MUSIC : Looking Back in Anger : Ex-Bolshoi Stars, in Costa Mesa for ‘Samson,’ Have Little Good to Say About Opera Troupe

Bolshoi may be a magic word to many American ears when linked to the ballet and opera companies of the Moscow-based theater. But two former members of the Bolshoi Opera who are singing in Orange County this week express nothing but contempt and anger for the company.

“I left because the (Bolshoi) administration was just horrible,” tenor Vladimir Atlantov said in a recent interview at his hotel here. Then translator Rudy Lukes quickly explained his choice of the word horrible. “He used the word swine, basically,” Lukes said.

Mezzo-soprano Ludmila Schemtchuk said: “Whenever I wanted to go sing in the West, I had to go five, six, seven, even more times to (Bolshoi artistic director Alexander) Lazarev, who was not a sympathetic person, and beg him to let me go. The last time I asked, I just felt like ripping things up.”

The two are singing the title roles of Saint-Saens’ “Samson et Dalila,” opening a five-performance run today at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in a production presented by Opera Pacific.

Atlantov, the son of an opera singer, was born in 1939 in Leningrad. He studied at the Leningrad Conservatory and later at the La Scala opera school in Milan. He sang with the Kirov Opera before joining the Bolshoi in 1967.

American audiences first heard him when the Bolshoi toured the United States in 1975. He earned accolades for singing Dmitri in Mussorgsky’s “Boris Godunov,” and for a pair of Tchaikovsky roles: Herman in “Pique Dame” and Lensky in “Eugen Onegin.”

But in 1988, Atlantov left the Bolshoi, harboring acrimonious feelings about both the institution and the Soviet Union.

“Every singer has certain ideas about his possibilities and his goals and growth,” he said. “For eight years, I asked them to do a production of Verdi’s ‘Otello.’ In all the years I was in the Bolshoi Theatre, that was the only thing that was done for me . . . “In the West, intelligent people like Claudio Abbado, Carlos Kleiber, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Riccardo Muti or James Levine make artistic decisions. In Russia, they were mediocre, all these directors. The Communist Party central committee appointed the directors.”

Although he has stayed in touch with some of the Bolshoi singers, he had nothing to say about present conditions at the theater. “I’m not interested in that,” he said.

Atlantov lives in Vienna and has a full schedule. “I wouldn’t want to sing any more than I do now,” he said. “It’s just right.”

He contrasts the Western and Soviet opera systems as “absolutely different.”

“Here, I know I will be working in 1995,” he said. “In the Bolshoi Theatre, I didn’t know if I would be working four months from now.”

Why?

“Because of the politicking. It was like there were fiefdoms there.”

In contrast with standard procedure at the Bolshoi, however, opera productions in the West seem thrown together quickly. “But we don’t object to that, even though we’re used to even more than a month of rehearsals,” he said.

“These are professional actors. It’s still the same family, an international family.”

Schemtchuk left the Bolshoi five months after Atlantov did. She said the company’s loss of a singer of Atlantov’s stature “was a tragedy, not only for the theater, but for our generation of singers.”

Schemtchuk, who also lives in Vienna, said that she, too, left Russia “for artistic reasons.”

After begging Lazarev to let her go to the West to sing Mussorgsky’s “Khovanshchina” with then-Vienna State Opera music director Abbado, she said he told her, “ ‘That’s nothing for you.’ ”

Instead he offered her “two couplets” to sing in Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera “Mlada.”

“They were too low for me,” she said. “The were written for a contralto.

“I refused to sing the part and went to sing ‘Khovanshchina’ anyway . . . . I am not a slave yet.”

Atlantov and Schemtchuk have worked together many times, she said, in operas including “Boris Godunov,” Bizet’s “Carmen,” Mascagni’s “Cavalleria Rusticana,” Leoncavallo’s “Pagliacci” and Tchaikovsky’s “Queen of Spades.”

But not in “Samson.”

The opera, which tells the story of the Jewish hero Samson who leads a revolt against the Philistines, is--to no one’s surprise--not popular in Russia, they said.

“They did only arias,” she said.

The role of Samson requires “a voluminous voice,” Atlantov said. “It’s like a role for a baritone really, but the tessitura is in the tenor range. That is a problem. So is the need to find the proper balance, giving out that strong sound and not losing the beauty of the voice and not overpowering the other voices as well.

“It’s a bit static compared to lots of other opera, but that doesn’t mean it’s an oratorio,” he said.

“Depending on the other singers and the director, it can be made interesting. The problem is the director’s.”

As for the dramatic requirements, Atlantov said, “Samson was a great man, with a few weaknesses. With me, there are hundreds.”

* Vladimir Atlantov and Ludmila Schemtchuk will sing the title roles in Camille Saint-Saens’ “Samson et Dalila” today, Saturday and March 5 and 6 at 8 p.m. and on Sunday at 2 p.m. at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. The production was created for the Opera del Teatro Municipal in Santiago, Chile, and bought jointly by Opera Pacific, Houston Grand Opera, Portland Opera and Michigan Opera Theatre. Tickets: $20 to $75. Information: (714) 740-2000 (TicketMaster).