Just an L.A. Memory

It sometimes happens that a major artist, though confident in his own work and distinct in his style, finds it necessary or interesting to confront a historical artistic landmark and, in the process, makes another. Marcel Duchamp drew a mustache on the “Mona Lisa.� Kenneth Branagh made a contemporary cinematic epic of “Hamlet.� David Hockney designed the sets for Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde.�

The Hockney “Tristan,� which returned to L.A. Opera Wednesday night at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion after nearly 10 years, is a landmark production in more ways than one. When new, in December of 1987, L.A. Opera was also new, only in its second season. It wanted to prove itself capable of performing Wagner’s most famous opera, the one that causes its devotees to go weak in the knees at the force of its enormous waves of erotic music and its high romantic ideals about love transcending death.

But the company had even greater ambitions. It wanted to create something that never before had existed, a Los Angeles operatic style. And to the extent that this “Tristan� was a genuine local product, it succeeded.

Hockney, the British painter who has long been associated with Los Angeles, is justly famed for his ability to capture our special light and sensibility, and his “Tristan� sets and costumes proved startling in their bold colors and fanciful shapes. In the pit was the Los Angeles Philharmonic, under Zubin Mehta, playing as loud as Hockney’s colors. The luminous gung-ho Isolde, Jeannine Altmeyer, was a soprano from La Habra; the hard-working Tristan, William Johns, was local enough, from Tulsa. Only a grumpy, ultra-rational British director, Jonathan Miller, fought this wildly Westernized Wagnerian ecstasy. In all, it was a “Tristan� that, love it or hate it, was new and fresh and very L.A.

A decade later, the sets still look fabulous. The light still seems magical. But just about everything else, including Los Angeles, has changed. The city and its opera company both have lost some of their taste for adventure, for committing to untried ideas.

Gone is just about everyone involved in the earlier “Tristan.� Hockney has taken over all the directorial ideas, though with the practical staging credited to Stephen Pickover. L.A. Opera has relied on its own pit orchestra, necessarily beefed up. The conductor and cast are thoroughly international, with big names and small.

The result is a kind of ordinariness. Not bad, certainly, but the kind of thing one hears at decent second-tier houses all over Europe.

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“Tristan und Isolde� is an opera about Tristan, and much of it takes place in his mind, the integrating of his personality so that he can achieve purity in an illicit love. Siegfried Jerusalem’s Tristan was unsure, gloomy, dispirited--walking and standing as if made of wood. He sounded vocally in trouble from the start, his production unsteady and tone small, marshaling his strength for the important third act for which he found the requisite energy if not much more. Given his fine performance on a recent Teldec recording of the opera, his voice has either taken a precipitous decline of late or he had a bad night.

Renate Behle, a young German soprano attempting her first Isolde, had a very good night vocally. Significantly stronger of voice than Jerusalem, she came on gangbusters, tone steely and focused and sure--all the time. A young singer, neither sensuous nor subtle, she has yet to find her way into the character.

Worse there was little chemistry between the lovers. They held hands and swayed as if on cue. They swooned like zombies. They hardly seemed to notice each other. But they did look great when motionless. Hockney moves light far better than people. And in the great love duet, lying still on the stage, with light, music and song telling their passions, they were the most convincing.

The best singing and acting came from smaller parts. Jane Henschel, a mezzo-soprano from Los Angeles who is in the early stages of building an international career, poured out great quantities of genuine Wagnerian sound, as Isolde’s servant, Brangane. Jorma Hynninen, the agile Finnish baritone, proved a lively Kurwenal, Tristan’s groom. Donald McIntyre made King Marke’s long monologue as dramatically compelling as possible.

Little in “Tristan� happens on the stage, much of the drama being enacted through the orchestra, where the story is told in a complex development of themes. Conductor Richard Armstrong, however, seemed more drawn to the warm soup of Wagnerian sonorities than to the sorting out of musical detail. He was supportive of the singers to a fault, often speeding things along as if that could make up for the lack of dramatic impulse. But he did not have a strong band in the pit, and there was no hope for the usual Wagnerian blood sport between singers and orchestra, which everyone always complains about but usually misses when absent.

* L.A. Opera presents “Tristan und Isolde,� Saturday at 12:30 p.m. and Tuesday, Feb. 7, 12, 15, 18 at 6:30 p.m. at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave. $23-$130. (213) 365-3500.