SHOW BIZ, JEALOUSY AND MURDER : IN NEW `PAGLIACCI,' FRANCO ZEFFIRELLI PUTS A MODERN SPIN ON TALE OF PLAYACTING THAT TURNS ALL TOO REAL.

Byline: Fred Shuster Daily News Music Writer

The stage of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion holds a surreal sight. Beneath a backdrop of a red-brick modern tenement building, about 150 actors in street dress perch on benches watching a play within a play.

They murmur among themselves while others, standing on thin balconies overlooking the square, point and whisper at a small raised stage that is the center of attention.

A murder is about to take place on that stage.

But first, Franco Zeffirelli, director and designer of this updated version of Ruggero Leoncavallo's opera standard ``Pagliacci,'' stops the action to make sure his actors have the correct motivation for the death scene to come.

``Gradually, they realize this story of jealousy they are witnessing is coming true before their eyes,'' the director explained during rehearsal last week. ``In five minutes, the whole situation turns sour. The audience on stage is confronted with a terrible tragedy.''

Simply put, the Los Angeles Music Center Opera's ``Pagliacci'' - which opens tonight featuring the renowned tenor Placido Domingo - concerns the comic actor Canio, who is highly jealous of his young wife, Nedda, and kills her and her lover after a play within a play re-enacts the story of her infidelity.

Jealousy, adultery, show business and death. The tragic opera, which premiered in Milan in 1892 under the baton of Arturo Toscanini, seems like a drama that could have been ripped from the headlines.

In fact, it was. Leoncavallo was in the courtroom around 1870 when a comic actor named Alessandro was sentenced to prison for murdering his unfaithful wife in a jealous rage immediately following a performance by his troupe.

According to opera historian Milton Brener's ``Opera Offstage'' (Walker and Co., 1996), the judge asked the traveling clown if he felt repentant. ``I repent me of nothing,'' Alessandro supposedly replied. ``If I had to do it over again, I'd do it again!''

Domingo and Zeffirelli are also doing it again, having worked together on ``Pagliacci'' in 1983 for the Rome Opera, an event memorialized on videotape and CD.

The piece, however, is new to the L.A. Opera's repertoire. With it, Zeffirelli, updating the melodrama's design for the first time, also makes his Music Center bow.

``I'm usually not in favor of updating productions, but in this case it was necessary to realize the true drama of the piece,'' Zeffirelli said. ``The composer always intended to have it done in modern day. When it was first produced, it was done in the modern day of that time. People saw for the first time on an opera stage a story that truly reflected their lives and feelings.''

Zeffirelli's vision of modern Naples includes a teeming working-class apartment building pressed up against a highway overpass. Clothes hang out of windows to dry. Junked autos litter the stage. An ice-cream stand sells potato chips and soda. The town square is peopled with easily identifiable characters - a prostitute, street toughs, giddy children, elderly women, earnest young men.

At first, the director took his cast, crew and stage set to a warehouse in industrial Vernon for 10 days of rehearsals that frequently were interrupted by nearby trains.

Along with Domingo as the brokenhearted Canio, the cast includes Chilean-born lyric soprano Veronica Villarroel (Nedda), dramatic baritone Juan Pons (Tonio, a member of the troupe) and Manuel Lanza (Silvio, Nedda's lover). Los Angeles native Lawrence Foster conducts.

``The story is as relevant today as it was in 1892,'' said Peter Hemmings, general manager of the L.A. Opera. ``The costuming is modern, but one of the things about Italy is the country is fairly timeless. The look never changes.''

Domingo, for his part, knew just what Zeffirelli was aiming at.

``I love working with him because he's so open, flexible, creative and such a great artist,'' the tenor said.

While generally known as a filmmaker, Zeffirelli has staged numerous productions in all the major opera houses of the world. This time, he was dealing with a huge cast of more than 150 actors.

``That's a great many people,'' Hemmings said. ``It's as many as we've ever had on our stage.''

According to Hemmings, advance ticket sales for the 1996-97 schedule are encouraging. Along with ``Pagliacci,'' the L.A. Opera's 11th season features ``Norma,'' ``Tosca,'' ``Tristan und Isolde,'' ``The Barber of Seville,'' ``The Return of Ulysses'' and ``The Marriage of Figaro.''

``We've already sold 10,000 more seats for our new season than we had at the same point last year,'' he said. ``We also have 1,000 new subscribers.''

That makes a total of about 14,000 opera subscribers, of which more than half purchase tickets to every event, Hemmings said.

``We're growing at a nice rate,'' the general manager said. ``It's a developing audience.''

The audience itself may be expanding, but what of the L.A. Opera's repertoire? Are there new, experimental productions in the works for 1997-98?

Hemmings says finances dictate whether the company can stage the more difficult or arcane pieces. The controversial ``Death of Klinghoffer'' by Peter Sellars was scheduled to be produced five years ago, but was ultimately canceled due to a constricting budget. However, ``Nixon in China,'' a collaboration between the L.A. Opera and the 1990 Los Angeles Festival, was produced at the Music Center.

``There's more to a big-league company than just producing well-known operas in familiar ways,'' Hemmings said. ``A company has to take chances, but you can't get so weird that you leave the audience behind.''

THE FACTS

What: Ruggero Leoncavallo's ``Pagliacci.''

Starring: Placido Domingo (through Sept. 20), Veronica Villarroel, Juan Pons.

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

When: 7:30 p.m. tonight; 2 p.m. Saturday; 7:30 p.m. Sept. 11, 14, 17 and 20; and 2 p.m. Sept. 22.

Tickets: $23 to $130, available at the Music Center box office, Ticketmaster outlets or by calling [phone].

CAPTION(S):

6 Photos

Photo: (1--Cover--Color) Placido Domingo, looking dapper in a pin-stripe suit, headlines in ``Pagliacci'' at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

(2--Color) The jealous actor Canio (Placido Domingo) stabs his wife, Nedda (Veronica Villarroel), as a horrified on-stage audience watches in ``Pagliacci,'' directed and designed by Franco Zeffirelli at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

John McCoy/Daily News

(3--Color) More than 150 actors are involved in the elaborate production of ``Pagliacci,'' set in the shadow of a present-day tenement apartment building, junked autos and hanging laundry.

(4--Color) Greg Fedderly (center, with mandolin) portrays Beppe in the Zeffirelli production.

(5--Color) ``I'm usually not in favor of updating productions, but in this case it was necessary to realize the true drama of the piece,'' says Franco Zeffirelli, who previously directed ``Pagliacci'' in 1983 for the Rome Opera.

Michael Owen Baker/Daily News

(6) Zeffirelli attends to the enormous Dorothy Chandler Pavilion set by adding a little paint.

Phil McCarten/Daily News