OPERA REVIEW : Monteverdi’s ‘Ulysses’ Surreal and Long

The Long Beach Opera has done it again, after a fashion. After its fashion.

While other organizations in the area concentrate on sure-fire Verdi and Puccini or lazy musical comedies, Michael Milenski and his intrepid little company serve the worthy cause of esoterica. They serve it diligently, and with a modern theatrical vengeance.

The first installment of the ridiculously short, typically adventurous 1988 season--the company’s tenth--took the form of something reasonably new: Szymanowski’s forbidding “King Roger,” in its American premiere. The second, final, installment brought us something very, very old: Monteverdi’s “Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria,” a.k.a. “The Return of Ulysses to His Homeland.”

First introduced to Venice 367 years ago, the five-act opera had never been performed professionally in this country in a reasonably authentic musical edition until Friday night. The local premiere at the Center Theater--prepared and conducted by the Baroque specialist Nicholas McGegan, re-interpreted by the theatrical iconoclast Christopher Alden and designed by the modernist wizard Paul Steinberg--turned out to be an event of historic as well as aesthetic importance.

The production also turned out to be a classic Long Beach demonstration of gutsy period contrasts. While McGegan and his Philharmonia Baroque defended the composer’s original impulses with scholarly elan that never precluded dramatic vitality, Alden and Steinberg turned the ancient libretto, with its convoluted invocations of Homer’s “Odyssey,” into an unabashedly contemporary, eminently picturesque morality play.

Noble antiquity was united, once again, with post-modern surrealism. It was daring, provocative, clever and, for a while, stimulating.

A 1970s Ulysses returns, in a wheelchair, from what must be the war in Vietnam. He wears combat fatigues. The mythological hero is transformed into a contemporary Everyman. Ithaca becomes Everyplace.

Before the wounded warrior can be reunited with the tragic, grieving Penelope, he must do battle with some unruly gods who happen to resemble overstuffed military officers in some archaic operetta. He also must contend with the benign intervention of an adorable yuppie priestess and must compete with three ominous suitors in white face and black tie.

And so it goes. The hospitable unit set on the thrust stage presents a painted panorama of storm clouds, a couple of grassy mounds, a trap door, a hollow rock that can swallow a ship and a distant replica of a Grecian temple.

The characters come and go, stalk and crawl, preen and prance, pose and brood. The dignitaries and deities are not above shimmying, strutting, shrugging and disco-dancing. The protagonists create and destroy their own vibrant reality at will.

Heather Carson illuminates them in mercurial, glaring flashes, then hides them in poetic shadows. She also startles the audience with rude, Brechtian spotlights.

It is all very interesting. The inspired madness of the concept is projected with constant flair by a large ensemble of virtuosic singing-actors. One has to admire the constant invention at work here, and the unflagging effort, too. One has to applaud the unified commitment to an unorthodox definition of style.

Jake Gardner is virile, feverishly magnetic, mellifluous in the title role. Cynthia Clarey exudes valor and strength as Penelope. Elise Ross--wife of Simon Rattle and Marie in “Wozzeck” next season at the Music Center--is irresistibly winsome as Minerva, goddess of wisdom.

Bruce Johnson makes a juvenile straight arrow of Telemachus. Kim Scown offers a superb comic cameo as the gluttonous Irus. Ken Remo transforms the faithful shepherd Eumaeus into the scarecrow of Oz. Angelique Burzynski makes Juno a marvelous mock-diva in silly pink. Lisa Turetsky borrows Ulysses’ wheelchair as the wise old maid with the inevitable contralto voice.

Catherine Swartzman and Robin Buck as the stock servants provide erotic as well as comic relief. Louis Lebherz contributes a basso-buffo Neptune, complemented by William Olvis’ heldentenorial Jove. Matthew Lau, John Collis and Paul Johnson glower magnetically as the suitors.

Everyone acts with fine, quirky relish. Everyone sings with extraordinary security, and with fervor or grace as needed. Everyone articulates the English translation with urgency and clarity. Still, one has to worry about the viability of the vehicle at hand.

Monteverdi’s subtle recitatives and arias--sometimes florid, sometimes poignant, sometimes amusing, sometimes quaint, sometimes merely decorative--do not offer much dynamic variety to ears accustomed to romantic indulgence.

The artful musical conventions may have lost their immediacy. The original theatrical devices have declined in emotional compulsion.

An iconoclast leaves “Ulysses” after three generous hours feeling benumbed rather than elated. For all the lofty intentions involved, tedium looms constantly, disrespectfully, on the horizon.

The thoughtful, irreverent, surprisingly apt staging scheme serves first as intellectual enhancement. Then it functions as distraction. Ultimately, it merely lulls impatient 20th-Century sensibilities.

For at least one potentially sympathetic observer, the elegant stylization and leisurely pace of the ancient rituals offer diminishing emotional returns. Even when adorned with dazzling modern trappings, even when sung with pointed beauty, Monteverdi remains very distant and very long.

And life is very short.