Commentary : L.A. Could Take a Lesson From Salzburg

Salzburg is a long way from Los Angeles. There is no direct flight; even lucky connections mean a minimum 14-hour journey to Austria. The high-powered Salzburg Festival is, moreover, a world of its own. Where else can you witness the latest ideas in opera on parade night after night? Where else can you hear, as you would have last Saturday, the world premiere of an epic American symphony (Philip Glass’ Fifth) in between Simon Rattle conducting the Vienna Philharmonic in Mahler’s Second, at lunch time, and Claudio Abbado conducting Mahler’s Ninth with the Berlin Philharmonic later that night?

But there can also be a lot to make an Angeleno feel at home. Rattle practically grew up conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Peter Sellars and Esa-Pekka Salonen are regulars (although neither appeared this year). Angelenos participate in other ways, too. Betty Freeman, the Los Angeles music patron, sponsors a concert series devoted to the next generation of composers at each festival. Richard Colburn, responsible for the Colburn School of Performing Arts in downtown Los Angeles, is also an important supporter.

The Los Angeles that Salzburg celebrates, however, has become increasingly devalued at home, and especially at the Music Center. It is a sense of artistic bravery.

Salzburg artistic director Gerard Mortier, who inherited an icily conservative festival in 1991 after the death of towering traditionalist Herbert von Karajan, has jolted it into the future. And he has done so with a relish for controversy.

At Salzburg now, operas are updated in startling ways. The latest news in composition from Europe and America is regularly on display. A vast spectrum of music is represented--from Lorin Maazel conducting Strauss waltzes to Dennis Russell Davies programming John Cage and Berio. Former CalArts composer George Lopez, who now performs his grandiose musical experiences in the Tyrolean mountains, had an evening devoted to him.

Mortier’s Success With Updated ‘Magic Flute’

This is a messy, relevant look at music, and it has been no easy road for Mortier. He has had to fend off a hostile festival social elite, a hostile press, a hostile musical establishment, to say nothing of the folks who control the business side of the festival.

But Mortier has stuck to his guns. And it now appears that he has brought the audience along with him. Two years ago, there was an atmosphere of stony outrage for a new “Magic Flute” production that transferred the action to a circus, with all the characters as clowns. Angry patrons and press called for Mortier to step down because of his supposed desecration of one of Salzburg’s holiest Mozartean relics. But this summer, the same exuberant production was such a hit that it became a tourist attraction.

This summer, a similar turnaround actually happened during a production. This time it was a completely off-the-wall version of Berlioz’s “The Damnation of Faust” as interpreted by an avant-garde Spanish theatrical collective, called La Fura dels Baus. At center stage a towering translucent cylinder used psychic energy to create a virtual being, with Faust as the diaphragm, the devil as the head and the eternal feminine as the heart--incorporating brilliant computer projections.

At intermission, two women sitting next to me couldn’t contain their disdain. Clearly won over by the end, however, they applauded the directors along with the rest of the enthusiastic audience. Not a single famous Salzburg boo was heard.

There is a lesson for Los Angeles in all this. The Los Angeles Philharmonic and L.A. Opera follow their audiences and donors; they don’t lead. The companies operate as if in terror of every protest against the new that appears in the letters column of this newspaper. Call it the wimp factor.

Downplaying an Adventurous Program

An example was the cowardly way in which the Philharmonic presented its Peter Sellars evening at the Hollywood Bowl last week. The concert included a remarkable contribution from Bill Viola, the internationally prominent Los Angeles video artist. (La Fura’s “Damnation” was practically a tribute to Viola.) In the Philharmonic’s ads, Viola was as if a footnote; in the program book, Sellars’ contribution was parenthetical.

L.A. Opera once had some adventure in its seasons, found it hard to sell and stopped. The Los Angeles Philharmonic has the reputation for being cutting edge, but it too has been giving signals that the edge is softening. The Hungarian Gyorgy Ligeti, a Salonen specialty, has become a focal point for subscriber protest. And the Philharmonic hardly boasted of its Ligeti premiere at the Bowl last week.

But again, Salzburg leads the way. The Sellars-Salonen production of Ligeti’s opera “Le Grand Macabre,” a Salzburg Festival scandal two years ago, has since proved itself. The production was a triumph in Paris, and now the Royal Opera has asked Salonen and Sellars to re-create it for the newly renovated Covent Garden opening in London this December.

What is it that our orchestra and opera fear? The Philharmonic has the best future prospects of any orchestra in America, and maybe anywhere. We have, in Salonen, one of the most imaginative, talented and highly sought-after music directors in the world. We also have an orchestra that, at its best, is among a handful of the great ensembles. (The Berlin Philharmonic’s Mahler’s Ninth in Salzburg lacked the beauty of tone or the finish of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s performance of it under Zubin Mehta last season.) And we are about to begin construction on a new concert hall by the world’s most renowned architect, Frank Gehry.

Most orchestras would kill for just one of those three advantages. And yet the Philharmonic continues to appear hapless. After deposing managing director Willem Wijnbergen, the board, temporarily in charge, makes us wonder whether it cares more about the bottom line than music.

L.A. Opera, like the Philharmonic, seems to put chasing after money as its first priority. One of the attractions of Placido Domingo as a successor to outgoing director Peter Hemmings is the famous tenor’s potential for fund-raising. But Salzburg has also proven that artistic priorities can inspire impressive investments.

Not only does Salzburg get Angeleno donations from the likes of Freeman and Colburn, but last week the festival announced a gift of $6 million from a New York businessman and arts patron, Alberto Vilar. It makes him the most generous patron in the history of the festival, and he has earmarked his money to produce new operas and to help launch a development office to attract other donors.

When Disney Hall opens in 2002, the world’s eyes will be on Los Angeles. People will be fighting to get into the concert hall. L.A. Opera will finally be liberated from the Philharmonic’s lording over the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Our opportunities are limitless. At this crucial stage in planning for the future, we must decide how we will enter the new century--as visionaries or wimps.