OPERA REVIEW : ‘Holy Blood and Crescent Moon’ Has No Sting : Music: Ex-Police drummer Stewart Copeland puts the music world’s spotlight on Cleveland with premiere of his opera.

This city may boast one of the world’s finest and most famous orchestras. But it is also home to an opera company. Ranked 10th in size among American companies, Cleveland Opera is not famous and decidedly not adventurous, relying mainly on old-fashioned productions of old-fashioned operas and Broadway shows.

Yet, Tuesday night, the company finally had its moment of stardom. It gave the premiere performance of a new opera by a rock star, the first new opera by a pop celebrity, we are told, since “Porgy and Bess.”

The opera is “Holy Blood and Crescent Moon.” The rock star is Stewart Copeland, former drummer of the band, Police. The staging is lavish, cost a million dollars and looks a lot like an extension of Cleveland Opera’s State Theater, a renovated movie palace. And the result turns out to be an old-fashioned production of an old-fashioned opera. Where, you might ask, is the Sting?

Copeland had been commissioned four years ago to write an opera in the hope that he might bring something new to the medium. It hadn’t mattered that the drummer had never heard an opera when he began, or that he lacked basic compositional technique.

It apparently also doesn’t matter that he still mispronounces viola and considers the differences between instruments of the same family to be fine distinctions. He has a computer that can remember, manipulate and make notes of what he plays. He has a synthesizer that demonstrates the instrumental sounds. And that has been good enough for him to produce a ballet score and film along with television background music.

It was not, however, good enough for opera. In fact, what Copeland has done has been to produce some more background music, this time operatic. Some of it is admittedly engaging, especially when it is rhythm driven, as in the swashbuckling battle scenes. But Copeland seems determined not to rely upon his strengths as a pop musician, and most of “Holy Blood and Crescent Moon” comes dangerously close to grand opera parody.

Set to a stilted libretto by British playwright Susan Shirwen, “Holy Blood” is a contrived but potentially explosive drama examining Middle East tensions, paralleling the religious fervor during the Crusades with current situations. Shirwen’s characters include a temperate and cultivated Palestinian ruler, a somewhat reasonable Christian king, a prince who is believed by a controversial sect to be the descendant of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. But all voices of moderation are stilled by warlike religious fanatics on both sides, while the prince is torn between attraction for the Grand Wazir’s steamy daughter and the Christian king’s vapid one.

To bring this to life, Copeland produces fast squiggles (the composer’s own term) for the fast parts and lush strings for the slow ones, just as he would for the movies. He gives the Muslims vaguely sinuous Oriental squiggles and the Christians more forthright ones. The singers sing just like in real opera, only they sing a sort of formless arioso over the orchestral squiggles. The choral writing is simplistic, with few attempts at real counterpoint.

With Cleveland Opera General Manager David Bamberger’s hokey production putting the stultifying final touches on the work, little could be expected from singers given such slight musical or theatrical oppportunity for character development, while dressed as if for a ‘50s B movie.

Still, Jon Garrison, as Prince Edmund, contributed a useful bright tenor; Edward Crafts made a reasonably commanding Grand Wazir, and Gloria Parker was his passionate daughter. A strange touch was entrusting the ayatollah-like Imam to a raucous countertenor, that of Tom Emlyn Williams. The rest of the large cast pretty much blended in with the fancy woodwork.

In the pit, Imre Pallo did little to make the many awkward transitions sound convincing, but the chorus, given pallid unchallenging part-writing, was just fine.

There was, however, a flash of excitement at the end, when Copeland took his bow. Triumphantly running onstage, he jumped all over the place, with his fist in the air, at long last demonstrating the excitable rocker roots that his music had worked so pitifully hard for three hours to deny.