`LA TRAVIATA' VIA MARTA DOMINGO.

Byline: Reed Johnson Daily News Staff Writer

Windblown but perfectly put together, Marta Domingo has just whirled into the offices of Los Angeles Opera looking every inch the cultivated, well-heeled woman of the world that she is.

Trailed by a personal assistant, she seems thoroughly at home amid the gusty crosscurrents of international opera as she jets to and fro between Europe and both U.S. coasts.

The downside is that it's been 20 days since she last saw her equally peripatetic husband, tenor-conductor Placido Domingo, who was named last fall to succeed Peter Hemmings as L.A. Opera's new artistic director.

But the maestro will be joining his wife in Los Angeles tonight for the opening of ``La Traviata,'' which Marta Domingo will direct. Soprano Carol Vaness stars as Violetta, Verdi's tragic courtesan led astray, with tenor Greg Fedderly as Alfredo and Finnish baritone Jorma Hynninen as the patriarchal Germont.

Then, Marta Domingo will race back to Washington, D.C., to helm a rare revival of Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari's ``Sly,'' starring Placido's Three Tenors cohort, Jose Carreras.

It's all in a day's work for one-half of the opera world's most prominent power couple.

``You won't believe our phone bills,'' Domingo says in her fluid, accented English. ``There are people who might've been together a whole life and don't squeeze in the time that we do. And we are not apart all that much, now, with planes - no, no, no.''

Seated in a drafty rehearsal room at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Domingo wastes no time in warming up to a favorite subject: Verdi's sympathetic depiction of a bourgeois woman scorned and punished for her sexual transgressions.

Based on the play ``The Lady of the Camellias'' by Alexandre Dumas the Younger (a book Domingo says she continues to read and re-read), ``La Traviata'' originally was considered too racy to be performed in modern dress. The Venetian censors insisted the premiere be staged in Louis XIV period costumes so as to distance the subject matter.

Inevitably, time has worn down ``La Traviata's'' erotic sheen. But while most opera companies routinely try to stress opera's ``relevance'' to our own sensationalistic times, Domingo wants this production to make clear that Violetta's plight is linked specifically to the socio-sexual constraints of mid-19th-century Paris.

``Don't you think that life has definitely changed 90 degrees?'' she asks rhetorically. ``Let's start with this problem with virginity in women! I mean, c'mon!''

Still, if sensual carelessness spelled the doom of many a Victorian heroine, from Violetta to Anna Karenina to Madame Bovary, Domingo seems to find modern, permissive society a bit too lacking in discretion.

``Now it seems, in our life, women are proud to have affairs,'' she observes. ``I don't think the tabloids would even bother to put it on the front page. It would be passe.''

It's been seven years since Domingo made her operatic directing debut with ``Samson et Dalila'' at Puerto Rico's Teatro de la Opera, launching what effectively has become a second career.

At the time, she simply was doing a favor for a friend, Guillermo Martinez, Teatro de la Opera's then-overextended director. Placido urged his wife to try her hand at directing the production, which she already had seen in Houston.

``Through 30 years of life, I was really prepared (to become a director), because I have seen all - all!'' And, she adds, ``I was privileged to be in rehearsals with the greatest stage directors. I was learning without even realizing I was learning.''

Raised by avant-garde, intellectual parents in a bohemian district of Mexico City, the former Marta Ornelas grew up surrounded by books and sheet music. Her mother would take her to the opera and theater, and before long she was studying voice at the Conservatory of Mexico, with an emphasis on Mozart and German lieder. Her training was augmented by finishing school, where she learned to ``walk like a model,'' arrange flowers, and other feminine arts.

``But for me, no cooking,'' she says. ``I didn't like it.''

Her career took her to Opera Belles Artes in Mexico City, where she and Placido met, followed by three years with the Opera Company in Israel, where the couple sometimes sang side by side. She has tackled most of the great female repertoire - Marguerita, Mimi, Rosina, Donna Elvira and Susanna, among others.

But when the chance to direct came along, Domingo willingly put her singing career on hold. The timing was right, she says, because of the increasing demands on her husband as a singer, conductor and opera administrator (he was appointed artistic director of the Washington Opera in 1996). The change to directing, Domingo says, also gave her more time to devote to the couple's children.

``When I stopped singing, I'd say my values (were) very clear. What am I going to do: Be a good wife, a good singer or a bad mother?'' she explains.

``And then they say, `Oh, oh, you've sacrificed, but then you have to live in Placido's shadow!' Do I seem like I am in the shadow?! Please, no `sacrifices' at all; I don't like that word.''

Having previously directed L.A. Opera's production of ``Rigoletto'' in 1993, and now ``La Traviata,'' a co-production with the Washington Opera, Domingo figures to be spending a lot more time in L.A. in the years ahead.

Though one of the couple's sons recently moved from Southern California to New York, it's likely Los Angeles still will serve as a spot for family reunions once Placido Domingo takes over at L.A. Opera next summer.

Is Domingo concerned that her husband, already the world's busiest opera star, is taking on yet another assignment?

``I always worry, yes, but not as much as I used to. Because he will keep doing it until God says, `Enough!' ''

THE FACTS

What: ``La Traviata.''

Where: Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Music Center of Los Angeles County, 135 N. Grand Ave., downtown.

When: Performances at 7:30 tonight, Thursday, Feb. 21 and 24 and March 3; 1 p.m. Feb. 27 and March 6.

Tickets: $25 to $137. Call [phone].

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos

Photo: (1) When the chance to direct came along, Marta Domingo willingly put her singing career on hold. ``I'd say my values (were) very clear,'' says the director of ``La Traviata,'' opening tonight at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

(2) Tenor Gregg Fedderly stars as Alfredo in Verdi's ``La Traviata,'' a co-production of the L.A. and Washington operas.