How to Set L.A. Opera Future in Concrete

Regarding “Once More, With Domingo” (Calendar, May 8), I read that: “The Los Angeles Music Center Opera has never ventured Verdi’s beloved ‘Aida.’ . . . We have yet to experience ‘Il Trovatore.’ . . . But ‘Otello’ keeps coming back.”

At this point, eyes failed me as my brain took over with thoughts about the “why” of this state in L.A. opera. Of course, I had the immediate answer:

Money.

“Aida”--staging, large cast, many costumes--has to cost like the devil. “Otello,” I surmised, could get by with basics, perhaps with that too-often ubiquitous “modernization.” It doesn’t lead down the road into red ink, and it also satisfies the local audience’s desire to re-see the familiar.

Continuing again with my reading of the review, I was confirmed with the sentence: “All four acts are played in a modified-unit set that looks for all the world like a canvas-concrete parking garage.” Four acts, and one set, that now spells savings.

However, more thought and I suddenly knew that there may well yet be an “Aida” on our horizon.

All some up-and-supposedly-coming L.A. stage designer need do is to design a “canvas-concrete” set based on perfect contemporary examples: Either 1) re-create the Northridge parking garage in its shattered state; or, better yet, paint a good canvas-drop rendition of the bomb-rocked north face of the federal building in Oklahoma City. What an effect either re-creation would have when the “Sunburst” rises!

Of course, it would be best if they would create the federal building as a solid set. The “Triumphal March” would knock our provincial L.A. audiences out of their seats as it wound down floor by floor to the apron. I can hear the applause now as a USC football team “extra,” tiptoeing in his sandals, muscle-struttingly gets too close to the edge of one floor. Spear and skirted body go head-first into the orchestra pit. It’s not good Verdi but it’s good Berg.

The whole presentation would be in perfect sync with our many L.A. disasters, whether by Mother Nature, or by endless Hollywood film producers and studios.

Hey! The Pharaoh lead could be renamed Rambo. That would satisfy native minds.

CHARLES DAVID SMITH

Monrovia