UNEVEN ‘BOHEME’ OPENS SEASON

The Music Center Opera, a lyric afterthought tenuously tied to the Los Angeles Festival, opened its second season Tuesday night at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

The main event seemed to be a $600-per-ticket brouhaha party (you can read about that in View). But from 7 to 9:40 the giddy celebrants could witness a glamorous, somewhat bizarre production of good old, dear old “La Boheme.”

Actually, it seemed like two “Bohemes” played simultaneously or, if you will, a “Boheme” with a drastically split personality.

Part of the event was business as usual: hoary, traditional, make-believe opera--the sort in which well-fed, starry, self-absorbed singers produce pearly tones while executing half-hearted all-purpose dramatic routines. In this context, Peter Hemmings & Co. gave us Placido Domingo--world-famous, golden-voiced, middle-aged, nicely dressed and slightly portly--politely going through the motions of the starving young poet, Rodolfo.

To complement him as Mimi, the company turned at the last minute to the Maltese soprano Miriam Gauci, who had been singing Madama Butterfly in Santa Fe. A young, little-known, incipient diva of the old school, she made the change of costume the most important distinction between the two Puccini heroines. Here, as in the New Mexican desert, she concerned herself primarily with the challenge of emitting pretty sounds and striking generalized poses.

In an ordinary bread-and-butter “Boheme,” the instantly celebrated Domingo and his obscure but amiable partner would have seemed all too much at home. This “Boheme,” however, wasn’t ordinary.

It was based on the famous--some might say in famous--production created by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle in 1977 for Strasbourg and subsequently exported to San Francisco and Houston. The controversial director-designer, an avowed enemy of both convention and sentimentality, had some original ideas about this hardiest of verismo perennials.

The action took place on a central platform. It could be the Bohemians’ garret (with entrances and exits forced awkwardly through a trap door). It could be the cafe or the custom house. In any case, picturesque, potentially stifling Paris--represented by detailed, three-tiered facades of Latin Quarter houses--loomed ominously in the background.

For a dubious central symbol, Ponnelle introduced a huge, cylindrical, quintessentially phallic stove. Presumably, it held out hope of life-sustaining warmth for the impoverished and the oppressed.

Ponnelle interpolated hints of politics. At the end of Act II, the principals held aloft a banner exhorting the rise of the republic and the fall of royalty. He also favored hints of unabashed erotica. Contrary to the libretto, Mimi and Rodolfo retired to the convenient bed for a quick get-acquainted session before joining the throng at the Momus.

More important, perhaps, Ponnelle stripped the characters of cliche identities, just as he stripped the action of second-hand bathos.

The Music Center version, directed by Christopher Alden, retained Ponnelle’s somewhat expressionistic set but only some of his action scheme. The central lovers did, once again, convey sex at first sight. There certainly was nothing demure about their flirtation. At the end of the love duet, however, Domingo and Gauci temporarily ignored the bed and dutifully clambered down the trap door. One was thankful for small favors.

Taking advantage of an exceptionally youthful supporting cast, Alden made Rodolfo’s companions 20th-Century hippies who happen to wear 19th-Century clothes--or take them off. In the last act, for some reason, two of the men walked bare-chested about their flat. More unlikely and more unseemly, they walked that way about Paris, too.

Alden could not bridge his own theatrical world--essentially mod--with that of Domingo--essentially trite. Nevertheless, he defined valid characterizations wherever possible, and, when he could resist exaggeration, told the story in clean, bleak straightforward strokes.

Like Ponnelle, he played the final moments of the mini-tragedy in a space that was bare except for the ubiquitous stove and a few mattresses. The Bohemians apparently had been forced to sell all their other belongings.

Like Ponnelle, he made telling use of cinematic devices. Simulated freeze-frames brought the crowd scenes into telling focus. Illuminated would-be close-ups, shadowy vistas and climactic blackouts, sensitively lit by Marie Barrett, defined mood and dynamic stress poignantly. In matters of stylistic unity, unfortunately, tone and focus were not consistently delineated.

The evening began less than auspiciously.

Far more sedate than the room-mates who could be his sons, Domingo seemed ill at ease in the theatrical context defined by Ponnelle and Alden. Abandoning all hope of charm and intimacy, the tenor blasted his way through “Che Gelida Manina” with his Otello voice and, as is his wont, opted for a downward transposition. Gauci, pressing dangerously for power, sounded tight and wan.

Lawrence Foster, the well-routined conductor, enforced prose where one had hoped for poetry. He also allowed the expanded Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra to play too loud for anyone’s comfort.

Everyone began to relax at the Cafe Momus, however, and, by the third act the pervasive brashness was tempered with some sensitivity. Domingo actually sang a few lovely pianissimo tones. Gauci spun out a relatively sensitive “Addio.” Foster loosened the reins.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the expressive spectrum, Thomas Hampson--the ardent, witty and emphatically sympathetic Marcello--offered consistent lessons in how to make mutually enhancing sense of words and music. This artist understands the secrets of character projection, savors the power of subtle inflection, knows how to stand and move with natural, telling purpose. What’s more, he applies his bright, slender baritone to the Italianate line with suavity and point.

Karen Huffstodt, his attractive, full-voiced Musetta, succumbed to sex-bomb charades and an overdose of vulgarity that made one pine all the more for the muted insinuation of Julia Migenes-Johnson in the San Francisco version.

John Atkins’ wry, bespectacled Schaunard, Louis Lebherz’s sweet, Teddy-bear Colline, Michael Gallup’s gentle Benoit and forceful Alcindoro all enhanced dramatic--and, yes, musical--credibility without the the benefit of notable vocal output.

The often clumsy supertitles encouraged laughter that was sometimes premature, sometimes utterly inappropriate. No matter. Puccini has triumphed over worse distractions.