They’re not ready for the coda

WHEN is a musical an opera? Yes, that’s a trick question. And it’s especially tricky if you’re running an opera company these days.

Musicals, operettas and other lighter or nontraditional works are cropping up on opera stages across America. According to Marc Scorca, president and chief executive of Opera America, a nonprofit service organization, “We are seeing a broader exploration of traditional Broadway crossover musical theater and other forms of vocal music theater that can be staged. That’s not to say that opera companies haven’t always done ‘The Merry Widow’ or ‘Die Fledermaus’ or Gilbert and Sullivan, but I do see opera companies going further in their exploration of an expanded repertory than ever before.”

What’s more, such programming is part of a larger trend, as opera seeks to reach beyond its traditional image and audience. An infusion of directing talent from stage and screen continues, and opera is also venturing into new media with a sense of urgency -- and a success -- unthinkable just a few years ago.

It all points toward an abruptly expanding view of the mission of the opera house. “We are in the first year of really creative, energetic experimentation, and I am curious to measure the outcome,” says Scorca. “We need to be viewing all of it in a measured way to see what works, using traditional and new technologies.”

Here in Los Angeles, L.A. Opera has grown in the direction of avant-garde work and music theater alike. And new media ventures are also in the works. While the Metropolitan Opera’s live high-definition video transmissions have grabbed the headlines lately, L.A. Opera has also been working on new media ventures for some time.

“There are plans to simulcast productions and to do films,” says the company’s Eli and Edythe Broad general director, Placido Domingo. “We have four or five films already done. We just have to organize everything contractually with the unions” in order to be able to release or broadcast them.

Already, “L.A. Opera on Air” is new this year. KUSC-FM (91.5) is producing the radio program in partnership with the company and will broadcast the 2006-07 season beginning May 12. And in July, Chicago’s WFMT will add L.A. Opera to the Chicago Lyric, Houston Grand and San Francisco operas for a total of 52 weeks of opera radio a year.

L.A. Opera had, but lost, the rights to Stephen Sondheim’s “Sweeney Todd,” and three years ago it presented a New York City Opera production of the composer’s “A Little Night Music,” directed by Broadway’s Scott Ellis.

This season, however, is especially rife with crossover. In February, the company staged Kurt Weill’s “Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny,” a genre-defying work perched between opera and musical theater, staged by Broadway director John Doyle and starring Patti LuPone and Audra McDonald. Saturday, Franz Lehar’s popular operetta “The Merry Widow” was scheduled to open. It is to run concurrently with “Porgy and Bess,” an American opera more often identified with the world of musical theater that is set to begin performances Friday. In June, the company will present “Luisa Fernanda,” a zarzuela, which is a form of Spanish musical theater, starring Domingo. And just last week, the company announced that it would offer $20 tickets for all seats remaining at the May 18 “Porgy” and the May 20 “Merry Widow.”

Elsewhere, a production of “Sweeney Todd” that began on Broadway moved to Britain’s Royal Opera and Chicago’s Lyric Opera. New York City Opera, which will be taken over by the iconoclastic Gerard Mortier in 2009, had “Ragtime” planned for 2008. The company recently had to postpone it but plans to replace it with another musical.

Nor is this expansive view limited to large companies. At San Antonio Opera, an up-and-coming regional company, the current season combined “La Traviata” with “The Pirates of Penzance,” plus upcoming concerts by Domingo and mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade.

Although opera companies staging musicals are not a new phenomenon, the pressure to expand the audience is greater than ever. “Opera is an aging art form,” says Peter Gelb, now in his first season at the helm of the Metropolitan Opera, speaking by phone from New York. “I think the reason why more companies are doing operetta and musical theater is declining attendance.”

Domingo concurs, but not without a hint of ambivalence. “All the theaters, more and more we need to fill every night the houses, so we need to search for more things,” says the popular tenor, another pioneer in crossover ventures, who also runs Washington National Opera. “Basically, I’m glad that these works are more and more accepted in an opera house.”

The yin and yang in L.A.

DOMINGO is looking emotionally subdued yet still his energetic self as he sits in his office in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on a March afternoon. In town for the day -- in between D.C. performances of “Die Walkure,” for which he has grown a stately beard -- he is dressed conservatively in a gray suit and blue shirt.

The look fits the day’s role, which is that of not only commander in chief but also spiritual leader to a company in mourning. L.A. Opera recently suffered the loss of Domingo’s close collaborator, chief operating officer Edgar Baitzel, who died of cancer at 51.

Baitzel had been key to the company’s growth and increased prestige since he came to L.A. at Domingo’s behest in 2001. Their artistic partnership was known to many insiders as a balance of aesthetics, with Domingo the more traditional yet catholic of the two and the German-born Baitzel more enamored of edgy avant-garde work.

That traditional part of Domingo does not necessarily relish movement at the expense of the core repertoire. Though open to musical theater, he acknowledges it is not always to his taste.

The recent “Mahagonny” was a case in point. It did well but fell short of critical expectations. “With all my respect, I know that ‘Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny’ is a piece that has to be produced, but I can say openly that it’s not my cup of tea,” says Domingo. “If we do it, it’s because there is a certain demand for it, certain possibilities.”

Those possibilities included “a foundation interested in doing a taping for television,” explains Domingo. What’s more, “ ‘Mahagonny’ was one request from James Conlon, coming in as music director. A matter of my own taste should never get in the way.”

Then too there was the star power. “The most important thing in order to be able to attract the public is people that are either specialists in that kind of work or big names,” says Domingo. “Audra McDonald and Patti LuPone are specialists, and they are big names. So in that case, we had both.”

Similarly, at the Met there is no desire to forsake the core repertoire. “I would like the Met to achieve better box office by actually presenting full-fledged opera,” says Gelb. “I’m not saying operetta shouldn’t be done in opera houses. But what’s appropriate for the Met is to find new artistic ways to make opera appealing.

“My first challenge is to take the standard repertoire and revitalize it, rather than to fill the Met with musical theater pieces,” he says. “That, to me, is like waving a surrender flag. Other places can do it, but not the Met.”

New vision at the Met

THE Met has long had a reputation as a bastion of traditionalism. Yet the new regime is having it both ways. Gelb’s eschewal of musicals will no doubt gratify purists, but he has also been aggressive in his new media innovations.

In fact, the Met may be less an exception to what’s going on in opera than it at first appears. The company is indeed raiding the legitimate stage. But rather than mounting musicals, Gelb is luring its directors, including Mary Zimmerman, Bart Sher and Jack O’Brien.

“My approach has been to increase theatrical values without decreasing musical values,” he says. “I believe by choosing the right directors, we can revitalize the art form. This season was planned before I arrived. Nevertheless, I’ve changed directors. Almost every director I’ve invited has never worked at the Met before.”

L.A. Opera, for its part, has long brought in stage and film directors and is especially known for its association with Hollywood. “My belief in using movie directors from years and years back continues here,” says Domingo. “Now when Edgar came with me, we went further to recruit more and more people: Maximilian Schell, Marthe Keller, William Friedkin, Garry Marshall, Julie Taymor and others.

“No one has been a gimmick. Everybody has been doing their job really well,” he continues. “All this has come with wonderful results, so we would certainly continue.”

As for Gelb, his initiatives include telecasting the Met’s opening night live in Times Square, a 24-hour opera channel on Sirius Satellite Radio, weekly live audio on the company’s website -- and of course the simulcasts. “What I don’t want to do is change the art form,” he says. “I want to enhance it, build upon it, make it available. I feel my mission is to keep grand opera alive and well.”

These efforts by Gelb, Domingo and others are the natural outcome of both 20th century practices and the traumas of the early years of this century.

“The opera repertoire through the 20th century was pretty narrow,” says Scorca. “We have seen in the late 20th century a renewed interest in Baroque opera and new American operas, and I think this is an effort to bring a broader creativity to a broader audience.

“There is a broader world that we want to invite into the opera house,” he goes on. “And a broader repertory is one way to make more people feel welcome.”

The 21st century started off badly, and the current wave of ventures may be seen as a response to that. “There was a bit of a downturn in 2001-02, and a lot of people wanted to think it was cyclical -- and that after a quick recovery from recession and the shock of 9/11, business would return to normal,” says Scorca. “People realized in 2003-04 that that return was not going to be automatic.”

Not abandoning the basics

FOR all the innovation going on, it remains secondary to the canon. In most cases, the warhorses are still the breadwinners -- and they tend to finance the experimental productions. So at the same time you have opera growing in new directions, there may also be a certain amount of retrenchment ahead.

For Domingo, it’s a matter of building around the basics. “We have to have a certain number of ‘A’ operas every season: ‘Carmen,’ ‘Aida,’ ‘Tosca,’ ‘Madama Butterfly,’ ‘La Boheme,’ ‘The Barber of Seville,’ ‘The Marriage of Figaro’ and others. Then you can combine it with ‘B’ operas, and then you can have a ‘C’ or a ‘D’ or an ‘E.’ ”

Consequently, the tenor is signaling what may be perceived as a retreat. “We are going to be doing more ‘A’ operas every season,” he says. “And the public should know that is not because unfortunately, sadly, we don’t have Edgar, but it was in our plans already. It is important for the world to know that we have a certain guarantee of certain operas. We really need that almost half of the repertory should be between ‘A’ and ‘B.’ ”

For San Antonio Opera, the greatest hits are of a slightly different flavor, but no less the lifeblood. “The ones that have really stood out are the operettas: ‘The Merry Widow,’ ‘Die Fledermaus,’ ‘The Mikado,’ ‘Pirates of Penzance,’ ” says general and artistic director Mark Richter. “ ‘Pirates of Penzance’ was our bestselling single-ticket-seller ever. That tells you a lot.”

In the future, there will be more musical theater at San Antonio. “We’re going to be expanding to four productions within the next season or two, and that fourth production will be a zarzuela or a musical comedy,” says Richter. “It has to be something that’s hanging in the middle between musical theater and opera: ‘Porgy,’ ‘Show Boat,’ ‘The Most Happy Fella.’ ”

It’s also important to tailor the season to the locale. “Every demographic has different ways to approach this dilemma of audience development,” says Richter. “If I lived in New York City, with the best musical theater in the world, why would I want to do musical theater? Zarzuela is a lot like musical theater, and San Antonio is a perfect place for that.

“The fastest-growing part of our audience is Hispanic, and zarzuela is definitely something that we’re going to do in the future,” he says. “Our dream is to co-produce something with L.A. Opera or D.C.”

Meanwhile, L.A. is preparing for its second zarzuela. In 1994, “when we did ‘El Gato Montes,’ the results were very good, so we will see now with ‘Luisa Fernanda,’ ” says Domingo. “We have a lot of Spanish-speaking people who live here, but it is not a repertoire that they know. So it is not a guarantee that Spanish people will come to see zarzuela.”

Ultimately, in short, it’s a tricky business for an opera company to present any alternative musical theater -- just as it is to reach out in other new ways.

“What you have to have is something that the public will be attracted to and that is not so far from the world of opera,” says Domingo. “I think you have to draw a line. You have to be careful.”

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Los Angeles Opera

What: “The Merry Widow”

Where: Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., Los Angeles

When: 7:30 p.m. Thursday and May 9, 12, 23, 26; 2 p.m. May 6; 1 p.m. May 19; 8 p.m. May 20

Price: $20 to $220

Contact: (213) 972-8001 or www.laopera.com

Also

What: “Porgy and Bess”

When: 7:30 p.m. Friday, Saturday and May 8, 10, 11, 15, 17, 18; 2 p.m. May 13, 16; 8 p.m. May 19; 1 p.m. May 20

What: “Luisa Fernanda”

When: 7:30 p.m. June 3, 5, 6, 12, 14, 16; 2 p.m. June 9, 10