Turning Opera Minus Into a Plus

Prokofiev’s “War and Peace” was among the most highly anticipated events of the upcoming opera season. So Friday’s news of its cancellation was disappointing, not the least because its ambitious underwriter, Alberto Vilar, and the ambitious Los Angeles Opera had led us to believe that the costs were covered to bring over the production from the Kirov Opera in St. Petersburg, Russia, to say nothing of the Kirov’s cast of thousands.

Now it turns out that the $600,000 needed to alter the sets to fit the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion stage and Vilar’s peculiar payment schedule of giving half his $1-million pledge on opening night and the other half a year later have proved unworkable. L.A. Opera needed money this summer to do the scenery work and book airline tickets and hotel rooms for a lot of performers. Vilar agreed to only what he had initially agreed to, no more and no sooner.

This tarnishes the reputation of the company and the world’s most generous opera donor, but it’s possible to sympathize with both sides. Although L.A. Opera had no business agreeing to Vilar’s terms in the first place, I would have done exactly the same thing had I been in the company’s shoes. Vilar’s promise of $1 million was a license to dream.

“War and Peace” is an epic work that we rarely get to encounter in the theater. The score has been criticized for being episodic (which it is, but look at the Tolstoy source) and maybe a bit too Stalin-appeasing (which it was, but it was also a product of World War II). Nonetheless, it has some magnificent music and fabulous scenic possibilities. I haven’t seen this reportedly spectacular Kirov production, which the Metropolitan Opera presented last year in New York. But two other productions I’ve witnessed, both conducted by the Kirov’s Valery Gergiev, left me entirely in the opera’s thrall. This is surely a work worth a risk.

And how can we argue with Vilar not coughing up more money? He told The Times that he has already sunk $4 million into this production and that is enough for one opera. Furthermore, he says that once he starts advancing one company money, then everybody will want the same favor.

The problem is, of course, that Vilar’s eccentric method of giving is only fiscally feasible for well-endowed companies with exceedingly large budgets, like the Met. At L.A. Opera and other organizations on a tight budget, Vilar’s delayed payments wreak financial havoc. For Vilar, the system allows him to continually generate new publicity on the installment plan. But it also means that he must have a slew of pledges coming due, which may be another reason he is loath to take on added outlays right now. We all know about the stock market.

L.A. Opera is spinning this embarrassing story with savvy, taking the blame itself. It hardly needs to humiliate Vilar just as he is about to host his engagement party here early next month, celebrating his upcoming marriage to Harvard musicologist Karen Painter, a Santa Monica native. L.A. Opera loudly announces that it still trusts Vilar. And perhaps it does. Certainly it doesn’t want to alienate a man genuinely devoted to opera who also happens to be extraordinarily rich and generous.

And maybe, just maybe, Vilar has done the company a favor.

As I wrote at the end of last season, L.A. Opera has a reputation for chaos, and the upside of that may be an ability to think on its feet and turn on a dime. L.A. Opera’s decision to import Shostakovich’s “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” from the Kirov in place of “War and Peace” is brilliant.

It may not be possible to muster the same affection for the scathing sarcasm in Shostakovich’s music or for the opera’s brutal story as it is for the sumptuous glory of Prokoviev’s opera. But “Lady Macbeth” is gripping theater and a work of major historic significance. It is what first got Shostakovich into serious trouble with Stalin, who objected to its Modernism. Moreover, just as Gergiev and his company would be most opera lovers’ first choice for “War and Peace,” so are they for “Lady Macbeth,” an opera that has never been presented in L.A.

But what also makes this an exceptional choice is that it ties in with the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s ongoing investigation of Shostakovich symphonies. This season, Esa-Pekka Salonen will conduct the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth symphonies, works that surrounded the “Lady Macbeth” controversy, the Fifth being the popular Shostakovich score that mollified Stalin’s fury. Suddenly we’ve got something to talk about.

The companies at the Music Center don’t have much of a reputation for working together, and a recent news story in Calendar about the future artistic direction of the center painted a picture of little if any overall artistic vision, however creative the individual companies may be. Here now is a chance to turn a disappointment into a cooperative Shostakovich festival and include a serious exploration of the potent issue of tyranny and art.

This is a timely topic. British novelist Martin Amis has attracted attention for his new book “Koba the Dread,” in which he attacks intellectuals in the West for having once embraced Stalin. At UC Berkeley, we have Richard Taruskin, the always-controversial authority on Russian music. Gergiev has fascinating things to say about the issue; he is, after all, probably the Russian artist who most successfully used glasnost as the window of opportunity to build a stunning international career while still serving his homeland. Salonen grew up in Helsinki in the ‘50s and ‘60s, in the shadow of the Soviet Empire. Even Vilar, a Cuban, might have something to say about the subject. There have been many Shostakovich festivals in recent years, but we now have, overnight, the ingredients for one of unique richness and freshness.

Vilar has demonstrated a taste for conferences; he presents them at Salzburg every summer. If he is reluctant to support the change of opera, he might consider this alternative: sponsoring a symposium that would turn this coincidence of events into meaningful context. Vilar could save face and also offer the Music Center an example of how it might begin to take advantage of its constituents.

We’ve thanked Alberto Vilar for many things in the past. Wouldn’t it be nice if he could turn a sorry situation in a whole new reason to thank him once more?