OPERA REVIEW : San Francisco Delivers Literal, Pleasant ‘Dream’

It has been a good year for “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

First the Music Center Opera in Los Angeles filtered Shakespeare’s fantasy through Benjamin Britten’s music in a gently inventive, mildly updated, remarkably compelling revival of the 1988 production by Gordon Davidson.

Now the San Francisco Opera has returned the delicate comedy to its fundamental Elizabethan perspective. John Copley has created a literal staging scheme that pays equal attention to timeless poetry and old-fashioned magic.

Copley’s sense of style and proportion cannot always be taken for granted. He, after all, was the director who recently gave both Los Angeles and San Francisco a frantically irrelevant “Barbiere di Siviglia” replete with bedpan jokes, and his much traveled version of “Le Nozze di Figaro” is notable neither for wit nor elegance.

But wit and elegance are the very virtues that make his “Dream” so lovely. When Copley is bad, he can be more horrid than the girl with the curl. When he is good, he is very good indeed.

His goodness in this happy instance probably can be traced to the restraining influence of Benjamin Britten himself. Copley happened to serve as stage manager for the world premiere of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” in Aldeburgh 32 years ago. The official regisseur on that occasion was choreographer John Cranko, who did not find himself precisely in his element. It is no secret that Copley intervened to do the composer’s bidding. He eventually received credit for his efforts in the printed score.

He soon repeated his idealistic, relatively anonymous duties at the Covent Garden premiere. This time, the interpretive stances and traffic patterns were entrusted to another stranger in the operatic paradise: the actor John Gielgud.

Since then, Copley has served as the virtually official guardian of this particular flame. Over the years, he has constantly refined the tone and focus of the master’s conservative concept.

The production presented for the first time in San Francisco on Sunday was actually conceived for the National Arts Centre in Ottawa in 1978. With its lush enchanted-forest set by the late Henry Bardon and its courtly costumes by Michael Stennett, it focuses and reinforces both the charm and the whimsy of the score. There is no room here for modernist variation, no need for aesthetic reinterpretation.

The assorted fairies are still beguiling other-worldly creatures. The mortals are still fools. The trees look like trees--nice, cozy, storybook trees. The rustics’ thespian adventure is still a formula laff-riot fusing music-hall banality with operatic caricature.

As Los Angeles well knows, this is not the only way to play “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” in 1992. But it is an eminently sensible way.

The version now on display at the War Memorial Opera House is certainly more persuasive than the two that preceded it here: the ponderous U.S. premiere production of 1961 (which enlisted such names as Mary Costa, Marilyn Horne and Geraint Evans); and the lightweight yet clumsy edition offered by the visiting English Opera Group a decade later.

Lotfi Mansouri has assembled an extraordinarily resourceful, well-matched cast. Despite some valid star turns, ensemble values are savored in depth.

Only one player on the team--John Allee as Puck--happens to be repeating a familiar assignment. In Los Angeles, he flew through the air with the greatest of ease, half Peter Pan and half Artful Dodger. In San Francisco, he returned the character to earthbound nature-boy tradition, losing neither agility nor impish humor in the process and modeling his furry loincloth with cheeky aplomb.

Sylvia McNair dominated the melismatic realm of the fairies as a sly and exquisite, utterly irresistible Tytania. Young Brian Asawa countered her bravura wiles with suave countertenor tones as a dramatically void Oberon.

The crazily mixed-up lovers, nicely differentiated, included Susan Patterson as a radiant Helena, Kurt Streit as a lyrical Lysander, Catherine Keen as a gutsy Hermia and David Malis as a hearty Demetrius.

Donald Adams--plangent basso for all reasons and all seasons--blustered with splendid panache, even when he made an ass of himself, as sweet Bottom. His rustic efforts were seconded by Steven Cole as a Flute who made much--perhaps even a bit too much--of his Thisbyan camping trip. Dale Travis (the patient Quince), Daniel Sumegi (the leonine Snug), Joseph Frank (the wallflower Snout) and Micah Graber (the mooning Starveling) followed suit with amusing brio.

Kevin Langan exuded dark-toned bonhomie as the aristocratic Theseus. Janis Taylor complemented him as a properly bemused Hippolyta.

John Mauceri conducted with sensitive concern for the shimmering, translucid textures, a fine ear for coloristic detail and no fear of dramatic propulsion. He elicited well-honed responses from the chamber orchestra in the pit, not to mention a chirpy conglomeration of children’s choruses on the stage.

This “Midsummer Night’s Dream” serves as the final full-scale installment of a troubled San Francisco Opera season. The best came last, and not a moment too soon.