Music Reviews : Puccini’s First Opera Heard at Ambassador Auditorium

Puccini’s seldom-heard first opera, the mellifluous, melodramatic “Le Villi” (1884), was brought out of mothballs Monday night at Ambassador Auditorium by the enterprising Los Angeles Concert Opera Assn., and cast with three winners of the 1989 Zachary Opera Awards Auditions. Conductor Lalo Schifrin’s understated verismo authority elicited warm and accurate playing from the Young Musicians Foundation Debut Orchestra, and made real aural treats of the opera’s several important dances. “Le Villi” contains Puccini’s most extroverted, high-and-loud operatic chorus part until “Turandot,” 40 years later. Roger Wagner Chorale Institute members did director Jeannine Wagner proud, projecting the text clearly, the treble singers sounding high B-flats without barking or bleating.

Likewise tenor Keith Ikaia-Purdy. One might not be altogether beguiled by his sound, which can turn metallic on top, but he sang with vocal and musical poise, without laboring for breath, freedom or volume in strenuous passages. Yu Chen’s intense manner served better than his sturdy but intermittently focused baritone, and Cynthia Jacoby’s insecure, effortful top compromised her every foray upward. Elsewhere, her attractive soprano proved too flimsy against Puccini’s orchestra.

For openers, Schifrin’s foundation assistant, Jung-Ho Pak, produced faceless conducting and a lethargic, error-ridden reading of Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” Overture, a prosaic perusal of Beethoven’s “Leonore” Overture No. 3 and nearly disastrous accompaniments to arias from “Carmen.”

Melody Rossi, joining Ikaia-Purdy and Chen in relentlessly unidiomatic performances, mistook Carmen for Theda Bara, vamping the audience shamelessly while deploying a bright, clear, hard-bitten mezzo.