MUSIC REVIEW : Provocative Offering of ‘Lucio Silla’

Weird but sometimes wonderful productions are the stock in trade at Long Beach Opera, where impresario Michael Milenski has been confounding, delighting and enraging his patrons since even before the company had a name and was merely an extracurricular activity of the Long Beach Symphony.

Opening his 14th year, Sunday in Center Theater at the Long Beach Convention Center, Milenski did it again. He produced an unfamiliar work by a major composer-- the composer of 1991, at that--in provocative and unexpected ways.

“Lucio Silla,” written in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s 17th year--it was followed by the better-known, but not more cherishable, “Finta Giardiniera”--has been produced rarely in the 218 years since its premiere in Milan. It finally reached the West Coast of this country in June of this year, for instance.

But it is a worthy vehicle, constructed along rigorously formal lines but containing music of memorable and irresistible beauty, music that, again and again, seems to melt those lines. At the core of “Lucio Silla,” there is a beating heart, as some would say there is not in “Finta Giardiniera.”

What may have, along with other considerations, kept the work from its larger public all these many decades, is its difficulty for singers. That and a dramatic scheme that complains and groans for 2 1/2 long acts, then does a precipitous turnabout into a happy ending at the end of the third.

Still, it is a wonderful piece. Sunday afternoon, the performance--sung in English--started right after 4 and went on until just after 7:30, a long sit but perfectly justified. Aside from the predictable defection by a few patrons before Act III, no complaints should have been heard. Each of the many set-pieces, including an ear-opening, three-movement Overture, is lengthy as well as beauteous, but what one remembers is the musical grace, melodic thrust and dramatic truth in each of them, not their expansiveness.

Two of the five strong principals in the Long Beach production turned out to be big talents still on the first rung of the career ladder. Thus, the real protagonist of the production became the excellent, accomplished and virtuosic Los Angeles Baroque Orchestra (32 players strong), conducted by Patrick Summers.

Summers led an unflagging, handsomely coordinated--in most moments--and effortlessly stylish performance despite the occasionally noticeable inexperience of some of his singers and the presence in the orchestra of a last-minute substitute (due to illness, the company said).

In later scheduled performances (Wednesday and Saturday nights at 8), the young conductor may want to modulate the players’ dynamic enthusiasm; even so, the orchestra seldom swamped the singers.

Carmen Pelton, who sings the role of the heroine, Giunia, may be the best of the lot; she certainly jumped all vocal hurdles with ease, brilliance and plenty of breath, zinged climactic notes above the staff (including at least four high D’s) without strain, and brought warm tone to sustained passages.

As an actress, Pelton may have been hampered by Roy Rallo’s characterization of Giunia as a catatonic--she spends most of the opera, outside her several arias, hanging on to the wall or draped over a chair.

Rallo’s quirky stage direction proved otherwise to be resourceful and sometimes dramatically pertinent, but left many unanswered questions:

Who were those zombies having a little party at the back of the stage during the second scene of Act I? Why does the secondary character, Cinna, pointedly fondle both his male friend, Cecilio, and Cecilio’s female lover, Giunia? Why are those yellow chairs covered in khaki, then uncovered, in Act II? Are they the airport chairs from “King Roger”?

And others.

The second important comer in this cast is mezzo Lynnen Yakes, who portrays Cecilio with the same kind of vocal luster and coloratura flair admired in Pelton’s singing.

William Livingston took the mostly ungrateful title role--one without great or showy vocal challenges--and made of it as much as one probably can. His medium-size, reedy voice and deferential stage manner produced an enigmatic characterization; perhaps that is what the composer and stage director intended. . . . Completing this cast of young comers were Anne Marie Ketchum as Cinna and Lydia Mila as Celia, both singers of high potential and admirable achievement. They sang their demanding arias apparently without effort.

Mark Oehlschlager’s surrealistic, not-quite-minimal sets added emotional resonances to Rallo’s apparently complex psychological insights. Leslie Brown’s costumes, aside from Celia’s Elvis-era party dress, looked handsome. And Kathleen Pryzgoda’s atmospheric, sometimes confusing, lighting supported the concept.

On to “Simon Boccanegra.”