‘BABY DOE’ IN REVIVAL BY LONG BEACH OPERA

Douglas Moore, if he is remembered for anything these days, is remembered for his opera “The Ballad of Baby Doe.”

The American composer (1893-1969), a student of Horatio Parker, Vincent d’Indy and Nadia Boulanger and winner of a Pulitzer Prize in 1951 for his operatic setting of O. E. Rolvaag’s “Giants in the Earth,” has been much neglected in the two decades since his death. Why?

Randall Behr, who conducts a new production of “The Ballad of Baby Doe” at Long Beach Opera, this week and next, says Moore, “at this point in history, is in a special limbo. His works are just old enough to seem old-fashioned, but not quite old enough to be considered ‘classic.’ ”

But Moore will again come into his own, says Behr, music director of the Long Beach company, and a veteran of operatic activities in San Francisco, Chicago, St. Louis and Michigan, among other places.

“ ‘Baby Doe’ is a wonderful work, affecting and accessible,” he enthuses about the eighth of Moore’s 12 operas. Based on the romance of silver miner Horace Tabor and his lover, Baby Doe, it was first presented in Central City, Colo. (50 miles from the locale of its action), in 1956. It is not, however, Moore’s masterpiece. That, says Behr, is “The Devil and Daniel Webster” (1939).

The charms of “Baby Doe” are many, the conductor points out, not the least of them the arias and set pieces involving the title character, who was first created for, and by, Beverly Sills. Ruth Ann Swenson, the Baby Doe in Long Beach, “probably has a larger voice than Sills did at that time,” comments Behr. “But the casting is still perfect.”

Richard Fredricks, the veteran American baritone, will take the role of Horace Tabor. Joyce Castle, another New York City Opera veteran, will play Tabor’s wife Augusta, Katherine Ciesinski, the originally announced Augusta, having withdrawn.

Others in the large cast include Geraldine Decker, Ken Remo, Michael Gallup and Gualdiero Negrini. Stage director is Peter Mark Shifter, who staged “Jonny spielt auf” for the company last season. Michael Devine has designed the sets, Barbara Cox the costumes, Michael Phillips the choreography and Craig Wolfe the lighting.

The five-performance run opens Friday night at 7:30 in Center Theater at the Long Beach Convention Center. Subsequent performances are scheduled next Sunday at 2 p.m., May 13 at 7:30, May 15 at 8 p.m. and May 17 at 2 p.m.

ALSO THIS WEEK: Sarah Walker appears in recital at UC Irvine, Monday night at 8, in a program titled, “Abandoned Heroines and Femmes Fatales.” The English mezzo-soprano’s program includes Haydn’s cantata, “Arianna a Naxos,” Robert Schumann’s “Frauenliebe und leben,” a group of Liszt songs, and a set described “Songs of Travel and Transatlantic Nonsense,” including pieces by Noel Coward, Geoffrey Wright, Vernon Duke and George Gershwin. Pianist Roger Vignoles will assist.

The Gewandhaus Orchestra from Leipzig, led by Kurt Masur, will play two concerts at Ambassador Auditorium in Pasadena, Tuesday and Wednesday nights at 8. Tuesday, the program comprises Schubert’s “Unfinished” Symphony and Bruckner’s Fourth. Wednesday, it will be Barber’s Adagio for Strings, Siegfried Matthus’ Timpani Concerto and Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.

In the Old Globe Theatre in Balboa Park, San Diego Opera presents two chamber operas by Gian Carlo Menotti, Saturday through May 17. Menotti himself will stage “The Telephone” and “The Medium” in performances scheduled Saturday at 8, May 11 at 8 p.m., May 13 at 7 p.m., May 15 at 8 p.m. and May 17 at 2:30 p.m. Karen Keltner will conduct; among the performers will be Amy Burton, Beverly Evans, Nadia Pelle and Francis Menotti.

Pianist Robert Palmer, a prize winner in the 1986 Joanna Hodges International Piano Competition, will appear Saturday night at 8 with the Riverside Symphony in Riverside Municipal Auditorium. Palmer will play Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto.

The Romeros Quartet closes the 1986-87 guitar series at Ambassador Auditorium, Saturday night at 8:30.

John Alexander conducts the Pacific Chorale, Pacific Symphony and a 300-voice high-school honors choir in “A Coronation Festival” at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, Saturday night at 8:30. Music by Parr, Handel, Walton and Elgar will be performed.

PEOPLE: Finalmente. Fernando Bujones, who this month dances a short season of guest appearances in Rio de Janeiro, recently starred in Paris in a ballet of his very own, Maurice Bejart’s “Trois Etudes pour Alexandre.” The 40-minute work, introduced during the spring season of Bejart’s Ballet of the 20th Century at the Theatre Chatelet, apparently offered the former ABT dancer myriad opportunities to shine. “Trois Etudes” will be danced when the company opens its next Brussels season, in September, and is being considered for the troupe’s next international tour.

Sir David Willcocks will conduct the final concert in the 1987 Long Beach Bach Festival, May 30 at 7:30 p.m. in the sanctuary of Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church, 370 Junipero, Long Beach. The English conductor, former music director at King’s College, Cambridge University (1957-1974) and director of the Royal College of Music (1974-84), will lead Bach’s B-minor Mass.

Luke Bandle has assumed her duties as new marketing director at Opera Pacific. Until recently with the Pacific Symphony, Bandle previously held posts at the Hult Center for the Performing Arts in Eugene, Ore., at Wolf Trap Foundation and at the Opera Society of Washington (D.C.).

Pianist Alec Chien, winner of the grand prize at the Gina Bachauer Competition in 1986, makes his Los Angeles recital debut Monday night at 8 at Ambassador Auditorium, Pasadena. Chien will play music by Beethoven, Schumann, Bartok, Rorem and Stravinsky.