Makers of the Latest ‘Liaisons’ : Conrad Susa Teams With L.A.’s Philip Littell for S.F. Opera

An 18th-Century French novel about a bunch of bored aristocrats and their sexual schemes may not sound like fodder for remakes, but “Les Liaisons Dangereuses” has been on a roll in recent years.

Brought to the screen in a 1959 film directed by Roger Vadim, Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’ tale of erotic scheming was re-popularized in 1988 by Christopher Hampton’s stage adaptation. A 1988 film based on the play and directed by Stephen Frears followed, as did a 1989 movie directed by Milos Forman.

Now, it’s about to be an opera. And coming in the wake of one of the most successful new American operas in recent memory--the Metropolitan Opera’s 1991 production of John Corigliano’s “Ghosts of Versailles”--this San Francisco Opera premiere of “The Dangerous Liaisons” has hopes high--particularly since it’s based on material with proven mass appeal.

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But there’s more to this project than a popular story. “Philosophically, I think every major artistic organization should do something to stimulate the creation of new work, so we don’t just become museums,” says San Francisco Opera general director Lotfi Mansouri, who commissioned the project for the company. “When I saw the play, it seemed to me to be the perfect subject for an opera.”

“The material is born for opera,” concurs baritone Thomas Hampson, for whose voice the role of Valmont was written. “It’s such a wonderful exploration of the human psyche, especially in the context of the more malicious side. The piece is about love and the futility of the manipulation of it.”

“The Dangerous Liaisons” opens Saturday and runs through Sept. 27, with a stellar cast that includes Hampson (Vicomte de Valmont), mezzo soprano Frederica von Stade (Marquise de Merteuil), soprano Renee Fleming (Madame de Tourvel) and Australian tenor David Hobson (Chevalier de Danceny) in his North American debut. The production is directed by Colin Graham and conducted by San Francisco Opera music director Donald Runnicles, with sets and costumes by resident designer Gerard Howland.

The cast was already mostly in place in 1992 when Mansouri invited Bay Area composer Conrad Susa and Los Angeles-based librettist Philip Littell to pen the piece. First to begin was Littell, who is familiar to L.A. audiences for his collaboration on the ensemble work “Plato’s Symposium,” in 1986, and his performance in “Kingfish,” in 1988, at the Los Angeles Theatre Center.

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Littell wrote most of the text of “The Dangerous Liaisons” during the first six months of 1992, and it was a task unlike any other the first-time opera librettist had ever undertaken. “I had to create big spaces of imaginary music bigger than any music I’d ever written for and see how words played with them,” says Littell. “The imaginative act is to shape that around which your writing goes.”

Susa had to conjure up the period ambience. “I imagined that at their various gatherings, I was the guy they hired to play the piano while everybody was chatting and playing cards,” says the composer, whose previous projects have included three operas. “They would impart their various attitudes to me, and I would make a subtle change in the kind of music I was playing.”

That allowed Susa to compose a sound that would evoke the 18th Century. “By that means, I was able to create new music of that period,” he says. “I had a feeling that I was a composer who should have been living at that time, but was living now, and I just moved into the world. The actual music that I began to write surprised me.”

During the past month, both the composer and the librettist have been in San Francisco taking part in the staging process. “It’s more like a construction site than any other theater I’ve done,” says Littell, who recently translated Moliere’s “Les femmes savantes” for L.A.’s Theatricum Botanicum. “There are a lot of activities going on at once, but I’ve never experienced that degree of concentration in a theater rehearsal.”

Littell has been fine-tuning the text with director Graham and in rehearsals. “I expected to be the odd man out,” he says. “As a librettist, it would seem to be the one job that’s already done. I was useful for five minutes a day, but I was very useful for those five minutes.”

The unusual aspect of such a collaboration is the chance the musician and writer have to work with the singers, and that’s part of the appeal for the vocalists as well. “I feel a responsibility, as well as my own personal curiosity, to do new works,” says Hampson. “It’s exciting to be part of a process that was simply the normal fare of musicians at the turn of the century. What is illuminating is to see how often we misunderstand each other, and to be able to suggest subtle changes in both word and scoring.”

Hampson feels that his input may be particularly useful for a new work. “Today, composers are writing music that is more about the psychology that an artist will bring to the partnership,” he says. “We’re not chasing notes and harmonies all night. Some of them are tricky, but once you get them, there’s never a time when you can’t actually turn a phrase to the idiomatic usage of the language.”

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Hampson’s character is certainly a psychological puzzle. “Valmont is not the demonic hero that Don Giovanni is, but he’s certainly a latent hero,” he says. “He acquiesces to a greater fate than he can possibly deal with, and that is love. But his choice of acquiescing is not to live in love, but to die because of love. The piece is not about his dying. The piece is about the awakening in him of true passion and emotion.”

Certainly “The Dangerous Liaisons” will be a piece that has awakened passions--and fatigue--in its creators. “It’s been a wonderful experience, though I don’t recommend it for the faint of heart,” says Susa. “I myself can only do it every five years. It takes that long to forget how truly hair-raising it can be.”

* “The Dangerous Liaisons,” Saturday-Sept. 27, San Francisco Opera, 301 Van Ness Ave., San Francisco, $20-$120. (415) 864-3330.