MUSIC : The Stable Singers : By maintaining a company of resident artists, L.A. Music Center Opera develops both talent and continuity

The young man with the gray-green eyes and the Girbaud jeans sitting cross-legged on the rehearsal hall floor in the old Queen of Angels Hospital looks like a lot of boys of summer. Give him a surfboard and trunks and he’d be right at home in a Bud Light commercial. Greg Fedderly isn’t exactly the hefty, aging tenor of opera lore.

While others who look like Fedderly troll for the ultimate wave, he is readying his part in Leos Janacek’s “The Makropulos Case,” which opens Tuesday as the second production of Los Angeles Music Center Opera season.

Atypical as Fedderly is of opera personae past, he is exemplary of a new generation of artists. He’s also one of the lucky few being given a leg up on their careers by Los Angeles Music Center Opera’s resident artists program.

The program is integral to how this company works and grows. Just in its seventh season, the company has a stable of capable performers on call; in return, the emerging artists get a steady meal ticket and a nurturing environment.

The rationale, says Music Center Opera General Director Peter Hemmings, is artistic: “It stems from the fact that I believe an opera company must have a sense of ensemble, that people must be used to working with each other. Although it’s vital that we have access to international stars, they should be grafted onto a resident ensemble.”

A residency program also helps to build the audience for what has traditionally been an elitist form, Hemmings says. “To make opera a part of the fabric of the city, you have to have people living here. One of the best ways to get interested is to have a neighbor who works (in opera). You realize that opera is viable and not just an exotic thing.”

Music Center Opera resident artists are contracted for at least 18 weeks and cast in a variety of roles each season, which lasts from fall until spring. In any given year, though, most of the residents tend to be employed for roughly twice that minimum number of weeks. They have to cover or understudy leading roles in addition to performing their own parts, and they may also elect to work in the company’s educational programs, which take productions to Los Angeles schools.

Music Center Opera used a number of local artists in its first season, but it is only in the last three or four years that it has markedly increased the number and length of contracts under the resident artists rubric.

Currently, there are seven resident artists. Fedderly, John Atkins, Richard Bernstein and Jennifer Smith have roles in one or both of the first two operas of the season, “La Traviata” and “The Makropulos Case.” The three other residents--Bruce Johnson, Paula Rasmussen and Stephanie Vlahos--appear in the third production, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Rasmussen and Vlahos will sing the roles of Hippolyta and Hermia, respectively, in the Benjamin Britten work.

Candidates are recruited by Hemmings and crew, who attend student performances around town, at Cal State Northridge, USC and elsewhere. Resident artists may also emerge from the chorus.

“We’ve never refused anybody an audition,” Hemmings says. “We try to choose people who are living here. We are looking for people with a future.”

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Although the main component of what it means to be a resident artist is the contract, there are a couple of additional services that the opera provides, such as classes and opportunities for further employment. Still, calling it a program doesn’t quite define its scope. The best analogy may be the old Hollywood studio system, where actors were kept as contract players, working in film after film with many of the same artists.

“This is not a training program per se,” explains Pat Mitchell, deputy general manager for Music Center Opera. “The resident artists program starts with people at a different level in their careers, although we do also provide special coaching.”

Yet the approach is unusual in the United States. Although training programs are fairly common, most opera companies do not maintain a locally based company for secondary roles, preferring instead to contract itinerant singers in much the same manner as they hire the leads.

“There are few singers (in the United States) who are employed for the bulk of the year on salary, although it is a regular thing in Europe, especially in Germany and Austria,” Hemmings says. “It works most obviously at the Australian Opera in Sydney, because they are so far away (from any other opera centers) that they have to have every part cast three times.”

Like much else in the arts these days, there’s an economic as well as an aesthetic logic.

“I resented that I would otherwise have to pay hotels, air fares and subsistence to people coming in from outside,” Hemmings says. “I would rather offer something approaching a living wage to people living here.”

“Economics is not why anybody would do the program,” Mitchell says, “although it’s true that none of the resident artists ride airplanes or stay in motels. The intent is, because they are professional singers, for there to be consistency of employment over a couple of years.”

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And from the singers’ vantage, the benefit is obvious. “It feels like a regular job, like a family,” says Fedderly, a 29-year-old Wisconsin native who trained at USC. “It’s a good, stable, supportive feeling. I like L.A. and I like staying in one place for a while.”

“The main thing is the steady work,” says baritone John Atkins, 34, who’s been with the company since 1987. “When you’re singing opera in the United States, a weekly paycheck is a problem. You mainly work as an independent contractor. The advantage to this is that you live in a hothouse for a while.”

“I’m not waitressing now and I’ve done plenty of that,” says Jennifer Smith, 28, who is in her first year as a resident artist and who sings Kristina in “The Makropulos Case.” “You can start to learn what it takes to grow.”

Smith grew up in Glendale, went to Chapman University in Orange and spent a year in San Francisco before returning to Los Angeles. She then auditioned to cover a role in a Music Center Opera production and to be in one of the Music Center’s student shows.

It was one of those Hollywood stroke-of-luck moments when the singer for whom Smith was understudy got sick and Smith actually went on as Fiordiligi in 1991’s “Cosi fan Tutte.”

“It went well enough that Mr. Hemmings trusted me to do other things like covering and small roles,” she recalls. “The roles that I have now are bigger, and it’s nice to have more responsibility.”

Increased duties from year to year are common for the residents. “Last year I sang in three productions and I understudied,” says Richard Bernstein, 26, a Brooklyn native who is the only resident who has roles in both of this season’s first two productions. “This year I’m in six out of seven, so my responsibility has doubled.”

In addition to roles in Music Center productions, the residents also field job offers from both the company’s educational productions and outside gigs. “There’s not much that they ever say you have to do,” Fedderly says. “But they say, ‘This will pay you for this many more weeks, do you want to do this outreach show?’ If you find something else you want to do, you can.

“I really like doing the outreach program,” says Fedderly, who has toured to both elementary and high schools. “(The students) may go away thinking, ‘I don’t care for that kind of music,’ but they won’t go away thinking it’s boring or that it’s not intense. I’m excited about making opera accessible for people my age or even younger.”

Other jobs also come the residents’ way. “We do a lot of little outside gigs and we’re paid for all of those,” says Atkins, who has sung recently at such places as the Getty Museum and California Plaza and who appeared in operas in Orange County and Long Beach last year. “This company is great about that.”

Most often, the residents cite the benefits of singing alongside familiar peers. “Working with the same other resident artists is a joy because you build up a camaraderie,” Smith says. “It’s not like one person is a star and the others aren’t.”

“I spent years (in situations) where you would come into the first day of rehearsals and you might know one person,” Atkins says. “Here, you walk into the room and there are 10 people that you know. It makes you comfortable. And when you get onstage, there’s not this ‘getting-to-know-you’ waltzing around, so you can get a lot more done.”

That team spirit extends into the company at large. “It’s much easier for them to cope with an early professional career when they’re on home ground,” Hemmings says. “We provide them with what we hope is avuncular wisdom, to advise them what is suitable.”

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Such benevolence wouldn’t necessarily be available if these emerging artists had taken a different road for their early careers, Hemmings believes: “Often young singers are snapped up by houses in Europe who are desperate for the sort of talent this country develops. If they go into a small provincial German house, chances are they won’t flourish. Five years later they come back because their talent has spoiled.”

The trade-off of being in a program like Music Center Opera’s, however, isn’t as clear. The participants feel fortunate to have steady work and they’re predictably reluctant to be critical of the people who have given it to them. On the other hand, their time commitment does preclude travel not only for other jobs but often for auditions in New York, which is still the tryout mecca.

“It’s a choice that you make when every contract comes along, and it’s a trade-off without question,” Atkins says. “You make a trade-off for some security, as opposed to the bigger and better things that might be around the corner.”

“I don’t have an agent or anything, so I’m not turning down work,” Smith says. “Others of the resident artists are, but the leadership tries to be flexible.”

Some say it goes beyond flexibility, citing Hemmings’ willingness to facilitate introductions, arrange auditions and accommodate schedules.

“I feel a big allegiance to this company because they took me right out of college,” says Bernstein, a USC graduate. “When I get an offer--as I did two years ago to sing my first ‘Figaro’ in Alaska--I asked them and they found that I could miss a week and still do it. I ask before I accept anything because my allegiance is here.”

Overall, the complaints with the residency program are few. The instruction that is provided, for instance, doesn’t meet with unanimous acclaim.

“The (company) has money going into voice lessons for certain residents, but I don’t benefit from that since I have my own teacher,” Smith says.

Smith would also like to see other kinds of physical training on the agenda. “It would be nice to have a resident Alexander Technique teacher,” she says, referring to the method used for enhancing performers’ physical agility. “That would be a boost for the company. As is, I pay $40 a week of my own money (for something) that makes me a better performer.”

For his part, though, Hemmings’ aspirations are much more grand. “I’m anxious to see more singers and more weeks (in this program) if our season continues to expand,” he says, citing the scheduled 1996 opening of Disney Hall, which will make available more dates at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. “That could justify year-round employment.”

Hemmings is also thinking about career progression for resident artists. “That’s the next problem we and they have to face. At some point singers have to be pushed out of the nest.”

In fact, the residents are well aware that this arrangement isn’t forever. “I don’t want to put a time on it, but I’m ready now when my contract runs out--maybe this next year or the year after that--to start looking around,” Fedderly says.

“At first it was exciting, but now I’m really hungry (to move on),” he continues. “I loved doing the small roles, but now that I’ve had a taste of some of the bigger ones, I’m ready to do more. They don’t put any date on it, but it’s a natural leaving-the-family kind of thing that you have to do.”

“I’d like to be considered for a lead at some point, but I know they won’t do that until I’m ready,” says Smith, who in July sang the soprano solo in Mahler’s Fourth Symphony with Esa-Pekka Salonen and the L.A. Philharmonic in one of the Salzburg Festival preview concerts at Hollywood Bowl. “My name isn’t necessarily going to sell tickets. Maybe after I go off and do things other places I’ll come back.”

Not all of the residents are restless, though. “We feel differently on this because all seven of us are at different places in our development,” Bernstein says. “That will happen for me, but right now I need to be in this sort of setting. I’m not ready to go all over the world yet.”

“We’re trying to make the company strong,” Smith says. “At the same time, we’re working to have a career that goes beyond Los Angeles. For now, it’s a great training ground.”