MUSIC : Director Sets the Stage for Mozart : Roy Rallo has created programs in non-traditional settings, but ‘Lucio Silla’ is his first effort at a full-length work, and a difficult one at that.

Before he was out of his teens, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had written no fewer than 10 operas. These weren’t short, modest items, either.

A few, to be sure, were comic works, although even some of these ran several hours. But a number were written as opera seria, the large-scale 18th-Century opera form in which serious, heroic and mythic themes prevailed.

Such a work was “Lucio Silla,” composed when Mozart was 16. It ran for 26 performances to full houses after its premiere in Milan in 1772.

But it took until this weekend for the opera to reach the Southland, when the Long Beach Opera unveiled a production at the Center Theater at the Long Beach Convention Center. Performances continue today and Saturday.

Director of the production is Roy Rallo, a 26-year-old native of Anaheim. Although Rallo has created programs for company ventures in non-traditional settings (called “Opera Alternatives”), “Lucio” is his first effort at a full-length work, and a difficult one at that.

“The problem that anyone faces with opera seria ,” Rallo said recently, “is that unlike 20th- or even 19th-Century opera, you don’t have a continuous flow of music or a continuous flow of drama. You have a start-and-stop process.

“The recitatives are dramatic and the action moves. Then you have an aria that purposely does not move anywhere. Some of these arias are eight minutes long. They don’t go anywhere for eight minutes in terms of plot.”

So the challenge is “to make them go somewhere, even if only a very small step,” he said.

But even with some cuts in the recitatives (“None of the arias have been cut,” Rallo said), the Long Beach production of “Lucio Silla” runs more than three hours.

In his staging, Rollo tried to create a visual atmosphere that is “interesting and (that) allows the singers to move the drama forward within the arias without obstructing the vocal line.” So he set the production in a black room.

“The whole set is black, the floor is black, the walls are black,” he said. “The costumes are deep jeweled colors so that the characters stand out against a background that you actually can’t see unless it’s lit.

“The intent is to simplify the visual atmosphere so what we concentrate on is the characters and singers and not the set because the music is very florid. Sometimes I find it difficult to pay attention when there are florid costumes, florid sets and florid singing. . . .

“The most important thing about the opera is the singing. I didn’t want to obscure that. . . . I sometimes feel that modern directors don’t allow the singers to sing.”

Rallo joined the Long Beach company as artistic administrator in 1988, two months after graduating from USC with a bachelor’s degree in music.

“Because it’s a very small company, it allowed me to fit into many, many jobs,” he said. “Wile my title was ‘artistic administrator,’ that meant I was doing everything from buying typewriter ribbons to assisting directors when they came into town.

“Basically, I worked on productions from the time I was there. So I got on-the-job training.”

Rallo and Long Beach Opera artistic director Michael Milenski picked “Lucio Silla” because they were amazed that the work hadn’t been produced more often.

“You always think of Mozart’s early genius piece as being ‘Mitridate’ (an opera composed in 1770),” Rallo said. “For me, this piece is far more advanced than ‘Mitridate.’ It intrigued me musically and story-wise and in relationship to Mozart’s later operas.”

As in many of his landmark operas, “Lucio” centers on an act of forgiveness. “There is a (king) who could have done something terrible but does not and does a nice thing at the end. But it’s sort of edgy and surprising.

“The main character is basically struggling between wanting to be a ruler--which means he’s cruel and forces people to do things. But he falls in love with someone, wants to have her, but she won’t have him. He considers forcing her. That’s the crux of his emotional dilemma.”

Unfortunately, at the Milan premiere, the person taking the title role proved not to be a very good singer, Rallo said.

“So Mozart didn’t compose a lot of music for him. So what could have been a really amazing character study turns into not much of one because there isn’t much music for Lucio.”

Although directing has offered Rallo “moments that have been incredibly exciting and invigorating,” there also have been times “when it’s been the least fun thing.”

“You wonder how you ever thought you could do it,” he said.

As far as continuing as a director, “I’m not an ambitious person,” he said. “As long as I’m doing something I enjoy, I don’t usually worry about it. If I don’t have a career as an opera staging director, I won’t worry about it, as long as I’m doing something I care about and that interests me.”

* The Long Beach Opera production of Mozart’s “Lucio Silla” will continue on today and Saturday at 8 p.m. at the Center Theater at the Long Beach Convention Center, 300 E. Ocean Blvd. Tickets: $22 to $55. Information: (213) 596-5556.

NEW ‘INVALID’ SCORE: Gare Mattison, associate director of development for the Orange County Philharmonic Society, has composed a score of incidental music for a production of Moliere’s “The Imaginary Invalid,” at Irvine Valley College, Friday through Nov. 23. Information: (714) 559-3333.