Labor of love

Alex Coolman

After three million people saw him do it, John Mauceri started to get a

reputation.

That’s the reason so many music lovers think of Mauceri as a figure from

the classical “pop” scene: he’s been the principal conductor of the

Hollywood Bowl Orchestra since 1991, and has waved his baton at some

fairly commercial work in front of some fairly big audiences during that

time.

But Mauceri’s true passion as a musician lies in a somewhat more

challenging vein, one that will be evident starting Tuesday night when he

conducts Opera Pacific in a performance of Verdi’s “La Traviata.”

Mauceri, 54, is a conductor for four American opera companies and is a

Verdi scholar -- a member of the advisory board of the Verdi Institute at

New York University.

“I spend most of my life conducting opera,” he said.

The appeal of such work, for the conductor, lies in the combination of

emotional power and intellectual complexity that opera -- more so than

pop classical material -- can offer.

“There’s something in the nature of opera that touches on a very basic

human tradition,” Mauceri said. “The need of the human species to tell

stories using music and drama.”Works like “La Traviata” or “La Boheme”

tell stories, as Mauceri puts it, that are “basic, or mythic.” They use

archetypal characters to deliver an emotional punch that translates

across barriers of language and culture.

Wrapped around the emotive core of these tales, however, are countless

layers of musical and cultural traditions -- layers that, for Mauceri,

make opera a source of endless scholarly fascination.

“Every opera encapsulates so much history and culture that learning any

one of them means learning many different things,” he said.

This is particularly true in the case of “La Traviata,” a work whose

19th-century source material is fertile ground for literary theorizing

and whose modern-day performance is a subject of some controversy.

The core story of the opera -- a romance between a young gentleman and a

courtesan is tragically disrupted by the man’s father -- is drawn from a

play by Alexander Dumas, a fact which, in itself, makes Mauceri light up

with speculation.

In his view, the strong presence of the father in the tale reflects the

overshadowing force that Dumas the elder represented in the young

writer’s life.

“He was a much lesser writer,” Mauceri explained of the son. The father’s

dramatic presence in some ways echoes the role Dumas’ father played in

his life.

And this is just one of the angles on “La Traviata” the conductor enjoys

exploring.

“You can study it from the point of view of the literary source, from the

point of view of the composer ... and you can study it from the point of

view of the people in Italy at the time. And there’s also a political

dimension to consider,” he said.

Underlying all these issues, of course, is the music itself. There, too,

Mauceri finds the opera engaging. He’s made several adjustments to the

performance of the piece based on his examination of Verdi’s original

manuscript of the score, changes that he says make the work both more

true to its composer’s intentions and more rewarding for the audience.

In one telling scene, the heroine Violetta, alone on the stage, reads a

letter. Opera companies typically accompany the stage action with a

melody played on a single, tremulous violin.

“That isn’t the way Verdi wrote it,” Mauceri said. “It’s for two violins

playing together.”

The restoration of the second violin, he says, renders the music

“slightly detached and ethereal, whereas a solo violin is very

sentimental.”

This sort of correction -- seemingly minor, but producing a significant

alteration in the emotional tone of the work -- is something Mauceri has

performed throughout “La Traviata.”

The result, he says, is a work that allows the audience to respond more

authentically to Verdi’s work. It’s not a “pop” approach to music, and

that’s just fine with Mauceri.

‘La Traviata’

WHERE: The Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive,

Costa Mesa

WHEN: Tuesday and Nov. 11 through 14. All performances begin at 7:30 p.m.

except the Nov. 14 show, which starts at 2 p.m.

HOW MUCH: $32 to $107

PHONE: (800) 34-OPERA