MUSIC REVIEW : Horne Comes Home to Long Beach

Marilyn Horne, prima donna assoluta of Long Beach, came home Monday night for a fancy concert at the Terrace Theater. The event, more notable for high spirits than high art, commemorated the centennial of the city and, more important, the 10th birthday of its plucky little opera company.

Resplendent in spangly lavender, the diva sang eight demanding arias on the regular part of the program. At encore time, she added three bonuses in a single, no-nonsense, uninterrupted lump. She doesn’t stint.

Surrounding the Greatest Vocal Hits, Randall Behr conducted the Long Beach Opera orchestra in five reasonably festive overtures and divertissements. He didn’t stint either.

The not-quite-capacity audience, which paid no more than $35 per ticket, clapped like crazy, tossed posies, screamed all-purpose bravos punctuated by a few sophisticated bravas, and seemed eager from the start to get on with the important business of the evening: the standing ovation. It was that sort of a concert.

At 54, Horne isn’t quite the singer she used to be. The timbre isn’t as rich, the top range isn’t as high, the pitch isn’t as sure. This means she must exert a certain gingerly care where she once threw vocal caution to the winds. It also means she cannot zonk her listeners with vocal weight alone, and she cannot exaggerate the descent into the chest register quite so drastically. That isn’t altogether bad.

She can still sing faster and darker, however, than just about any mezzo-soprano in the ornate business. Her agility still astonishes. She still can gurgle trills and runs and staccato filigree with uncanny accuracy. She can still make the breathless tricks of the coloratura trade seem easy.

She mastered the long lines of Handel’s “Ombra mai fu” with dynamic finesse. She sang one obscure aria from Vivaldi’s “Orlando Furioso” with real flower power. Then she read another--this one accompanied only by harpsichord-and-cello continuo--with somewhat halting lyricism.

She brought heroic gusto to “Or la tromba” from Handel’s “Rinaldo.” She brought droopy ardor to an aria from Rossini’s “La Donna del Lago.”

In the page’s cavatina, “Non, non, non . . .” from “Les Huguenots,” the giggly humor seemed a bit labored--as did the ascending climax. Dalila’s “Mon coeur s’ouvre a ta voix” emerged harsh rather than seductive, and the interpolated B-flat at the end was barely touched. In both arias, Horne substituted open vocalises for the text when the evasion suited her.

The program additions began with Rossini’s “Canzonetta Spagnuola,” sung with bel-canto charm despite the anachronism of modern orchestration. Next came Carmen: Horne’s heavyweight Habanera, klutzy as always. Finally, there was a sweet but often flat tone-bath in a very slurpy arrangement of “Beautiful Dreamer.”

Behr led the orchestra in attentive accompaniments as well as generally rousing solo offerings. These included the inevitable “Forza” overture, a relatively stylish Vivaldi intermezzo, Rossini’s “Gazza Ladra,” a beguiling Massenet rarity (the overture to “Cherubin”) and the orgiastic banality of the “Samson” bacchanale.

The conductor displaced Grant Gershon at the virtually inaudible harpsichord for the non-orchestral Vivaldi aria. His fingers seemed to move nicely.