Obituaries.(Peter Hemmings)(Brief Article)(Obituary)

PETER HEMMINGS, Enfield, Middlesex, England, April 10, 1934 -- Dorset, England, January 4, 2002

Where others had failed, or succeeded only halfway, Peter Hemmings planted the operatic seed in the Los Angeles cultural desert and nursed it to full bloom. Determinedly ignoring a chorus of naysayers, charming a support structure into existence by dint of soft-spoken earnestness and elegant British tailoring, Hemmings came to Los Angeles with the mission of founding that city's first-ever world-class opera company, and he fulfilled that mission with surprising ease. Even the ultimate omen -- the curtain stuck halfway up at the opening-night Otello -- did not block his upward path. When he retired in June 2000, yielding his place to his hand-picked company superstar and logical successor, Placido Domingo, his fourteen-year-old Los Angeles Opera had long since shaken off its initial omens and challenges.

Hemmings's life was almost entirely operatic. At Cambridge he headed the University Opera Group and aimed briefly at a career as a singer. Instead, he moved into music management at London's prestigious Harold Holt Ltd., from there to a personal assistant's post to the manager of the Sadler's Wells Opera, and from there, in 1962, to run the newly formed Scottish National Opera, which he built over fifteen years into one of Britain's most adventurous companies.

A stint at Sydney's Australian Opera (1977-79), where Hemmings groomed the company to make the most of the newly-won reputation engendered by its glamorous new hall, was cut short by political infighting. In 1979, he strayed outside opera to manage the London Symphony Orchestra. Five years later, however, the call came from the Los Angeles Music Center; it was high time, the company decided, to create a place in the opera firmament for that famously nonoperatic city.

Los Angeles's operatic desires previously had been fanned feebly by visits from the San Francisco Opera (in the notorious acoustic horror, the 6,700-seat Shrine Auditorium); ...