"Don Giovanni," Los Angeles Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel LOS ANGELES - Maybe it's because the movies provide this city with more than enough Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk. Whatever the reason, even though Puccini's "Bohème" had its American premiere here in 1897, Los Angeles has never really been an opera town. There is evidence for this both big and small, statistical and anecdotal. It took until 1986 for the city to develop, in the Los Angeles Opera, a serious, stable opera company. And on Friday evening, at the Los Angeles Philharmonic's performance of "Don Giovanni," silence greeted Mozart's winking quotation of his own "Nozze di Figaro" during the final scene. It was an opera in-joke in search of an opera audience. It hasn't helped that the last few years have been hard on the Los Angeles Opera, which put on some exciting, important productions but has also had its income and ambitions shrink, along with the length of its seasons. The Philharmonic clearly sees an opening. The orchestra has ventured into opera in the past, with projects like a 2004 production of Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde," with video by Bill Viola. But under its current music director, Gustavo Dudamel, and its president, Deborah Borda, its operatic ambitions have widened. Already the most adventurous major symphony orchestra in the country, it has set its sights on being the most adventurous opera company too, with an enviable portfolio of new and recent works. The marquee offering is a staged cycle of Mozart's three operas to librettos by Lorenzo Da Ponte. "Don Giovanni" is the first, with "Le Nozze di Figaro" to come next season and "Così Fan Tutte" the season after. True, this is as standard as standard repertory gets; the twist is that each opera will pair, as designers, a famous architect and a famous fashion designer. Combining Frank Gehry with Kate and Laura Mulleavy, the sisters who founded the label Rodarte, turned out to be a clever idea. Mr. Gehry, who designed the Philharmonic's magnificent Walt Disney Concert Hall, filled the stage with huge icebergs of crumpled paper, a lunar landscape through which the male characters stalked slowly, wearing the Mulleavys" futuristic, form-fitting space uniforms. It was an eerie, elegant study in white, with the strangeness that should permeate "Don Giovanni." But the production, and the logistics of staged opera in Disney Hall more generally, remain works in progress. Conducted by Mr. Dudamel, the orchestra was placed far above and behind the icebergs and the singers, which was fine for balances but disastrous for coordination. Even by the fourth (and final) performance of the run on Friday, not a minute of the score went by with the singers and the players firmly in sync. In any opera this would be a problem, but it is fatal for a work as dependent on precision and timing as "Don Giovanni." Christopher Alden's direction felt out of sync too. Mr. Alden led a much praised "Don Giovanni" for New York City Opera in 2009, and in Los Angeles he faithfully recreated some of that production's surreal sensuality and dreamlike mood. Each scene slowly leaches into the next; the characters circle one another warily. But stripped of the City Opera production's memorably creepy Southern gothic ambience, Mr. Alden's work felt more arid and less tense, revealing or moving. His mixture of stylization and bursts of slapstick was potent in New York but blander when coupled with Mr. Gehry's rumpled installation and the Mulleavys" costumes, which seemed intended for a much more abstract show: a Robert Wilson "Giovanni," perhaps. Given the disjunctions between stage and orchestra, designers and director, the singers had trouble making an impact, with the exception of the coolly, completely confident baritone Mariusz Kwiecien, who has made a calling card of the Don. Anna Prohaska made a sweet, floating sound as Zerlina; Kevin Burdette was a resonant, loose-limbed Leporello. Aga Mikolaj's Donna Elvira sounded heated but thin; as Donna Anna, Carmela Remigio faded by the end of phrases. There was little sign of the profound cohesion that is characteristic of Mr. Alden's productions. Things might have gelled better had Mr. Dudamel been more inspired, but while the orchestral sound was full, it lacked weight, intensity, terror. The sighing orchestral accompaniment before Elvira's aria "Mi tradi" should burn; here, like so much else in the score, it was merely lovely music. As an event "Don Giovanni" was disappointing, but as the start of the Philharmonic's sustained commitment to opera, it was exciting. In addition to "Le Nozze di Figaro" (with designs by the architect Jean Nouvel and the fashion designer Azzedine Alaïa), next season brings Oliver Knussen's "Where the Wild Things Are," Berg's "Wozzeck," Peter Eotvos's "Angels in America" and a staged version of John Adams's "Gospel According to the Other Mary" (which has its premiere here in a concert version on Thursday). That is an extraordinary program of opera in America. And other, smaller companies are joining in, like the Industry, whose inaugural production, of Anne LeBaron's new opera, "Crescent City," immersed both singers and audience in a warehouse full of vivid installation-style set pieces. Mark Swed wrote of it in The Los Angeles Times, "We now have something that can genuinely be called L.A. opera." It's about time.