MUSIC REVIEW : Wagner Operas Sparkle Under the Sky : Pops: Guest conductor Jack Everly’s unfailing sense of pace proves to be a winner.

When Richard Wagner built his theater in Bayreuth, he expected his devotees to fast before attending a performance of one of his operas. One can but speculate what the egomaniacal composer would have said about Wednesday’s SummerPops program.

While guest conductor Jack Everly led the San Diego Symphony in 10 excerpts from eight of Wagner’s operas, many of the 1,255 in attendance dined leisurely alfresco.

At first, the attention of the assembled Wagnerites at Embarcadero Marina Park South was less than worshipful, but as Everly worked his way through his adumbrated version of the Wagner canon, he won them over. After a particularly majestic reading of the Prelude to Act III of “Lohengrin” on the program’s opening half, one of the Wagner neophytes in attendance uttered an amazed and reverential “Wow!”

Much of Everly’s winning way with Wagner can be attributed to his unfailing sense of pace--whether it was his athletic sortie through “The Ride of the Valkyries” or his contemplative stroll through “Forest Murmurs” from “Siegfried.” His unambiguous conducting style was another factor.

Members of the orchestra could hardly misread his neatly diagramed directions, nor did his authority on the podium elude them. With minor exception, they responded warmly and played with unusual discipline for a midsummer night. (The cause was aided by the presence of nearly all the first-chair players, many of whom find reasons to be absent during the longueurs of the summer season.)

Only the Overture from “Tannhauser” seemed labored, its grand pilgrim theme plodding with metronomic exactitude. The orchestra’s finest moment was its deft and sensuous Prelude to “Tristan und Isolde,” full of shimmering woodwind solos. The ensuing “Liebestod,” however, began tentatively.

Notable for breadth and stately carriage was “The Entry of the Gods into Valhalla” from “Das Rheingold.” Everly introduced his five “Ring” excerpts with concise, witty plot summaries, avoiding both the arch humor of Anna Russell’s classic “Ring” monologue and scholarly pedantry. He compared Wagner’s Teutonic gods and Norse supermen with the heroes of today’s science fiction films, such as Luke Skywalker, and equated the operatic tetralogy’s labyrinthine plots with the excesses of television’s soap operas.

This is the young conductor’s second summer season with the local orchestra and his third week this season. Preparing this all-Wagner concert with the usual modest rehearsal time of the summer schedule clearly demonstrated his uncommon podium prowess. It would be instructive to hear him on a winter subscription concert at Copley Symphony Hall.