COMMENTARY : ‘Oklahoma’ At The Music Center : Strange Priorities, Odd Perspectives at the Opera

Why do opera companies stage musical comedies?

The responsible parties offer noble explanations--lofty platitudes about respecting and protecting the great American heritage of musical theater. You may have read some of those platitudes in these pages just last week.

Forget the rationalizations. Opera companies really stage musicals for one basic reason: They tend to be profitable.

Ah, commercialism. That’s the kindest of several possible words that spring to mind.

The New York City Opera may have ventured “Pajama Game,” “South Pacific” and “The Sound of Music.” But these efforts, which received mixed reviews at best, were offered during segregated post-season runs. They certainly weren’t integrated into the Mozart-Verdi-Puccini repertory.

Don’t let anyone tell you there was anything operatic in the revivals of these shows. The presumed high-brows at Lincoln Center didn’t apply lofty musical standards to the popular entertainments.

They didn’t cast opera singers in crucial roles. They didn’t dabble in crossover experiments. They merely drafted some Broadway talent and pretended that the summer-stock improvisations of hoary yore were still viable.

It happens in Costa Mesa too. First, Opera Pacific scraped together a bus-and-truck version of “West Side Story,” then a modest “My Fair Lady.”

There is nothing wrong with the basic idea. The opera and the musical--like the farmer and the cowman--can be friends.

It might really be interesting some day to encounter consistently superior voices in musical comedies, to have the old hits restudied with the advantage of a serious opera-house perspective. Unfortunately, musicals presented by opera companies tend to fuse the worst of both worlds.

Take “Oklahoma!” as performed by an unreasonable facsimile of the Music Center Opera. It is, without much doubt, a pleasant diversion.

Richard Rodgers’ inspired score remains a revelation (eat your mask out, Andrew Lloyd Webber). The cast is generally attractive and uniformly attentive. In the case of Rodney Gilfry’s Curly, it is considerably more than that.

To these eyes, Charles Abbott’s direction looks like an orgy of cliches, and John Lee Beatty’s sets resemble primitive distortions. But Randall Behr conducts an excellent chorus and a splendid orchestra with classy bravado. The audience on Saturday night went away obviously happy.

Still, the production raised some discomforting questions. So did the fuss surrounding the production.

Contrary to popular opinion, “Oklahoma!,” which opened in 1943, was not the first musical to attempt a serious fusion of book, song and dance. “Show Boat” paved the way 16 years earlier, and it, too, had some formidable predecessors.

The most progressive element in “Oklahoma!,” without question, was Agnes de Mille’s choreography. It always sprang from the action and, in the celebrated dream sequence, it actually explored the psychosexual relationship between the heroine and the two men in her life: the innocent Curly and the shady Jud.

The Music Center Opera treats the ballet with shocking disdain. Mary Jane Houdina’s elementary dance numbers either rip off De Mille’s historic contributions or, worse, trivialize them.

Poor Jud doesn’t even dance in Houdina’s dream ballet. He doesn’t have a double. The singer just walks on and strikes poses.

The cuts are cruel. The movement patterns look prosaic. The dancing per se is lazy at best. We don’t even get to see the famous Girl Who Falls Down.

De Mille was far better served in the revival staged at the Pantages in 1979. And that production claimed no fancy operatic lineage.

Equally disturbing is the matter of amplification. Everyone--repeat, everyone--on the Music Center stage wears a body microphone. The sound is grotesque, loud, unnatural, distorted.

The deafening noise, it must be remembered, is provided by a bona-fide opera company. It insults intelligence, as it assaults the senses.

Gilfry didn’t need amplification to be heard as Mozart’s Figaro in the same house earlier this season. Local operagoers know that Michael Gallup, the nasty Jud, commands a booming basso. Rebecca Eichenberger, the pretty Laurey, certainly sounds as if she would be qualified for Mozart’s Zerlina or Puccini’s Musetta.

When “Oklahoma!” opened at the St. James Theatre in 1943, the unforgettable Alfred Drake required no electronic boost as Curly. Body mikes had not yet become a universal disaster.

Broadway houses are, of course, not as big as opera houses--nor as big as the 3,000-seat Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. But Drake could have competed honorably with Lawrence Tibbett, his baritonal counterpart at the 4,000-seat Met. And audiences in that unamplified house had no trouble hearing Patrice Munsel, whose soprano probably was smaller than that of the original Laurey, Joan Roberts.

It is a matter of vocal projection. It is a matter of concentrated listening. It is also a matter of artistic integrity.

The director of our quasi-operatic “Oklahoma!” claims that contemporary Broadway cannot afford the large cast that this show requires. Anyone who has seen “Les Miserables” or “Cats” or “Phantom” knows that the claim is balderdash.

The Music Center Opera mustered only seven bills this year. The agenda included no Wagner, no Strauss, no Rossini, no Donizetti, no Bellini, nothing French or Russian.

We deserve Rodgers and Hammerstein revivals, under the best possible conditions. Other organizations, however, can borrow decors from Minnesota and put together an essentially unoperatic, hand-me-down version of “Oklahoma!”

There seems to be something wrong with our priorities.