The Architect of L.A. Opera

After nearly 20 years in Los Angeles, Peter Hemmings still seems a quintessentially proper Englishman. The founding general director of Los Angeles Opera, who will retire next month, doesn’t publicly shirk blame or boast. Over lunch recently, he ended many thoughts about his 14 seasons here with the question, “Do you think I was right?” or the doubt, “Perhaps I was wrong.”

Opera is an unreasonable art form, and its fans are passionate; it would be hard to find one who did not think Hemmings went wrong somewhere along the line. Yet every operatically inclined Angeleno owes Hemmings a profound debt of gratitude. Opera flourishes in Los Angeles because Hemmings made it flourish.

Don’t expect many wrongs to be pointed out in these last days of Hemmings’ reign. On Monday night he receives the company’s tribute, a gala that features some of the stars who have shown loyalty to the company over the years. At the head of the list, of course, is Placido Domingo, who has been a continual presence since the company’s first opening night in 1986 and who becomes its new artistic director in July.

Just as telling will be the presence of the up-and-coming stars Hemmings has developed--especially baritone Rodney Gilfry and mezzo-soprano Suzanna Guzman.

Then on June 3, the Los Angeles Opera unveils, as the final production of Hemmings’ last season, Benjamin Britten’s “Billy Budd,” and that also serves as a valedictory. Not only is it one of the greatest operas of Hemmings’ native country, but it also stars Gilfry in his signature role.

The simple fact is that Hemmings has built a world-class permanent opera company where there was none, in the last great Western city to be without one. For more than a century, an assortment of local visionaries, dreamers and hustlers put on opera in Los Angeles one way or another, but all of it was either transitory, provincial or imported. Why did Hemmings succeed where others failed?

“I went into a situation where there was a latent demand just waiting to be filled,” Hemmings, 66, modestly answers. “And as soon as we began to provide opera on a regular basis, we brought those people to us. Whereas before, Los Angeles had always been dependent upon visiting companies who weren’t woven into the fabric of the city, a [local] company begins to be supported properly by the city.

“I think we’ve gotten to that stage now, and I think that we can build upon that,” he says optimistically, then suddenly tempers it. “But I keep on wondering why it is that the Philharmonic, which certainly had that relationship, seems to have lost it.”

Los Angeles Opera, which this season is presenting 55 performances of eight operas, has succeeded this season in filling about three-quarters of the seats in the 3,000-seat Chandler Pavilion. The Philharmonic, which once also did a pretty good job of filling the auditorium night after night, now sometimes plays to noticeably empty houses.

“I don’t understand why that should be. Do you?”

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“Operatic” is an adjective that can mean flamboyant, and opera houses are sometimes run by appropriately colorful characters. Hemmings, Cambridge-educated in the classics and with the formal manner of a member of Parliament, is not one.

But his sober realism appears to be just what the Music Center (which changed its name to the Performing Arts Center of Los Angeles County last year) wanted when it hired Hemmings in 1984 to create a company.

That, and a track record. Hemmings was born in England in 1934 (“the year in which Elgar, Holst and Delius died,” he notes). A chorister in college, he got his first administrative job at Sadler’s Wells Opera in London in 1959. In 1962, Hemmings was invited to create the Scottish Opera in Glasgow. He ran the company for 15 years, turning it into one of the most imaginative and important in Britain. He also spent two years managing the Australian Opera and five with the London Symphony Orchestra.

When he arrived in L.A., he had an advantage over all the would-be impresarios who had gone before him: the infrastructure for a company. Opera at the Music Center may not have been a priority for Dorothy Chandler, who raised the money to build the complex and was a symphony partisan. But the multipurpose Chandler Pavilion was always intended for opera as well, and by 1966, two years after it opened, the Music Center Opera Assn. was formed to find a way to produce opera. For several years its solution was to bring in the New York City Opera for an annual residency.

Opera was also on the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s mind from time to time. The orchestra’s first two music directors in the hall, Zubin Mehta and Carlo Maria Giulini, were opera enthusiasts. Mehta conducted concert opera with the orchestra, and in 1982, the Philharmonic, in cooperation with London’s Royal Opera, staged Verdi’s “Falstaff” for Giulini. It proved one of the highlights of the international operatic season. Two years later, the Royal Opera appeared at the Chandler Pavilion as part of the Olympic Arts Festival. By that time, Los Angeles’ appetite for world-class opera was fully stimulated.

His mandate, says Hemmings, was to serve a cosmopolitan audience without ignoring Angelenos who did not grow up on opera. He was eager to utilize local talent but also felt he should pay attention to Europe, where so much opera action unfolds. “I thought, you can’t sit in Los Angeles and expect the world to come to you, you have to go to them. And the best way was to go to Europe and not to go to the East Coast, because on the East Coast they spend an awful lot of time going to Europe.”

Hemmings also knew he needed to find a way to attract big-name singers and directors who might not necessarily want to remain on the West Coast, far from opera’s capitals, for the long periods of time opera rehearsals and performance runs require. His masterstroke was to ask Domingo to be an artistic advisor for the company. Not only has it meant that the famous tenor has performed with the company every season, but his participation has also been a magnet for other star singers. In 1995, Domingo became the principal guest conductor of the company as well.

Music Center Opera (in 1996, it changed its name to L.A. Opera and then last year to Los Angeles Opera) opened in September 1986 with a production of Verdi’s “Otello,” and on that first night it seemed almost as if the great gods of opera had designed a test to see whether California’s cultural climate could support the lyric muse. Domingo was engaged to sing what is perhaps his most celebrated role. His leading lady, soprano Daniela Dessi, canceled mysteriously at the last minute. Her replacement, a 40-year-old Czech singer, Gabriela Benackova, was not well known in America. There was a heat wave that quickly wilted the formally attired opening-night crowd. And the curtain stuck for a second.

But it rose. Benackova proved a singer long overdue for international recognition, which this production helped provide. Domingo was impressive. The staging by modernist German director Goetz Friedrich was powerful. The company had arrived.

That first season, the cool and prim Hemmings also provided titillation with an R-rated production of Strauss’ “Salome,” directed by Peter Hall and starring the British director’s then-wife, Maria Ewing. Her full strip for “The Dance of the Seven Veils” was instantly the talk of the opera world, and other companies clamored for the production (they still do). Los Angeles not only had an opera company, but it also appeared to have one with its own cheeky character, one that got people talking.

There were five operas staged in 1986-87, seven the next season, and soon eight became the rule. Hemmings says that he quickly developed a formula for programming he has consistently attempted to follow.

“The mix that I tried to establish was that if you are doing eight operas, four of them should be standard, popular operas, the names of which people knew, hopefully in interesting productions. I bring in at least one co-production of an unfamiliar piece each season. This season it was ‘I Capuleti’ [Bellini’s “The Capulets and the Montagues”]. There is the inclusion, each year, of a relatively modern piece, like ‘Florencia en el Amazonas,’ like ‘The Fantastic Mr. Fox,’ or like ‘Billy Budd’ this year. And, if possible, we do a musical or an operetta. That’s the basis on which I’ve tried to work. Do you think I’m wrong?”

For most seasons, the company has had at least one production that got it international recognition. The second season, Hemmings brought in David Hockney to design Wagner’s “Tristan and Isolde.” Zubin Mehta conducted the L.A. Philharmonic in the pit. Jonathan Miller directed and told everyone who would listen what wretched beasts he considered Wagner and Hockney to be. Still it was a sensation. That was also the year Miller directed for the company his irresistible flapper version of “The Mikado” at the Wiltern Theatre.

Perusing the laundry list of productions over the years, one can find at least one unusual production or opera every season. In the third season, there was a magnificent “Wozzeck,” conducted by Simon Rattle and provocatively staged by David Alden. Among its most ambitious undertakings was Berlioz’s epic masterpiece “The Trojans” in only its second full staging in America, and a wildly postmodern one at that--by then-controversial Francesca Zambello. Both productions received negative reviews and audience boos, but Alden and Zambello are today two of the most celebrated and established American directors.

Still, opera is a very expensive business, and Hemmings played it safe most of the time with standard repertory, often in conventional productions.

“An awful lot of people are there seeing ‘Tosca’ for the first time,” he responds, when the conventionality issue is raised. “That, I think, is an argument both for and against the idea of reexamining old masterpieces and doing them in modern ways. It may be that doing it in a modernist way helps this audience to enjoy it more, or it may be that it puts them off for good. And I don’t know how we will ever find that out. Do you?”

Damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t, he remains necessarily philosophical.

“Whatever you do, you will get attacked,” Hemmings acknowledges, good-naturedly. “I know I get as many pro as con letters. And do you know what I do with them? I exchange them. I send the ‘bad’ letters to the ‘good’ people and vice versa, and it usually stops the conversation.”

In the early years, star singers, despite Domingo’s Rolodex and arm-twisting, weren’t plentiful. Likewise, star conductors. There were always a few around each season, but they stood out as the exception. The company’s Web site list of highlights mentions very few singers other than Domingo, and even fewer conductors.

And while Los Angeles Opera still may not draw the stars as well as the older, more established San Francisco Opera and Chicago Lyric Opera can, casting has generally improved over the years. Increasingly, the company is able to compensate with an ensemble of budding young singers who are on contract with the company and now give it part of its personality and assure reliable casting of fresh, believable singing actors in the small parts.

The company has had less success with its orchestra and chorus. These are expensive components in the budget, and the bother of building an orchestra and chorus was put off for the first few years by employing the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and the Los Angeles Master Chorale. The company now hires its own freelance orchestra and chorus, and they are inconsistent.

An even more glaring need is for a music director. Hemmings admits this has been impossible, since Domingo, who has found Los Angeles Opera a fitting place to hone his own conducting skills, made that a condition of his involvement with the company, even though he generally conducts only one production a season. Hemmings also feels that for a music director to be effective the company should be able to afford a permanent orchestra: musicians on a contract, with the conductor doing the hiring. Only now, he says, is the company reaching the financial capacity to do that, and he confirms the rumors that Domingo is, indeed, in the process of searching for a music director.

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Perhaps the biggest criticism Hemmings must deflect as he takes his leave concerns Los Angeles Opera’s commitment to pushing the art form forward.

Despite his formal tailoring, Hemmings’ own taste appears to be for a bit of adventure. And that there has been less of it in recent years has led to speculation that his hands have been tied by an increasingly bottom-line-oriented board. But Hemmings says, board or no board, the hard financial realities of much of the last decade--and therefore much of the life of the company--have demanded discretion.

Los Angeles Opera faced especially lean years in 1993, ’94 and ’95. “We were really suffering from all the problems that everybody else in Los Angeles was suffering from--the recession, the movement of banks and corporations away from Los Angeles, the riots, the earthquake in 1994,” Hemmings says. “There were about three years when growth was out of the question, when we had to play it safe and, hopefully, inexpensively safe. And that was a considerable setback.”

Wagner’s “The Mastersingers of Nuremberg,” in a new $1-million production, had been part of the plans during those years, but it was scrapped as too expensive. The same fate befell John Adams’ “The Death of Klinghoffer.”

“We couldn’t do that either,” Hemmings says, although Los Angeles Opera was a co-commissioner and had footed part of the development bill for the opera. The company had a great success with a brilliant production and performance of Adams’ first opera, “Nixon in China.” But “Klinghoffer,” about the Palestinian terrorist killing of an American Jew on a cruise ship in the Middle East, became a political lightning rod during a very tense time.

“The fact that we didn’t do ‘Klinghoffer’ was purely financial,” Hemmings insists. “I’ve said this so often and people don’t believe me, but it had nothing to do with anti-Semitism or blocking from the board or anything like that. It was a difficult time to raise money and sell tickets, and we felt that we couldn’t manage to do that [for that opera], at least then. I don’t think it is as attractive an opera as was ‘Nixon,’ but I think that it is a piece that might come into its own later as people come to understand it better. I have to say that I found the libretto, shall we say, over-mystic. Is that a fair way of putting it?”

Those lean years, though, also had an ongoing effect on the company. Singers and conductors book three years or more in advance, so a cautious mind-set rippled right through the rest of the decade, even as times improved.

There were other bits of bad luck as well. Two new operas it commissioned in recent seasons--Daniel Catan’s neo-Puccini-esque “Florencia” and Tobias Picker’s bland children’s opera “Fantastic Mr. Fox”--did not prove to be quite the events the company had hoped they’d be. Both of these were by composers who had written promising first operas, and expectations ran high.

But Hemmings will surely leave Los Angeles on a high note. The “Billy Budd” that opens in two weeks has already proven itself. Zambello’s production is likely to erase any unfortunate memories of her “Trojans”; it and Gilfry’s portrayal of the title role were career-making hits in London and Paris (Zambello’s new production of Prokofiev’s “War and Peace” is the sensation of the current Paris opera season). Hemmings says that originally the Los Angeles Opera had been a co-producer of “Billy Budd” in 1994, but again he had to drop what he felt would be a difficult opera to sell during the lean period.

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Next for Hemmings will be a move back to London, where he serves on the board of the Royal Opera and where he will do consulting. It is also where some of his children and grandchildren live. He was responsible for planning all of next season in Los Angeles, but he has stayed out of Domingo’s way in scheduling anything beyond that. And he feels it is only proper that he should bow out completely once Domingo actually assumes power.

“It wouldn’t be appropriate for people to be asking me about what I thought about certain things that were happening,” he says.

But there is also a sense that Hemmings has somewhat tired of the fight. “I’m distressed to think that so much time and effort has been spent by the Music Center getting Disney Hall built, and that it will end up in the end having cost almost as much as the Sydney Opera House. Yes, it will give at least an initial boost to symphony audiences. But we are the only company that can fill [the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion] regularly. The Philharmonic certainly can’t, and there is no dance company anyhow. So we are in a situation now where we feel that there is a great deal of pressure on us to go on being the milch cow. There are times when I think that we are not sufficiently appreciated.”

Hemmings is not, in the end. pessimistic. “I would not be surprised if within the next 10 years we don’t get to 100 performances of 10 operas a season, putting it on par with or even ahead of San Francisco. It seems to be going that way. I can’t see any reason why it shouldn’t. We are probably the only major company in the country which has the potential for growth of that sort.”

And while he worries about audiences, he doesn’t see them vanishing. “They talk about the graying of audiences, and in my experience opera’s always been graying and [yet] it’s still going.

“It’s expensive, it’s time-consuming, you have to make plans a long way ahead. And that’s something which is more likely to happen in your 50s than in your 30s. But I still find that our audience has a lot of younger people.”

Characteristically, though, Hemmings tempers his optimism. He points to the increasing difficulty of involving audiences who are more easily distracted than they used to be, and to what he finds as their increasing lack of adventure, be it in L.A., Berlin or Chicago.

“I don’t think that the health of opera is as strong now as when I started,” he says. “A lot of the enthusiasm and excitement that we all had back in the ‘50s, when I started, was because we were seduced by opera. I’m not sure that it is quite like that now.

“But, perhaps I’m wrong.” *

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The Hemmings Years’ Greatest Hits

1986-87

Kicking off a tradition of the Peter Hemmings years, for its debut production, Music Center Opera casts artistic consultant Placido Domingo in the starring role in Verdi’s “Otello.” Domingo has starred in or conducted every season opener since. Biggest first-year sensation: Maria Ewing in “Salome”--during “The Dance of the Seven Veils” she was absolutely, positively (but only momentarily) nude.

1987-88

Jonathan Miller directs Wagner’s “Tristan and Isolde,” with Angelenos Zubin Mehta and David Hockney as conductor and designer. “A major achievement, worthy of a major international company,” wrote The Times.

1988-89

L.A. Opera dives into experimental waters with a production of Berg’s “Wozzeck” from David Alden that audiences and critics either loved or hated--but which kept the fledgling company on the radar screen.

1989-90

Maurice Sendak set to music arrives in Los Angeles after making a splash in Europe and New York. “Where the Wild Things Are” showcases composer Oliver Knussen’s wit, with sets and costumes that “oozed instant charm,” said The Times.

1990-91

The company co-produces “Nixon in China”--John Adams’ debut opera, matched with local director Peter Sellars--and helps establish the controversial genre known as “CNN opera.” L.A. Opera later co-commissions the same team for another controversial work, “The Death of Klinghoffer,” but never presents it.

1991-92

Berlioz’s “The Trojans”--in only its second staging in the U.S.--brings controversial director Francesca Zambello to L.A. Opera for the first time to predictable cheers and jeers. The company’s first world premiere: “Kullervo” by Aulis Sallinen.

1992-93

British artist Gerald Scarfe designs and Peter Hall directs the company’s new production of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute”--its vivid colors and characters will be an image-maker for the company for years to come.

1993-94

Hollywood weighs in when Herb Ross stages a new and crowd-pleasing “La Boheme”: “Lots of original--possibly cinematic--maneuvers,” wrote The Times. This “Boheme” will be revived in 1997 (it’s scheduled again in 2000-01), but the company won’t go back to Hollywood for a new production until Bruce Beresford’s “Rigoletto” in 2000. Best in show for ‘93-’94: Hockney’s second offering, Richard Strauss’ “Die Frau ohne Schatten.”

1994-95

A Sellars production of “Pelleas et Melisande” sets Debussy’s fantasy in dysfunctional modern Malibu, with the L.A. Philharmonic in the pit and Esa-Pekka Salonen on the podium. Domingo adds the title principal guest conductor to his local resume.

1995-96

Two years before her Broadway triumph “The Lion King” made Julie Taymor a household name, her interpretation of Wagner’s “The Flying Dutchman” proves a hard sell: One person reportedly threw a tomato.

1996-97

Monteverdi’s “The Return of Ulysses”: Pierre Audi mixes early music and minimalism in an imported production that yields “exceptional theater,” according to The Times. Music Center Opera adopts a new name, L.A. Opera. Three years later, it changes again: Los Angeles Opera.

1997-98

“Florencia en el Amazonas” gets points as a great idea--a libretto with ties to Gabriel Garcia Marquez and a score by hot Mexican composer Daniel Catan--but not as great opera.

1998-99

Another creative idea--turning Roald Dahl’s kids’ book “Fantastic Mr. Fox” into an opera by Tobias Picker with Scarfe providing costumes and sets--and another creative failure. Domingo is named artistic director-designate.

1999-2000

Britten’s “Billy Budd”: Hemmings co-commissioned this Zambello production in 1994. With home-grown star Rodney Gilfry, it gets an L.A. run as the founder’s valedictory.

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* It will take more than Placido Domingo’s mere star power for Los Angeles Opera to prosper. Page 77