The Domingo Factor

Were there a country Indefatigabilia, who better to run such a land without rest than music’s two most startling overachievers, Placido Domingo and Valery Gergiev? Domingo now heads Los Angeles Opera and Washington Opera (soon to be called the National Opera) and continues to be a tireless performer. Gergiev is director of the Kirov opera and ballet companies at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, principal conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic, principal guest conductor of the Metropolitan Opera and artistic director of five international festivals. Both men habitually make the world their stage.

What, then, to do for Domingo, whose only performing task the opening week of his first season as artistic director of Los Angeles Opera is conducting “Aida”? What to do for Gergiev, with a week or two between European dates with his Kirov company?

Two complete acts from Wagner operas in concert form at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, of course.

And so the outcome of Domingo’s first artistic decision in his new Los Angeles post was a performance Sunday night of Act 1 of “The Valkyrie” and Act 2 of “Parsifal,” a concert organized with remarkable swiftness just a few months ago. A skeptic might note the inherent ego in such resolve. But, in fact, the gesture could also be interpreted as a generous gift to Los Angeles from two of the world’s most important artists. Domingo had never sung Wagner in Los Angeles, and, at 59, he can’t wait forever to do so. Gergiev had never conducted such an extended Wagner program in America.

The result proves an opportunity--and, at his age there can be no guarantee that it will be repeated--to hear Domingo at the very height of his Wagnerian mastery. And it also offers a fascinating glimpse into Gergiev’s growing, and individual, ideas about Wagner.

Both characters Domingo here portrays, Siegmund and Parsifal, are fools whose love duets have a cosmic impact on the course of operatic events. Siegmund, the narcissist fool, seeks indemnity in witlessly coupling with his twin sister and thus secures the downfall of the gods in the “Ring” cycle. Parsifal, the purer fool, manages to obtain spiritual redemption in his overcoming the temptress Kundry and saves the Holy Grail.

Domingo, who took these roles on about a decade ago, as his voice began to develop the proper heft, has always been ardent, but not necessarily distinctive in both. Naturally, he continues to lose tenorial gleam, but it has been replaced by a richer baritonal timbre that now adds a new and powerful dramatic sophistication. Gergiev’s concept of Wagner is a world of menacing shadows and heedless urgency that forces Domingo to confront rather than reflect.

What we get, then, from Domingo and Gergiev, is not the Wagner of fairy tales, not the Wagner of magical atmosphere within which an audience can loose itself, but a sense of reckless, dangerous passion. The recklessness could also be heard in the Kirov Orchestra’s playing, which was far from elegant but often thrilling. And it could be noted in what was, perhaps, a too hastily assembled program.

Concert opera, even with Wagner, can work, but it requires some theatrical attention (and that is not a unreasonable expectation when ticket prices are operatic). In both acts, the singers all seemed to thoughtlessly occupy separate spaces. In “Valkyrie,” Danish soprano Eva Johansson hit some decent notes, but her attention was on them more than their dramatic meaning. Russian bass Fyodor Kuznetsov, her brutish husband, had more character but seemed equally confined to his own world.

In “Parsifal,” Linda Watson proved a sumptuous Kundry, but that only gave the impression that she and Domingo, on opposite sides of the stage, were involved in some kind of phone sex. Alan Held was an acceptable Klingsor but might have generated more evil in costume. The flower maidens, imported from the Kirov, were more prickly than beguiling. They were supplemented by women from the Los Angeles Opera chorus, standing behind the orchestra, and out of any kind of seductive range altogether.

Disappointing, too, was the sound. The company did not employ the stage extension that the Los Angeles Philharmonic has supplied to the Pavilion, and the orchestra, as a result, lacked immediacy. (Having heard Gergiev conduct the Kirov a week earlier at the Philharmonie in Berlin, where the sound has a powerful presence, I was struck by just how dull and uninvolving the impact was in the unconfigured Pavilion by comparison.)

Still, Domingo has made a statement. Los Angeles is Wagner-starved, and he means to do something about it. And if we take the best aspects of this curious event as the future’s promise, we have something to look forward to.

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* The program repeats Wednesday and Friday, 7:30 p.m., Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave. $28-$148. (213) 365-3500.