SULLIVAN MINUS GILBERT : ‘THE ZOO’ IS EXHUMED A LA CARTE

Gilbert and Sullivan are still alive and reasonably well in Los Angeles, thanks to Richard Sheldon and Opera a la Carte.

With much devotion, much authority, much style and very little money, the company has been preaching the sacred Savoyard Gospel since 1970.

The brave little band has brought its special brand of Victorian musico-dramatic cheer to any number of schools, community theaters and out-of-the-way locales. Appearances at Ambassador Auditorium, however, represent the company’s annual moment of glamour and, it is hoped, glory.

Saturday night, for its 10th foray to the lavish Pasadena campus, Opera a la Carte momentarily abandoned Gilbert, and D’Oyly Carte, too. Digging deep into the esoterica file, Sheldon came up with a long- and justly neglected opus called “The Zoo.”

Bolton Rowe and Sullivan are alive and not so well in Los Angeles.

Bolton Rowe? Well, his real name was B.C. Stephenson, but that doesn’t help much. He was a hack.

Back in 1875, he provided Sullivan, then 33, with a cranked-out text that could hardly bring out the best in any composer. It is quaint crisscross formula stuff about a typically tenorial chemist who loves the greengrocer’s daughter and a pompous nobleman who disguises himself as a commoner in order to woo the pretty but lowly proprietress of the snack bar at the local animal emporium where all the inaction takes place.

“The Zoo” lacks the zany characters and the deft caricatures that Gilbert inevitably provided Sullivan. It also lacks biting satire, clever words, and--perhaps most important--the smug, preposterously straight-faced celebration of the outrageous that made the best, and even the worst, G&S; comedies sublime.

Nevertheless, “The Zoo” does exert undeniable period charm, bland though it may be. Sullivan’s tunes, even here, are pretty. His burlesque of basic bel canto conventions is engaging. And the opera--it contains not a word of dialogue--at least is blessedly short.

It is good, once in a while, to be able to observe the weaker side of greatness. It helps put things in perspective.

If our records are reliable (a somewhat dubious proposition), the work was performed only once before in Los Angeles. The ever-resourceful Jerome Weitzman and friends exhumed it in 1979 at Immaculate Heart College.

The production at Ambassador looked and sounded like a labor of love. Sheldon staged it with fluidity, with grace and with enough cute choreographic touches to engage the eye even when the ears were being lulled.

Frank Fetta did what he could to sustain momentum in the pit. David Barber provided an attractive, functional set. Minta Manning and Charles Hernandez assembled dandy candy-box costumes.

Alison England brought cheeky verve and mock-cockney charm to the central ingenue duties and, when the line did not dip too low, sang very sweetly. The rest of the cast, deft though vocally less resplendent, included Jeffrey Gerstein as the suicidal swain, John Ross Nelson as the disguised duke, Carol Winston as the counter-ingenue and Terrell Anderson as her quasi-bad dad.

As a curtain-raiser for this should-be curtain-raiser, Sheldon offered a bona fide bit of Gilbert and Sullivan, “Trial by Jury.” Written three months before “The Zoo,” it remains a masterpiece of wit, operettic condensation and operatic condescension.

The standard of singing may not have been as elegant as one might have wished. Occasionally one felt the influence of a noble non-Savoyard tradition that embraces the work of zealous amateurs. Nevertheless, the collective spirits were lofty.

Sheldon deftly incorporated the picturesque stage patterns defined by ancient tradition, added a few nuances of his own, and crisply delineated the foxy old patter-jurist who would rather make love himself than preside over matrimonial war. He was the judge, and a good one too.

Jon David Gruett was the feisty if not particularly mellifluous Defendant, Deborah Mayhan his flitty and chirpy bride-not-to-be. Rollin Lofdahl served nicely as the hyper-agitated usher. So did Mark Beckwith as the counselor and Marc Goldstein as the jury foreman.

Now, about “Ruddigore,” and “Iolanthe,” and “Utopia, Ltd.” . . .