OPERA REVIEW : Ewing and Domingo in Another Loud, Lusty Music Center ‘Tosca’

When in doubt, play “Tosca.”

Puccini’s superbly tawdry little melodrama always fills the house, always sends the crowd home humming. It is short, taut, fast and--even in an imperfect performance--instantly effective.

The Music Center Opera has been playing “Tosca” with some regularity for seven years. During its formative period, back in the dark days of 1985, the company imported a rather shabby production from (then West) Berlin, primarily as an easy showcase for a popular tenorissimo: Placido Domingo.

In 1989, the company mustered a semi-newfangled production of its own, with the ex-mezzo soprano Maria Ewing venturing the title role for the first time in her perilously ascending career. On that occasion, the overachieving Domingo was supposed to serve only (only?) as conductor, but he swapped his baton for the hero’s paintbrush when the scheduled merely mortal tenor found himself unavailable at the final performance. No one seemed to mind the switch.

Sunday night, “Tosca” was back at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Ewing returned to the veristic agonies of the diva-protagonist, and Domingo held the stage, not the pit. This was “Tosca” business as usual--loud and lusty business, for the most part, ecstatically greeted by a loud and lusty audience.

The only serious troubles involved John Gunter’s awkward, timid-modernist scenery, created in collaboration with the British director Ian Judge. Placing all the action on a central wedge and literally surrounding every vista with an ornately irrelevant picture frame, the decors created more problems than they solved.

Essentially, this was a production that catered only to the lucky patrons seated in the middle of the house. The sight lines from the sides, even in expensive locations, were blighted. Compounding frustrations, Gunter simply blanked out expansive areas at the left and right extremes of the proscenium in a dull--and vain--attempt to create intimacy within the wide open spaces.

Christopher Harlan, who has taken over the stage direction, tried valiantly to mitigate the miscalculations. He moved much of the action downstage, and made some tactical adjustments to prevent the set from contradicting the text (Tosca no longer stands before an open arch complaining of a locked door). He also toned down some of Judge’s corny theatrics (the evil Scarpia no longer crushes a rose in his fist at the climax of the Te Deum).

Harlan could do nothing, of course, to make sense of the trendy temporal updating that comes with the production concept. Liz Da Costa’s pretty costumes still suggest 1900, while the apparently delirious characters speak of Napoleon and the battle of Marengo. Nor could the young director avoid hiding stage lights behind obtrusive curtains in the starry sky of the last act. Still, he did what could be done with an awkward inheritance.

The principals seemed to be enacting their own habitual charades, some more effective than others. Laissez-faire drama remains a fact of operatic life, especially when the protagonists happen to be seasoned stars and the director happens to be something of a novice.

Ewing was, to say the least, capricious--sometimes mildly impetuous and sometimes wildly mannered. She proved herself a virtuosa of the sensuous pout in the love scenes, a rather kittenish adversary in the game of death with Scarpia (watch the stagy new business with Angelotti’s suicide knife), and something of a zombie in the final act of self-sacrifice. She wasn’t always convincing, but she always was fascinating.

Her singing, as usual, was uneven. Smoldering sighs gave way to healthy bel-canto explorations (a really poignant “Vissi d’arte”) followed by harrowing climactic screams that aroused concern for her vocal longevity. Ewing certainly is not a dramatic soprano of the traditional Italian idiom. Still, she knows how to make things work--for the time being, at least--on her own imaginative, daring terms.

Domingo was Domingo. In the early scenes, he squeezed out mighty tenor sounds (anyone for Otello?) and looked like a smug and portly businessman. This hero kept on his three-piece cream-colored suit even while at work on his painting, and he allowed himself nothing more unsightly than a neat little bruise on his temple after undergoing Scarpia’s horrendous torture.

He came to life, however, in the last act, caressing the line of “O, dolci mani” with lovely pianissimo tones and actually managing some subtle fits of acting. Tosca may have believed that the executioners would fire blanks at her lover, but Cavaradossi clearly knew better.

James Morris, the brutish yet reasonably suave new Scarpia, offered useful echoes of two other specialties in his repertory: the delight in villainy for its own dark sake that defines his Claggart in “Billy Budd,” and the delight in sonority for its own dark sake that defines his Wotan.

The supporting cast was dominated by Michael Gallup as an endearingly blustery Sacristan and Richard Bernstein as a powerful Angelotti who was made up to resemble a concentration-camp victim (block that cliche). Greg Fedderly played Spoletta as a handsome Mafioso thug and lost the character’s slimy menace in the process. John Atkins repeated his debonair Sciarrone. The voice of the offstage shepherd had been overamplified in 1989; this time it proved inaudible.

Randall Behr, the overexposed resident conductor, sustained enlightened, somewhat leisurely routine in the well-staffed pit.