Opera : Focus on Drama in Costa Mesa’s ‘Cavalleria,’ ‘Pagliacci’

The cobblestone proscenium, an otherworldly landscape and the vividly black sky remain. Otherwise, many of the signature details of Jean-Pierre Ponnelle’s controversial, 1976 production (for San Francisco Opera) of “Cavalleria Rusticana” and “Pagliacci” have disappeared.

What has been rediscovered in the traditional pairing of Mascagni’s and Leoncavallo’s verismo one-acters, which opened the 1991-92 season of Opera Pacific on Saturday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, is their dramatic power. At the risk of making melodrama out of tragedy, director Jay Lesenger has refashioned, quite orthodoxly, but with a fresh eye, these familiar scenarios.

Not every moment of Lesenger’s mostly fluid and credible stagings is thoroughly convincing--now and again, simplistic gestures and unthought-through symmetry spoil the picture--but much of the dramatic scheme works and restores what can be tired rituals to revelations for the eye.

As composers use silence, so Lesenger sometimes chooses the visually static to balance and contrast the intensity of the musical scores.

He has willing, if not always masterly, assistance from veteran conductor--not all veterans are heroes--Anton Coppola, who usually keeps the resourceful Opera Pacific Orchestra moving along at a regular pace. Despite wonderful instrumental moments--every appearance of the horns, for instance--the pit band proved more game than solid. After the “Cavalleria” Intermezzo, for example, there materialized an unfortunate series of sloppy musical entrances.

The opening-night casts also performed inconsistently, although, singer-for-singer, they responded well to the stage director’s schemes.

In “Cav,” Celine Imbert, a young, pretty and little-known soprano from Brazil, began her Santuzza unevenly but soon produced handsome and plangent tones. Her acting could be believed, even--or perhaps especially--when it seemed to cause her a recurring shortness of breath.

Equally promising is her Turiddu, Fabio Armiliato, a young tenor from Genoa whose slight, slender figure belies a voice evidently on the way to genuine size and quality.

The rest of the Mascagni singers were dominated by the booming Mamma Lucia of Camellia Johnson--watch this one, who assumes the role of Santuzza at the final performance, Sunday. Kathleen Segar looked and sounded matronly but acted a convincing Lola; Robert McFarland proved a standard-issue Alfio.

The large, nicely balanced and resonant chorus, trained by Henri Venanzi, sang lustily here, even more so in “Pagliacci.”

In Leoncavallo’s masterpiece, the 52-year-old Ermanno Mauro, in his belated debut with the Orange County company, became a Canio of brooding theatricality and controlled vocalism--not exactly fresh or beauteous in sound, but effectively utilizing his considerable resources. Without going over the top, he gave a full-throated, histrionically believable performance.

As an actor, Marianna Christos proved expert in the detailing of Nedda’s mood swings and reactions of the moment; vocally, she sometimes sacrificed tone for drama. McFarland as Tonio and Jeff Mattsey as Silvio gave exciting theatrical, if musically inconsistent, performances. As can and often does happen in this opera, Beppe, here sung by the gifted and accomplished William Livingston, turned in the most elegant singing in the show.

Ponnelle’s sets, seen from halfway back in the orchestra section, seem not yet to show their age. Of course, they had the best possible assistance, it appeared, in the varied and unobtrusive lighting design of Marie Barrett.