OPERA REVIEW : Once More, With Domingo

The Los Angeles Music Center Opera has never ventured Verdi’s beloved “Ai da,” even though our company helped pay for a 1987 production in Houston.

We have yet to experience “Il Trovatore” or “La Forza del Destino” at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

But “Otello” keeps coming back.

Verdi’s Shakespearean masterpiece opened the first season here in 1986, serving primarily as a vehicle for a quasi-residential hero: Placido Domingo. The opera returned--lock, stock and tenor--three years later. And here it was again, Saturday night, giving aficionados their only opportunity to hear Verdi in 1994-95 and their only opportunity to see Domingo on the stage (as opposed to his secondary workplace, the podium).

We should be grateful, we suppose, for big favors. This “Otello” was problematic, however, when it first arrived here and repetition hasn’t made the heart grow fonder.

The production, originally conceived by Gotz Friedrich and designed by Gunther Schneider-Siemssen, offers a rather ponderous, intellectualized--yes, Germanic--interpretation of the basic Italianate emotions. All four acts are played in a modified-unit set that looks for all the world like a canvas-concrete parking garage.

Christopher Harlan now oversees the picturesque groupings and he keeps the traffic moving efficiently (apart from the odd horde of aquatic extras who emerge from the sea to set up the ramp for Otello’s entrance). The hand-me-down direction can’t do much, unfortunately, to enforce urgent realism in the face of clumsy stylization or to create passion amid stodginess.

The stodginess, not incidentally, emanates from the pit. “Otello” is, first and foremost, a conductor’s opera. It demands vast resources of power offset by vast resources of introspection. It requires driving agitation, a unifying sense of proportion, an ear for the heroic climax as well as the subtle detail.

In recent times--elsewhere--”Otello” has attracted such formidable practitioners as Carlos Kleiber, James Levine, Georg Solti, Riccardo Muti and Herbert von Karajan. Meanwhile, Los Angeles has contented itself with workaday maestros: Lawrence Foster, John DeMain and now Randall Behr.

Behr, who is about to relinquish his post as resident conductor of the Music Center Opera, is a solid, reliable technician. He has, no doubt, brought reassuring stability to a number of difficult tasks, some of them thankless. At the same time, he has been getting on-the-job training in certain challenges that overexpose his limitations.

In “Otello,” he stirred a thick yet bland Verdian soup. Tension was scarce. Attacks were approximate. The grandiose rhetoric kept getting chopped into small pieces. The dynamic scale fluctuated between loud and louder (poor Iago tried conscientiously to respect the composer’s pianississimo markings in “Era la notte,” only to be buried in orchestral mush). One yearned for a vital leader and had to settle, at best, for a respectful follower.

The festive first-nighters--who chose to applaud in some strange places--didn’t seem to mind the musical shortcomings a bit. They had come, after all, to worship the tenor. And the tenor delivered.

Domingo probably represents the current gold standard for the ultra-demanding title role. He sings with unflagging fervor, rides the mighty climaxes with reasonable thrust, conveys a compelling aura of dignity, articulates the text cleanly, paces himself wisely and brings considerable pathos to the death scene.

His acting remains a bit generic, more concerned with stock gestures than with the revelation of deep inner turmoil. His tone color remains a bit monochromatic. His top notes are sometimes abbreviated. Still, one must admire his authority, his generosity and daring. (In the process, it is best to put Jon Vickers, James McCracken, Mario del Monaco and Ramon Vinay out of mind.)

*

June Anderson, the lovely new Desdemona, isn’t exactly typecast. She specializes in the batty bel-canto heroines of Donizetti and Bellini who live on dangerous high-wires.

Her tone is a bit straight and cool for Verdi, and she encountered some uncomfortable moments in the early scenes. Still, she dominated the great concertato of Act III with silvery purity and rose to the poignant challenge of the final scene with exquisite poise. The soft high notes that trouble other divas were, of course, no problem for her.

Gregory Yurisich, a burly Australian baritone from Covent Garden, introduced a dark, big-voiced, rather jolly-looking Iago. Unlike many a celebrated predecessor, he found neither the extreme fortes nor the extreme pianos a strain, and he had the good sense to underplay the character’s villainy. Even though the clap-happy audience responded with inexplicable silence to his “Credo,” this was a promising debut.

The supporting cast was dominated by Greg Fedderly as an uncommonly handsome and mellifluous Cassio, Louis Lebherz as a properly sonorous Lodovico, and Paula Rasmussen as a warmly sympathetic Emilia.

Jan Skalicki’s period costumes looked lavish. Marie Barrett’s lighting scheme, now executed by Maidie Rosengarden, looked simplistic. The first-act fire dance, choreographed by Peggy Hickey, looked silly.

* Remaining performances at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion of the Music Center Tuesday, Friday, May 15, 18 and 23 at 8 p.m.; May 20 at 1 p.m. (Vladimir Bogachov succeeds Domingo on May 20 and 23.) Tickets $21 to $115 at the box office, (213) 972-8001. $10 student and senior-citizen rush tickets on sale one hour before curtain, if available.