He’s Still a Student of the Opera : After Five Decades Wielding a Baton, Julius Rudel Still Finds Fresh Insights, Rewards

For years Julius Rudel has had a running joke with himself: After more than five decades of conducting operatic performances and having presided over as large a repertory of stage works as anyone in memory, Rudel has never assayed Wagner’s “Parsifal,” a work he has wanted to conduct since he was a very young musician in his hometown of Vienna.

Rudel reiterated the joke recently, but this time he specified that he is not frustrated by the lack of a “Parsifal” in his long career.

“Maybe it’ll happen, maybe it won’t,” he says, smiling resignedly. “Either way, I’m still a lucky fellow.”

Rudel’s “luck” might be said to have started in 1941, when he first stepped onto a podium to conduct the New York City College Choral Society in Gilbert & Sullivan’s “Mikado.” And it extended, famously, to 22 years as the artistic director of New York City Opera.

He left City Opera in 1979, but not until he had also made a considerable mark on the Los Angeles opera scene: Beginning in 1967, Rudel’s (later Beverly Sills’) NYCO visited the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion for 16 consecutive fall seasons, until shortly before the formation of Music Center Opera as L.A.’s resident company. Now he expresses satisfaction that L.A. finally has “a stable company that has produced some very interesting repertory.” Beginning today at the Pavilion, Rudel will lead that company in Mozart’s “Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail” (Abduction From the Seraglio) for six performances.

At 74, Rudel has conducted more than 154 works, many of them premieres or first U.S. performances. And the white-haired musician seems game to learn and conduct a few more.

But his passion at the moment is Mozart.

“What lucky people we are to be working with Mozart,” he says simply.

“The breadth and wisdom in these works seems endless. Every time I conduct a Mozart opera I thought I knew well, I find new things, new delights, new human insights.”

This is all the more surprising, Rudel claims, since our knowledge of Mozart the man often pictures him as a boor.

“We think of him as a person who has terrible trouble with interpersonal relationships, a man often without a clue. Yet the music shows how much he really knew about people, their feelings and their interactions.

“Mozart’s insights were Freudian long before Freud, and his music consistently preaches tolerance and self-sacrifice. It touches a pulse of humanity very few composers even approach.”

Rudel says the “Entfuhrung” rehearsals have gone so well, he’s “almost superstitious.” He comments that general director Peter Hemmings has put together “a lovely cast. And the orchestra is superb, really superb.”

He also praises director Michael Hampe’s “many touches.” For instance, Rudel says, “Hampe has fleshed out the usually cardboard character of the Pasha, so that there is real dramatic tension in that crucial scene.” And he has devised “a strong staging solution to the problem of the long introduction to the ‘Martern aller Arten’ aria, a solution with an interesting psychological point.”

In general, Rudel is not an adamant opera traditionalist. But he does feel fortunate that his own training in the lyric theater was done the old-fashioned way.

“I began as a rehearsal pianist who played for all rehearsals, not as a coach, but as a simple assistant,” he says. “I worked with the singers and with the chorus and learned the score.”

When he went to New York City Opera in 1943, he remained a working pianist and made his conducting debut the following year. Still, he kept “learning by doing,” attending all staging rehearsals.

“There are some things in opera you learn only by being on the spot,” Rudel avers.

“Eventually, as a music director, you have to be able to answer questions--like ‘How long is that fermata ?’ ‘What is the reason for it?’ ‘How do I judge that?’--with answers which only knowledge of the drama, the individual singers and the composer’s style can give you.”

Today’s young conductors, he fears, “move up too quickly, before they know both the questions and the answers.”

Having long advocated opera in the language of the audience, Rudel says he would prefer to present most of Mozart’s operas, including “Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail” to American audiences in English. For the same reason of accessibility, Rudel supports supertitles: They “help increase the audience’s enjoyment and bring more people into the theater,” he says.

And what about the threat to opera from dwindling financial and cultural support? His reply is measured.

“I know all the reasons that concern people about the continuation of the art. But opera still manages to touch the listener, still catches you with its emotions, as nothing else does.

“I say, if our civilization stays, opera will continue. We go in waves--conductors’ waves, singers’ waves. And recently we have had a director’s wave, in which the outrageous is the norm.

“That will probably pass, and we will go on to the next stage.”

He speaks matter-of-factly: “The thing about opera is, those who love it, love it with a passion. And as long as we keep feeding that passion, people will continue to attend.”

* Julius Rudel conducts Mozart’s “Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail” at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., today , 1 p.m. and Tuesday, Friday and Nov . 15, 18 and 21 at 8 p.m. Tickets: $22-$120; (213) 365-3500.