DOMINGO WILL EXTEND HIS RUN WITH L.A. OPERA

Placido Domingo, the superstar tenor who helped found Los Angeles Opera and has led it as general director since 2003, has renewed his contract with the company for an additional five years, through 2011.

At the same time, the company announced Tuesday, artistic director Edgar Baitzel has been promoted to chief operating officer, and two executives are assuming new jobs: Marilyn Shapiro as executive vice president and Mitchell Heskel as director of administration and chief financial officer.

Although Domingo’s re-upping is no surprise, it underscores his pivotal role at Los Angeles Opera, where he has been involved since his 1986 performance as “Otello” in the company’s debut production. Before assuming his present position, he had been artistic director since 2000. He is also general director of Washington National Opera.

“It’s wonderful to have this new extension, which gives me the possibility to bring us to our 25th anniversary,” Domingo said by phone from outside New York. He spoke particularly of his enthusiasm about conductor James Conlon, who will arrive as the new music director this summer, replacing Kent Nagano, as well as of his excitement about other projects.

Over the next few years, Domingo said, he has a lot to look forward to: three new productions, including Elliot Goldenthal’s new opera, “Grendel,” which will be performed May 27 through June 17; a series of Puccini operas in 2007 and 2008 to mark the composer’s 150th birthday; and a complete production of Wagner’s four-opera “Ring” cycle, details of which he said will be announced in September.

Domingo also expressed continued interest in something that’s become one of his trademarks: “working with movie directors without any gimmicks, but because they love opera.”

Baitzel, a native of Germany with experience in European companies, came to Los Angeles Opera in 2000 as the company’s artistic administrator; his titles and responsibility have been enlarged every few years. Domingo said the two make “a good team.”

Baitzel said Tuesday in Los Angeles that his new post will be more business-oriented.

“This company still has a huge potential for growth,” he said, adding that a new goal will be “aiming for the right size for the company” and figuring out “how aggressively we should grow.” He said he is especially interested in boosting the company’s subscription base, which currently lags that of Chicago Lyric Opera.

“We have board members saying there is no reason Los Angeles shouldn’t have the second-largest opera company in the country,” Baitzel said. (It currently ranks fourth.) The company, he said, is “working on business strategies that we need to translate into artistry.”

The last several years have been ones of transition for L.A. Opera. The current season was scaled back because of financial problems, and an anticipated world premiere, Unsuk Chin’s “Alice in Wonderland,” was canceled because of a lack of funds. Baitzel said that work, which was championed by Nagano, will receive its world premiere in Munich, Germany, in 2007 but will not be immediately scheduled here, though it may arrive someday.

“That was one of the most painful decisions Placido, Kent and I have had to make since we’ve been with the company,” he said of the scaling back of the current season. “We couldn’t continue going forward without fixing the sins of the past.”

However, L.A. Opera is expanding its offerings for the recently announced 2006-07 season to 75 performances of 10 operas, up from 61 performances of eight operas during the current season. And when the new season was announced, Chairman and CEO Marc I. Stern said the company had operated in the black in 2005 for a third straight year.

According to the most recently available tax records, in 2003 Domingo was paid roughly $600,000 as an administrator and performer, and Baitzel earned about $240,000.

“This reconstruction of the opera company sends a very powerful message to the international opera world,” Baitzel said. The message? “That we’re solid.”

One less solid note in the opera’s recent history has been the 65-year-old Domingo’s health: The tenor suffered from tracheitis this winter and recently canceled European performances of Wagner’s “The Valkyrie” in April, because of what he termed overcommitment.

But Domingo insisted he is on the mend. “I can say that I feel much better,” he said, adding that he was recently practicing for a March 8 performance of “Cyrano de Bergerac” at the Metropolitan Opera and sounded fine.

He said he harmed his throat singing the title role in “Parsifal,” which Los Angeles Opera mounted in a Robert Wilson production last fall.

“I’m not used to singing without movement,” he said of director Wilson’s meditative, ritualistic production. “I need the movement.”