Double Bass

As unlikely double bills go, it’s like pairing “Lucrezia Borgia” and “H.M.S. Pinafore.” Or “The Seven Deadly Sins” and “Little Mary Sunshine.”

Imagine, then, if the same performer were to star in each.

What’s playing at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion may not be quite that extreme, but it’s nearly as challenging. And Samuel Ramey is the hero taking victory laps.

Ramey is starring in the final entry of the Los Angeles Opera season, an unusual duo of 1918 one-act operas: Bela Bartok’s “Duke Bluebeard’s Castle” and Giacomo Puccini’s “Gianni Schicchi,” both staged by film director William Friedkin. The production has two more performances, Wednesday and Saturday.

Apparently, some people just love a dare. “For years I’ve thought it would be an interesting double bill,” says Ramey, seated in Los Angeles Opera artistic director Placido Domingo’s office at the Music Center on a recent afternoon.

“The two operas are so miles apart, how much more opposite could they be? And the two roles? I just thought it would be a challenge for me to do both in the same evening. It’s quite a turnaround.”

As if the pairing weren’t daunting enough, there’s more. “Gianni Schicchi,” the Puccini comedy about relatives scrambling for a dead man’s money and the charlatan who outwits them for the sake of a pair of young lovers, is a role debut for Ramey. And although he has sung the macabre tale of Bluebeard and his ill-fated wives before in English, he’s performed it in Hungarian only in concert, so singing it in Hungarian, fully staged as he does here, is a kind of role debut as well.

The result is a tour de force performance. As Times reviewer Daniel Cariaga wrote: “The American bass-baritone’s ... myriad vocal and dramatic resources, remarkably demonstrated as the enigmatic, many-faceted Bluebeard and as the genius-scoundrel Schicchi, had to thrill even the observer who knew in advance the scope of these challenges. Ramey is a national treasure.”

As Bluebeard, Ramey is regal and unyielding, yet not without a hint of yearning, suggesting the secrets he and his grisly castle hold. The Duke’s undeniable carnality explains why the young Judith (Denyce Graves) cannot resist him, despite the tales she has heard about the wives that have gone before her. Ramey’s Bluebeard is both captor and captivating.

Friedkin’s vision called for a particularly dark interpretation of the role. “His idea was that this guy’s a serial killer,” Ramey says. “Usually, the wives are alive and Judith is just escorted and locked up in the room; he’s a collector.”

Working with Friedkin turned out to be a pleasantly collaborative experience for the veteran singer. “We really came up with things together,” Ramey says. “I don’t know what I was expecting; I’d never worked with a film director before. But he didn’t work that differently from the ordinary.”

Ramey’s Schicchi is from a different universe than his Bluebeard. He is lithe and jaunty, an ingenious rogue and a creature of whimsy. Indeed, when Ramey makes his entrance in the second opera, his look and style of movement are so different it’s almost difficult for the audience to recognize that it’s the same singer.

Puccini’s lushly romantic music doesn’t necessarily lead the audience to expect humor. “The comic roles I’ve done are not anything like this one,” he says of the rarely produced opera, Puccini’s only comedy. “It’s groundbreaking for me. I’d only seen it once, and that was seven or eight years ago in Chicago. But it’s been fun and very interesting. I just experimented during rehearsals.”

He’s quick to share credit, in this case with Friedkin. “He said, ‘Think of this as one of those old MGM musicals,’ ” Ramey says. “He wanted everything very expansive, with gestures.”

At one point in the production, Schicchi does a little jig of glee. “That was something Bill Friedkin came up with,” Ramey says. “We had a brunch at his house the first week we were all here rehearsing. He said, ‘I want to show you something,’ and he took me up into his office and put on a tape of ‘The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.’ There was a scene where this old guy starts laughing, and he does this funny dance. And Bill said, ‘I want you to do something like that at a certain point. Try to figure out something like that.’ ”

Born in Colby, Kan., (population 5,000) and based in Chicago, Ramey is one of American opera’s home-grown stars. An undeniably magnetic presence onstage, with a bass so seductive it can make opera converts upon a single hearing, he is equally gentlemanly and elegant offstage.

He can also be surprisingly reticent. Although many performers like nothing better than to talk about themselves, he’s often reluctant to do so, a trait that suggests Midwestern good manners or maybe just modesty.

Ramey attended Wichita State University, followed by training programs at Central City Opera in Colorado and Santa Fe Opera in New Mexico. He made his New York City Opera debut in 1972 and took his first Metropolitan Opera bows in 1984.

Just recently turned 60, Ramey--who first appeared with L.A. Opera in 2000, as Mephistopheles in Guonod’s “Faust”--is in the fourth decade of a career that has regularly taken him to the world’s most prestigious venues, including the Metropolitan Opera, La Scala, the Royal Opera and Covent Garden. He is commonly billed as the most recorded bass of all time.

Ramey is perhaps best known for his devil roles, particularly the Guonod and the title role in Boito’s “Mefistofele,” both of which he began singing in the 1970s and has sung more than 200 times each. He also has a solo show, “Date With the Devil,” in which he sings 14 devil, or at least devilish, arias.

Yet Ramey is by no means limited to the dark and brooding bass parts. His repertoire is broad, a versatility encapsulated by the “Duke Bluebeard’s Castle” and “Gianni Schicchi” pairing.

He has, for instance, performed in such works as “Don Giovanni,” “The Marriage of Figaro” and “The Barber of Seville.” Admittedly, he has performed lighter works less often than dark, particularly at the Met. But that’s probably because there’s simply more dark-hued bass repertoire from which to choose.

“I haven’t done very much comedy at the Met,” he says. “But I feel at home in both drama and comedy. People who know me know I can be silly and funny.”

And he continues to seek new challenges. “I’ve done a number of new roles this past season,” notes Ramey, who will return to L.A. Opera in the fall to sing the villains in Jacques Offenbach’s “The Tales of Hoffmann,” directed by Marta Domingo. “I’m glad this year’s over, because it’s been a difficult year with all the new repertoire.”

Even in a year of new challenges, however, the Bartok-Puccini double bill stands out as arguably the most daunting. “I was telling a friend about this and he just said, ‘Why would you want to do that?’ ” Ramey recalls, with a twinkle in his blue eyes and a glimmer of nearly Schicchi-like delight at his triumph in the assignment. “But I’ve certainly enjoyed doing it.”

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Los Angeles Opera, “Duke Bluebeard’s Castle” and “Gianni Schicchi,” Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., 7:30 p.m. Wednesday and 2 p.m. Saturday. $30-$165. (213) 365-3500.