James Conlon remains hooked on L.A. as he reflects on his 20 years as music director of L.A. Opera
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In mid-September 2004, James Conlon, a 54-year-old New Yorker who had just completed a nine-year appointment as music director of Paris Opera, got a surprising call from Plácido Domingo, the famous tenor and head of Los Angeles Opera.Conlon was itching to return home after having spent two decades in Europe, where he had headed the Rotterdam Symphony as well as the Cologne Opera and the German city’s Gürzenich Orchestra.He seemed the most likely candidate to succeed another “Jimmy.” James Levine had become an operatic legend as music director of the Metropolitan Opera for nearly three decades and had been a mentor to and champion of Conlon.
But Levine had no immediate plans to leave the Met.“I wasn’t expecting an offer or anything,” Conlon said recently in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion office he has occupied for 20 years and laden with mementos soon to be boxed.When Conlon conducts the final performance of the company’s bewitching production of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” Sunday afternoon that will also mark his last appearance as L.A.
Opera music director.“I left Paris thinking I’m going to goof off now,” Conlon explained, having for seven of his nine Paris years retained his positions in Cologne, shuttling between two exceptionally demanding jobs.But Plácido said to me, ‘If you just come to Los Angeles Opera for three or four years that would be great for the company.
We’ll give you what you want,’ blah, blah, blah, blah.’“Basically, I figured that would be it for a few years, but I felt right away at home.I liked it, and I wanted to stay.“It is very hard to say why you like somebody,” he continued.
“I mean, I got here, I started rehearsing and conducting and meeting everybody and felt welcomed on all levels.It was as simple as that.”When L.A.
Opera came calling, it was a wild, if exciting, adolescent company.Domingo told me a...