MUSIC REVIEW : Pacific Problems With Zajick, Maag

It should have been a terrific concert, Tuesday night at the Orange County Performing Arts Center. Should have been. . . .

The Pacific Symphony, seemingly on the brink of an artistic renaissance, had engaged Peter Maag--a celebrated, multitalented old pro from Switzerland--to serve as guest-conductor. For a stellar soloist, the orchestra turned to Dolora Zajick, a singer with little competition in the sparse contemporary ranks of dramatic mezzo-sopranos.

The semiliterate “Calendar of Events” in the puffy program-magazine managed to get the intended division of labor backward. The innocent reader was promised that “Zajic (sic) would accompany the orchestra.”

In perverse reality, no one really accompanied anyone. And that was just the first of numerous problems.

It would have made good sense if Zajick--who had sung a splendid Amneris in “Aida” here in 1988--had shown Costa Mesa what she can do in more introspective repertory. Some Mahler or Brahms would have been both appropriate and revealing.

But no. Someone decided that she should sing a bunch of unrelated opera arias. She did just that, with much primitive gusto, much luscious tone and little sense of dramatic identification.

Compounding the disappointment, Maag provided rather vague and ponderous orchestral impulses. The Pacific Symphony often responded with harsh timbres and sluggish attacks.

For all her extraordinary vocal opulence, Zajick dispatched two excerpts from Handel’s “Rodelinda,” score in hand, as if they were mere warm-up exercises. Expression remained monochromatic, ornamentation minimal. Maag and the mini-ensemble chugged along behind her.

Matters improved with the splendidly vulgar romanticism of “O, vagabonda” from Cilea’s “Adrianna Lecouvreur,” thanks to Zajick’s brilliant, nearly explosive, top notes and her formidable control of the grand, ascending line. Dalila’s “Amour! viens aider ma faiblesse!” sounded just as lush. If one hadn’t known better, however, one might have guessed that this was an ode to the joys of wood-chopping or motorcycling, not an elemental discourse on seduction.

The Pacific Symphony management added to the interpretive obfuscation, not incidentally, by providing “singing” rather than literal translations--line for inaccurate line. Although the syllables did fit the music, the archaic English words did not fit the original texts.

Responding to decidedly modest applause, Zajick returned for an instant, unannounced encore: “O don fatale” from Verdi’s “Don Carlo.” She threw herself into its wide-ranging passions with breadth, ease and heroic fervor probably not equalled since the golden days of Ebe Stignani. Maag and his followers tried, sometimes successfully, to keep pace.

Having begun this ill-balanced program with an elegant performance of Verdi’s “Luisa Miller” overture, they returned after intermission with Mendelssohn’s “Scottish” Symphony. The folksy rhetoric flowed with reasonable grace and mellow charm, some passing discrepancies of pitch notwithstanding. The pathos never exceeded safe lyrical bounds. Tension never flagged, not even when the maestro paused to savor a poetic detail or a subtle dynamic shift.

Intentions, no doubt, were lofty. The level of technical execution, unfortunately, was not.

Perhaps this conductor and this orchestra need more time to get acquainted.