Light-Hearted, Not Lightweight

With some few exceptions, the bel canto operas of Bellini, Donizetti and even Rossini disappeared from the active opera repertory for decades this century. Then American soprano Maria Callas proved in the 1950s and early 1960s that these works could be dramatically and musically powerful. The tide turned.

A second wave of great artists kept the momentum. These included Australian soprano Joan Sutherland and her fellow Australian conductor-husband, Richard Bonynge, who leads Donizetti’s “La Fille du Regiment” (The Daughter of the Regiment) Tuesday through April 11 for Opera Pacific at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa. (Bonynge will conduct Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor” for the Los Angeles Opera, May 26-June 13 in Los Angeles.)

Bonynge and Sutherland revived “Daughter” for London’s Covent Garden in 1966, where it proved a huge success, incidentally launching the career of a young and relatively unknown tenor named Luciano Pavarotti.

“We were looking for a fun part for Joan to play because she did so many tragedies,” Bonynge, 68, said during a recent lunch at a Costa Mesa hotel. “I think it was the first time it had been done in any major theater for many, many years. Lily Pons did it during the war at the Met. She ended it by singing the ‘Marseilles.’ It was very patriotic.”

The comic story of an orphan raised by a French regiment, but who falls in love with a civilian, “Daughter” offers an audience many delights, the conductor said.

“The tunes are fantastic, and they’re tunes people can go out of the theater whistling. It’s also a very nice piece of theater.

“In this particular performance, we’ve got people that you can already believe in because they look like a couple of kids, and they relate to each other very beautifully on the stage. They’re charming and amusing.”

The Opera Pacific cast includes Lynette Tapia, a native of San Clemente, in the title role and tenor John Osborn as Tonio, the suitor. (The singers are husband and wife.)

Both need “tremendous breath control” for their roles, Bonynge said. “That’s the secret of all singing, really, but especially in these works, which were written for the great singers of those days. You must have great breath control and great discipline. The voice mustn’t come in gusts.

“You also have to have an even scale, all the way up and all the way down. You have to be able to sing legato. You have to have the technique that allows you to sing coloratura as well. Because the opera is light-hearted, it may seem a little easier to sing just because it’s very jolly. But it’s not so easy.”

Bonynge says singers today can handle these demands, though he does feel that “certain of the great big-time voices are lacking today.”

“Where’s Gigli? Where’s Bjorling? Let’s not talk about Caruso. They’re not around. Where’s Milanov? Where’s Tibaldi? Callas? Even my wife has stopped singing. Those sort of voices are not around. But there are many very lovely voices and very charming voices, so the repertoire has to change a little bit to accommodate them.”

But they do have problems.

“Lots of young singers come to me and ask, ‘May I sing to you?’ I say, ‘Yes, you can sing to me as long as you don’t mind what I tell you, because I’m not going to flatter you. I’m going to tell you what I think.’ Oh, yes, they’re quite happy about that, until they hear it.”

One of the problems is that “they copy recordings, which is very bad because they’re copying something that is good for somebody else but not necessarily good for them. And Callas, of course, is the most copied of all. With Callas, the trouble is, they don’t copy her virtues. They copy her faults. Constantly.”

Another problem is that “a lot of singers today sing out of tune. Probably they always have done so, but it’s a bit too pronounced these days. A singer will get quite out of tune, then they’ll belt out a high note at the end of an aria, and the public will go, ‘Oh, Oh, wonderful.’ ”

Bonynge also decried the dependence on amplification, which he blames on musical theater.

“You go to a musical; you are deafened by them, with everything blown up. I remember musicals when they didn’t use microphones,” he said.

“Unfortunately, some of the opera houses are starting to use them too. This is a great danger because one of the great beauties of opera is being in a house--even sometimes in a big house--and hearing the normal human being project into this big, big space. . . . When it’s all miked, half the excitement goes.”

Nor does he approve of electronic manipulation, criticizing many recordings of today as “dishonest.”

“They’re turning up voices to a fare-thee-well,” Bonynge said. “Nowadays, you can record something in B-flat major and turn the knob and it’s in C major, without affecting the tone or the tempo or anything. Oh yes, they do that. I’ve heard it and seen it done myself. So that’s not hearsay.”

Fortunately, he said, music lovers still can hear the music the way it used to be performed and recorded, thanks to pirate discs that are widely available.

“We don’t own a penny of them, but I couldn’t care less about that because to me it’s history. . . . In the ‘40s, ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s, they did not use microphones anywhere.”

* Richard Bonynge will conduct Donizetti’s “La Fille du Regiment” Tuesday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. 7:30 p.m. Performances continue Thursday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 4 p.m. $28-$131. (800) 346-7372.

He will conduct Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor” for L.A. Opera, May 26-June 13, at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Los Angeles Music Center, 135 N. Grand Ave. $25-$137. (213) 365-3500.