REDEMPTIVE EVENING : LA SCALA BALLET IN MIXED BILL

After the delirious theatrical excesses and flagrant choreographic inadequacies of Franco Zeffirelli’s “Swan Lake,” La Scala Ballet of Milan on Thursday danced the first mixed bill of its four-city North American tour as if it had something to prove and, of course, it had.

For a company of emerging though hardly confirmed international stature, the opportunity to perform works by George Balanchine, Jiri Kylian and Roland Petit represented an authentic test of artistry--one that was met and passed with distinction.

There was even a bonus Thursday in the War Memorial Opera House: Carla Fracci dancing excerpts from Bournonville’s “La Sylphide” opposite guest artist Jean-Charles Gil and showing by the softness of her movement and the extraordinary stillness of her suspensions on pointe that she is still a great Romantic ballerina.

Beginning with a sequence from Act I (the Sylphide watching over the sleeping James), Fracci and Gil then performed some of the endearing Act II mime (she bringing water to him) and their celebratory duet. Gil delivered spectacular jumps and brilliant legwork, but it was Fracci’s exceptional delicacy of articulation and sense of otherworldly calm that gave their collaboration its special radiance.

Formerly with Ballet de Marseille and now a member of San Francisco Ballet, Gil brought all his passion and virtuosity to the title role of Balanchine’s “Prodigal Son”--but it wasn’t enough. Admittedly, the early scenes of this masterwork found him all but definitive: not merely in command of the unorthodox leaps and partnering challenges but exuding the arrogance-in-innocence that made his corruption and betrayal devastating and inevitable.

But, after being stripped, robbed and abandoned, this prodigal remained a spoiled glamour boy. The mimed drinking and begging was rendered with absolute clarity, but the desperation behind it, and especially the Prodigal’s horror at his lameness, remained underpowered. Indeed, the final, harrowing knee-walk across the stage looked much too easy--something like a deliberate submission to his father instead of a broken man’s cry for acceptance.

As the Siren, Paola Maccaferri danced impressively but stayed expressively remote, unknowable, which is a legitimate interpretive option but not as satisfying as going for maximum heat or maximum frigidity. Otherwise the cast dealt with the unusual rhythmic pulse of Prokofiev’s score and the strange character dance demands of Balanchine’s choreography with enormous surety.

That same deep comprehension of styles differing from classroom classicism greeted two contrasting water-studies set to music by Debussy: Roland Petit’s “La Mer” and Jiri Kylian’s “La Cathedrale Engloutie.” After an opening corps sequence mostly devoted to liquid port de bras --rippling arms, shimmering fingers, etc.--Petit’s large-scale showpiece diluted this concept by adding conventional supported-adagio passages for three couples.

The corps women danced in soft slippers, the three leading women on pointe and Petit wove this contrast into his increasingly complex surges of group movement.

Sometimes a single action (a jump in place or a lift) would pass along a whole line of dancers like a mighty wave, but elsewhere all the swimming/treading motions and the endless group ebb and flow turned tepid or even turgid: choreographic embellishment capturing little of the specific qualities of the score.

Two of the leads in “La Mer”--Elisabetta Armiato and Maurizio Vanadia--also appeared in “La Cathedrale Engloutie,” dancing with each other and with Vittorio D’Amato and Maurizia Luceri in linked duets that avoided literal Petit-style water imagery and instead developed a strong emotional undertow through circular motion.

Set to fragments of the Debussy piano music intercut with long sections of recorded surf, Kylian’s non-literal dance drama associated the former accompaniment with physical harmony and accommodation, the latter with wild turbulence and conflict. But along with the use of shared weight, the circular runs, rolls and turns unified the choreographic elements and conveyed the sense of people responding to forces beyond their control.

Except for raucous and ragged playing of the Lovenskjold “Sylphide” music the orchestra played capably under Michel Sasson. An enlightening and also redemptive evening.