L.A. Opera’s Future, From 3,000 Miles Away

NEW YORK--Looking north from the 35th-floor apartment in a tony building on Central Park South, the view of the Gotham green is epic. On a recent evening at cocktail hour, you could even catch a glimpse of the future of opera in Los Angeles.

A small klatch of supporters, many of them with big names, big wallets or both, gathered in the quietly opulent digs of arts patrons Elaine and Lee Elman to watch composer Deborah Drattell present her score of a new opera, “Nicholas and Alexandra,” to Los Angeles Opera artistic director Placido Domingo. “I could have just sent it to L.A.,” said the petite brunet to the celebrity tenor, who arrived straight from seeing an opera that afternoon, and en route to conduct another that night. “But I insisted on giving you the score myself.”

Drattell’s opus, with libretto by Nicholas von Hoffman, is one of several new operas to be commissioned by Los Angeles Opera since Domingo took the company helm. It’ll be the first to hit the boards, with its world premiere launching the 2003-04 season, starring Domingo and conducted by Mstislav Rostropovich, in a co-production with Paris’ Theatre du Chatelet.

A phalanx of white-jacketed waiters circulated, bearing silver trays laden with caviar and sundry other upscale nosherei, and green napkins monogrammed with the hosts’ names. (Lee is a lawyer, real estate investor and former commissioner of cultural affairs for New York City; Elaine is a former stockbroker.) Tony-winning playwrights Terrence McNally and Wendy Wasserstein were on hand to support their fellow collaborator on the 1999 New York City Opera trilogy “Central Park.” Wasserstein and Drattell are now working together on a second opera. And McNally’s “Dead Man Walking,” recently staged at Opera Pacific, is on a roll these days, with productions slated across the country. Present as well was grande dame Kitty Carlisle Hart, herself no stranger to the art of singing, impeccable in a tangerine day suit.

Catherine Wichterman, program officer for the performing arts at the New York-based Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and a friend of Drattell’s, mentioned that the foundation has given its first-ever grant to L.A. Opera.

“We wanted to support opera companies that can contribute to the development of new work,” Wichterman said. “We are interested in experimentation, and Domingo is clearly a person with a vision.”

Mellon has chipped in $750,000 over three years, to help pay for commissions, including the 2002-03 premiere of Luciano Berio’s new orchestration of “The Coronation of Poppea,” the 2003-04 premiere of “Nicholas and Alexandra” and the 2004-05 premiere of a new opera by John Williams. In fact, Edgar Baitzel, the company’s director of artistic operations, said that the subject of directing the Williams opera was being broached with a Very Hot film director in New York.

Drattell, who lives with her husband and four kids in Brooklyn, wore a black-and-white animal-print skirt, strappy heels and peppermint-pink toenails. Just hours earlier, she’d been frantically photocopying the score in preparation for the ceremonial handoff.

The three spiral-bound volumes were covered in baby blue, and tied with a gold mesh bow. “Leave it to me to wrap it in a ribbon that cuts your hands before you have to conduct,” a somewhat nervous Drattell said to Domingo, who would shortly be leading “Rigoletto” at the Met. “And they weigh 10 pounds. So don’t feel pressured to take it with you.”

When it came time for the speechifying, Drattell went first. As a child growing up in New York, she had taken part in a program to introduce students to music. When the man in charge asked her what instrument she wanted to play, the 7-year-old future composer had no doubts. “I want to be a violinist,” she told him.

“‘And why do you want to play the violin, little girl?’ ‘Because I want to be the concertmaster.’

“It was that same sense of chutzpah when I decided I wanted to write an opera for Placido Domingo,” Drattell explained.

“You were the total source of inspiration for the piece,” she told the tenor.. “And now that I’ve gotten the check, I can say that I would have paid you to let me write this opera.”

Domingo took the opportunity to do his duty as an artistic director, schmoozing with the influential and well-heeled well-wishers. “We want the company to be representative of all the different types of works--new works, and especially having those works written by American composers,” he said. Citing the centuries-old reliance of artists on benefactors, Domingo gave the nod to the Mellon Foundation’s Wichterman in particular for encouraging composers such as Drattell.

“Nicholas and Alexandra” came to Domingo’s attention when Baitzel urged him to hear excerpts of the work in progress presented in a showcase organized by Drattell at New York City Opera, where she used to be composer in residence. “The moment I heard it I knew it should be the first world premiere” for L.A. Opera, Domingo recalled.

“I asked her to make just one change,” he said. “She told me she had written Nicholas for me. I said, ‘Let me be Rasputin. Just for once, I don’t want to be the suffering tenor.’ I will be killed, with 20 bullet holes in my body, to gorgeous music.” (Baritone Rodney Gilfry, a longtime L.A. Opera favorite, will assay the role of Czar Nicholas, with Nancy Gustafson as his wife Alexandra.)

Turning to Drattell, Domingo added a coda. “I thank you for the change,” he said. “And I congratulate you.”

Riding down in the elevator afterward, the elegant Carlisle Hart chatted demurely about her own musical muse. “Lyric mezzo?” queried the opera’s Baitzel.

“I used to be a soprano,” she replied. “Yes, I sing lower now--I’m very old. The words are more clear, though.”