TWO OPERA COMPANY OFFERINGS : OPERA PACIFIC STAGES ‘WEST SIDE STORY’

It’s still “West Side Story.” It isn’t “West Side Opera.”

If the forces behind Opera Pacific, the new and pretentious saviors of the lyric muse in Orange County, want to dabble in easy Broadway nostalgia, that is their business. One can only hope it turns out to be profitable business.

If they think any play that contains some songs qualifies as opera, so be it.

One wouldn’t mind a bit if Leonard Bernstein’s sugar-watered-down version of “Romeo and Juliet,” which began a 19-performance run Friday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, were part of a broad and adventurous operatic repertory and a long season. The remainder of the current agenda, however, lists only “Porgy and Bess” and “La Boheme.”

The question isn’t whether “West Side Story” can be equated with “Carmen” and “Boris Godunov.” The question is whether “West Side Story” is good enough.

The answer, alas, is negative. The show isn’t good enough. The local production, imported from Detroit, isn’t good enough.

“West Side Story” created something of a sensation back in 1957. We all wanted to hail it then as a giant step forward for American musical theater, as an omen of Great Cultural Things to Come. The step turned out to be isolated, and the Great Things didn’t come.

Bernstein, who could crank out extraordinarily clever music, brightly comic music and well-dressed funky music better than any of his peers, decided to pursue other avenues. Probably too many.

In the cool and cruel light of 1987, we can see “West Side Story” as a quaint period piece. Urban gang wars have come a painfully long way from polite little encounters with switch-blades. Credible hoodlums no longer look cute and well-scrubbed, and they certainly don’t call each other Buddy-boy and Daddy-O.

The common vernacular, whether uttered by juvenile delinquents or expletively undeleted Presidents, has gone way beyond such delicate phrases as “When the spit hits the fan” and “Gee, Officer Krupke, krup you!” Realism is a sometime thing.

In the innocent days of 1957, we may have found Arthur Laurent’s dialogue less simplistic. We certainly did not expect great sophistication from a baby lyricist named Stephen Sondheim.

Thirty years ago, we were galvanized by Jerome Robbins’ tricky choreography--sexy-slinky for the Latino Sharks, macho -athletic for the Anglo Jets. We also were beguiled by Bernstein’s score.

It included pretty love ballads, funny burlesque numbers, ambitious dance routines, torchy blues allusions, jazzy mood music and at least one bona-fide operatic inspiration: the seven-part contrapuntal ensemble that vents everyone’s contradictory emotions just before the fateful rumble.

“West Side Story” illuminated the Broadway of “Kismet” and “The Music Man.” In context, one wanted to overlook the instant bathos. One hardly noticed that the composer tended to cop out in the big dramatic moments, that he resorted to musical repetitions--or, worse, mere words--just when the tragedy reached its peak.

The Michigan Opera Theatre production, created in 1985, tends to compound the built-in problems. As staged by Michael Montel and choreographed by Karen Azenberg, it looks like a tired and fuzzy recollection of the Broadway original. The rumble bumbles. One waits in vain for the inspiration of new impulses and a really fresh perspective.

Robert O’Hearn’s sets provide an awkward fusion of the literal and the abstract. One gets the uneasy feeling, moreover, that the abstraction--an all-purpose network of skeletal tenement structures--was dictated by economy rather than expressive conviction.

Segerstrom Hall, with its 3,000 seats, is much too big for a piece so fragile. On opening night, the voices were smothered in a blanket of electronically induced echoes. And, even with the disastrous amplification, the pit band still out-sang the cast.

This doesn’t happen in opera. Nor, in opera, would one expect to hear such feeble voices competing with such a scrawny orchestra.

The current cast is led by Beverly Lambert as a pale, pretty, oddly robust Maria (a.k.a. Juliet) and Jeffrey Reynolds as a bland, mellifluous, oddly geeky Tony (a.k.a. Romeo). So much for the central sympathies.

Diane Fratantoni impresses as a volatile, slightly reticent Anita--if one can forget the earthy magnetism of Chita Rivera, Muriel Bentley and Rita Moreno.

Luis Perez as the tempestuous Nardo (a.k.a. Tybalt) brings a misplaced bit of Joffrey Ballet bravura to the dance at the gym and tends to be suave when one really wants him to be sensuous. But he is very suave indeed, and lithe, too.

Al Checco mouths the homey platitudes of Doc the Druggist (a.k.a. Friar Laurence) with as little embarrassment as possible. The others are OK.

David Abell keeps things moving quickly in the raucous pit. Sometimes too quickly.

Next year, according to the often reliable rumor mill, the guardians of operatic virtue in Costa Mesa will venture “Aida,” “Fledermaus” and, ahem, “My Fair Lady.”

Won’t that be loverly?