L.A. Opera Opens With New Deal in ‘Spades’

As he has been so often in the past, Placido Domingo was once more on stage Tuesday night at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion for the opening of the Los Angeles Opera season. And as is so often the case with leading tenor roles, his character was dead on that stage by the end.

But the new production of Tchaikovsky’s “The Queen of Spades” represented something altogether different for this famed tenor, who also became the artistic director of the company a year ago.

This season is the first under his planning, and his ambition is to turn the respected but not groundbreaking company into something of an international symbol for the cultural life of Los Angeles.

Domingo took over the company when Peter Hemmings, who started building L.A. Opera from scratch 17 years ago, retired as general director. The celebrated tenor previously held the title of artistic advisor and principal guest conductor of the company.

In addition to his role as artistic director, Domingo remains one of the busiest, most powerful figures in opera and is still in great demand as a singer. There has been concern that his busy conducting and singing schedules, as well as his duties as head of Washington Opera, would limit his effectiveness here.

So the manager of artistic operations, Edgar Baitzel, came on board in April 2000 to serve as Domingo’s partner. With “Queen of Spades,” representing the first time the company has attempted a Russian opera, Domingo has gone all out, importing a great Russian conductor, Valery Gergiev, head of the Kirov Opera in St. Petersburg, along with some of the most noted Russian singers of the day. That alone doesn’t remake L.A. Opera, but the results were strong enough to make a significant start.

Tchaikovsky’s opera, based on a Pushkin story, is a supernatural study of a gambler’s obsession with love and cards. As Herman, Domingo, ardent and sounding nothing like a singer who last year turned 60, brought an Italianate sheen to his character’s lust for gambling.

All he lacked, perhaps, was a true Russian sense of despair, but that was provided by the luminous soprano Galina Gorchakova (Lisa) and two superb Russian baritones, Vladimir Chernov (Yeletsky) and Sergei Leiferkus (Tomsky). The flamboyant Elena Obraztsova was the creepily exciting, flamboyant Countess with the secret of the three cards.

The production by German designer Gottfried Pilz places the entire opera in a large ballroom at a dangerous tilt, and updates the period from the 18th century to the late 19th. The set looks fine, even though the ballroom comes to seem like Grand Central Station by the evening’s end, the place of all comings and goings.

And maybe that too will become a symbol of the new opera for Los Angeles that Domingo intends, a company in constant flux, with something for everyone.

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See additional coverage in Thursday’s Weekend Calendar.