OPERA REVIEW : ‘La Gioconda’: Musical Junk Food in S.F.

Ponchielli’s “La Gioconda” is musical junk food, impure and complex.

The convoluted plot lends new meaning to such terms as creaky and melodramatic. The melodies suggest organ-grinder primitivism. The harmonies come straight from some faded Romantic textbook. The formula form sprawls.

None of this should imply, however, that “Gioconda” is either hopeless or worthless. Far from that, it is a junk-food masterpiece.

It offers much to savor, even to cherish, on its own not-so-lofty terms. All it needs is five golden-throated paragons who can serve up the inherent cliches with leather lungs, a smattering of bel-canto finesse and dauntless expressive conviction. The San Francisco Opera provided none of the above at War Memorial Opera House on Sunday afternoon.

The troubles began at the top. Eva Marton played the title role--the chronically tempestuous but fatally sentimental street singer--as if she were a dreary but well-dressed Valkyrie lost in 17th-Century storybook Venice. She did a lot of screaming, a lot of snarling, a lot of wobbling and a lot of prima-donna posing. Unfortunately, she never came close to a pianissimo, an even scale, a genuinely arching phrase or a sympathetic characterization.

As the would-be heroic Enzo, Vyacheslav Polozov (a.k.a. Polosov) sounded like a narcissistic ex-Bolshoi tenor feeling his gingerly way through an unfamiliar Italian challenge. That, of course, is exactly what he is.

The voice per se is bright, attractive and capable of reasonably ringing climaxes. The tone tends toward nasality, however, and the technique seems insecure. “Cielo e mar,” the potential show-stopper, turned into a very bumpy ride.

Cornelis Opthof, replacing the originally scheduled Brent Ellis, gobbled up the cardboard villainy of Barnaba and triumphed, after a fashion, over baritonal constriction. Cleopatra Ciurca bathed the generous amorous platitudes of Laura in neutral mezzo-soprano mush. Sheila Nadler reduced the saintly plaints of La Cieca to a series of contralto croaks. Bonaldo Giaiotti was loud and crude as nasty old Alvise, the friendly wife-killer.

Where are you, Zinka Milanov, Franco Corelli, Leonard Warren, Giulietta Simionato, Mignon Dunn and Cesare Siepi, when we need you?

One knows something is wrong with “La Gioconda” when the ballet earns the biggest ovation. On this occasion, Tracy-Kai Maier, Horacio Cifuentes and Julian Montaner of the San Francisco Ballet brought down the house in the unintentionally silly “Dance of the Hours,” as choreographed by Vassili Sulich.

Where are you, Walt Disney hippos, when we need you?

Kazimierz Kord, who should be employed for serious tasks, conducted with more passion, poise and breadth than the endeavor deserved. Anne Ewers assumed responsibility for the somnolent traffic patterns in the garish, hyper-traditional production designed by Zack Brown and originally staged by Lotfi Mansouri in 1979.

The audience applauded all the hit tunes dutifully. More important, the resident readers laughed at the all-too-literal supertitles as the archaic tragedy of love, hate, betrayal, murder, rape and suicide unfolded.

There has to be a better way.