Immortal Opera

Opera is a thorny, venerable and unavoidable force in the world of classical music. It exists off to the side of standard musical practice, requiring complex performance strategies and, from the audience’s perspective, a suspension of disbelief. We’re asked to accept these characters, not always the physical picture of their roles, who sing all their lines and, for the most part, stand and deliver them.

Still, it hardly needs to be said that when it’s done well, opera can be a uniquely profound experience, one that transcends either music or narrative and becomes a cultural reality unto itself. But how to keep it alive?

Urban centers have opera companies of varying strengths; outlying areas occasionally get touring companies or humble efforts. Ventura County lies somewhere between those two poles, close enough to Los Angeles to consider the Music Center Opera home, but without a regular operatic enterprise to call its own.

Fortunately, the Thousand Oaks-based New West Symphony, the most significant musical organism in the area, has seen fit to include opera in its programming. The group pulled it off nicely two years ago, with the semi-staged version of “La Traviata.”

Now comes time to attend to another staple in the short list of best-loved operas, “Madama Butterfly.” Puccini’s sweet and tragic opera is being presented in semi-staged concert version, in collaboration with Opera San Jose’s director Daniel Helfgot, this weekend in Oxnard and Thousand Oaks as part of the Symphony’s season.

The performances have local importance, too, in that the lead role of Cio-Cio San will be sung by soprano Cynthia Clayton, a Thousand Oaks native. Two years ago, she appeared as Violetta in “La Traviata,” and subsequently has shown up in “La Boheme” in Santa Barbara, in the Cleveland Opera’s “Faust,” and San Diego Opera’s “Carmen.”

Opera may be a rare visitor to these parts, but its occasional appearances are welcome additions to the scene.

* “Madama Butterfly,” Friday at 8 p.m. at the Oxnard Performing Arts Center, 800 Hobson Way in Oxnard, and Saturday at 8 p.m. at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza, 2100 Thousand Oaks Blvd. Tickets are $12-55; 643-8646.

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Notes From the Chamber: The Camerata Pacifica continued its season with your basic, meat-and-potatoes program last weekend, performed, as usual, at four venues around Santa Barbara and Ventura County. While the program was filled with hearty staples, it was also quite substantial, in the best sense.

Other programs on the Camerata’s season are more exotic, balancing conservative favorites with obscurities and/or contemporary works. But hearing a simple, two-work program of Haydn’s string quartet “The Lark” and Schubert’s glorious String Quintet in C, played with passion and point, added up to moving music-making, without distractions or whirligigs.

As heard at the Music Academy on Thursday night, the performers--violinists Roger Wilkie and Raphael Rishik, violist Donald McInnes and cellist John Walz--attended masterfully to the genteel duties of performing Haydn.

As in the best of Haydn’s sizable string quartets, civility reigns supreme here, but things are never quite as staid as you’d expect within the proprieties of a classical framework. Surprising modulations or expressive shifts are often lying in wait in music that keeps the listener both soothed and alert. “The Lark” is a compact treasure, veering from the elegant rumination of its Adagio to the almost delirious dance of 16th notes in the Finale.

Noted cellist Dennis Brott (brother of New West maestro Boris) joined the quartet for Schubert’s quintet, using a double cello format, which adds richness of sonority and flexibility of voices available. The piece, the last instrumental work written by the great composer before his death at age 31, is a masterpiece, and it was approached with proper degrees of care and emotional release by the group.

Each component contributes to the solidity of the whole: The first movement is a meal in itself, full of elaborate melodic invention; the Adagio is distinctive for its plaintive introspection; and the Scherzo is a bracing dose of affirmation, with its recurring, anthemic motive. In the end, a sense of bounding enthusiasm, tempered by inward reflection, gives the final movement a sense of deep, well-earned resolution.

The Camerata Pacifica’s season is the most exciting news in chamber music in the region, boasting a focused sense of musical purpose and a concerted effort in making the music accessible. (Founder Adrian Spence can hardly restrain his natural flair for oration, addressing the audience as participants in a cultural adventure.) Overall, it’s contributing to the worthy cause of making chamber music concert-going habit forming.