MUSIC REVIEW : Turandot Puts On an Evening Gown

Gualtiero Negrini is a stubborn man with a dauntless mission. And he thinks pretty big.

Los Angeles knows him best, perhaps, as the mellifluous mock-tenorissimo who did the wicked Pavarotti imitation before meeting his cruel fate in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Phantom.” For Negrini, however, art means more than musical-comedy spoofery. Now he’s putting his entrepreneurial energy and, no doubt, his money where his mouth used to be.

Last season, he formed an organization to further some lofty personal goals: The Opera Orchestra of Los Angeles. As he bade a lingering farewell to the presweetened music of the night, he embarked on a series of concert performances intended to serve the lyric muse without the benefit--or distraction--of scenery and costumes. The erstwhile vocal pirate would forsake the high Cs in favor of podium and baton.

His debut outing, a rough and unready approximation of Verdi’s rarely attempted “Attila” at an empty Wilshire-Ebell Theatre, proved most memorable for the refreshments sold at intermission. The second effort, involving Tchaikovsky’s “Yevgeny Onegin,” was promptly, perhaps wisely, canceled.

Many observers thought Negrini and his orchestra had become phantoms of the opera themselves. But no. Hope springs internal. The would-be maestro was emphatically back in action on Thursday night.

The locale this time was the relatively glamorous Pasadena Civic Auditorium, which can accommodate nearly 3,000 (it happened to accommodate a lot less on this possibly over-ambitious occasion). The vehicle this time was nothing remotely obscure but Puccini’s beloved “Turandot.” And, in place of the semi-amateurs who had disfigured innocent Verdi, the uneven cast this time was headed by a pair of singers who at least could boast major-league credentials.

The result was not a “Turandot” to treasure forever. Much of the time, however, it was an honorable facsimile of sprawling, vital, complex masterpiece.

The best news emanated from the chorus, an entity that functions as a primary force in Puccini’s exotic scheme of things. The vocal ensemble was identified in the laughably inadequate program slip merely as “Opera Orchestra Chorus.” No trainer was named. But the hundred singers assembled on bleachers upstage made a mighty, poised, plangent, flexible, well-meshed noise, propelling the invisible drama forward at every opportunity, producing a nice resonant hush for the mysterious passages and rising with zeal to the great, whomping climaxes.

The orchestra, though somewhat less lavishly endowed, mustered some welcome flash and fire, too. Positioned at the front of the stage, the players certainly did not sound like the ill-prepared pick-up group we so often encounter at events like this.

It would be an exaggeration to claim that Negrini conducted with maximum concern for dynamic finesse; he often allowed the instruments to overpower the voices all too nearby. It would be less than realistic to claim that he devoted a lot of attention to defining expressive nuances. He did keep things moving at reasonable paces, however, and he showed a firm grasp of the grand extrovert line.

The brief but cruelly exposed title role, with its high tessitura and almost constant demand for fervor without stress, was entrusted to Ghena Dimitrova, a veteran of many “Turandot” wars. Although she chose to omit “Del primo pianto,” the Bulgarian diva still commands the right equipment for the heroic challenge. She understands the cool, assertive style, yet she won sympathy with some unexpected flights of gentle introspection. At this point in her distinguished career, however, freshness and steadiness of tone have become sometime things.

Giuliano Ciannella, a former Carlo Bergonzi pupil who did utility service at the Met in the early 1980s, partnered her as an ardent, sympathetic, light-toned Calaf who succumbed to inevitable strain under pressure at top range.

The rest of the cast operated on lower aesthetic levels. An Armenian soprano named Rima Karapetian sounded pretty but fluttery and jittery as a Liu who either couldn’t or wouldn’t float the wonted pianissimo phrases. Mario Storace sounded weak and woolly as old Timur. In the Ping-Pang-Pong trios, Hisato Masuyama, Agostino Castagnola and Chris Campbell sounded as if they still belonged in an opera workshop.

The incidental children’s refrains were deftly chirped by the Pasadena Boy’s Choir.

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* “Turandot,” performed in concert form by the Opera Orchestra of Los Angeles at Pasadena Civic Auditorium, 300 E . Green St., Pasadena. Last performance tonight at 8. Tickets $28-$68. For information call (818) 449-7360.