MUSIC REVIEW : Orchestra Pays ‘Tribute’ to Bach Beat

In the wake of Peter Schickele’s impending retirement from touring, one thing we’ll learn quickly is whether P.D.Q. Bach can survive without him. The tentative answer from the Irvine Symphony, Sunday afternoon, was yes--as long as everyone sticks to the Urtext , as it were.

Using the modern, intimate facilities of the Irvine Barclay Theatre, P.D.Q. Bach’s half-act opera “The Stoned Guest” received a pretty good, semi-staged performance, one in which several levels of Schickele humor came through. In 32 minutes, Schickele manages to roast Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” to a turn, with a little “Carmen” thrown in for laughs. But as usual, everyone from the aficionado to the casual user of opera is let in on the jokes.

Betty Grimes Tesman’s staging was simple yet sufficient, giving everyone enough room to camp it up. The setting consisted of a dressing table, two clothing racks, a chair and sofa--and George Safire, in the role of Stagehand, manipulated terse flash cards that served as model supertitles.

The cast was dominated by a pair of talented singing comediennes--”mezzanine soprano” Linda Frisch-Jarvis’ flighty Donna Ribalda, and “off-coloratura” Mary Lou Basaraba’s fetching Carmen Ghia, complete with bona fide “Habanera”-style vamping.

While perhaps John Gerhold doesn’t qualify as a genuine P.D.Q. Bach “bargain-counter-tenor,” his Don Octave made do with a touch of falsetto. Aaron Frankel made cuddly, floppy work of the role of Dog, and classical radio personality Rich Capparela made a brief, properly inebriated appearance in the title role of Il Commendatoreador.

Unfortunately, the deliberately rumpled conductor, Peter Odegard, would not merely let Schickele be Schickele, adding some lame shtick of his own throughout the afternoon.

The problem was far more evident in the preceding performance of Mozart’s “Ein musikalischer Spass” (A Musical Joke), in which Odegard simply lacked the comic timing to make his series of gags coalesce--as if Mozart’s hilarious satire needed help.

And while the 13-member orchestra tended to plod through Mozart, one cannot rule out the possibility that this too was part of the show.