For L.A., History’s Knocking

Peter Sellars lives surrounded by books and water. His bungalow on the Venice canals is, every room of it, a library. And prominent among the mile-high pile on his dining room table are tomes on China, since he has begun work with composer Tan Dun on an opera based on the classic Chinese novel “The Peony Pavilion,” which will have its premiere at the Vienna Festival in 1998 and later travel to Lincoln Center and Berkeley.

One of the most important and prominent opera and stage directors in the world, Sellars, 39, is something of a stranger in his own strange land, having not worked in this country all year. His only local prospect for 1997 is curating a show of video artist Bill Viola for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art next fall.

Still, Sellars remains a regular collaborator with Los Angeles Philharmonic music director Esa-Pekka Salonen, with whom he made a new production of Stravinsky’s “The Rake’s Progress” in Paris last September, and with whom he will work at the Salzburg Festival this summer (a new production of Gyorgy Ligeti’s “Le Grand Macabre”) and next (a revival of Messiaen’s “Saint Francois d’Assise”).

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Question: You and Esa-Pekka Salonen are close collaborators and friends. How do you see the Los Angeles Philharmonic these days?

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Answer: Well, those couple weeks in Paris were amazing! In two weeks, the orchestra played several performances of the “Rake,” five concerts packed with late Stravinsky and two contemporary concerts. That’s the profile of a major orchestra, an orchestra that puts its energy not just into playing the Tchaikovsky Fourth but into playing music that was written in the lifetimes of many of the people who are playing it. You can’t say that there’s another big-time orchestra that’s doing that. No, there is no substitute for the Vienna Philharmonic; the Berlin Philharmonic is the Berlin Philharmonic. But the Los Angeles Philharmonic is in a whole other league. And that’s real news!

Q: But wait a minute, we don’t have the same sense of occasion when it comes to music here, do we?

A: No, but I think that escaping from the Music Center will be a big deal.

Q: Do you mean by the orchestra moving into Disney Hall, if it gets built?

A: Yes, but for now I always tell everyone that if you want to hear the Los Angeles Philharmonic, hear them on tour. Because the only places you can hear them in Los Angeles are the neighborhood concerts, where they play in churches in East L.A. and South L.A. These wooden churches have a warm, rich acoustic, and you hear the warmth of the string sounds, you hear the strength of the wind section. The Chandler Pavilion, on the other hand, just doesn’t sound very good. And if you’re missing that in an orchestra concert, you’re missing a lot.

Q: What about Salonen’s contribution?

A: Things are ripening in a very good way between him and the orchestra. He has just written this new piece [which will have its premiere in January] for them. He played me the MIDI version of it, and it’s staggering! You can tell that it’s really about the energy of this city and what the orchestra can represent in this city.

Q: A touchier subject. The opera.

A: Obviously there is a missing link--the collaboration between the Philharmonic and L.A. Opera is sporadic and complicated. Esa-Pekka and I have done our most ambitious work outside of Los Angeles, and will continue to. I have mixed feelings about that. In Los Angeles, opera is not indigenous in any way. So with a limited arts budget, I can’t necessarily say that a disproportionate amount of money should go to this one activity and starve other groups in town.

Q: What, then, is the solution?

A: If the fund-raising could move in the classic European direction, where it has not been a democratic process, where there is literally excess wealth that has decided to have an opera or a symphony and we’re taking money that would not otherwise go to, say, [the print workshop] Self-Help Graphics in East L.A., then fine.

Q: Most of the excess wealth in Los Angeles is in the entertainment business. . . .

A: Nobody can predict the future, but there is nobody in my generation who wants to be on the board of a symphony orchestra or an opera company and raise the kind of money that’s needed. I think that the energy that in the 19th century went into opera is, in the 20th century, going into films. Films have that same over-the-top, overwhelming, high impact--all of the senses knocked out--and vast popular following, with stars who are larger than life. Well, that’s what opera did in the 19th century.

Strangely, one of the things that can keep the symphony orchestra going is the fact that they can play film scores, and I think it’s kind of interesting that Esa-Pekka’s last album was the Bernard Herrmann stuff.

Q: We actually hear a lot of worry about the future of classical music in general. How do you feel about it?

A: I think of the classical world as a cancer patient or an AIDS patient. You know you have a limited life span. The question you now might want to ask is what would be the most important things to do now with your remaining years. I would like to think that that type of prioritizing could happen with museums, symphony orchestras, opera companies. Things really are urgent right now, and what we’re doing somehow has to matter, has to make a contribution.

Q: Who’s doing that now? What have you seen lately that is memorable?

A: I find that a lot of amazing energy is coming from the poetry movement, from young people doing poetry readings. It’s low budget, low maintenance and very high content. They realize that we have to speak up, but we have to speak up a lot more eloquently than in the past. It’s no longer the language of a grant application; it’s, instead, a language of how do you address the people around you directly.

Q: But you are no longer really part of that scene. You’re spending most of your working life in such places as Glyndebourne and Salzburg, havens of mature artists and the very rich.

A: Obviously I’m occupying a strange kind of high-end ground now. I work with composers like Ligeti and John Adams, who are not young. John is moving into a place where he’s writing the great works of his late-middle period, which is really different from a young musician finding a voice. And I myself am no spring chicken. The question now is what do we all do next? History’s knocking, and we’ve got to move on. And you know all kinds of categories are breaking down finally.

Q: Like what?

A: The breakdown between popular and classical culture. It’s really interesting that so many new movies are based on Shakespeare and 19th century novels. People are noticing that if you make a movie based on something that has real chops, it’s going to be interesting. I’d like to think that a lot of what the classical world has to offer will more and more be taken up in these other forms. Because, frankly, right now, everyone’s looking for content. And that part we’ve got.

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CROSSROADS

Between today and Jan. 4, the daily Calendar section will present a series of interviews conducted by Times critics. The series will bracket Sunday Calendar’s comprehensive look at 1996 in review.

TODAY

MUSIC: Peter Sellars.

FRIDAY

RESTAURANTS: Wolfgang Puck.

SATURDAY

POP MUSIC: Benny Medina.

MONDAY

ART: John Baldessari.

TUESDAY

MOVIES: Joe Roth.

WEDNESDAY

THEATER: Larry Gelbart.

JAN. 2

DANCE: Sali Ann Kriegsman.

JAN. 3

TELEVISION: Dick Wolf.

JAN. 4

ARCHITECTURE: Richard Meier.