CONTEMPORARY OPERA TO BE PERFORMED AT CLUB

When the Who performed its rock opera “Tommy” at New York’s Metropolitan Opera House in 1970, it was the first rock musical ever presented in the hallowed halls of the Met.

Composer William Houston, however, wants to take his contemporary operas the opposite direction. That’s one reason he’s staging excerpts from his new work “Tarotterror” on Saturday in the unlikely confines of Safari Sam’s nightclub in Huntington Beach.

“The idea of street theater is one of the things that appeals to me most,” said Houston, 32, while sipping coffee during an interview on Wednesday. “It’s really offensive to me to spend $2 million to put on an opera like (‘CIVIL warS’ composer) Robert Wilson did. You don’t have to be extravagant to create good art.”

A 1981 graduate of Cal State Fullerton’s music department, Houston was born, raised and schooled in Orange County but currently lives in Riverside.

Last year, the Newport Harbor Art Museum was the site for a staging of another Houston opera, “The XTC of St. Teresa,” which Times critic Daniel Cariaga enthusiastically reviewed as “a multifaceted, philosophically provocative operatic fantasy that . . . is not only accessible but also tuneful, entertaining and upbeat.”

Following that production, Houston formed the theatrical-musical company Domes, comprising seven rock, jazz and classical instrumentalists and a revolving core of singers, including classically trained vocalists, to perform his works in local rock clubs. Domes, which will perform the opera excerpts at Safari Sam’s, includes former Western Skies drummer Jeff Fairbanks, and Chuck Estes, who was with Houston in the Cartesian Reunion Orchestra, a group that essentially evolved into Domes.

The chamber-sized ensemble uses French horn and trombone as well as two electric pianos, amplified viola, amplified acoustic guitar, accordion, electric guitar, electric bass and percussion. The result, as Houston describes it, is somewhere between the jazz-inflected pop music of Sting and the amplified electric guitar rock orchestras of Glenn Branca.

“Tarotterror,” which has never been performed in its entirety, tells the story of four characters from a deck of Tarot cards--the Fool, the Emperor, the Empress and the Magician. Scenes from the work have been previously performed in Los Angeles at the Anticlub and the Eilat Gordin Gallery, although, Houston said, “We have redesigned it to fit this space.”

“It has four characters and a series of tableaux. . . . The magician seduces the empress and the emperor doesn’t like it. So the themes are very big in that sense. I don’t go for the psychological angles--not in the sense of a Sam Shepard. But the characters are bigger than life, and I try to get the audience members to recognize that they are bigger than life, too.”

In “The XTC of St. Teresa,” Houston also explored some weighty religious issues in his reconsideration of the texts of St. Teresa of Avila.

Yet Houston is reticent to discuss in depth the meanings behind his work, saying: “Music is the most difficult thing to talk about there is because it is fundamentally abstract. Musical theater attempts to take out some of the abstractions, but the element that describes it best is the music itself.”

He will, however, go as far as describing Saturday’s performance as an evening of “theater of the contrary. We reserve the right to disagree with anyone. That’s what that is all about.”

After traveling the route of the aspiring folk singer and songwriter in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, Houston enrolled at Cal State Fullerton to broaden his musical knowledge.

With a bachelor’s degree in music in hand, he said: “I worked a little on my master’s but decided it was pointless unless I wanted to teach. The further you go on, the more stultifying it is. It’s designed to make you conform to be a nice little academic. But I learned that if you can deal with the politics of academics, you can deal with politics anywhere.”

Such politics are sometimes painfully apparent to Houston and other modern composers when they go in search of financial support for new works.

“Backing, especially in the art world, is mired in politics,” Houston said. “There are a lot of games you have to play to get people to pay attention. I’m not sure I can do that. And I can’t feel good about myself unless I’m free to do what’s on my mind. One of the reasons the production is at Safari Sam’s is so that I’m not dependent upon Mobil Oil to send checks.

“It would be nice to think we’re such great humanitarians that we’re just interested in promoting art for art’s sake and the sake of the audience,” he said. “But that’s not the case. Anything that’s controversial, people tend to shy away from.”

That “play-it-safe” approach to the arts is an attitude that particularly angers Houston.

Perhaps, he said, “that’s the way people will always be. They are comfortable with what they are familiar with. But that seems to be changing in younger people these days. Growing up today you are automatically exposed to a wide variety of ideas, if you’ll only open your eyes and ears to them.

“The disadvantage is that it can be hard to get focused when you are bombarded with so much information,” he said. “But I think when the dust clears, things will be a little bit better, hopefully.”

Even with the eclectic bookings at Safari Sam’s, club owner Sam Lanni said: “This is the most exciting thing we’ve done here.”

Houston was similarly effusive about working with the club, commenting: “Sam has been very supportive of this whole project. It takes a lot of guts. If more people had that kind of adventurous attitude, it would be better for everyone.”

LIVE ACTION: 10,000 Maniacs will play Safari Sam’s on Thursday. . . . The Beat Farmers return to the Golden Bear in Huntington Beach on Dec. 6. . . . Rosanne Cash’s Dec. 16 show at the Crazy Horse Steak House has been postponed. No new date has been announced.