A Smorgasbord of Mush : Andrew Lloyd Webber’s quasi-opera is haunted by many phantoms

Contrary to widespread and ultra-popular opinion, Andrew Lloyd Webber is no Mozart. He isn’t even a Salieri.

But he is very clever. Give him that.

He can write pompous grand-opera music almost in the manner of Meyerbeer. He can crank out cutesy opera-buffa music that might pass for Cimarosa if not Rossini.

When he wants to sound modern, he can toss off a half-decent imitation of half-digested Stravinsky. At sentimental-ballad time, he can dress up quite convincingly as a poor man’s Puccini.

He can play around knowingly with exalted diva and divo caricatures. He can disguise conversation as recitative. He can deal effectively with sophisticated concertato confusion, crisply with D’Oyly Cartian chatter. He can provide quaint hippety-hop accompaniment for ballet divertissements.

He must be the most efficient, and most prosperous, compositional chameleon ever to spread happy hysteria from the West End to Broadway to the Music Center. The trouble doesn’t set in until he wants to write music on behalf of himself.

It is hard to know if and when the real Andrew Lloyd Webber really stands up in “The Phantom of the Opera,” currently driving the masses mad at the Ahmanson Theatre. He seems to try to stand periodically in this super-slick quasi-serious musical comedy. Most of the time, alas, he seems to stumble.

The whole world may want to hum “The Music of the Night,” the melodic contour of which happens to bear a canny resemblance to “Come to Me, Bend to Me” from “Brigadoon.” It probably is the closest thing to a bona-fide hit song in the show. Nevertheless, it isn’t much of a song.

For all its simplistic appeal, the ballad remains banal, inane, harmonically crude. It owes much of its appeal to Michael Crawford, the charismatic baritone who croons it in such insinuating, impeccably amplified mezza-voce tones.

Incidentally, one must not blame Lloyd Webber, if--inadvertently or not--he has taken a leaf from Frederick Loewe. That isn’t a major problem.

Beethoven borrowed from Mozart. Strauss borrowed from Wagner. Strauss also borrowed from Strauss. The 12 tones of our common scale can only yield so many permutations and combinations.

The issue isn’t where the material comes from, but how the composer recycles it. Lloyd Webber’s recycling tends toward laziness. When the cadences are down, he cannot resist the easy effect.

His presumably serious songs--as opposed to his obviously parodistic ones--bog down in mush of various unrelated flavors. There is bubble-gum rock mush, high-flying lyrical mush, ardent dominant-tonic mush, bombastic hit-’em-in-the-face mush. There even is some peppery I-wish-I-were-Stephen-Sondheim mush.

“The Phantom of the Opera” offers a veritable smorgasbord of musical mush. It isn’t bad, mind you, as mushy smorgasbords go. It just shouldn’t be confused with haute cuisine.

In some ways, the show sounds better here than it did in New York. The vast open spaces of the Ahmanson reinforce the wonted opera-house ambience.

The amplification system in this hall is relatively kind to the voices, even though it allows some confusion as to who is singing what and when. On occasion, the protagonists still must resort to lip-syncing pre-recorded lyrics.

The Los Angeles echoes are less obtrusive than their Manhattan counterparts. Although the dynamic level can reach deafening heights at the Ahmanson, the dynamic scale is surprisingly broad. Once in a while, one actually can hear some pianissimo passages. In this raucous context, one must be grateful for soft favors.

The charismatic Crawford, one of the few principals who boasts no genuine operatic credentials, has become a microphone virtuoso virtually without peer. He has learned to tame the electronic monster, creating remarkably subtle vocal effects within a primitive expressive milieu.

Even at his eeriest, he caresses the legato line and projects the text with illuminating care. He goes far beyond the limits of Sprechgesang .

Dale Kristien, the latest ingenue-turned-prima-donna, probably commands just a peep of a voice. Only her sound designer (yes, Giuseppe, that’s his official title) knows for sure.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter. In the stratospheric utterances Lloyd Webber tailored for his wife, Sarah Brightman, Kristien sings with arresting purity, grace and verbal clarity.

Reece Holland brings toothy musical-comedy attitudes to the obligatory platitudes of Raoul, her incipient lover. He emerges from the sticky proceedings as just another tenoral wimp.

The bona-fide opera singers who actually play opera singers go about their exaggerated duties with surprising restraint. There may be time for charades later, when director Harold Prince leaves town.

Leigh Munro, celebrated as Verdi’s Violetta and Puccini’s Magda in Beverly Sillsville, cackles and preens most expertly as Carlotta. Unlike Judy Kaye, her irresistible predecessor in the role, she doesn’t bother to pay sly homage to Renata Scotto or any other colorful colleagues.

By the same token, Gualtiero Negrini, the resident tenorissimo, makes a burly noise without trying to invoke the phantom of Pavarotti, as had David Romano on Broadway. Nor does Negrini look quite so splendiferously ridiculous when he models an ornate costume worthy of Caruso as Radames and clambers atop that mighty wheeled elephant in the “Hannibal” episode.

Incidentally, Maria Bjornson’s spectacular period decors for the operas-within-the-play suggest images lifted from an ancient issue of the “Victor Book of the Opera.” This is the right fanciful stuff.

Roger Cantrell, who knows his way around such operatic challenges as “Carmen” and “Il Barbiere di Siviglia,” conducts a large, resourceful pit band with verve and, where possible, with finesse. It isn’t his fault that the music sounds canned.

In a way, it even seems appropriate. Other key elements in this massive production seem canned, too. The problem is fundamental.

For all its theatrical glitz, its lofty flirtation and prissy pretension, this quasi-opera is haunted by many phantoms. There is less here than meets the ear.