O.C. OPERA REVIEW : Tenor Strong in ‘Samson’ : Music: Vladimir Atlantov’s voice is huge at the Center’s Segerstrom Hall, but the overall production is unstylish.

“Samson et Dalila,” which Opera Pacific ventured Wednesday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, doesn’t represent an easy challenge for any company.

If the old-fashioned quasi-biblical spectacle isn’t re-created with dramatic conviction, the opera resembles a singing comic book. If the sentimental score isn’t performed with a reasonable facsimile of elegance, the enterprise teeters on the brink of perfumed caricature.

Make that cheap perfumed caricature.

The grandeur of Saint-Saens’ romantic rhetoric demands generous forces--a massive chorus, a lavish orchestra, a hootchy-kootch ballet. The climactic scenic devices require sophisticated stagecraft.

Most important, however, “Samson et Dalila” needs a heroic yet sensitive Samson and a wily yet sensuous Dalila. It needs flamboyant singers--singers equally adept at muscular bravura and introspective radiance.

Singers like that are hard to find. Opera Pacific didn’t find them on this occasion. But in the case of Vladimir Atlantov, the celebrated Russian tenor who portrayed Samson, the company did come close.

Atlantov’s voice is huge. In the odd acoustical ambience of Segerstrom Hall it sounds more than huge. With its dark, baritonal timbre, its fierce cutting edge and easy, ringing top, it inspires instant awe.

In a desperate day when lightweight tenors lay claim to heavyweight challenges, one longs to hear Atlantov, now 53, as Otello. One cannot but wonder what power he might lend the blighted heroes of Wagner.

He certainly has the potential to be a Samson without contemporary peer. To realize that potential, however, he would have to do more than sing loud and look strong--which is about all he did in Costa Mesa.

Atlantov ignored most opportunities for dynamic shading. He settled for only the most generalized projection of character. He mangled the French text. Still, he did make a mighty, thrilling noise. One should be grateful.

Ludmila Schemtchuk, his Dalila, turned out to be another alumnus of the Bolshoi and, as such, another artist with obvious linguistic limitations. Impersonating the treacherous Philistine priestess for the first time in her career, she revealed an opulent, broad-scaled mezzo-soprano and an alarming lack of expressive finesse.

She sounded tough, coarse and unsteady, even in moments of languid allure, and offered little histrionic compensation for vocal crudity. Here, alas, was a prima-donna vamp whose blandishments seemed eminently resistible.

The secondary roles were entrusted to Yalun Shang, a mellifluous High Priest; Kevin Bell, a reasonably assertive Abimelech, and Gregory Stapp, a deeply sonorous, slightly wobbly Old Hebrew. The chorus, trained by Henri Venanzi, sang with welcome resonance and surprising urgency.

In the well-staffed pit, Mark Gibson attended efficiently to Saint-Saens’ indulgent sprawl, curbing excesses wherever possible. He made the most of cool, attentive restraint.

Jay Lesenger, the ever-resourceful stage director, did what he could with a less-than-ideal cast and with decors by Beni Montresor inherited from the Teatro Municipal in Santiago, Chile.

The stark, modified-unit set reinforced some poetic images, especially in the opening scene. Eventually, however, Montresor let realistic detail clash with abstract definition, and the reflection of stage lights on the Mylar temple facades introduced an odd suggestion of Brechtian alienation. As usual, the designer’s penchant for golden-glitz costumes smothered the characters and invoked the aura of old-Italian Christmas-tree ornaments.

In the would-be orgiastic Bacchanale, Helena Ross devised some quaint aerobic exercises for members of the Los Angeles Classical Ballet. The stellar soloists, whose names were buried in the wrong part of the program, turned out to be two more refugees from the Bolshoi: Alla Khaniashvili-Artyushkina and Vitali Artyushkin. Between cliche lifts, she lounged on an altar in a funny body stocking and he struck beefcake poses.

The non-capacity audience shrank as the evening progressed. Those who stayed to the end gasped in appreciation when the temple walls came a-tumbling down.

Opera is alive but not as well as one might hope in Orange County.

Vladimir Atlantov and Ludmila Schemtchuk sing the title roles in “Samson et Dalila” Sunday at 2 p.m. and March 5 at 8 p.m. at the Orange County Performing Arts Center 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. John Absalom and Jennifer Jones take over the leads on Saturday and March 6 at 8 p.m. Tickets: $20 to $75. Information: (714) 740-2000 (TicketMaster).