L.A. OPERA SCRAPS PLANS FOR ‘POPPEA’

For the second time this season, Los Angeles Opera has been forced to cancel a major production.

Italian composer Luciano Berio’s new orchestration of Monteverdi’s “The Coronation of Poppea” -- slated for Jan. 11-19 with L.A. Opera artistic director Placido Domingo and Frederica von Stade performing -- is off the schedule because the composer is ill and the new version of the opera has not been completed.

The new “Poppea” was highly anticipated because it would pair Italy’s foremost contemporary composer, Berio, with the seminal 400-year-old Monteverdi work.

It will be replaced with a soon-to-be-announced three-act program that company spokesman Gary Murphy said will “definitely include some Berio.” In August, the opera company canceled its most ambitious offering for 2002-03, Kirov Opera’s $3-million production of “War and Peace,” because of financial problems.

Although originally planned as a fully staged production, L.A. Opera announced in January that “Coronation” would instead be presented in concert form. At the time, Domingo said that Berio had been in an auto accident and was behind on delivering the new orchestration. No details were available Monday on the nature of Berio’s current health problems.

Murphy said that L.A. Opera still plans to present Berio’s “Coronation” at a later date. The opera company had also announced that Berio is writing a new opera to star Domingo for 2006. As of now, those plans are unchanged.

The opera company canceled its November presentation of “War and Peace” after high-tech investment mogul Alberto Vilar balked at being asked to supply $600,000 in extra funds to adapt the massive production to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion stage, as well as to move up the payment of a $1-million pledge. “War and Peace” was replaced with another Kirov production, Shostakovich’s “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk,” less expensive to present at $2 million.

That production ran into a snag in October when the 10-day shutdown of West Coast ports prevented the sets, costumes and props from being unloaded in Los Angeles. The boat carrying the items left for Tokyo, and the company scurried to build its own sets from scratch and arrange for the costumes and props to be flown back to Los Angeles on a cargo plane.