<\/p>\n
James Conlon has begun his long goodbye as music director of Los Angeles Opera, and he does so by boasting big numbers. Twenty seasons with the company (half its history). More than 500 performances of 70 different operas at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and occasional neighboring venues, such as the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. But only 10 of the operas have been comedies. The life of a music director at a major opera company is inevitably one engaged in tragedy, and Conlon exhibits the dramatic flair to grip its emotional immensity.<\/p>\n
Yet he is exiting by showing that, when it all comes down to it, he prefers laughter to tears.<\/p>\n
The two main stage actual operas he leads in his final season (the other was \u201cWest Side Story\u201d<\/a>) happen to be the most sublime and insightful comic operas to have ever reached the lyric stage. They are works that don\u2019t just make you feel good but make the world feel good. One, Verdi\u2019s \u201cFalstaff,\u201d is currently at the Chandler, and that will be followed in May and June by Mozart\u2019s \u201cThe Magic Flute.\u201d<\/p>\n Friday night, Conlon further upped the comedic element in a gala farewell concert at the Pavilion that included extended excerpts from two more comic operas that most illumine the human condition: Wagner\u2019s \u201cDie Meistersinger\u201d and Mozart\u2019s \u201cThe Marriage of Figaro.\u201d<\/p>\n All four of these so-called comic operas go far beyond genre. Sunday\u2019s performance of \u201cFalstaff\u201d was followed by a talk between Conlon and British actor, writer and startling wit, Stephen Fry. In a rollicking monologue, Fry described all opera as comedy, tragedy merely being the result of idiotic egos incapable of levity. He gave the example of Iago in Verdi\u2019s \u201cOtello.\u201d Had Otello understood that all the world is a joke, as Falstaff startlingly reveals at the end of the opera, Iago would never have been able to poison Otello\u2019s susceptible frail ego with his ridiculous tales of handkerchiefs and what-not. Rulers are, of course, like that.<\/p>\n \u201cFalstaff\u201d is an obvious choice for one of Conlon\u2019s farewell operas \u2014 farewell but leaving with the title conductor laureate and the promise for regular returns. It was the opera that helped him at 14 fall in love with the art form and the first opera he conducted professionally a half-century ago. It has been with him all his life, and it is a conductor\u2019s opera \u2014 complex, fleeting, sylvan, changeable, tender and tough. Conlon has lived with it his whole operatic life and makes it live in performance. The production <\/a>is a revival of the disappointingly fussy, clumsy, old-fashioned one by Lee Blakeley the company unveiled in 2013 for Conlon and to celebrate the Verdi bicentennial. Falstaff is shown as a dissolute, deluded, drunken buffoon, the only advantage of that crudity is that it by a small miracle he turns lovable. <\/p>\n It looks no better now, but the cast is even finer, with Craig Colclough as an exceptionally characterful Falstaff, spritely stage play (Shawna Lucey directs the revival), a consistently winning cast, a glowing orchestra (which includes the first performances with its new concertmaster, Alyssa Park) and Conlon conducting not so much like his life depends on it (that was the old days) but as a wise embrace that all life is a joke.<\/p>\n \u201cFalstaff\u201d can be seen as a corrective in opera. Those merry scheming wives of Windsor further debasing the lecherous, if harmless, old \u201cFalstaff\u201d \u2014 they could just as easily ignore his ludicrous missives but instead use him to get back at the more troublesome scheming jealous men who attempt to control their lives.<\/p>\n But when not asked to clown too much, Nicole Heaston (Alice), Sarah Saturnino (Meg), Hyona Kim (Mistress Quickly) and Deanna Breiwick (Nannetta) reveal seductive powers and Breiwick brings Fairy Queen magical lyricism to the final scene. Anthony Le\u00f3n is her lyrical tenor fianc\u00e9, Ernesto Petti Meg\u2019s lordly loutish jealous husband and Nathan Bowles the loutish Dr. Caius. Hyungjin Son and Vinicius Costa filled out the cast as Falstaff\u2019s bumpkinly servants.<\/p>\n Deanna Breiwick as Nannetta in L.A. Opera\u2019s production of Verdi\u2019s \u201cFalstaff.\u201d<\/p>\n (Ariana Drehsler \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n Most of the cast took part in the gala along with the Los Angeles Opera Chorus, and the conductor used his lovefest to show what we missed in \u201cThe Conlon Era.\u201d He had advocated for Verdi\u2019s \u201cLa Forza del Destino,\u201d one of the two mature Verdi operas the company never staged (\u201cLe Vespri Siciliani\u201d is the lamented other) and Wagner\u2019s \u201cMeistersinger.\u201d<\/p>\n Though tragic \u201cForza,\u201d from which were excerpts from the third and fourth acts, constituted the first half of the program. After intermission came the Act 2 finale of Mozart\u2019s \u201cMarriage of Figaro\u201d (which Conlon has memorably conducted at L.A. Opera) and excerpts from the end of \u201cMeistersinger.\u201d The theme seemed be redemption, showing, just as Fry had suggested, that while it serves tragedy, it works especially well in comedy.<\/p>\n \u201cForza\u201d is not neglected, but it is often overlooked. The libretto is cumbersome although full of dramatic promise and surprise and with a comic episode that prefigures \u201cFalstaff.\u201d <\/p>\n Conlon here did the redeeming with special help from tenor Rodrick Dixon, who had served the conductor well in Wagner\u2019s \u201cTannh\u00e4user\u201d and Conlon\u2019s revival of Alexander Zemlinsky\u2019s powerful \u201cThe Dwarf,\u201d part of the conductor\u2019s Recovered Voices project to rediscover operas banned by Nazi Germany and then forgotten.<\/p>\n Mozart turns redemption into transcendence in \u201cFigaro,\u201d as a jealous yet philandering count finds his soul. That doesn\u2019t happen until Act 4, but at the earlier finale, full of tomfoolery, the stage is well set for depth in a way not dissimilar to \u201cFalstaff.\u201d Here Hyungjin Son, the bumpkin-ish Bardolph in \u201cFalstaff,\u201d portrayed the Count, while Colclough was the wily Figaro.<\/p>\n \u201cMeistersinger\u201d has been on L.A. Opera\u2019s wish list since practically the beginning. The young company had promised to mount it in the early 1990s, but it proved too expensive during an L.A. recession. With the help of baritone Martin Gantner as Hans Sachs \u2014 the cobbler and mastersinger who comes to grips with a changing world and art form \u2014 the magnificence of Wagner\u2019s only mature comedy may make it hard for the company to ignore it much longer, no matter how budget-busting.<\/p>\n Among video tributes to Conlon from singers, musicians, board members, politicians and administration officials, there was the surprise appearance of Placido Domingo. It was impossible to make out what the famed and once adored tenor said, so loud the applause at seeing him for the first time since he resigned<\/a> from the company because of allegations of sexual harassment.<\/p>\n He was crucial in the creation of the company. He sang in and conducted countless performances. He raised millions of dollars to keep the lights on. He ran the company for several years. He hired Conlon.<\/p>\n Whether the cheers for Domingo will translate into redemption remain to be seen. But one of Conlon\u2019s parting gifts to L.A. is an irrefutable argument that no art form does redemption quite like opera.<\/p>\n