MIKE SILVERMAN
Lotfi Mansouri is fond of saying that he saved countless lives
over the
years by making opera his profession.
''My father wanted me to become a doctor,'' he recalls.
''Unfortunately, I
had no interest in medicine, and would not have been a very good
one.''
Now, sadly, the world of opera is about to lose what the world
of medicine
was spared. At age 71, Mansouri is just one year away from
retiring as general
director of the San Francisco Opera.
In an interview in his modest fourth-floor office backstage at
the War
Memorial Opera House, Mansouri reflected recently on a career that
traces back
to his first appearance as an extra in Verdi's ''Otello'' half a
century ago.
Fittingly, that ''Otello'' was a production by the San Francisco
Opera, which
in 1951 was visiting Los Angeles, where the Iranian-born Mansouri
was studying
at the University of California at Los Angeles. He took singing
lessons (he's a
tenor), but soon gravitated toward the production end of the
business, becoming
a stage designer and eventually an administrator in Zurich and
Geneva,
Switzerland,Toronto, and, since 1988, in San Francisco.
For a time in the 1970s he was cultural adviser to the shah, who
built Iran's
first opera house as part of the celebrations marking the 2,500th
anniversary of
the Peacock Throne. Mansouri staged several productions there and
was reconciled
with his father, who finally forgave him for abandoning medicine.
''But, of course, it all came crashing down with the
revolution,'' says
Mansouri, who has not been back to Iran since and doesn't expect
ever to be able
to return.
And so, in permanent exile, he presides over an organization
whose annual
budget of more than $50 million makes it the second-largest opera
company in
North America after New York City's Metropolitan Opera. Its season
runs from
September into January, then, unlike most opera companies in the
United States,
it picks up again with a full schedule for June.
''We've proved that we can draw a subscription audience to fill
our 3,000
seats even in June,'' Mansouri says. ''The Bay Area has grown so
much that we
now have 6 million potential customers very affluent customers,
too.''
This June saw good, if not always sold-out, houses for three
operas, one from
each of the last three centuries: Mozart's ''Don Giovanni,''
directed by
Mansouri himself along with soprano-turned-director Graziella
Sciutti; Wagner's
''Parsifal'' in a striking, space-age setting by Nikolaus
Lehnhoff; and
Stravinsky's ''The Rake's Progress,'' produced by John Cox with
sets by painter
David Hockney.
The company has always played in the major leagues when it comes
to competing
for top singers. The Stravinsky, for example, starred Welsh
baritone Bryn Terfel
as Nick Shadow, the devil who leads poor Tom Rakewell to disaster.
The title
role of ''Don Giovanni'' was sung by Russian baritone Dmitri
Hvorostovsky, and
the crucial part of Gurnemanz, elder knight of the Holy Grail in
''Parsifal,''
was taken by the great German bass Kurt Moll, who first sang the
role here in
1974 and sounded amazingly sonorous despite the passage of time.
Artistically, the results were uneven. ''Parsifal'' was a
complete triumph,
the ''Rake's Progress'' dryly amusing, the ''Don Giovanni''
listless and, in
some key roles, weakly sung.
Mansouri seems to take the critical brickbats, as well as the
laurels, in
stride. ''One thing about a general director: Everybody knows how
to do my job
better,'' he says.
Undoubtedly Mansouri's greatest challenge during his tenure was
leading the
company through the renovations required by damage from the 1989
earthquake. The
repairs provided an opportunity to improve a house that hadn't
been modernized
since it opened in 1932 but it meant the auditorium would be
unavailable for 18
months.
''Of course, some of my more conservative board members wanted
to close us
down (as was done at London's Covent Garden during renovations),''
Mansouri
says. ''They think you save money doing that.
''But I was prepared for them,'' he says with an impish smile.
''I had a
study done that proved it would cost us $15 million just to do
nothing. And that
didn't even include the cost of losing our audience, some of whom
would never
come back.''
Instead, Mansouri used the opportunity to break down what he
calls opera's
''elitist image'' by taking it to the community. He staged
productions in two
different settings the mammoth Bill Graham Civic Auditorium for
amplified
spectacles like Borodin's ''Prince Igor,'' and the smallish
Orpheum Theater,
where he put on Puccini's ''La Boheme'' in an
eight-performances-a-week format
with a top price of $70, compared to the usual $120 for orchestra
seats.
Critical response to the 1996-97 season was mixed, but Mansouri
considers it
a huge success.
''We met our main goal, which was to attract the first-time
operagoer,'' he
says. For performances of ''La Boheme,'' the average age of the
audience was 31,
compared to an average age in the opera house of 54.
Admittedly, some of the newcomers weren't exactly musical
sophisticates, but
they were just the type of patron Mansouri was hoping to attract.
''I'd stand in the lobby during the 'Boheme' intermissions and
people would
come up to me and ask, 'Is this the original Broadway cast?''' he
recalls.
A lifelong advocate of the premise that ''opera is for
everyone,'' Mansouri
helped popularize the art form while in Toronto by introducing
supertitles, the
running English translations that appear above the proscenium.
Initially
assailed by purists as a distraction, these titles have become
ubiquitous.
''Now, Wagner doesn't seem so long,'' Mansouri says. ''My God,
people even
laugh at the jokes in the 'Ring' cycle!''
Mansouri thinks the next revolution in opera will be the visual
magic offered
by computer-generated graphics, used by the company in a 1998
production of
Berg's ''Lulu.''
''Look what it's already doing for the movies. Can you imagine
the
possibilities!'' he asks excitedly. ''George Lucas doing the
'Ring'? Or Pixar
doing 'The Magic Flute'?''
Mansouri has worked hard to continue the company's proud history
of
presenting soon-to-be-famous artists before they appear elsewhere
in this
country. Over the decades, such legendary sopranos as Leontyne
Price, Birgit
Nilsson and Renata Tebaldi all made their U.S. operatic debuts
here.
This past June included two promising U.S. debuts English tenor
Christopher
Ventris, who made a convincingly youthful and brightly sung
Parsifal, and Monica
Colonna, an Italian soprano who had the power and technique, if
not yet the
confidence, for the role of Donna Anna in ''Don Giovanni.''
One of Mansouri's proudest coups was engaging conductor Valery
Gergiev of the
Kirov Opera in 1991, before he was widely little known in the
West. Gergiev has
since become an international celebrity, and the Met recently
named him its
principal guest conductor.
''Mr. Joe Volpe (Met general manager) thinks he just discovered
Valery
Gergiev,'' Mansouri says with a laugh. ''I said, 'Excuse me, Joe,
he's been here
for eight years. You really need to come see what we can do in the
provinces.'''
One star he failed to entice was Italian mezzo Cecilia Bartoli.
''I was close,'' he sighs. ''I wanted her to do Offenbach's 'La
Perichole.'
She came out here to look at the house, but then she decided no. I
wish she had
trusted me.''
Future casting decisions will be up to Mansouri's successor,
Pamela
Rosenberg, a California native who now runs the Stuttgart Opera.
She'll arrive
at the end of the year and work together with Mansouri for six
months before
taking over for the 2001-02 season.
But given the need to book artists years in advance, all the
planning for the
2001-02 was already done before Rosenberg's appointment. She was
able to have
some input into 2002-03.
''I told her I'll take all the blame for that season, too,''
Mansouri says.
''After that, she's on her own.''
Mansouri, meanwhile, plans keep his hand in directing, in San
Francisco or
elsewhere, ''if it's a really lovely project.''
Given his evident vigor and enthusiasm, one is tempted to ask why
he is
retiring at all.
''It's a cliche, but in this business especially, you have to
know how to
make an exit,'' he says. ''Better to go when I still enjoy coming
to work every
day, before people start saying, 'Oh, is he still around?'''