OPERA REVIEW : The Met Goes Modern--After a Fashion

Of all the major houses in the world, the Metropolitan Opera must be the most conservative. It is a matter of tradition, of taste and of finance.

By most standards, the double bill that was introduced Monday night at Lincoln Center would seem a timid gesture. Bela Bartok wrote “Bluebeard’s Castle” in 1911. Arnold Schoenberg completed “Erwartung” back in 1909.

The mighty Met, however, had discovered “Bluebeard” only in 1974 and abandoned it after a dozen performances. The company had never touched a tone of Schoenberg until this momentous occasion.

Actually, the occasion wasn’t as daring as once envisioned. The two short operas originally were to have been complemented by a third--either Debussy’s “Le Martyre de St. Sebastien” or Dallapiccola’s “Il Prigioniero.” The theatrical mastermind for this stimulating juxtaposition was to have been the inevitably provocative Peter Sellars.

By the time the not-so-well-laid plans were realized, however, the third act and the first director both fell victim to some weird operatic policies and politics. The Met finally settled for a smaller package of 20th-Century masterpieces and wrapped it in second-hand Eurotrash glitz.

To stage the two surviving psychodramas, the management turned to Goran Jarvefelt, an internationally fashionable, mildly controversial gimmick specialist. For trendy modernist decors, the Met enlisted Hans Schavernoch and Lore Haas, set and costume designers who had performed similar service for Vienna three years ago.

To prove that it harbors no consistent concern for the validity of opera as comprehensible drama, the company offered “Bluebeard” in English but “Erwartung” in German. The program magazine didn’t even deem it worthwhile to translate the title. Anyone for “Expectation”?

Essentially, the evening was reduced to an unorthodox indulgence for a misplaced prima donna, Jessye Norman, as accompanied by an inspired conductor, James Levine. The singing was variable. The playing was brilliant. The staging was pretentious.

Jarvefelt (well remembered for the distortions of numerous Santa Fe efforts) and Schavernoch (well-remembered for the high-tech kitsch of his Bayreuth “Ring”) have, of course, ignored the careful theatrical instructions outlined by the composers and librettists.

“Bluebeard” no longer takes place in a dark castle chamber with seven mysterious doors. “Erwartung” no longer takes place in a nightmarish forest. Both operas are forced to inhabit the same shiny set, a mock-marble mausoleum equipped with sliding panels that can reveal missiles, branches, sci-fi panoramas, hootchy-kootchy dancers, piles of bloody gems plus other cheap and useful symbols.

In “Bluebeard,” the room is bare except for a podium that supports the protagonist. The protagonist, not incidentally, executes a profoundly significant partial strip-tease as each door to his psyche opens. Gosh.

In “Erwartung,” the room is strewn with bloody autumn leaves that surround a grand piano bedecked with a Liberacian candelabrum. A convenient corpse appears and disappears on cue, via trusty trap door. Ask not why.

It is all very chic and very silly. The claptrap could even be funny if it weren’t such an affront to Bartok’s brooding, decaying romanticism and Schoenberg’s febrile, ecstatic expressionism.

In “Bluebeard,” Samuel Ramey sang with nice, bland basso fortitude, demonstrated model diction, bared his chest proudly and even doffed his purple wig without cracking a smile. Still, it didn’t mean much.

As his hapless and chronically inquisitive bride, Norman offered more crooning and marking than genuinely expressive singing. She all but faked the climactic high C at the opening of the fifth door, and tended to hide under the orchestral blanket. She did, however, strike grandiose, statuesque poses.

As the victimized heroine of Schoenberg’s monodrama, she traced the mercurial vocal line with verve and reasonable accuracy. Even here, however, she seemed more intent on producing lush sounds than on portraying neurotic tragedy.

Still, she made her loyal fans undeniably happy. The brave ones who stayed to the atonal end gave her the sort of ovation usually reserved for an Isolde or Elektra. The director and designer had to endure a few boos.

And so Bartok and Schoenberg ended up providing a star turn for an old-fashioned diva. Only in New York. . . .