OPERA IN STEINBECK COUNTRY : HIDDEN VALLEY ENSEMBLE STAGES ‘OF MICE AND MEN’

Carlisle Floyd’s “Of Mice and Men,’ based on the novel and play of John Steinbeck, always seems a bit incongruous in a big, high-falutin opera house.

The Salinas Valley ranch hands and vagrants tend to look arch and sound pretentious when framed by an ornate proscenium and flanked by the glitter of a golden horseshoe. Floyd’s homespun music, moreover, tends to cloy when projected with pomp and grandeur in the wide open operatic spaces.

There isn’t any pomp and grandeur, thank goodness, in “Of Mice and Men” as performed by the Hidden Valley Opera Ensemble. There aren’t any wide open spaces either, and the only horseshoe in the vicinity seems to be attached to a horse.

Hidden Valley is something of a mirage, a rustic 250-seat theater and associated arts academy nestled in a sleepy, verdant village 15 miles inland from Cannery Row. Under the direction of Peter Meckel, Hidden Valley has been staging enlightened and economic ensemble opera on the Monterey Peninsula for more than a decade, capitalizing on intimacy, imagination, thorough preparation and fresh, eager, inexpensive talent.

Meckel can be proud of some remarkable achievements, against the logistical and financial odds. It seems unlikely, however, that many past achievements can match “Of Mice and Men.”

As staged and designed by Robert Darling, conducted by Roger Cantrell and enacted by an obviously dedicated, virtually ideal cast, the potentially maudlin opera emerges here as poignant musical theater.

Although Carmel Valley audiences know the Steinbeck setting very well--they live in it--the young singers involved were outsiders. They came from all over the country. During rehearsals, Darling took them to the actual south county ranches and river banks that inspired the author. He wanted his people to have a feel not just for the score and for the drama but for the land.

They got the feel. It is difficult to think of the performers in this production as opera singers. They look too right, act too real.

They do not emote. They do not invoke cliches. They savor honest simplicity.

The plight of Lennie and George and the tragedy of their unfulfilled dream take on rare theatrical intensity as a result. Darling enhances the emotional impact of the piece, even makes it poetic, by playing it in a stark, stylized, barnlike setting. A few boards suggest the bunkhouse, a few branches define the clearing in the woods.

If anything, James Medvitz’s orchestral reduction strengthens musical impulses that sometimes veer dangerously toward mere prettiness. Presiding over 30 young instrumentalists behind a scrim at the side of the stage, Cantrell reinforces the energy and the lyricism of Floyd’s eclectic score without luxuriating in the sentimental elements.

Roy Wilbur makes a sweet, gentle, frightened giant of the victimized Lennie, and sings with pliant, ringing tenorial grace. David Dunlap provides sympathetic counterforce as a George whose common sense and dignity are always undermined by a hint of desperation, and he illuminates the vocal line with an uncommonly flexible, poised lyric baritone.

Karen Hall has the good sense, and the good direction, to play Curley’s Wife not as a hardened slut but as a sensuous innocent, and her dewy soprano masters the high tessitura with staggering purity and ease.

The supporting players, all of them strong, include Thomas Hannan as a marvelously crisp and perceptive Candy, John Atkins as a specially sensitive, incisive Slim.

The opera, not incidentally, is being played in repertory together with the original Steinbeck play.

Also on the current agenda is a spirited, gag-oriented “Barber of Seville” that invokes the aura of a good, somewhat misguided opera workshop. Miracles do not happen every night, even in Hidden Valley.