HAMPSON’S STAR RISING

Meeting operatic singers coming to Los Angeles from other parts of the world, one often wants to ask, “Do you mind our smog?” And many do, of course. Baritone Thomas Hampson, hearing a similar question--”Are there cities you avoid because of the bad air?”--answers immediately, “Not as long as they pay my fee.”

The young American baritone can afford to be relaxed. His career, marked by a successful Metropolitan Opera debut last fall, is going in the directions he expected, and with the swiftness some had predicted. Washington State and USC-trained, Hampson went to Europe in 1981 and has quickly moved from small to leading roles, from medium-size opera companies to major ones.

This month he sings Marcello in the Music Center Opera production of Puccini’s “La Boheme,” opening in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion Tuesday night. Shortly after the closing performance, Sept. 23, Hampson returns to Europe.

“The next three seasons will be very, very busy for me,” Hampson said last week, relaxing by the pool at his local stopping-place. “But not hectic. In Europe, I may move around a lot--I’ve been a free-lancer for the past two years--but I don’t jet back and forth between continents. I try to be sensible and to do everything in moderation.”

In the past season, the 32-year-old baritone said, he performed Marcello “more than 30 times, in three different productions.” All three productions were traditional, though the details “varied quite a lot.” The Music Center Opera staging, reproduced by Christopher Alden after the model of Jean-Pierre Ponnelle’s Houston Grand Opera production, is, according to Hampson, “very entertaining, but not bizarre. There are some things in it, however, that can be argued about.”

The expected high points of Hampson’s upcoming season are his first Don Giovanni’s, in Zurich, his home theater--”although I only sing there 15 evenings a year now”--and Vienna. The baritone’s libertine will be seen in subsequent seasons in Hamburg and at the Met. Also, a midwinter recital tour--interrupted by five weeks at the Met, again as Marcello--to touch down in Vienna, Tully Hall in New York, London, Geneva and Trieste, among other places.

And he will be here briefly in February for an American Youth Symphony benefit.

“La Boheme,” first of the seven productions to be mounted by Music Center Opera this season, opens Tuesday night at 7. The cast includes Miriam Gauci, Karen Huffstodt, Placido Domingo and Hampson. Lawrence Foster will conduct. Subsequent performances are scheduled Friday at 8 p.m., next Sunday at 2 p.m. and Sept. 23 at 8 p.m. At the final performance, Angelique Burzynski will sing the role of Mimi.

FINAL WEEK AT HOLLYWOOD BOWL: The 10th and final week of the Hollywood Bowl season begins Tuesday, when the young American conductor Hugh Wolff, music director of the New Jersey Symphony, and Finnish pianist Olli Mustonen make their Bowl debuts. The program: Beethoven’s “Leonore” Overture No. 3, the Piano Concerto by Grieg and Stravinsky’s “Sacre du Printemps.” Wolff returns to lead the Los Angeles Philharmonic again Thursday, when the agenda is Sir Arthur Benjamin’s Harmonica concerto (with Larry Adler as soloist), shorter works for harmonica and orchestra by Vaughan Williams and Bartok, and Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition.”

Wolff also conducts the closing program, to be performed twice, Friday and Saturday nights. That is the now-traditional Fireworks Finale, this year to include music by Rossini, Faure, Dvorak, Copland and Handel. Philharmonic principal cellist Ronald Leonard will be soloist in Tchaikovsky’s “Rococo” Variations.