OPERA REVIEW : Music Center Borrows a Jumbled ‘Orfeo’

Remember “Orfeo ed Euridice,” Gluck’s monumental study in classic repose and noble pathos?

Forget it.

For the latest installment in its season of relative esoterica, the Music Center Opera presented a version of the opera on Wednesday that distorted or, worse, denied most of the inherent stylistic impulses. This turned out to be just another tedious exercise that contradicted the composer’s intentions in favor of trendy modernism.

Similar problems beset Mozart’s “Idomeneo” just last week at the Music Center. But that unhappy effort at least had some inspired music-making in its favor.

This one turned out to be an inept jumble of theatrical gimmicks in hapless support of a dubious star turn, with discreet accompaniment emanating from the pit. After all those years of operatic deprivation, Los Angeles deserves better.

The star, cast as the grief-stricken hero, was Marilyn Horne. At 56 (or 61--it depends on which encyclopedia one chooses to believe), she still commands a prodigious technique. She still can boast reasonably potent vocal resources.

She can toss off a bravura challenge such as “Addio, o miei sospiri” with dazzling speed and decent precision. She respects Baroque performance practices enough to stress the dotted rhythms and add melodic embellishment in “Che faro senza Euridice.”

It would be unrealistic, however, to claim that her tone is now invariably fresh and pure. It would be difficult to ignore her recurrent pitch problems. And it would be silly to pretend that she takes the drama very seriously.

Horne is a diva who likes to stand, strike poses and sing. The poses on this occasion looked perfunctory, and the singing was eccentric if not egocentric, labored if not harsh. Undaunted, her fans bestowed the usual push-button ovations.

The theatrical concept, decors and costumes were borrowed from the Santa Fe Opera, where the same production received a less than ecstatic reception last summer. Steven Rubin’s ugly set--a series of flexible panels, ramps and steps surrounded by Brechtian banks of lights--was designed for the wide, open, alfresco stage in New Mexico.

Santa Fe has no curtain, no facilities for hanging scenery. Primitive theatrical devices are a necessity there, and some directors make that a virtue. The same primitive devices look odd within the conventional proscenium of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, a well-equipped theater that cannot offer the consoling charms of Los Alamos blinking in the distance.

Lamont Johnson, the stage director, came to “Orfeo” with primary credentials in film and television. He cluttered the action with irrelevant business, repeatedly shifting the focus away from the principals in moments of crisis. He never seemed to trust the fundamental dynamics of the score.

In collaboration with his misguided choreographer, Kimi Okada, he added the anachronism of nine clumsily aggressive modern dancers from the Oberlin Company in San Francisco. They dashed, bumped, jerked and jumped nervously about the stage, even when serenity was dictated by both music and text.

They clashed with the idiom of timeless antiquity and reduced mythology to farce. As outfitted by Rubin, they resembled rejects from a road company of “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.”

Johnson fussed with a muddled repertory of props. The ubiquitous dancers did a lot of waving and stretching of picturesque sheets. Orfeo clutched but never plucked a mock lute. The timid Furies modeled exotic masks. Projections devised by Larry Reed gave us Asian shadow puppets on the side panels one moment, invocations of Jean Cocteau the next.

Amore, sweetly piped by Tracy Dahl, resembled a pudgy little cartoon cupid in an Offenbach operetta. Perhaps the director thought this was “Orpheus in the Underworld.”

Benita Valente introduced a tasteful, somewhat matronly Euridice whose gentle lyrical flights tended to get lost in the hokey melee. The chorus looked as scraggly as it sounded.

It was one of those nights.

The conductor in Santa Fe had been Lawrence Foster. He, one assumes, was responsible--along with Horne--for the editorial decisions that fused elements of Gluck’s two versions of the opera (1762 and 1774) with romantic amendments from such disparate sources as Berlioz, Saint-Saens and the diva Pauline Viardot-Garcia. Various bastardized traditions were accommodated here.

For the local performances, the baton passed to Randall Behr. Ever sensitive and ever wise, he followed more than he led. The Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra sounded tired.

Perhaps next time. . . .