L.A. Opera picks music director

Los Angeles Opera announced Monday that James Conlon would become music director on July 1, 2006, a day after Kent Nagano, the company’s first music director, steps down from his post.

The news came less than two weeks after Nagano informed the L.A. Opera board that, once he assumed the music directorships of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, Germany, and of the Montreal Symphony in 2006, he would be unable to continue in Los Angeles. It ended speculation not only about his successor in Los Angeles but also about Conlon’s plans. The 54-year-old American conductor, who recently left his post as principal conductor of the Paris National Opera to return to the United States, had been widely rumored as a possible candidate for the Metropolitan Opera were its longtime music director, James Levine, to resign.

Reached Monday in Florence, Italy, where he is conducting Mussorgsky’s “Khovanshchina,” Conlon said that he was particularly struck by L.A. Opera general manager Placido Domingo’s vision for opera in Los Angeles.

“This company is one of the few places in America where you can innovate,” he said over a cellphone while dodging noisy motorbikes in a Florence piazza. “It is young and growing. It is in a creative phase.”

The New York-born Conlon said that he was eager to come back to the U.S. after being based in Europe for the last 20 years but that he had expected to enjoy a period of relative freedom, guest conducting without official ties to any company. But the freedom will not last long. Next summer, he will assume the music directorship of the Ravinia Festival, the Chicago Symphony’s summer home.

In Europe, Conlon has served as music director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic in the Netherlands. As music director for the city of Cologne, Germany, leading both the Cologne Opera and the Gurzenich Orchestra, he endured what he called “the German grind” for 13 years. He said that “participating in a repertory theater of such breadth and depth was the best education in the world.”

Conlon also weathered the notorious opera politics of Paris for nine years. When he left Paris National Opera in July, he was longest-lasting music director of the company since 1939. “I never imagined the Paris post would be as satisfying or as long as it was,” he said.

In announcing Conlon’s appointment, Domingo cited the conductor’s work in Paris as a particular attraction. “Because of his involvement with Paris National Opera’s productions at both the Opera Bastille and the Palais Garnier,” Domingo said, “he has been artistically responsible for a wider repertoire and a greater number of performances than any other musician of today.”

Domingo, who first sang under Conlon more than 25 years ago at the Met in “La Boheme,” also performed recently in a production of “Parsifal” that Conlon conducted in Paris.

For all his concentration on Europe, Conlon never abandoned America. He is a frequent guest conductor of opera and symphony in this country, and he has served as music director of the Cincinnati May Festival since 1979. Already booked ahead in the U.S. for several years, he had to withdraw from some future Met dates to free up time for Los Angeles.

Although not ready to discuss his ideas for Los Angeles Opera, including whether he will inherit a long-postponed Wagner “Ring” cycle with the company, Conlon did acknowledge having a close connection to “that part or the repertoire.”

In recent years, he has also become a noted champion of such neglected composers as Erwin Schulhoff and Victor Ullmann, who were victims of Nazi persecution. Next month, he will conduct a series of concerts of their works with the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

L.A. Opera artistic director Edgar Baitzel, however, confirmed Monday that a “Ring” with Conlon was very much in the offing, although no dates had been set. “We are checking the availability of the best singers, and it is more a logistical problem than anything else,” he said.

Baitzel also said that he shared many of Conlon’s artistic enthusiasms. “As we figure out where the crossroads of his and our ideas are,” Baitzel said, “it turns out that there are so many options, our problem is which ones to choose.”