LET'S TAKE A 'RIGOLETTO' MEETING OPERA MEETS NOIR IN MODERN TINSELTOWN.

Byline: Reed Johnson Staff Writer

The alcohol is flowing freely, and the beautiful people are striking seductive, impersonal poses when a gust of rain blows Bruce Beresford in off Rodeo Drive.

Looking slightly dazed, the Australian film director quickly scans the crowd milling about Giorgio Armani's swanky Beverly Hills boutique, which is hosting this invitation-only reception for Los Angeles Opera's new production of Giuseppe Verdi's ``Rigoletto.''

The mirrored room is packed wall-to-wall with opera singers, designers, art patrons, models, journalists and Hollywood celebrities of varying luminescence, all sizing each other up over cocktails. Beresford is one of the few people not wearing black.

It's a Raymond Chandler moment, familiar to most Angelenos: Life imitates film noir. It's also a scene that might feel right at home in Beresford's forthcoming, pointedly updated take on Verdi's 1851 musical melodrama about egotistical power brokers and their back-stabbing cronies and resentful minions.

If that scenario sounds, well, vaguely L.A., you're beginning to catch Beresford's drift. By transporting Verdi's high-voltage tragedy from 19th- century northern Italy to 21st-century Southern California, the Oscar-nominated director of ``Driving Miss Daisy'' and ``Tender Mercies'' is attempting to give ``Rigoletto's'' treacherous courtiers a modern-day Hollywood twist.

In Beresford's new co-production with San Diego Opera, which opens Wednesday at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the lascivious Duke of Mantua becomes a scheming studio mogul. Rigoletto, the hunchbacked court jester whose thirst to avenge the Duke's deflowering of Rigoletto's daughter, Gilda, ends tragically, has morphed into a fawning talent agent.

The assassin Sparafucile is a stuntman, Count Monterone is a disgraced industry executive, and various other characters have been recast as Armani-suited hangers-on and party-hearty glitterati.

The production will mark the Los Angeles Opera debut of baritone Haijing Fu, a native of the People's Republic of China, in the title role. Tenors Frank Lopardo and Roberto Aronica will alternate the role of the Duke, while soprano Inva Mula sings Gilda. Richard Hickox will conduct the eight-performance run.

Though it sounds high-concept, Beresford says he got the idea for giving ``Rigoletto'' this hip makeover almost by coincidence a few months ago, while shooting ``Double Jeopardy,'' a psychological thriller starring Ashley Judd and Tommy Lee Jones.

``I was saying to someone at one point, not about the opera, (that) it's amazing how there's a sort of hierarchy in Hollywood, it's sort of medieval,'' Beresford says. ``You have a kind of baron figure, a big star or a studio head, and they're surrounded by acolytes, people kowtowing. They make fantastic amounts of money and they live like kings.''

That idea began to germinate when Los Angeles Opera general director Peter Hemmings asked Beresford if he would consider crafting an all-new ``Rigoletto'' this season.

The two men had known each other from the days when Hemmings ran the Australian Opera in Sydney, so Hemmings was well aware that Beresford had directed four other operas, most recently a 1999 Washington Opera production of Robert Ward's ``The Crucible'' (based on Arthur Miller's play) at the Kennedy Center. Washington Post music critic Tim Page described that staging as ``far and away the smartest and most valuable production the company has given us this season.''

Knowing from first-hand experience that Hollywood loves to contemplate itself, even when through a glass, darkly, Beresford began conceiving a modern-dress ``Rigoletto'' treatment. While his version will have some sharp edges, he maintains that it's not intended as any kind of deep commentary on the show-biz world. Think of it more as an acid-tipped mash note from down under.

``I'm not really being critical of it (Hollywood), I just think the opera's fun,'' says the 59-year-old director, whose keen eye for social behavior has been noted in movies like ``Breaker Morant,'' ``Driving Miss Daisy'' and ``Black Robe.''

``It's quite amusing to update it to Hollywood,'' Beresford continues. ``I don't see the production as a vicious satire on Hollywood mores. I mean, I've got nothing against them. I've had a good time. I've made a lot of films and made a lot of friends. I don't hate them. But it's fun to update it to Hollywood. I think it's actually rather nice that a story like this can actually work in Hollywood.''

With this vision in mind, Beresford spent a couple of days scouting Los Angeles with a camera, just as he would for a movie shoot.

``It was kind of funny, going into the courtyards of people's houses and taking pictures,'' he recalls with a chuckle. ``A few times, they came out and said, 'Well, what are you doing, what's going on here?' Very hard to explain! I didn't have time to go rushing around getting permission and all that. I mean, most of it was perfectly harmless. And there was nothing I photographed that's actually reproduced in the set. I used them as references - they're not copied.''

Beresford then presented his photos to set designer John Stoddart, a fellow Aussie and past collaborator who lives not far from Beresford's permanent home in Sydney.

Stoddart began crafting models of such essential Tinseltown locales as a producer's mansion and a seedy Venice Beach hotel. For the opening scene, set at the producer's party for his new movie, Beresford even shot a 2 1/2-minute film that will be projected on an overhead screen.

``It's a kind of film noir. Quite fun to do. We had very little money. I was pulling favors in from all over Australia, getting people to do it. I got a top cameraman to do it for nothing.''

And since no self-respecting Hollywood player would be caught dead in anything but the latest high-priced casual chic, Stoddart suggested that costume designer Johann Stegmeir outfit the cast in sleek adaptations of Gucci, Prada and Armani.

``This is an opera about rich, powerful people,'' Stegmeir says, ``and so starting with that, we were going to need clothing of a certain quality, a certain theatricality, which instantly means you're not going to be at Marshall's buying this stuff.''

The costuming particularly takes its cues from Armani, whose famous namesake collaborated directly with Stegmeir and whose Beverly Hills salon hosted the aforementioned kickoff cocktail party.

``He is so tied to the Hollywood community,'' Stegmeir says. ``When Armani hit Los Angeles for the first time, he actually changed the way we look at fashion in the United States. With 'American Gigolo,' he did those suits, and it set a tremendous precedent. He had an instant star following.''

That left one last item crucial to any ladder-climbing Hollywood clothes horse: sunglasses.

Trend-setting LA Eyeworks, which has furnished distinctive lenses for movies like ``Blade Runner,'' ``Rain Man'' and ``Thelma & Louise,'' as well as for the Robert Wilson-Philip Glass 3-D opera, ``Monsters of Grace,'' was recruited to create and supply some 50 pairs of glasses for ``Rigoletto.'' Several characters change eyewear several times during the three-act opera, an apt motif for a city built around its own self-perceptions.

``Los Angeles is the quintessential sunglasses town,'' says LA Eyeworks co-owner and designer Gai Gherardi. ``Something about a movie star, something about sunglasses makes them available and not available at the same time. It's not only about deception. It could also be about an excruciating vulnerability.''

Even in its own relatively sedate time, ``Rigoletto'' aroused strong, even violent feelings. It was briefly banned by Venice's Department of Public Order due to what a censor described as ``the disgusting immorality and obscene triviality of the plot,'' which Verdi derived from a Victor Hugo story.

Apart from its passionate score, which the director says contains more great tunes than any opera besides ``Carmen,'' Beresford also was attracted to ``Rigoletto's'' stormy emotional conflicts. He says he generally gravitates toward operas with well-crafted narrative lines that can be sung and acted naturalistically, mentioning Benjamin Britten (whose ``Billy Budd'' will be seen here in June) and American composer Carlisle Floyd (``Susannah'') as two favorites.

``I'd never do Wagner,'' he confesses, sotto voce. ``Hate Wagner. Bores me silly. They go on and on and on, one tune endlessly repeated, static action, amazingly silly stories, I can't believe how goofy they are.''

Backstage, Beresford gets high marks from his singers, who appreciate his sensitivity to the differences between acting off a movie screenplay, which leaves room to improvise, vs. following a libretto and a score with fixed time signatures.

``He's very accommodating,'' says mezzo-soprano Megan Dey-Toth, who performs the role of Giovanna.

As a filmmaker who moonlights in opera houses, Beresford belongs to a select company that includes John Schlesinger, William Friedkin, Franco Zeffirelli and the young Canadian director Atom Egoyan.

Like many people, he's at a loss to explain why more brand-name auteurs aren't interested in opera.

``Most directors that I know don't know anything about it,'' he says. ``In fact, most have never even seen one.''

But if Hollywood poses little threat to Milan as the world opera capital, Beresford doubts it ever will lose its primacy as a place where great stories can be told. Fixated on movies since childhood, he still longs to someday shoot a classic western like those Randolph Scott pictures he watched as a boy.

``I think (Hollywood) will always be the center of film production,'' he says. ``It's still the big place.''

The facts

--What: ``Rigoletto.''

--Where: Los Angeles Opera at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Performing Arts Center of Los Angeles County, 135 N. Grand Ave., downtown Los Angeles.

--When: Performances at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday and March 7, 9, 12, 15 and 21; and 1 p.m. Saturday and March 18.

--Tickets: $27, $52, $82, $115, $128 and $146. Call [phone].

CAPTION(S):

10 photos

Photo:

(1 -- 3 -- cover -- color) OPERA NOIR

Director Bruce Beresford gives 'Rigoletto' the Tinseltown treatment

(4 -- color) Australian movie director Bruce Beresford, who is heading L.A. Opera's upcoming production of Verdi's ``Rigoletto,'' says, ``It's quite amusing to update it to Hollywood. I don't see the production as a vicious satire on Hollywood mores ... I don't hate them.''

John Lazar/Staff Photographer

(5 -- color) Models strut their stuff on the catwalk during the invitation-only reception for the L.A. remake of Giuseppe Verdi's opera.

(6 -- color) Guests enjoy cocktails and conversation while models showcase the Gucci, Prada and Armani-designed cast costumes.

(7 -- color) Members of the production look at costumes from ``Rigoletto'' during a store fashion show at Giorgio Armani in Beverly Hills.

(8) Conductor Richard Hickox, left, director Bruce Beresford, set designer John Stoddart, costume designer Johann Stegmeir and L.A. Opera general director Peter Hemmings gather for a talk.

Tom Mendoza/Staff Photographer

(9 -- 10 -- color) Designer Johann Stegmeir's costume sketches.