Abdoh Brings His Own Brash Stylings to Verdi : Opera: Director makes his opera debut with the Long Beach ‘Simon Boccanegra’ in a stark, minimalist staging.

Brash and brainy young director Reza Abdoh is joining forces with venerable basso Jerome Hines for the Long Beach Opera’s highly stylized new production of Giuseppe Verdi’s “Simon Boccanegra” with performances Sunday and Wednesday.

The 30-ish Abdoh is best known for his violent, erotic and highly politicized spectacles, and the 70-ish Hines is one of opera’s best-traveled artists, a veteran of the world’s major stages.

The director is making his opera debut. The bass, who sang at New York’s Metropolitan Opera before Abdoh was born, is celebrating his 50th anniversary as a performer.

“Simon Boccanegra” will be performed in the Terrace Theater in Long Beach, conducted by Steven Sloan and designed by Y. Z. Kami.

Set in 14th-Century Genoa, Verdi’s 19th opera is based on a play by the Spaniard Antonio Garcia Gutierrez and follows the magnanimous rule of Boccanegra (Allan Monk), the ex-pirate turned Doge.

The Abdoh-Hines pairing is particularly apt given that the libretto focuses on what Abdoh describes as “non-patriarchal fatherhood.” Yet for Abdoh aficionados, used to the director’s jolting and jarring depictions of patriarchy’s evils, this production of a romantic story and its mellifluous score will confront the versatile director with a new interpretive challenge.

Abdoh’s recent acclaim in Los Angeles and New York has been based on his Dar a Luz Company’s controversial stagings of his own texts, including last year’s “Boogeyman” at the now-shuttered Los Angeles Theatre Center and, most recently, “The Law of Remains” which took place in the gritty Hotel Diplomat, just off Manhattan’s Times Square.

Yet Michael Milenski, Long Beach Opera’s general director, isn’t worried about Abdoh’s tendency to challenge his audiences. “Certainly Reza’s own works are confrontational--in so many ways, they’re opera,” says Milenski. “But when he’s dealing with Verdi, it’s Verdi. It’s no more confrontational than Verdi is confrontational.”

Milenski, backed by Long Beach Opera’s burgeoning reputation as a haven for experimental opera-theater, has long wanted to stage “Simon Boccanegra.” “My basic attraction to the piece was as theater,” he says. “The intimate relations between the characters are well expressed. As with ‘La Traviata,’ you really feel a tragic process.”

In Abdoh’s hands, that process is made even more bleak by an unusual approach that Milenski describes as “stark.” Traditionally, though, this work has been staged as what Hines calls “one of those blood-and-thunder operas.”

In Abdoh’s vision, says Milenski, “the minimalist staging puts emphasis on the drama.” And that has meant a change of work habits for both Hines and Milenski.

“This is done in a very stylized fashion and any movement we make is quick,” says Hines. “There is no gesture. The emotion has to come through the face and the voice. You have to try and project it more from the internals.

“When you do make a movement, it’s done in a strong way, because you have so little chance to communicate in that way. You take away one dimension (of expression) and you have to communicate in other dimensions.”

The demands of this approach went against Hines’ inclinations--at least initially. “My first reaction was, ‘Wait, this is an emotional opera.’ I thought, ‘This is a stern and mechanical way of doing it.’ ”

But Hines, who has appeared in two previous LBO productions, found ways to adapt: “I asked myself, ‘How can I accommodate this and make it work?’ You decide to join this stage director. I’ve gotten a lot more positive since the first day of rehearsal.”

From Milenski’s point of view, “it’s been baptism by fire, having a theater director come in and work on a grand scale like this.”

“When I’m working with people who’ve come up through opera as I have, I understand what they’re thinking,” Milenski says. “With Reza coming from theater, I’m discovering his way of working is different.

“It’s hard for me to go up to Reza and discuss the work because I don’t necessarily see where it’s going. His production process works on a different tempo than we’re used to.”

Yet these adjustments aside, the irreverent Abdoh seems to have won over even the veteran Hines. “I always eventually appreciate something that makes me think,” says Hines. “That’s the way that I’ve kept fresh all these years. It’s always a challenge to do something in a different way. You rethink the entire work.”