MODUS OPERANDI; DAHL'S `FANTASTIC MR. FOX' INSPIRES SOUNDS OF PICKER, VISUALS OF SCARFE IN NEW PRODUCTION DEBUTING TONIGHT.

Byline: Reed Johnson Daily News Staff Writer

Growing up outside New York City in the late 1950s, Tobias Picker couldn't stomach most so-called ``children's literature.'' About the only authors of that ilk he could abide were A.A. Milne and ``a little bit of Dr. Seuss.''

But there was one children's author the precocious Picker rated highly: Roald Dahl, who gave the world ``James and the Giant Peach,'' ``Charlie and the Chocolate Factory'' and other prepubescent classics.

Only thing was, Picker didn't actually read those books until later in life. Instead he was drawn to Dahl's adult fiction, a taste he'd acquired from his parents.

``They were big readers, and they loved his writing,'' says the soft-spoken 45-year-old composer. ``They just loved his wicked, twisted, wonderful, wry (style) - they thought he was a genius. And Hitchhock discovered it also on his `Alfred Hitchcock Presents,' and dramatized, I believe, more than one Dahl story. I used to watch that show as a kid.''

From Hitchcock to Dahl to L.A. Opera might seem a surreal sequence. But it's one that will be completed tonight when Picker's operatic adaptation of Dahl's children's story, ``Fantastic Mr. Fox,'' premieres at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

With a libretto by Donald Sturrock and sets and costumes by British political cartoonist Gerald Scarfe, ``Fantastic Mr. Fox'' was conceived as a colorful musical morality tale that, like Dahl's book, could speak to adults without talking down to children.

Its story concerns a family of clever foxes who are being hounded by three grotesque English farmers, Boggis, Bunce and Bean, who are bent on exterminating them. Canadian baritone Gerald Finley stars as the wily vulpine patriarch. The cast also includes Los Angeles native mezzo-soprano Suzanna Guzman as Mrs. Fox.

A key to the project, according to its production team, was preserving Dahl's multiple layers of meaning and his subversive edge. ``Fantastic Mr. Fox'' can be read as a satire of human greed and brutality, with the animals in the story representing a kind of oppressed underclass. But the story also works on a simpler comic level.

``He (Dahl) had a delight in the naughty,'' says Sturrock, ``which most adults can share with children, and in saying things which shouldn't be said, and in seeing things as they are rather than how they seem, which I think a child can immediately understand.

``A lot of his adult stories are based on that `What if - what if things aren't what they appear to be?' or `What if somebody said this, but was actually doing something else?' ''

Picker said the project appealed to him in part because it was miles removed from his first opera, ``Emmeline,'' which premiered two years ago at Santa Fe Opera to considerable critical oohs and aahs.

Inspired by a novel by Judith Rossner (``Looking for Mr. Goodbar''), ``Emmeline'' was based on a true story about Emmeline Mosher, a textile worker in 19th-century rural Maine who was seduced by her boss and forced to give up her infant son. Twenty years later, she met and married a young drifter, only to discover that he was the very son she'd abandoned.

Invoking the Oedipus legend as seen through Jocasta's eyes, ``Emmeline,'' with a libretto by poet J.D. McClatchy, had the shape and structure of classical tragedy. Reviewing New York City Opera's production last April, the New York Times critic Bernard Holland wrote, ``The City Opera should put `Emmeline' in its permanent repertory. It is a model of its kind.''

But the opera's downbeat subject took a toll on Picker, who says that after ``Emmeline'' he was ready to work in a brighter musical palette.

``After `Emmeline,' I wanted the freedom that this (`Fantastic Mr. Fox') allowed me of all these different characters and possibilities and playfulness and fun and comedy - the challenge of doing something funny, which is very, very hard to do.''

The idea for an opera of ``Fantastic Mr. Fox'' came from a 1993 lunch chat between librettist Sturrock and Peter Hemmings, general director of L.A. Opera. Sturrock, who was in town shooting a BBC documentary on tenor Placido Domingo, mentioned that he'd been commissioning some orchestral works based on the writings of Dahl, whom Sturrock had befriended late in the author's life.

Hemmings told him: ``If ever you think of doing an opera, let me know.'' Two years later, Sturrock began writing the libretto.

Then, while trying to decide on a composer, Sturrock and Dahl's widow, Liccy (short for Felicity), attended ``Emmeline's'' world premiere in Santa Fe.

``When I heard `Emmeline' in Santa Fe, it made a very big impression on me,'' says Sturrock. ``He (Picker) is a composer that can craft an opera in a very impressive fashion and also write something that can very much move an audience.''

The final piece of the equation was hiring Scarfe, at Hemmings' suggestion. Known for his fanciful production designs for the feature films ``Pink Floyd: The Wall'' and Disney's animated ``Hercules,'' Scarfe previously had teamed with L.A. Opera for its 1993 production of ``The Magic Flute'' (restaged here last season).

While the plot of Dahl's original story has been condensed, Sturrock has compensated by fleshing out several secondary characters.

``The characters are strengthened, and each one has a personality of their own,'' Picker says. ``Hedgehog - actually there's a family of hedgehogs - and I think Donald created Miss Hedgehog, the spinster, the lonely spinstress, who at the end finally finds the animal of her dreams in Mr. Porcupine. And they sing a love duet. And there's a fox trot!''

Ba-DUM-bum!

``Fantastic Mr. Fox'' arrives at a moment when a handful of American composers, several of them just entering their peak years, have been writing operas. The past two seasons alone have seen the debuts of ``Emmeline,'' Tod Machover's ``Brain Opera'' and Michael Torke's ``King of Hearts,'' plus Andre Previn's adaptation of ``A Streetcar Named Desire,'' which premiered earlier this season in San Francisco.

Like many of his contemporaries, Picker spent much of his early composing career studying under an older generation of devout serialists. His teachers included such godfathers of atonality as Elliott Carter at the Juilliard School, Charles Wuorinen at the Manhattan School of Music and Milton Babbitt at Princeton University.

But Picker's subsequent work has embraced the more melodic vein of the American vernacular and the warmer sounds of neo-romanticism. In addition to song cycles, three symphonies and concertos for violin, viola, piano and oboe, he also composed ``The Encantadas,'' a ``concerto'' for actor and orchestra inspired by a text by Herman Melville.

``It was deliberate, and it was unconscious at the same time,'' Picker says of his gradual movement toward opera. ``I knew that eventually I was going to have to write opera. And theater and drama, that was just part of me and in my music. My father had a great interest in theater and was a drama critic early in his career and had wanted to write plays but never did.''

With the success of ``Emmeline,'' Picker already has received requests for three more operas. On tap for the year 2000 is a Metropolitan Opera commission based on a turn-of-the-century American novel that Picker declines to name.

His fourth opera, he says, will be a treatment of an Emile Zola text - though which one he's keeping a mystery.

Meanwhile, Picker recently wrote a Suite for Cello and Piano for Lynn Harrell that is being premiered in San Francisco in January, and he also found time to write another chamber piece, ``but I've forgotten what it was.''

What he does know is that he wants each new opera to ``solve different problems, dramatically and musically.''

``There's so much to learn,'' he says. ``It's another world.''

THE FACTS

What: ``Fantastic Mr. Fox.''

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

When: 7:30 p.m. tonight, Tuesday, Dec. 20 and 21; 1 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 19 and 22.

Tickets: $20 to $68. Call [phone].

CAPTION(S):

5 Photos

Photo: (1--Cover--Color) `Fox' tale

Colorful new opera adapted from classic children's story

(2--Color) Composer Tobias Picker says he was drawn to ``Fantastic Mr. Fox'' after tiring of the downbeat nature of his highly successful first opera, ``Emmeline.''

(3--4--Color) Porcupine, far left, Mavis the Tractor, Mr. Fox and Farmers Boggis, Bean and Bunce, as drawn by cartoonist-turned-opera designer Gerald Scarfe. The farmers, above as portrayed by Louis Lebherz, Jamie Offenbach and Doug Jones.

(5) Scarfe's multilevel set highlights the visual dimension of ``Fantastic Mr. Fox,'' which is based on a short story by Roald Dahl.

Evan Yee/Daily News