OPERA REVIEW : Music Center ‘Hansel’--Lost in the Woods

An orchestra seat-- any seat downstairs--for the Music Center Opera normally costs $85, and next year the tab goes up $5. For Humperdinck’s “Hansel and Gretel”--which opened this weekend at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, closing the 1991-92 season--the price was only $60.

Only? In the irrational world of opera, everything is relative.

It is unclear if the reduction in entry fees turned Humperdinck’s heavyweight romanticism into a feasible family-attraction. Still, economy was in the air.

One could tell by the casting. The Music Center--which imports Placido Domingo for “Carmen,” Maria Ewing for “Tosca,” and Frederica von Stade for “Barbiere”--certainly wasn’t star-struck, or star-stuck, on this occasion. The only international name on the roster belonged to Ragnar Ulfung, the Norwegian character-tenor who camped up a precious little storm as Rosina Daintymouth, a.k.a. the witch.

Big names do not necessarily ensure high quality. We know that all too well. But, for all its pretense at being a kiddie show, “Hansel and Gretel” requires voices that can hold their own against a thick and heavy Bayreuth band. Although the attractive, lightweight local teams (alternate rosters were employed here) worked valiantly, the obstacles were daunting.

So were some of the physical conditions.

According to a program note, Peter Hemmings, general director of Music Center Opera, chose to utilize supertitles even though the work was being sung in English. The curious reason: “ ‘Hansel and Gretel’ belongs to a long tradition of German opera, and was obviously influenced by Wagner.”

Be that as it may, the infernal supertitle machine broke down on opening night. The audience looked in vain to the blank screen atop the proscenium. The management deemed neither explanation nor apology necessary.

The singers, most of whom made little effort to enunciate the text with much point, were left to their own fuzzy devices. The deft though not terribly literal translation, incidentally, was attributed to Norman Kelley, himself a celebrated Witch a few decades ago.

Then there was the vexing matter of the staging. In the original announcements, Frank Corsaro was promised as director and Maurice Sendak was supposed to be the designer. Who knows what wild things this dynamic duo might have concocted.

In the wake of fiscal constraint, Hemmings & Co. abandoned their plans for a novelty. Instead, they turned to lend-lease practicality.

They borrowed a picturesque production first staged for Dallas a couple of years ago by John Copley and designed by Michael Yeargan. It is, for the most part, handsome and solidly conventional--reasonably realistic in a not-too-grim Grimm tradition.

Copley, who got himself caught in a web of irrelevant vulgarity in the recent “Barbiere di Siviglia” here and in San Francisco, took few liberties with old Humperdinck. Yeargan provided him with a lovely movable forest, a cute, gingerbread house that opened up on command, and a squeaky-clean wardrobe for the pleasant peasants.

Trouble beckoned only when the story transcended nature and the production transcended tasteful restraint. In an orgy of sugar-coated literalism, director and designer turned the winged angels into a glitzy-gilty chorus line worthy of Las Vegas, Botticelli halos notwithstanding. The sweet dew fairy, identified in the libretto as “a little man,” ascended from heaven in a tulip shell, gussied in pink Carol Channing frou-frou.

Sad to say, your faithful scribe cannot report what happened during the vaunted broomstick ride of the marginally wicked witch. The takeoff, presumably spectacular, took place on the wrong side of the gingerbread roof. All that could be seen from mid-left out front was a subsequent maneuver involving a silly little cardboard silhouette that streaked along the cyclorama (first forward. then backward).

Even more anticlimactic was the grand finale, in which the gingerbread children turned into a timid chorus of peeping toddlers. Next to them, Hansel and Gretel looked like Mom and Dad.

None of this would have been too troubling if the singing had been stronger. I know we are dealing here with Hansel and Gretel, not Tristan and Isolde, but bland competence is not enough for these babes in the wood. Not, at any rate, in a house that seats 3,200.

On Friday, Paula Rasmussen introduced an agreeably gangly, modestly mellifluous Hansel opposite the sweet, wispy, slightly strident Gretel of Karen Beardsley. On Saturday, Stephanie Vlahos took over as a nice, impetuous Hansel who sounded feeble but could turn nifty cartwheels. Dale Franzen, his tall, wide-eyed Gretel, piped her music very sweetly and exuded girlish cheer. She also treated the text with gratifying care.

Ulfung was the coy, scene-stealing Witch-in-drag on both nights, but he left vastly different impressions. Friday, bereft of his supertitle crutch, he seemed to be cackling clumsily in the gibberish of a misplaced Mime. Saturday, with the benefit of textual captions, he became crisply, amusingly comprehensible. It was nice to see what he was talking about. If only we could have seen him fly.

There is, incidentally, a long tradition of twilight tenors impersonating the Witch, but Humperdinck intended the role for a dramatic mezzo-soprano. He knew what he was doing.

Apart from the Dew Fairy, prettily chirped by the off-duty Gretel on each night, the secondary roles turned out to be problematic. Peter, the father, should be sung by a lusty dramatic baritone. Michael Gallup had to force his splendid basso-buffo to accommodate the high tessitura on the first night; John Atkins tried in vain to make his lyric resources sound dramatic on the second. Susan Hinshaw was unsteady and incomprehensible as Gertrude, a maternal role that really requires Wagnerian amplitude. Jennifer Wallace’s dark mezzo-soprano sounded a bit unwieldy in the blessing of the Sandman.

Ultimately, Humperdinck was best served in the well-staffed pit. Andrew Litton conducted an expanded version of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra (time for a name change?) with ample brio and with lyrical flow that stopped safely short of sentimental mush.

Incidental intelligence:

Dale Franzen, the second Gretel, has been known until now as Dale Wendel. Apparently she has decided to take on the name of her husband, identified in the program as a member of the Music Center Opera board and as “Placido Domingo’s attorney.”

In his seasonal valedictory, Peter Hemmings cites six “personal highlights” to which he “looks back with affection.” The revealing list includes “Thomas Allen’s deshabille during the opening scene of ‘Don Giovanni’ (and) Rodney Gilfry’s more extreme deshabille in the ‘Largo al factotum.’ ”