LANCHBERY CONDUCTS : OLD VIENNA THRIVES AT HOLLYWOOD BOWL

Old Vienna, Gershwin, and Rodgers and Hammerstein might seem like the last resorts of such gathering places as Hollywood Bowl, but they are actually the first choices of a great many people.

A reported 13,418 vicarious Viennese assembled in the Bowl Friday night for the first of two consecutive observances called “A Night in Old Vienna,” and the applause was far more plenteous and spontaneous than it has been at recent symphonic evenings.

The Bowl management did smartly by the popular conception of Alt Wien. It put John Lanchbery in charge of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which insured liveliness and a sometimes too-reverent respect for tradition. Some of the conductor’s vagaries seemed based more on perverse balletic notions than on conventional musical insights, but he coaxed the Philharmonic into more precise playing than it has sometimes recently exhibited, and he was as adept at pursuing vocal soloists as he usually is in keeping up with dancers.

Good as Lanchbery was, the best thing the management did for the junior Johann Strauss and the irrepressible Franz Lehar was to engage Roberta Peters, perennial and unfaded after 35 years on the Metropolitan Opera roster.

Peters is the ultimate professional. Mistress of all the tricks of the trade, the American soprano is never less than valid and legitimate. She is always reliably discreet and tasteful, and the voice shows minimum traces of wear. It charms and beguiles, effortlessly, and the coloratura passages could have been a replay of Peters’ singing, as a fresh young vocalist, 30 years ago.

The Strauss and Lehar excerpts all had the expert touch, but it was hackneyed old “Vilia” from “The Merry Widow” that soared and entranced. It was Peters’ personal triumph.

In the duets she had the partnership of Mark DuBois, a personable Canadian tenor with a voice which comes close to crooning in the gentle passages, but one that can ring forcefully when pressure is applied. In both aspects, however, its color tends to be monochromatic.