Opera : Provincial, Warmed-Over ‘Romeo et Juliette’ in Orange County

“Romeo et Juliette,” Charles Gounod’s other opera, offers a very French, very Romantic and very pretty perspective of Shakespeare’s tragedy.

It requires a conductor and director unashamed of old-fashioned Gallic sentiment. It demands a cast equally responsive to lyrical eloquence, expressive elegance and dramatic fervor.

Gounod asked for a lot: flexible orchestral and choral forces, an atmospheric theatrical ambience, singers willing and able to take the familiar conflicts seriously, an ensemble that appreciates the subtleties of a basically intimate style yet knows how to project that style on a broad scale.

Most of all, the composer wanted a pair of well-matched paragons to portray the star-cross’d lovers: a Romeo who could be ardent and heroic yet sensitive and vulnerable, a Juliette who could be fragile and giddy yet passionate and powerful.

If nothing else, the essentially provincial production warmed over by Opera Pacific at the Orange County Performing Arts Center on Friday did muster a potentially formidable Romeo. One always must be thankful for tenoral favors.

Marcello Giordani, last admired here as Nadir in “Les Pecheurs de Perles,” has all the right attributes for this young gentleman of Verona. His slender, open, wide-ranging tenor rises to the high climaxes with ringing, Italianate bravado. It also can caress the line with sensuality and warmth. Giordani even understands the rare value of a strategically placed diminuendo.

He cuts a potentially dashing figure on the stage, and inflects the French text conscientiously, sometimes even suavely. In the balcony scene, he actually dares to explore the dynamic impact of a dreamy, extended pianissimo while lying flat on his back, and then compounds the wonder by rising in mid-phrase without ruffling the stream of even tone in the process. Try that, Signor Pavarotti.

It could not be claimed that Giordani conquered every vocal hurdle with equal ease on this occasion, or with consistent finesse. Never mind. He tried, valiantly, and he received little musical or dramatic support for his efforts.

At this point in his promising career, Giordani needs to collaborate with a seasoned conductor who really appreciates the delicacies of the idiom and with a director who savors the inherent emotional stresses. Opera Pacific let him down on both counts. In the process, the company let Gounod down too.

James Meena, the energetic young maestro imported from Toledo (Ohio, not Castile), seemed primarily intent on keeping the music loud and moving it fast. He apparently had no time for sensuality, for the crucial subtleties of light and shade, for the wonders of legato phrasing or the ultimate pathos of serenity.

The interpretive superficialities were complemented, alas, in the clumsy staging of Bernard Uzan, who did little to establish mood, define character, sustain the essential repose or even establish sensible traffic patterns. He was too busy, apparently, toying with fussy flashbacks, fussy flash-aheads, and--the most picturesque gimmick of all--with a magic shroud that rose and fell all by itself over the titular corpses.

The appropriately prosaic sets, created by Claude Girard for a Uzan production in Montreal seven years ago, consist of five all-purpose arches rearranged in various unconvincing combinations and permutations to suggest ballroom, garden, priestly cell, courtyard and crypt. The audience applauded the balcony scene, possibly because several tons of kitschy greenery were lowered to mask the unit design.

The unattributed quasi-period costumes looked like the spoils of a raid on a dusty warehouse on some long-forsaken B-lot. This was not a great night for illusion.

Under the uneasy circumstances, the novices in the large cast often seemed left to their own devices. Since this was largely a cast of novices, the devices had to look unpracticed as well as uninspired.

Attempting Juliette for the first time, Maureen O’Flynn simpered sweetly and applied the same little-silver-bell tones to moments of silliness, moments of rapture and moments of agony. Although she deserved credit for venturing the so-called Philtre Aria, which Gounod added for Adelina Patti 20 years after the Paris premiere, the inherent grandeur eluded her.

James Maddalena came a long way from Nixon, Sellars and China to introduce a cardboard Capulet. Timothy Jon Sarris tossed off Mercutio’s Mab scherzo as if he were a clumsy Shark preparing to rumble with invisible Jets.

George Hogan wobbled darkly as an oddly bumbling Frere Laurent (would you buy a temporary-death potion from this friar?). He doubled, inexplicably and almost anonymously, as the Duke of Verona in place of Mario Storace. Carla Wood succumbed to travesti caricature as a hyperactive Stephano.

The comprimarios resembled premature graduates from a second-rate opera-workshop. The chorus sounded feeble. The orchestra had trouble playing in tune.

At least we were spared the ballet.