, who was also scheduled to sing the role in Milan, according to Mazzonis. Andrei Konchalovsky, who was to direct in Los Angeles, will do so in Milan.

Music Center Opera is keeping what it already has of “Pikovaya Dama.” Though it is not on any future season yet, it remains an opera that Hemmings would like to do, presenting the ironic possibility of Music Center Opera renting the production it intended to premiere.

Co-production agreements covering the joint investment and participation in the design and direction of an opera can be arcane, and their purposes and benefits not immediately apparent. Under a 1986 agreement, MCO and Houston Grand Opera have passed back and forth $250,000, giving Houston a stake in the MCO “Otello” and Los Angeles a piece of the Houston “Aida,” scrubbed from MCO plans as announced now.

For “Nixon in China”--joining “Fidelio” in repertory to open the 1990-91 season in September--MCO agreed to contribute $177,731 in quarterly installments of $16,157 to a partnership with Houston Grand Opera and three other companies. For this MCO receives a one-fifth ownership of the physical elements of the production and 15% in the net proceeds from the video after its initial release on PBS and in the United Kingdom.

Bastille Opera sources refused to answer questions about “Pikovaya Dama,” but Mazzonis said that La Scala would not have qualms about considering a future co-production with Music Center Opera.

“But we would need to sign a contract with them beforehand,” he warns, “a very strict one with specific conditions.”

Meanwhile, in Los Angeles the Lyric Opera sets, properties and costumes for “Don Carlo” were rushed in from Chicago. At what price, Hemmings declines to say, although the shipping alone costs $16,000, according to Wally Russell, MCO technical director.

Renting an opera is much cheaper than buying, even when costs are divided among other companies in a co-production. Thompson estimates that MCO may be saving a little money over what it would have cost to continue co-production with “Pikovaya Dama,” while Hemmings thinks that the end results will be almost the same.

The company will almost certainly have the same amount of ticket income to weigh against its expenses. MCO received a few more requests for refunds than it expected following the opera shuffle, according to publicist Mac Henderson, but has already resold all those tickets.

“We have a very good relationship with Chicago,” Hemmings says. The rental price for “Don Carlo,” he suggests, is equivalent to what Music Center Opera asks for its own productions, such as “The Fiery Angel” and the well-traveled “Salome.” Co-production and rental income brought the company a total of $189,000 for the 1987-88 season.

That relationship served MCO in good stead when it came calling for Lyric Opera’s “Don Carlo.” The unexpected request “put a lot of pressure on Chicago,” Russell says, understanding the difficulties of his counterparts back East in cataloguing and preparing their production for rental, chores they would normally do after the season ends.

The Chicago company was able to send Russell the “Don Carlo” designs on computer disks, and sent one of its people along with the sets to make sure everything could be assembled properly.

At that point in mid-January, Russell and the rest of the company were deep in “Pikovaya Dama.” “We were well into it,” he says. “We’d done all the planning and organizational work. We’d even started constructing the scenery.

“The timing was fortunate, in the sense that it could have cost a lot more. Another week and it would have cost $100,000 more.” The company’s suppliers were all very reasonable, Russell says, taking payment only for what had already been done, rather than insisting on the full amount they would have received if “Pikovaya Dame” was completed.

The sudden switch in operas left Russell and his crews with very little planning time.

“Normally, we like a minimum of five or six months for planning. Its physically quite intricate, quite a three-dimensional problem to solve,” he says.

Under the current time sharing arrangements in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the problem is complicated by the fact that the company must be able to completely change the stage from its set to the orchestra shell for the resident Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1 1/2 hours.

The Chicago sets have fit well, however, only needing alteration on one side. To help ease the strain on the timetable, American Airlines flew the costumes--remember the big chorus and all those supers who needed fittings--out ahead of the trucks as a donation.

Despite the haste with which “Don Carlo” has been assembled here, the process has gone relatively smoothly, at least with the physical properties. “So far as I can see, there haven’t been any major problems,” Russell reports.

Thompson, however, sighs and says: “It is never simple. Producing an opera is operatic.”

Nick Rossi and Laurence Vittes Michael Balter contributed to this report.