SALZBURG DIARY : Grim Janacek Opera in a Festive City

Oversimplification is a popular sport in feverish Salzburg. Listen to the gossip in the coffeehouses. Read the speculation in the papers.

The saintly but conservative, formidable yet self-glorifying Herbert von Karajan is gone. The sophisticated but brash, wise yet iconoclastic Gerard Mortier has taken over.

Under the circumstances, observers--including some in the presumably enlightened American press--look for innovative symbols even where there are none.

Take, for example, the elaborate production of Leos Janacek’s “From the House of the Dead” (a.k.a. “Z Mrtveho Domu”) at the Grosses Festspielhaus. Although written in 1928, this opera happens to be the first by the Moravian master to be ventured at this glamorous international festival. As such, it has been treated in some quarters as a modernist breakthrough.

Forget all that.

“From the House of the Dead” merely continues a healthy if sporadic Salzburg tradition. Even in the Dark Ages, the festival played dutiful, prestigious host to “Wozzeck” and “Moses und Aron,” to premieres of Berio, Cerha and Penderecki, not to mention Von Einem, Barber, Orff and Frank Martin. Mozart has always enjoyed the company of a few 20th-Century composers in his glamorous hometown.

That may be so, the conservatives concede, but look at the modern staging given “From the House of the Dead.” Surely that reflects Mortier’s revolutionary influence.

Balderdash.

It isn’t modern at all. Klaus Michael Gruber has created a strangely passive and reasonably realistic action scheme. The only serious aberrations involve a silly dancer in a bird costume representing the symbolic eagle and a huge, bald tree that serves as temporary haven for the young prisoner Alyeya.

Eduardo Arroyo, the Spanish expatriate writer and artist, has designed spare, picturesque sets. They serve primarily to prettify Janacek’s elemental drama of agonized yearning and inevitable death.

Much of Janacek’s grim, compact, incredibly inventive score now sounds romantic to ears conditioned to avant-garde abrasion. The Salzburg authorities opted for the vaguely optimistic ending that contradicts the composer’s original intentions.

Nevertheless, this episodic setting of Dostoevsky’s dark narrative demands an air of bleak desperation. Concentration camps cannot be an abstraction for those with long memories in Austria. They aren’t even an abstraction for those who read a daily paper in the ghastly summer of 1992. Nevertheless, Gruber and Arroyo have sanitized their vision of 19th-Century Siberia.

Despite half-shaved heads, the prisoners look much too comfortable, much too well-fed, much too prosperous. The landscape, for all its poetic stylization, looks much too warm, much too neat, much too placid.

The obvious contrasts between image and text could, if properly focused, register as intentional ironies. Unfortunately, they don’t.

In a strange way, the music-making on Monday matched the dramatic concept. Claudio Abbado conducted an impeccable vocal ensemble on the hopelessly broad stage and a suitably inspired Vienna Philharmonic in the exposed pit with sweeping intensity, with a keen ear for melodic detail and an astonishing array of vibrant orchestral color. This obviously was a virtuoso performance by a world-class ensemble.

Unfortunately, it seemed too smooth, too refined and, if you will, too sophisticated to reinforce the cruel, primitive accents inherent both in the score and the drama. This was romanticized Janacek--Janacek with little blood, less sweat and much champagne.

The heroic cast was dominated by Monte Pederson, an extraordinarily promising young American baritone who sang the monologue of the betrayed prisoner Shishkov with broad tone and incisive temperament. Philip Langridge mustered the hysteria of the cobbler Skuratov with focused pathos. Barry McCauley brought muted power to the stoicism of Luka.

Especially sensitive cameos were contributed by Elzbieta Szmytka as the Tartar boy Alyeya, and Heinz Zednik as the crusty old prisoner Shapkin. Nicolai Ghiaurov--once Karajan’s charismatic Don Giovanni in Salzburg--tried honestly, if not always successfully, to pretend that the fleeting duties of the aristocratic Goryanshikov did not represent a star turn.

Meanwhile, next door on the stage of the courtly Felsenreitschule (a former riding academy conveniently built into the side of a mountain), Peter Sellars & Co. were busy constructing a mock cathedral and setting up a bank of television monitors for the much ballyhooed opening of Messiaen’s “St. Francois d’Assise” on Monday. Musical officials were worrying if the playing area would accommodate a significantly enlarged percussion section.

The beleaguered Esa-Pekka Salonen and his Los Angeles Philharmonic were forced by unseasonal weather to cancel regular rehearsals in a suburban steam bath called the Orchesterhaus. They moved instead to an air-conditioned hotel ballroom on the outskirts of town.

Mortier, protector of all that is young and novel, is blithely continuing to attack the commercial Establishment here. His mighty target this week seems to be the record industry, and at least one administrative colleague is distancing himself from the Flemish upstart.

The local controversy mongers, in the press and on the crowded streets, are observing the contretemps of the aesthetic enfants terribles --call them Lausbuben --with obvious relish. Salzburg is hoping for a nice little scandal.