A Crowd-Pleasing ‘Vive la France!’

“Vive la France!” at the Hollywood Bowl on Friday night began with pleasant, unassuming summer pops breeziness.

John Mauceri and the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra cruised easily, if fairly superficially, through such guaranteed crowd-pleasers as the Act 1 Prelude to Bizet’s “Carmen,” an orchestrated rendering of Debussy’s “Clair de lune” and Gershwin’s “An American in Paris.”

In the program’s second half, singer Karen Akers offered a set of Parisian songs, some closely identified with Edith Piaf--”Sous le ciel de Paris,” “La vie en rose” and “Non, je ne regrette rien” among them.

But “Vive la France!” finally exploded, literally, with the performance of Ravel’s “Bolero” and a fireworks show designed by Gene Evans.

Fireworks at the Bowl are a traditional part of the summer season, but they are rarely presented with the panache and elan of this extraordinarily creative spectacular. Waving aside the usual highly synchronized, patriotic presentations, Evans devised a kind of free-flowing counterpart to the music, sometimes filling the sky with white-light rockets, frequently offering accents of explosive bursts of pure flame.

It was a remarkable show, perfectly conceived for the inexorable progression of “Bolero,” and clearly the highlight of the evening.

Which is not to say there was anything particularly wrong with the orchestra’s frothy first-half program. Concertmaster Bruce Dukov’s rendering of Saint-Saens Introduction and Rondo capriccioso was workmanlike and efficient, and the Gershwin finally seemed to generate some emotional energy from the players.

Akers’ arrival induced even more vigor from the musicians and the near-capacity audience. Garbed in an attractive red gown, her trademark short coiffure now tinged with blond highlights, Akers’ look is far different from the trademark austerity of the past. Always a superb singer of French material, she approached the familiar songs with warmth and intimacy. Still, it remained for the fireworks to supply the program (which was repeated Saturday) with its true climax. The final colorful display may have arrived more than a month after Bastille Day, but no Francophile could ask for a more stirring tribute to the luster of French culture.