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SECOND CAST : FROM BERLIN: ANOTHER ‘FIGARO,’ ANOTHER SHOW

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Times Music Critic

The Deutsche Oper of West Berlin is performing “Le Nozze di Figaro” five times this week. That represents a lot of exposure to Mozart’s masterpiece, even for sophisticated audiences in a great international opera house. If one may judge by the number of empty seats at the second performance, Thursday night, it may be too much exposure for innocent Angelenos at the 3,200-seat Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

While the booking strategy seems a bit overoptimistic, this “Figaro” does justify a second visit for the intrepid aficionado. The second set of principals, though hardly a collection of universally adulated paragons, serves Mozart honorably. It also serves the special modern concepts--rough, tough and hyper-analytical--of Goetz Friedrich’s 1978 staging and Herbert Wernicke’s designs as conscientiously as difficult conditions permit.

For the record:

12:00 a.m. Sept. 23, 1985 FOR THE RECORD
Los Angeles Times Monday September 23, 1985 Home Edition Calendar Part 5 Page 6 Column 1 Entertainment Desk 2 inches; 51 words Type of Material: Correction
In Saturday’s review of the Berlin Opera “Le Nozze di Figaro,” Martin Bernheimer noted that Daphne Evangelatos as Cherubino was “just as slender, just as nimble, just as pretty as Margit Neubauer had been” the previous night. Neubauer actually sang both performances. Evangelatos took over the role at later repetitions. Bernheimer misread the program credits.

The program credits kept the fact a secret, but two of the principals were making their Deutsche Oper debuts on this occasion. Alan Titus, who had sung the Count here in the conventional New York City Opera production three years ago, returned to his familiar amorous-courtly duties as something of an ersatz Berliner. Daphne Evangelatos, a Greek mezzo-soprano with major experience in minor German houses, replaced the originally scheduled and equally obscure Graziella Araia as the new Cherubino.

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Titus sang with easy power, especially as the line ascended, and found no reason to fear the awkward flourishes at the end of the formidable second-act aria. In general, however, he seemed less than totally comfortable executing the psychological stances dictated by the Friedrich production. He ended up playing Almaviva as an amiable blunderer rather than as the dangerous, aristocratic threat posed by his immediate predecessor, Wolfgang Brendel.

Evangelatos, on the other hand, introduced a vocally pallid, patently lovesick page boy just as slender, just as nimble, just as pretty as Margit Neubauer had been on Wednesday--and Evangelatos added her own subtle gloss of urgent sensuality.

Manfred Roehrl, Berlin’s house Figaro, proved himself an affable, intelligent routinier with a flair for dramatic detail, a less than idiomatic command of Italian, and a moderate-size baritone that thins out both at the bottom and at the top. Lucy Peacock, the Countess most likely to be encountered these days at Richard-Wagner-Strasse 10, is a lovely American girl who looks and, unfortunately in this case, acts like a co-ed. She sings with a limpid middleweight soprano that tends to go out of control at the top.

Under the circumstances, the stage was dominated by the charming, light and bright-toned, unfailingly sympathetic Susanna of Sona Ghazarian, a stylish Viennese soprano from Beirut (not to be confused with Bayreuth).

The strong supporting cast--Patricia Johnson as Marcellina, Donald Grobe as Basilio, Ivan Sardi as Bartolo, Klaus Lang as Antonio, Gudrun Sieber as Barbarina, Loren Driscoll as Curzio--remained unchanged.

The conductor, Christof Perick--who, incidentally, adds the e to his name only when he conducts in America--still stressed speed over emotional expansion. This time, however, he did relax somewhat, and he did encounter a few synchronization problems between stage and pit.

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