WESTERN-STYLE ‘YU-ZURU’

“Yu-Zuru” (“Twilight Crane”) is a one-act, Western-style, Japanese-language opera composed by Ikuma Dan in 1952--though it sounds more like 1925, with its unstinting gush of lachrymose, late-Puccini sonorities.

However, the performance presented by the Japanese Philharmonic Orchestra of Los Angeles, Wednesday in the Japan America Theatre, suggested that “Yu-Zuru” isn’t really an opera at all, but rather a song cycle for soprano with a few dramatic connecting passages for other voices.

Set to a libretto by Junji Kinoshita, the opera examines male greed and female self-sacrifice through a folk tale about a supernatural being (a crane-woman) married to an all-too-human simpleton who fatally overtaxes her devotion.

Ikuma Dan establishes the world of the opera promisingly with a mastery of atmospheric tone-painting and an adroit use of a children’s choir (here the Tozai Gakuen Language School). But his writing for tenor (the simpleton), baritone and bass (the two evil tempters/manipulators) is sketchy at best in contrast to the lush, melodic solos composed for the crane-woman. Indeed, her string of arias--mostly extended laments--stops the drama dead.

At least it seemed that way Wednesday, when the English synopsis in the house program provided only a general outline of the narrative and the staging (by Kaori Yabuuchi) proved undeniably picturesque but highly static.

Designer Shiegeo Okajima conjured up a stylized vista of trees and snowbanks with a cutaway rustic cabin in the foreground.

A broad but effective actress, Chieko Tanaka sang the grueling lead role with untiring reserves of silvery tone and great expressive surety. Bass Takao Okamura unleashed powerful vocalism and menacing histrionics in his few prominent passages, while Tadashi Hosokawa and Yoshinobu Kuribayashi redeemed thankless roles with enlightened musicianship.

Akira Kikukawa led the singers and the occasionally thin-sounding Japanese Philharmonic in a careful yet energetic performance.