The Opera Auteur

Sixty members of the Los Angeles Opera chorus are gathered in a Performing Arts Center rehearsal room for their first go-round of a pub scene in Benjamin Britten’s “Peter Grimes.”

Director John Schlesinger sits Yoda-like on the side. Having survived a triple bypass operation and a host of physical setbacks in the course of the year, the portly, mild-mannered 74-year-old now walks with a cane and strains to make himself heard.

“What’s the name of that fellow?” he whispers to associate director Patrick Young, pointing out a tall, lanky singer cast as the Fool--a bit part, at best. Young supplies the information. Putting two fingers to his lips, the director lets out a whistle.

“Michael . . . oh, Michael,” he calls as loudly as he can. Michael looks up in surprise. “You’re supposed to be out of it--very much engaged in the game you’re playing--not who’s coming in,” Schlesinger tells the singer. “And the people cleaning the tables should glance up every time the door opens. You’re looking very detached.”

To Schlesinger, this is clearly no run-of-the-mill crowd scene but a collection of individual actors--and actions--with specific motivations. The British director, best known for film work such as “Midnight Cowboy” and “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” is nothing if not consistent. An emphasis on character and the smallest details of human interaction has always been the stuff of his storytelling style.

Schlesinger’s intense scrutiny of the pub scene would come as no surprise to his boss on this project, L.A. Opera artistic director Placido Domingo. Domingo has himself been scrutinized twice by Schlesinger. He starred in the director’s opera debut, “The Tales of Hoffmann,” at Covent Garden in 1981, and in his staging of “Un Ballo in Maschera” eight years later at the Salzburg Festival.

“John goes deep into the work, reading between the lines and highlighting big moments,” the tenor says. “[He works] on the dramatic aspects as though it was theater or being filmed close-up by a camera--and he’s really good with movement, filling the stage.”

But Schlesinger is under no illusions about the role of the opera director.

“Opera is a music medium,” he says. “You have to realize that you are collaborating with the conductor and the score. At a certain point, you pass the baton and you don’t open your mouth.

“It’s all about letting go.”

*

“Peter Grimes” is Schlesinger’s fourth opera--and his Los Angeles Opera debut. A co-production with Milan’s La Scala Opera, where it opened in June, the production has its West Coast premiere at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on Wednesday.

The story, set in an 1830s fishing village in England, deals with a driven and persecuted outsider whose apprentices are found dead under mysterious circumstances. Though the first death was ruled accidental, the violent, unyieldingly nonconformist Grimes becomes the collective obsession of the townspeople. His own torment and the village’s goading send him to his death.

The New York Times’ Alex Ross has called Britten’s work “one of the supreme 20th century operas, perhaps the greatest ever written in English.” What is the real nature of the protagonist? What is his crime? Every generation has new answers, Ross says.

“It’s a masterpiece of a work--musically and dramatically,” Schlesinger agrees, munching on a chicken Waldorf salad three weeks before the opening. “The orchestration, choral harmony and feeling of ‘sea’ are extraordinary. And the plot--a man judged on hearsay rather than on evidence--is quite modern, in a way.”

Schlesinger had originally talked with former L.A. Opera general director Peter Hemmings about staging “La Traviata” for the company in the mid-’90s. It was Domingo, then artistic advisor at the opera, who suggested the grittier “Grimes.” Schlesinger says he welcomed the change. “I’ve always been drawn to dark things, I don’t know why,” he explains. “And I’ve never identified with the pack.”

The Schlesinger “Grimes” was set to have its world premiere in L.A. during the 1998-99 season, with Domingo in the lead. But things didn’t go as planned.

First, the more Domingo considered the title role, the more he decided it wasn’t for him. After watching a production at Chicago Lyric Opera, the singer pulled out.

“I don’t like the character,” Domingo says now. “Sometimes you have to do negative roles, but this one is cruel with little boys. “

The need to find a replacement shifted the schedule, and the “Grimes” premiere went to La Scala, L.A. Opera’s junior partner in the production. The venture was far from positive.

Philip Langridge, who stars in the L.A. Opera production, also headed the cast in Milan. He calls it his “worst performing experience in 40 years.”

Union regulations, language difficulties and organizational problems so overwhelmed the artistic end, Langridge says, that it was every man for himself. There was no bus to rehearsals on the outskirts of town. The rehearsal room was filthy. The chorus and orchestra were uncooperative. And, the director adds, the lighting wasn’t completed until the afternoon of the opening.

“Grimes” was Schlesinger’s first production in Milan--a venue, he says, to which he’ll never return. Coming off a stretch of ill health, he had had to conserve his energy.

“I didn’t panic,” the director says. “But neither did I throw up my hands--which suggests I didn’t care. I did care. We were on such a collision course that I set my priorities--trying to get things as right as possible. Though I prevented my friends from coming to see the work, it turned out all right.”

Some of the reviews were downright positive. “With a polished production of ‘Peter Grimes,’ La Scala has added weight to the rediscovery of Britten in Italy,” said critic Luciano Ghienese of London’s Financial Times. “Schlesinger’s staging underlined the conflicting sides of Grimes’ personality . . . and the abundance of extra detail included made the plot seem all the richer.”

Still, Schlesinger says he regards the Los Angeles run as a second chance--an opportunity to get it right.

“This is much better,” says Langridge. “ I said [that] to John at a recent rehearsal. He just looked at me--but his face spoke volumes.”

*

Growing up in London, Schlesinger had a clear theatrical bent and an attraction to opera early on.

He has childhood memories of waving goodbye to his parents as they set off to Covent Garden in “full regalia.” The next morning, he’d press them for details of the opera. Of primary concern then was the scenery, because he was intent on becoming a designer.

When he was 10 his parents took him to see Humperdinck’s “Hansel and Gretel” at Sadler’s Wells and he remembers loving the music. All five children in the family played instruments--his were the piano and oboe. Schlesinger also saw his first “Ring” at Bayreuth and attended the Salzburg Festival as a student at Oxford University. Now, he says, though he can read music, he can’t “hear” it, and would be hard-pressed to sing part of a score.

At Oxford, he took up acting but was never very good--”I wouldn’t cast myself if I came up for an audition in front of me.” Still, after his 1950 graduation, Schlesinger acted for eight years until he was hired to make arts-related documentaries by the BBC. His first movie-house film was a short, 1961’s “Terminus,” a distillation of 24 hours at Waterloo Station. It won the British Academy Award and the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.

Schlesinger’s work caught the eye of Italian producer Joseph Yanni, whom he calls the biggest influence in his life. It was for Yanni that he directed his first feature, 1962’s “A Kind of Loving” with Alan Bates (1962), as well as “Billy Liar” with Julie Christie (1963) and “Darling” (1965), a movie about life in swinging London in the ‘60s that is about to be re-released.

“Darling” made Schlesinger the toast of the British film world, but his first big-budget studio movie, 1967’s “Far From the Madding Crowd,” was decimated by critics. Still, his next project, “Midnight Cowboy,” won a best picture Oscar as well as a best director statuette and put him back on track.

The success of “Cowboy” encouraged him to tackle a “more difficult” project, 1971’s controversial “Sunday Bloody Sunday.” The tale of a heterosexual divorcee, a homosexual doctor and their mutual lover is said to feature the first gay screen kisses. It’s the most personal of his films, says the director, who’s been openly gay for decades.

The rest of Schlesinger’s movies range from the glossy thriller “Marathon Man” to the Shirley MacLaine vehicle “Madame Sousatzka” and the comedy of manners “Cold Comfort Farm.” His most recent release, this year’s “The Next Best Thing,” starring Madonna and Rupert Everett, wasn’t well-received. The venom took Schlesinger by surprise and struck him, he says, as a vendetta against the singer.

Schlesinger made the move into opera in the late ‘70s, pushed by Domingo. The director is quick to point out that film and opera make “poor bedfellows.”

“In opera, one knows four years in advance when the chorus rehearsals are scheduled--a very strange way of working. In film, the time factor is so imprecise because no one knows when the money will come through. After I pulled out of [a] ‘Carmen’ in the mid-1970s, Placido gave me a warning: ‘If you don’t do opera, you’ll always regret it. You have to put it first.’ ”

Within the next few years, he and Domingo were committed to the Covent Garden “Hoffmann,” which went so smoothly, Schlesinger recalls, that it gave him “a false sense of [operatic] security.”

“Der Rosenkavalier” in 1984, again for Covent Garden, was more of a “reality check” because he didn’t know German and the meaning of some passages eluded him. Still, his “Rosenkavalier,” like the “Hoffman,” are active productions in the Covent Garden repertory.

In 1989, the Salzburg “Un Ballo in Maschera” survived the sudden death of its conductor, Herbert von Karajan (Georg Solti stepped in). The critics faulted the piece for being over the top. However, the director--and the audience, he says--was pleased.

In fact, until the La Scala fiasco, his only major operatic disappointment came in 1994, when his Metropolitan Opera production of “Otello,” also slated to star Domingo, fell apart. A revolving castle set, central to Schlesinger’s vision, was deemed too unwieldy to dismantle between a matinee of that opera and an evening performance of another. “I thought that was rather stupid,” he says, “and there was a mutual parting of ways.”

*

The false start at the Met makes “Peter Grimes” Schlesinger’s first opera in a decade. He may be a little out of practice, but his process is still in place. (“When we did ‘Tales of Hoffman,’ ” remembers his movement director, Eleanor Fazon, who has worked with him for 20 years, “he was terrified. Now he’s an old hand.”)

Schlesinger first immerses himself in the music. In the case of “Peter Grimes,” that meant listening over and over to a recording of the work conducted by Bernard Haitink.

Then he attempts to see the opera. Working with designer Luciana Arrighi, whose film credits include “Sunday Bloody Sunday” as well as “Anna and the King” and “The Remains of the Day,” Schlesinger arrived at a muted color scheme with a lot of grays and blacks and a stylized set based on landscapes by Picasso and Braque.

Schlesinger has taken a traditional approach to the operas he tackles. In “Grimes,” for example, the characters’ dress and the stage sets will place the piece in the mid-1800s, in an English fishing village--nothing radical or modernized.

“I’m not a fan of ‘conceptual’ opera,” says Schlesinger, “transposing new locations or premises onto a piece. Though it’s not always disastrous, sometimes it just draws attention to itself. One of its primary proponents, Peter Sellars, is full of good ideas, but I don’t think all of them work.”

He also strives for authenticity when it comes to the action on stage. Langridge, who has made Grimes a signature role for a decade, says that Schlesinger has helped him refine the part.

“Instead of giving a three-hour sermon on the first day, John likes to be guided by the artist,” he says. “And he hates for things to be overstated. ‘Why wave your arms around when apparitions appear--if that really happened, you’d go cold inside.’ ‘Will that carry in a big house?’ I say. ‘It will, if you communicate it,’ he replies.”

Good acting, says Schlesinger, has been more central to opera ever since productions began to be filmed. And movie directors are more in demand because of a desire to break the mold, to attract a new audience.

Will that strategy work with “Peter Grimes”?

When it comes to judging outcomes, Schlesinger again returns to the music.

“This isn’t a ‘La Boheme’ with a lot of tunes one can whistle,” he cautions. “What people will make of it, I don’t know.”

*

Schlesinger says he has two movie scripts on his desk right now. But he’s not at all sure that’s what he’ll be doing next. He says he feels increasingly estranged from the business, as it’s practiced in L.A.

“Decisions from the front office are calculated on the basis of what brings in money and may have little to do with the work,” he says. “And the town is even less friendly these days because the kind of movies I’m interested in are not the general diet.”

Two years ago, he took an acting role--a geneticist in “The Twilight of the Golds.” In recent years, he has directed two music videos (one for Paul McCartney). And he’d like to do more live performances--including theater--although there are no new operas on the horizon.

But his real goal now, he says, is slowing down: “I’m looking forward to taking it a bit easier. I plan to take a year off.”

When Fazon hears the comment, she raises her eyebrows and flashes a knowing smile.

“In our profession, you never retire,” she observes. “It would be very hard for John not to be creative. He’s always been one who likes to be stretched.” *

*

“Peter Grimes,” Los Angeles Opera, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., Opens Wednesday, 7:30 p.m.; six more performances through Nov. 4. $28 to $148. (213) 365-3500.