San Diego Spotlight : Opera Composer Likes to Be on the Outside Looking In

A decade ago, the opera composer was an endangered species. The few who survived were kept in the artificial environment of the university, and their feeble hothouse operas barely lasted through the premiere productions. Then, in the mid-1980s, along came the surprisingly popular operas of Philip Glass and John Adams to prove that the species was alive and well and did not need academe’s protective shelter.

Since its instant success at the Houston Grand Opera in 1987, Adams’ “Nixon in China” has played festivals and opera companies in both Europe and North America. A collaborative effort with librettist Alice Goodman and enfant terrible stage director Peter Sellars, the fresh idiom and contemporary subject matter of “Nixon in China” appealed to audiences far beyond the clubby circles of opera devotees and new-music aficionados. Last year, Adams’ second stage offering, “The Death of Klinghoffer,” proved that the initial success of Adams, Goodman and Sellars was no fluke.

It’s no surprise that Adams does not see himself as an opera insider.

“I’m not an opera buff. I basically feel that most operas musically are not that interesting,” he said during an interview last week at the Opera America conference at the downtown Doubletree Hotel. “The way opera is produced in this country is as an artifact from another era. Even contemporary versions, those Euro-trash versions of old operas, I think still miss the point.”

The Berkeley-based composer spoke on a panel dealing with artistic collaborations and partnerships. After an effusive introduction by Opera News Editor Patrick Smith, in which Smith touted Adams’ work with Sellars and Goodman as the wave of the future, Adams told the assembled opera directors that he doesn’t recommend the collaborative approach.

“ Collaboration has become a buzzword, and it seems you can’t get funded without it. But it’s not the great thing it’s made out to be,” the contrary Adams said. He went on to explain that he and Goodman do not get along well in the same room when they are discussing an opera in the works.

“Even the telephone is a dangerous mode of communication between us. Fax and first-class mail are the best modes,” he said.

A native New Englander who graduated from Harvard University, the 44-year-old Adams is forthright and uncompromising when expressing his opinions. An hour before his Opera America panel last Friday, he agreed to discuss his attitudes and opera prejudices over lunch. Adams, who has lived 20 years in the San Francisco Bay Area, displayed a relaxed composure that gracefully complements his thoughtfully articulated views.

“I came out here in 1971, intending to stay for a year or two, then to go back and finish my Ph.D. at Harvard,” he said. “I never left; I’m still here.”

Adams taught for a time at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and then worked with the San Francisco Symphony as its composer in residence and new-music adviser from 1978 to 1985. Since then he has been able to make his living from his composing and conducting, a rarity in his field.

Adams’ appreciation of Los Angeles and its cultural life may be rank heresy to his Berkeley neighbors, but such attitudes do not phase him. “I have great response in Los Angeles,” he said. “In fact, I have a more enthusiastic response to my music from audiences in Los Angeles than I do from any other city in the world--even my home town.”

In April, Adams will conduct the Los Angeles Philharmonic in his new composition “El Dorado,” but opera fans will have to wait until November, 1993, for the Los Angeles production of “The Death of Klinghoffer.” Adams’ third opera will be a longer wait.

“You could say I’m in the subconscious gestation stage of a new opera,” he said. “I haven’t really chosen the subject, although I’m narrowing in on one. What I do know is that I want it to be much smaller and more mobile, much less expensive (than the first two). I would like to get out of certain operatic traditions I find myself locked into, such as using the operatic voice. I want to write a theatre piece that doesn’t use the trained operatic voice, but one that uses a more natural kind of untrained but beautiful voice.”

Like “Nixon” and “Klinghoffer,” Adams’ next opera will be as topical as the stories in today’s paper.

“Of course, some refer to topicality with a strange hint of distaste about it,” he said. “But if I were a novelist or movie director, they would assume that my work would be based on a contemporary topic.”

Nor is Adams afraid of what he calls the “A” word: accessibility .

“Accessibility is the sine qua non for everything in our lives except for art,” he said. “We now feel that anything in art that is immediately accessible is easy, light, cheap and superficial. One of the great struggles in my life has been to overcome that taboo and to realize that it is possible to create a work that has layers of accessibility and yet still is very complex.”

Carnegie debut. Former San Diego musician Christopher Jepperson made his Carnegie Hall debut as part of the Quintet of the Americas on Jan. 9. Clarinetist Jepperson and his wind colleagues presented two premieres, Roberto Sierra’s “Dos Tonos de Verde” and William Thomas McKinley’s “Concerto for the New World.” Both works were commissioned by the New York-based quintet and performed with the Manhattan School Chamber Sinfonia on a program that celebrated the Columbus quincentennial. New York Times critic Allan Kozinn gave the concert a generally favorable review.

CRITIC’S CHOICE

EVERYBODY’S FAVORITE TRUMPET CONCERTO

San Diego Symphony principal trumpet Calvin Price will solo in everybody’s favorite 18th-Century trumpet concerto, the Haydn E-flat Trumpet Concerto, at 8 p.m. Friday in Copley Symphony Hall. Under the baton of music director Yoav Talmi, the orchestra will also play Shostakovich’s epic Fifth Symphony and Grieg’s Holberg Suite.