OPERA REVIEW : A Tired, Flat ‘Fledermaus’ in San Diego

Johann Strauss’ “Die Fledermaus” brims with charm and cheer, sexy melodies, lilting rhythms, insinuating comedy, naughty satire, even a hint of psychological truth. Too bad most American companies can’t get it right.

The essential problem seems to be a matter of weight and tone. Strauss waltzed lightly--elegantly--through this tongue-in-cheeky essay in erotic intrigue. His source was French, his own orientation Viennese. There is no room in this delicate challenge for ponderous vulgarity. Champagne serves as the central image, not soda pop.

Champagne, alas, doesn’t always travel well. Like the Met and the San Francisco Opera, San Diego has staged a “Fledermaus” chronically deficient in fizz. The performance fell flat at the Civic Theater on Saturday, and the pratfall wasn’t funny.

Although Karen Keltner tried valiantly to sustain a semblance of verve in the pit, the plodding farce on the stage defeated her virtually at every cadence. Wolfgang Weber, an adopted Austrian who should know better, allowed his frantic actors to leer and pounce and prance and mug without shame, constantly poking the audience in its collective ribs. Forget finesse.

To dress up this tired charade, Ian Campbell, the San Diego impresario, retrieved a truck full of window-dressing sets by Oliver Smith and hand-me-down costumes attributed to Ann Roth. Significantly, the San Francisco Opera had discarded these dowdy decors long ago.

Compounding the problems, San Diego chose an oddly unbalanced cast. Karen Huffstodt--the competent, somewhat blowzy, ever-eager Rosalinde--blasted her florid music with Wagnerian generosity. Ronald Stevens--her hyperactive, emphatically undebonair Eisenstein--dispatched his romantic blunders in wiry parlando.

More interesting, and far more successful, was Cheryl Parrish, who played the saucy maid Adele as a hard-boiled dumpling, and traced the bravura flourishes with both sensuality and thoughtful point. No sweet soubrette cliches for her.

As the lyrical Alfred, Douglas Johnson mastered the usual mock-Italian tenor platitudes, but the wonted undertone of amorous urgency eluded him. As Dr. Falke, the should-be cynical mastermind of this dangerous game, Victor Ledbetter projected a vivid baritone and a pallid personality.

Richard McKee blustered earnestly as the amiable Warden Frank. Suzanna Guzman conveyed the dapper boredom of young Orlofsky with aristocratic elan. Beau Palmer seemed understandably embarrassed by the tasteless gags assigned the stammering lawyer, Dr. Blind.

Deprived of topical references and the slightest trace of wit, Zale Kessler reduced Frosch the jailer to a whining, wining, roaring, staggering fugitive from burlesque. One drunk joke can only go so far.

In place of the usual ballet divertissement, Maxine Mahon encouraged the hard-working cast to do a lot of hectic, incidental traipsing, sometimes in mid-aria. It looked clumsy.

This was one of those nights. . . .

Incidental intelligence: Apart from a quasi-Hungarian Csardas , the opera was performed in a British translation by Leonard Hancock and David Pountney (the latter currently doubling as director of a very different challenge by a very different Strauss, “Elektra” at the Music Center). Although the text was not articulated with particular care or flair, one could understand enough words to concentrate on the stage, for once, and to celebrate the absence of those infernally distracting supertitles.

* “Fledermaus” will be repeated Tuesday, Friday, Sunday afternoon and March 13. It will be broadcast in San Diego on KFSD-FM at 8 p.m., March 19.