OPERA REVIEW : A ‘Falstaff’ Revival With Compromises in San Francisco

Some operas virtually play themselves. Give “La Boheme” or “La Traviata” even the most base of basic goods, and it is hard to fail.

Other operas are more delicate. They require special, loving, enlightened care. One can’t just stir and serve Verdi’s “Falstaff,” for instance.

Wednesday night, the San Francisco Opera tried to do just that. The management called up some pretty sets from the warehouse, dusted off the motley costumes and assembled an almost-reasonable cast. So far so mediocre.

Nobody did anything bad. But hardly anyone did anything good enough.

The troubles began at the top. Verdi’s miraculously witty, complex and poignant valedictory requires a great conductor, a brilliant director and a formidable singing-actor in the title role. Terence McEwen, who selected the personnel for this endeavor before handing over the company to Lotfi Mansouri, settled for compromises.

To represent the composer in the pit, McEwen turned to Kazimierz Kord. He is a fine musician, a solid technician, a thoughtful stylist in the right challenge. “Falstaff,” unfortunately, demands a Toscanini, a Bernstein or a Giulini.

Kord kept things moving decently, if a bit ponderously. He got the orchestra to play well, and he accompanied the singers deftly. Ultimately, he gave us prose when we needed poetry.

The production was originally staged and designed in 1985 by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle. As such, it was a fussy enlargement of a pictorial scheme first envisioned for the tiny stage in Glyndebourne in 1976.

The scheme--cold, contrived and cutesy--wasn’t particularly effective then. It really looks drab and mechanical now.

Since Ponnelle’s untimely death in the summer of 1988, his productions have been entrusted to ex-assistants, who assume the unhappy, inflexible task of enforcing old laws even where they no longer make sense. In this instance, Vera Lucia Calabria held the book and functioned as faithful traffic cop.

She can’t be blamed for the general absence of spontaneity. Even if she wanted to, she probably could not have refocused the action (a cackling page boy dares interrupt “Quand’ero paggio”) or elevate the taste (a sloppy servant actually splashes the contents of two chamber-pots all over Mistress Ford’s living room).

Some of Verdi’s--or Shakespeare’s--spark still might have been salvaged by a persuasive protagonist. No such luck.

As the fat knight, Thomas Stewart is neither fat nor knightly. He is tall and imposing (several Don Giovannis within memory boasted bigger paunches). One cannot fathom why he waddles. He is also crusty and amiable, but never very funny, never much of an amorous or social threat, never an eloquent exponent of dignity in decay.

At this stage in his distinguished career, moreover, Stewart tends to merely approximate the vocal line. He never did command a big, juicy Verdi baritone (Wagner was his mezzo-forte). Now, at 63, his resources force him to meet most legato challenges with parlando evasions.

Three of the merry wives turned out to be holdovers from Ponnelle’s original cast. Pilar Lorengar returned bright and matronly as Alice Ford. Marilyn Horne--much slenderized in body, somewhat slenderized in voice--mustered a restrained Mistress Quickly. That must be an oxymoron. Ruth Ann Swenson again floated rapturous pianissimo tones in the love music of Nannetta.

Best among the newcomers in the ensemble was Michel Senechal, a sweetly crotchety Caius. Kathryn Cowdrick held her own spunkily as Meg Page, a role she had undertaken in the student-matinees three years ago.

John David De Haan suggested the boyish ardor of Fenton agreeably, though his lyric tenor tended to evaporate in the wide open spaces. J. Patrick Raftery’s recently resplendent baritone betrayed alarming signs of decline in the gutsy music of Ford. Joseph Frank and David Pittsinger contributed dull caricatures as Bardolfo and Pistola.

In 1985, Ponnelle vetoed the distracting crutch of supertitles. This time, however, the translated lines were flashed across the proscenium, inspiring the non-capacity audience to laugh before the funny lines were uttered.

All the world’s a jest, indeed.