THE ROAD TO `MAHAGONNY' BRENCHT/WEILL OPERA TRAVELS UNUSUAL PATH.

Byline: Evan Henerson Staff Writer

The director has developed a reputation -- at least in this country -- for crafting art from practically a bare stage, and for making his musicians as well.

The two headlining stars are renowned vocal powerhouses, certainly, but from the world of musical theater, not opera.

Their point of intersection? A rarely staged work by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht that is part song cycle, part jazz, part cabaret and part critique of the Weimar Republic -- updated, in certain instances, to reflect the present day.

Unconventional programming calls for unconventional partnerships, and the Los Angeles Opera's production of Brecht and Weill's ``Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny'' -- opening Saturday -- should prove intriguing for precisely this reason.

That musical theater leading ladies Patti LuPone and Audra McDonald should work together -- or with hot director John Doyle -- is hardly surprising. That all three should find themselves on the same road to ``Mahagonny'' is a bit different.

``I would not call myself an opera singer,'' says Patti LuPone, making her company debut as ``Mahagonny's'' tough madam, Leocadia Begbick. ``I'm a hybrid. She's the soprano.''

Hybrid vehicles 

``We're both hybrids,'' corrects Audra McDonald, LuPone's co-star and the ``she'' being referenced. ``Anytime you learn a new role, whether it's musical theater or opera, it's training your muscles to the way that piece of music requires you to work. It's like learning a new dance.''

``We're lucky,'' returns LuPone. ``The director we have is releasing us from all the confines of what is `opera,' what they call `park and bark' (where) you stand there and you sing.''

Doyle, the soft-spoken director from Scotland, won the 2006 Tony award for best direction of his production of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler's ``Sweeney Todd.'' His Broadway follow-up, Sondheim's ``Company,'' also uses actors as musicians.

L.A. Opera's ``Mahagonny'' will make use of no such economy. Set designer Mark Bailey and costumer Ann Hould-Ward will have plenty of decadent finery to put on stage. Still, Doyle says that his directorial style fuses well with this tale.

``My production of `Sweeney Todd' was done in quite a spare ... Brechtian way,'' says Doyle. ``I just treat it as a story I have to tell. I'm a play director first and foremost.''

LuPone (Broadway's original ``Evita'') played Mrs. Lovett and learned the tuba for Doyle's ``Sweeney Todd.'' A one-time classmate of L.A. Opera music director James Conlon -- who is conducting ``Mahagonny'' -- LuPone was delighted to be reunited with Doyle.

``I think everybody creatively wants an experience, and rarely are we given that chance,'' she says. ``We either get a weak director or not enough time to rehearse. We are lucky this time to have enough time to rehearse and to have a great director to take us through the rehearsal process so that when we get up on that stage, it's not going to be an opera. It's going to be `Mahagonny.' ''

Ah, yes, Mahagonny, aka the shining city of pleasure, an oasis of sin in the desert, where lumberjacks, sailors, prostitutes and fugitives can gather and debauch with minimal interference. Jim McIntyre (played by Anthony Dean Griffey), the city's only halfway decent man, falls for floozie Jenny Smith (McDonald) with not-so-happy results.

World events of the day

Brecht and Weill wrote the piece between 1927 and 1929. The opera premiered in 1930 and was banned by the Nazis in 1933.

``John has talked about the fact that (Brecht and Weill) were very prescient,'' says McDonald. ``A lot of the things they talk about happening in Mahagonny are things that have happened as capitalism started to take over.''

``I had someone tell me their father was alive during this era and he made a ton of money out of the inflation and deflation of the mark,'' adds LuPone. ``With the fluctuating of money, you could make $1 million a day. It's kind of a concept that's alien to me.''

``Especially in the theater,'' returns McDonald, with a laugh.

Sitting together during a rehearsal lunch break, the two actresses share an easy rapport that comes from numerous experiences on stage together, although rarely -- ironically -- as scene partners. They've worked several Ravinia Festival concerts together as well as the Kennedy Center Sondheim Celebration and the benefit ``Children and Art.'' In the mid-1990s, McDonald was leaving the Broadway company of Terrence McNally's ``Master Class'' just as LuPone was coming in.

Their collaboration and friendship was, both say, inevitable. Growing up, McDonald, 36, had a poster of LuPone in her Eva Peron incarnation on her bedroom wall. LuPone, 57, became aware of McDonald's ascendancy as the younger actress moved up through the musical theater ranks.

Mutual admiration

``There was this beacon,'' recalls LuPone. ``She was bringing a quality of singing to musical theater that was there but that had gotten lost. She became the representation of the best that musical theater is. And then, when I saw Audra on stage, she took my breath away.''

``What you meant to me and to so many of my friends, especially growing up,'' McDonald says to LuPone. ``Every once in a while, when I do sit down to think about it, I go, `I can't think about that because I won't come out to rehearsal.' ''

Reverence, of course, gives way to levity. McDonald also possesses a photograph of LuPone amid director Lonny Price, their ``Sweeney Todd'' mutual friend Michael Cerveris and director Lonny Price in a Chicago hotel room.

``It's about 2 a.m., Patti is just blowing on that tuba, and we're all holding our ears,'' McDonald says.

The instrument in question, which LuPone named Irene, is being used in ``Company,'' and will not be appearing in ``Mahagonny,'' although its reappearance might make for a good production jest. ``We actually thought about putting a tuba on the truck (prop),'' LuPone says.

Evan Henerson, [phone]

[e-mail]

RISE AND FALL OF THE CITY OF MAHAGONNY 

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

When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Wednesday, Feb. 17, 22 and March 1; 2 p.m. Feb. 25 and March 4.

Tickets: $30 to $220. [phone] or visit www.laopera.com.

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Photo:

Anthony Dean Griffey and Audra McDonald star in ``Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny,'' an opera of a different sort, at the Music Center's Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.