Backstage

By Martha Duffy

OPENING NIGHT April 13, PBS, 10 p.m. E.S.T.

The San Francisco Opera's new production of Amilcare Ponchielli's sprawling, lurid La Gioconda last September was a vast undertaking, and PBS station KCET had the wit to record the preparations in a funny, breezy documentary, Opening NightThe Making of an Opera. The camera roams in wig shops and rehearsal rooms, where Baritone Norman Mittelman after fluffing a line complains that the composer wrote it wrong. At the shaky dress rehearsal Kurt Herbert Adler, 75, the company's director, notes, at that late hour, that the chorus is posi tioned so that ticketholders on the right cannot see the action in a big scene.

In the lobby the ushers are getting their orders: "Be very, very careful. Do not touch any customer. If you take a tip that's up to you, but do not tell anybody." Backstage a honcho of the costume department is pointing out the need for underwear: "I would like to remind you about B.O. The costumes are new. We have new T shirts. Wear them." Cosmeticians are making up the cast, many of whom are part-timers. One of them moans, "Right now I'm cutting vegetables for salads and soups and I just can't handle it."

The real drama involves the principals, Tenor Luciano Pavarotti and Soprano Renata Scotto. San Francisco is his territory, the town that virtually takes credit for his American success; the lady is understandably apprehensive. She is a warm and pretty woman and also a diva who knows the craft of staging and upstaging. From Stage Director Lotfi Mansouri she seeksand getsendless reassurance.

Pavarotti arrives at the administrative offices swathed in desert robes. He strokes the astonished Adler's hair affectionately and then drinks the director's coffee. When he protests, Pavarotti says mildly that it is his coffee. The stage, the opera, the fans are his coffee too, and he knows it. He is in superb voice. Adler murmurs, "When Pavarotti sings like this, a compliment is not enough."

The tension bursts over curtain calls. Pavarotti takes a disputed solo bow, so Scotto refuses to take her final bow. As the loudspeaker calls her repeatedly to the stage, she sits in her dressing room, ignoring Mansouri's just praise and his fervent pleas. There will be no bow.

PBS will broadcast the opera as a miniseries, one act each night following the April 13 program. The rare hour is the first one, because Opening Night is the work of people who know the opera world, relish its absurdities and are candid enough to show the temperaments that make it grand.

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