OPERA REVIEW : Revelations of a Heroic Order in S.F. : S.F. OPERA

Everybody loves Rossini’s “Guillaume Tell” overture--a tour de force better known, perhaps, as the “Lone Ranger” overture. “Hi yo, Silver,” and all that.

Now, after 162 years, we are catching up at last with the rest of this sprawling, stately, remarkably progressive opera--all 4 1/2 hours of it. Believe it or not, the old overture doesn’t seem so tacky in context.

Commemorating the Rossini bicentennial, the San Francisco Opera has ventured what must be the first major American production of Rossini’s ultimate magnum opus. The results are illuminating.

Truth to tell, “Tell” has its flaws. The opera doesn’t know when to end. It tends to get bogged down in dutiful folk ritual, especially at the outset, and it sanctions a lot of annoying hippety-hop detours.

Rossini sometimes settled for easy cliches when a little inspiration would have been most useful. He also settled for a banal, slow-moving libretto that trivializes poor Schiller beyond recognition.

Nevertheless, this lofty, quasi-historical ode to liberty and the pursuit of sacrificial heroism marks Rossini as a composer of far broader scope than his reputation might suggest. The maestro of Italian buffo intimacy, we discover, could also be a maitre of Gallic grandeur.

The best pages of “Guillaume Tell” offer revelations. Rossini dared undertake some surprising harmonic excursions, built convoluted ensembles into massive, multi-layered climaxes and incorporated telling experiments with exotic instrumental color.

For all its sprawl, “Guillaume Tell” never succumbs to bombast or empty rhetoric. Well, hardly ever.

Writing for the Paris Opera in 1829, Rossini helped pave an expansive way for late Verdi, for epic Berlioz, and in the shimmering transfiguration of the finale, perhaps even for ultraromantic Wagner.

The eminently serious, laudably ambitious production of “Guillaume Tell” at the War Memorial Opera House serves the complex score appreciatively. At the same time, it stumbles rather clumsily over the inherent dramatic hurdles.

The hero of the performance on Wednesday was Donald Runnicles, the new music director in residence. He conducted an authentic, minimally cut edition with abiding passion sensitively counterbalanced by sweeping lyricism. He couldn’t make the orchestra play with consistent precision and, though he tried valiantly, he couldn’t make all the padded passages sound vital. But he did manage to sustain urgency, splendor and grace against considerable odds.

The same could not be said, unfortunately, for Lotfi Mansouri. The general director of the San Francisco Opera staged the proceedings in a variety of styles that muddled narrative coherence and, worse, accentuated the lumbering platitudes of the text.

Together with his eclectic set designer, Gerard Howland, he devised an all-purpose playing area that reduced 14th-Century Switzerland to a raked neo-Bayreuth turntable flanked by glitzy 30-foot mirrors and backed by projections of Disneyesque nature vistas. The clash between faint stylization and quaint realism in this kitsch paradise proved as awkward as movement on the revolving ring and inner disc.

Liz da Costa’s prim period-piece costumes, borrowed from Covent Garden, hardly enhanced the modernist illusions, and Mansouri’s static action scheme did little to enliven the stilted drama. At least the stage compositions were picturesque, and the scene changes swift.

Given the difficult theatrical conditions, the hard-working cast could not be blamed if it seemed to regard the challenge as an elaborately decorated concert. Rossini made cruel demands upon his singers, and the carefully selected San Francisco ensemble met the vocal requirements with unflinching honor. The essential priorities were in order.

Timothy Noble struck sympathetic poses as the patriotic protagonist and sang Guillaume (a.k.a. Wilhelm a.k.a. William) with secure, rolling amplitude. His tone may have been a little too dry and dull for optimum impact in the great apple-shoot aria, “Sois immobile,” but his dignity and authority were constantly reassuring.

Carol Vaness traced the arching legato phrases of Mathilde, the unhappy Hapsburg Princess, with seamless breath and exquisite poise. She mustered easy agility for the florid flights and even proved herself mistress of a perfect trill. She brought limpid tone, dynamic finesse and haunting expressive point to her formidable entrance aria, “Sombres forets,” and actually registered a reasonable facsimile of ardor in the love scenes opposite a less than responsive tenor.

Chris Merritt, her self-absorbed partner, has made something of a specialty of the strenuous vocal duties assigned Arnold--a role that goes very high, stays very high, stretches for even higher climaxes and deals in muscular flamboyance at every turn. He couldn’t make the role seem easy on this occasion, and he didn’t invariably sound mellifluous or even steady. He looked a bit like a caricature from an ancient lithograph. Still, he delivered the impossible goods with disarming conviction and sincere bravado.

Rossini was tough on his tenors. Even the little fisherman Ruodi, a secondary character, revels in stratospheric bravura, and Jorge Lopez-Yanez served the composer’s needs with deft refinement. Janet Williams piped sweetly as Jemmy, the gutsy child who gets the climactic apple shot off his head, and Sandra Walker exerted proper maternal sympathy as Hedwige Tell.

Euro Nava stalked the tilted boards like a misplaced Scarpia as the evil Rodolphe, henchman to Peter Rose’s primitive, stock-villain Gessler. Philip Skinner introduced a more plangent basso as the noble shepherd Leuthold, and Jeffrey Wells was staunchly sonorous as Walter Furst. Dale Travis exuded competence as Melcthal, the short-lived village patriarch.

The all-important chorus, trained by Ian Robertson, made up in fervor for what it lacked in concerted power. The prissy mock-Alpine corps de ballet, executing boondock-Bournonville maneuvers by Robert Ray, remained a source of embarrassment.

“Guillaume Tell,” War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco. Saturday and Thursday at 7 p.m. Closes June 14 at 1 p.m. In French with English supertitles. Information: (415) 864-3330.