MUSIC REVIEW : Domingo Conducts Verdi at Music Center

From the moment Placido Domingo stepped on the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion stage Wednesday to conduct a program of Verdi arias, duets and overtures, many in the large audience sounded a cheer that suggested the beloved tenor could do no wrong.

Critics be warned.

For a distinct minority, however, Domingo’s interest in plying the baton--he is now officially principal guest conductor of the Los Angeles Music Center Opera and his first duty was to accompany soprano Carol Vaness and baritone Vladimir Chernov on this occasion--remained a problem.

It added few accolades to his distinguished career and in this case revealed little beyond functional competency in the music.

Domingo served essentially as a time-beater. The right arm set tempos; the left followed along or occasionally clutched expressively toward the heart.

The result, in the overtures to “La Forza del Destino” and “I Vespri Siciliani,” and even the ethereal Prelude to Act One of “La Traviata,” was that Verdi emerged flat, regular and four-square, rather episodic and not particularly cohesive. And sometimes noisy.

Domingo offered little shaping or shading of melodic line, tended toward propulsive tempos and, oddly, on occasion, let the orchestra overwhelm the singers.

All this in the midst of the strong impression he is making in the title role of Verdi’s “Otello.”

For her part, Vaness sounded brilliant at the top, hefty if sometimes hollowish toward the bottom, and somewhat tremulous, threadbare and unfocused in mid-range, particularly when singing softly. Still, she acted with conviction and force in “Pace, Pace” from “Forza” and “Tu che le vanita” from “Don Carlo.”

Chernov is one of the bright hopes of the Metropolitan Opera. He demonstrated a forceful, solid, fresh and even baritone, even if it was used without much dynamic or coloristic shading. Still, he sang Carlo’s soliloquy in the third act of “Forza” and Rodrigo’s death scene in “Don Carlo” with dramatic urgency and power.

Together, the two sang the second-act scene between Germont and Violetta in “La Traviata”--breaking no hearts--and a truncated version of the fourth-act scene between Leonora and Count di Luna in “Il Trovatore”--pushed perhaps too relentlessly by Domingo’s tempos.

Texts were provided throughout, but not synopses of the plots of the operas. Greg Fedderly made a brief appearance as a mellifluous Don Carlo in Rodrigo’s death scene. Baritone Tod Fitzpatrick interjected the surgeon’s one line in Carlo’s soliloquy.

Apart from a few scrubby entrances, the Los Angeles Opera Orchestra played with alert responsiveness and transparent textures. It was not its fault that the military band aspects of Verdi’s scoring sounded so prominent.

For encores, Vaness sang “Io son l’umile ancella” from Cilea’s “Adriana Lecouvreur,” Chernov sang “Eri tu” from Verdi’s “Un Ballo in Maschera” and the two sang “La ci darem la mano” from Mozart’s “Don Giovanni.”