OPERA REVIEW : Berg’s ‘Lulu,’ Cautious and Complete, in San Francisco

Lotfi Mansouri, the new head of the San Francisco Opera, has staged 42 productions since he first came here in a relatively lowly position 26 years ago.

His two predecessors as general director, Kurt Herbert Adler and Terence McEwen, used him primarily as a bread-and-butter chef. Mansouri was the pro they turned to when they needed a quick, cheap and easy yet decent “La Boheme” or “Carmen.” He was the obvious choice, moreover, to assemble a nice, neat, decorative package to show off the favored box-office attraction of the moment--be it diva (Sutherland, Sills, Scotto, Caballe or divo (Pavarotti, Domingo).

Everyone admired Mansouri’s resourcefulness and intelligence, his skill and dedication. No one thought of him, however, when it came to difficult and elaborate theatrical challenges in which the work, not the star, happened to be the thing.

For better or worse, Mansouri never was a fashionable experimentalist like Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, Nikolaus Lehnhoff or Pierluigi Pizzi. He wasn’t a “concept” director. He didn’t rethink masterpieces, second-guess composers, dabble in modernist abstraction or impose heavyweight symbolism. He didn’t countenance gimmickry or take stylistic liberties. He was good old reliable Lotfi.

One couldn’t blame Mansouri if, after all that work and all these years, he didn’t like that image. This season, he took a major step toward contradicting it: He cast himself as stage director for a lavish new production of Alban Berg’s momentous “Lulu”--the first production on the West Coast of the complete “definitive” three-act version that has been in circulation for a decade.

This not-so-little “Lulu” is, in its cautiously conservative fashion, an emphatic success. It follows the composer’s orders. It dots just about every dramatic i while it tries valiantly to cross every musical t .

Mansouri’s “Lulu” looks fine, works fine. It makes exemplary sense on its own conventional, reverential terms.

Nevertheless, for at least one critical ingrate, it lacks the illuminating, inspiring spark of fresh perspectives and new ideas. It recalls many a solid effort in the better German houses of the 1960s, yet it hardly dares go further. Observing its dutiful progress on Saturday, one couldn’t help but wonder what Peter Sellars might have done with this and imagine what Harry Kupfer could have done with that. . . .

At least Mansouri didn’t try to be different for the sake of being different. Give him credit for that. Aided by Gunther Schneider-Siemssen’s stylized set fragments, evocative scrims and primitive film inserts, abetted by Michael Whitfield’s gutsy lighting, the director knowingly used the old circus-menagerie metaphor to frame and propel the action. His flexible yet consistent narrative scheme never obscured focus or distorted motivation.

Mansouri’s only directorial liberty involved moving the action forward from the turn of the century to 1931. This conceit made a few textual references dubious and turned Jack the Ripper, Lulu’s ultimate nemesis, into an anachronism. However, the change in period did help justify the fashion-trendy costumes of Bob Mackie, who created a chic series of filmy and flimsy getups for the eternally feminine anti-heroine.

Bravely cast in that difficult, ambiguous role was a promising 26-year-old named Ann Panagulias. Slim, long-legged, dark-eyed and naturally child-like, she exuded appealing innocence throughout. It wasn’t Lulu’s fault, she seemed to insist, that anyone who came near her happened to perish.

Appropriately, Panagulias sang with uncommon sweetness, purity and accuracy. The jagged, awkwardly ascending vocal lines held no terrors for her.

Still, she did encounter a few problems. Her soprano seemed a bit light for this challenge. The lower register sometimes tended to evaporate, and she lacked a certain essential degree of the personal magnetism--call it charisma, if you must. Remember Teresa Stratas as Lulu, and Anja Silja? Remember Evelyn Lear?

Lear, as fate would have it, returned on this occasion as the self-sacrificing Countess Geschwitz, the person who loves Lulu most of all. It was not a wise move. At this juncture in her long career, her tone sounds worn, and the mezzo-soprano tessitura poses a strain. More damaging, she creates a rather prim, sentimental, matronly impression in a role that should be validated by tragic, stoic allure.

Otherwise the casting was persuasive. Victor Braun managed to sustain maximum dignity and sympathy as the agonized Dr. Schon. Barry McCauley defined the desperate ardor of Alwa boldly. Michael Myers sang sturdily as the Painter. Ray Reinhardt mimed Lulu’s silent victims with brilliant economy. Richard Cowan flexed vocal as well as physical muscles imposingly as the Acrobat.

Best of all, perhaps, was Hans Hotter as Lulu’s kindred earth-spirit, Schigolch. The noblest Wotan of them all, now 80, offered a mysterious, magnificently sleazy portrait of dignity in decay. He also projected the German text with clarity and subtle point--a claim that could not be made for many of his colleagues.

John Mauceri conducted the taut, forbidding, ultimately wondrous score as if it were as transparent as Mozart and as Romantic as Brahms. That is high praise.

Unfortunately, he could not always keep the orchestra from overpowering the singers. The blame for that must be shared in part by Berg.

For all his insights and energy, the conductor failed to focus much sound and fury in the reconstituted last act, which drags the playing time to 3 hours and 50 minutes.

Friedrich Cerha’s latter-day editing may indeed respect Berg’s original intentions. The world will never know, however, what alterations and compromises--yes, what cuts--the composer might have sanctioned had he lived to shape the work himself.