OPERA REVIEW : Cozy ‘Midsummer Dream’ in Santa Barbara

In the fey and fevered woodland of Benjamin Britten’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” mystery and delicacy are at a premium. A countertenor king must exert a commanding vocal presence, and the solemn observances of a children’s chorus of fairy servitors must be both intimate and immediate.

Originally created for the tiny Jubilee Hall at the Aldeburgh Festival, such a place seldom truly thrives in venues with the seating capacity to make a modern professional production viable--it has been tried locally in Shrine Auditorium and, most recently, the Wiltern Theatre.

This week, however, Britten’s night-blooming translation of Shakespeare flourished in Santa Barbara, for three performances in the relatively cozy confines of the 669-seat Lobero Theatre. The enterprising Music Academy of the West staged the 1960 opera affectionately, resourcefully and, ultimately, quite successfully.

Anyone who attended Music Center Opera’s production at the Wiltern in February would have had a strong sense of deja vu in the Lobero. Oberon in black and sequins and heavy eye shadow stalked a seedy patch of mutable woods, styled in conventional, dry-ice Gothic. His slinking, simian spirits crawled about, shifting the vegetation as needed.

There were changes, to be sure. Director Bodo Igesz, of the Met, dispensed with Music Center Opera’s Victorian updating and opening dumb-show. More crucially, he placed a nearly naked Puck in an overtly fawning, fearful relationship to Oberon, removed the physical presence of the Indian page boy who precipitates the rift between Oberon and Tytania, and let the quartet of Athenian lovers fall asleep at the end of Act II still in mismatched couples.

The effect was to downplay external motivations--the object of Oberon’s jealousy, the magic love potion--and suggest that the source of the turmoil, and its resolutions, lay within the characters and their personal relationships. Though attractive as a concept, in practice it proved more confusing than illuminating.

Wednesday, at the final performance, the Music Academy students sang at least diligently and often compellingly and acted with well-drilled, unself-conscious panache. Though there were no vocal titans lurking unheralded in the effective ensemble cast, all produced intelligently and intelligibly.

For all the nocturnal Fairyland subtleties, the bumptious, rustic, would-be-thespians nearly stole the show, thanks in large measure to Robert Lauder Jr. as the blustering Bottom. All the rustics--Bruce Rameker, Scott Blois, Wei Long Tao, Alan Crawley, Allen Reynolds--defined their roles keenly, though only Tao’s booming Snug matched Lauder in vocal authority. Their opera-within-the-opera parody proved a model of unlabored farce.

Mark Lee’s Oberon was dramatically regal, vocally reedy when trying to compete with an often overachieving orchestra. Cherie Caluda’s Tytania warbled sweetly over the transformed Bottom, a bit wide in vibrato but otherwise youthful in voice and person. In the speaking, hyper-athletic role of Puck, Robert Williams kept himself and the action in constant motion.

Karie Brown brought to Hermia an even mezzo and self-contained poise, effectively contrasting with the doubting Helena and unforced soprano of Jacque Zander. Tenor Peter Lurie pressed some as the ardent Lysander, partnering the dramatically bland, baritonally resonant Demetrius of Robert Chionis. David Mims was an elegant, vocally stuffy Theseus, with Charlotte Hellekant an imperious, authoritatively gleaming Hippolyta.

The Laguna Blanca Children’s Chorus, directed by Terri Ridilla, provided the attendant fairies, who sang clearly and effectively, some of them engaging in endearing, ad-lib, background jostling. They also played Orff instruments capably and danced demurely for Tytania and Bottom in Act II.

Lawrence Leighton Smith, music director of the Music Academy and the Louisville Orchestra, elicited suitably colorful playing from his student band and urged the musical argument sensitively, though he pushed the lovers’ big second-act quartet literally too fast for words. The Lobero has no pit, so the orchestra was seated immediately before the stage, and the concerted wind efforts frequently overwhelmed the singers.

Craig Edelblut designed the flexible forest set, though his best effect was the descent of four Greek columns to suggest Theseus’ palace in the final scene. Kathryn Masson’s costumes gave Tytania an ungainly bustle and only a slip and fringe below, but put the Athenians in attractive pseudo-Elizabethan garb, color-coding the lovers. Theodore Dolas provided the inconsistent but evocatively moody lighting.