OPERA REVIEW : A Worthy Werther in San Diego

Jules Massenet’s “Werther,” written in 1892, is a fragile little opera.

The libretto--a superficial gloss on Goethe’s sorrowful novel, “Die Leiden des jungen Werthers”--is mired in mushy Germanic sentiment. The score adds layer upon delicate layer of gently perfumed Gallic gush.

It is all terribly pretty, terribly sad and terribly romantic in its unabashedly bourgeois-intimate manner. Also a bit gooey.

In the cool light of the 1990s, this artificially sweetened saga of thwarted love, denial, honor, renunciation and picturesque suicide in quaint old Wetzlar can be a cloying bore or an unintentionally amusing anachronism--unless it is performed with stylish conviction.

The new production mustered by the San Diego Opera Tuesday night at the Civic Theatre wasn’t perfect. Nevertheless, it was neither tedious nor risible. Thank goodness for large favors.

The largest favor involved Richard Leech, who is assuming the brooding stances, the melancholic airs and rhapsodic apostrophes of the Byronic protagonist for the first time in his fast-moving career. He commands virtually everything the difficult role requires: a dashing stage presence, a sense of urgency, a sense of elegance, a penchant for poetry, an arching legato and--most crucial--a fresh, bright, pliant, well-focused, wide-ranging, open-toned tenor voice.

The only serious deficit in his performance at the moment involves his reluctance to sing softly. The introspective passages really demand a dreamy mezza-voce . In moments of somber repose, Leech seems to have been influenced by the cries of Franco Corelli rather than the whispers of Alfredo Kraus. Sorry, wrong role model.

Perhaps with time. . . .

Charlotte, Werther’s tortured beloved, was entrusted to the British mezzo-soprano Jean Rigby. Making her debut with an American company in an unaccustomed assignment, she gave a sympathetic, intelligent, eminently tasteful performance.

Actually, it may have been too tasteful. There’s the rub.

Rigby’s calm demeanor and slender lyric resources tended to slight the great dramatic outbursts. For all the clarity and point of her vocalism, one missed the aura of desperate suppression, the denial of emotional turmoil that motivates the tragic crisis.

Visual impressions weren’t exactly enhanced, moreover, by the folksy-ornate costume imposed on her in the second act. Here, the unhappy heroine looked more like a bartered bride from the Czech provinces than a simple German Hausfrau on her way to church.

Albert, Charlotte’s innocent husband and Werther’s noble friend, was sung with a warm if somewhat wavery baritone by Vernon Hartman, and enacted with a needlessly sinister veneer. Like all sopranos cast as Charlotte’s little sister Sophie, Jeanine Thames chirped pertly. Herbert Eckhoff was strangely stern and bluff as the paternal Bailiff, though his basso sounded nice and earthy.

The minor roles were in competent hands and throats. The chorus of cutesy children, a veritable gaggle of Hansels and Gretels and Fritzes and Claras, pranced and chanted like properly obedient stage-urchins.

The conductor was Richard Bonynge, whose career in the pit seems to have declined somewhat since his wife, Joan Sutherland, retired from the stage. He always was an ardent champion of neglected French romanticism, and he served the cause on this occasion with informed affection. One might have wished for a bit more rhythmic vitality and climactic thunder. Still, one had to be grateful for the suavity and pathos he constantly enforced.

The handsome, basically conventional production is a cooperative venture involving the Opera de Bellas Artes in Mexico City as well as companies in Montreal and Miami. It was directed by Bliss Hebert and designed by Allen Charles Klein, both old pros.

For the first two acts, a backdrop in the manner of a Durer woodcut depicting a Medieval German town provides a stylized frame for the fussily literal decors up front. As disaster looms in the finale, the line drawing on the backdrop gives way to the bleak painterly strokes of Sturm-und-Drang realism. It is very portentous, and a bit contrived.

The audience at the super-titled performance hardly filled the house. But those who came clearly liked what they saw, heard and read.