‘Rosarium’ Spiritedly Delivers Message

Intentions are lofty in “Rosarium,” the big new oratorio by Roger Bourland and William MacDuff that had its world premiere Saturday night at UCLA. The school supported the aspirations of its faculty members with the UCLA Chorale and Philharmonia Orchestra, the Angeles Chorale, soprano Juliana Gondek, tenor Gary Bachlund, baritone Peter Atherton, narrator Michael Piontek and conductor Donald Neuen, and an enthusiastically filled Royce Hall.

MacDuff’s ponderous libretto preaches a millennial gospel of universal love in two large, formally balanced acts. It retells the stories of the rose-heralded appearance of Our Lady of Guadalupe in 16th century Mexico and of the 1981 apparition of the Virgin in Medjugorje, Yugoslavia, and the current strife in the area symbolized by the “Sarajevo Rose,” slang for the characteristic pockmark left in concrete by mortar shells.

Self-consciously struggling for rhyme, his poetry thuds more often than it soars. Bourland sets it in a sweet, facile style, suggestive of the modern animated musical in both structure and character. Though they begin with intimations of irony and detachment, lyrics and music aim at exaltation but hit exhortation instead, ready but repetitious in effect. Composer and librettist take a clear and positive position on the messages--not the nature--of these Marian apparitions.

Though seeming to struggle at times vocally with her wide-ranging part, Gondek generally delivered the radiant assurance intended from Mary. Bachlund made a poignant Juan Diego in the first act and a rather stentorian warring Yugoslav in the second, partnered with more character but less heft by Atherton as the Bishop and an opposing Yugoslav. Balances were problematic in the duet combinations, which drew cumbersome part-writing from Bourland.

Piontek was an articulate, slyly understated Storyteller. Able contingents from the UCLA Opera Workshop provided the Gilbert-and-Sullivan-style comic relief ensembles in the second act.

Bourland gives the large chorus mostly easy, grateful music of immediate, albeit predictable, impact and the well-drilled combined choirs sang with spirit and presence for Neuen. The orchestra proved equally committed, if sometimes less precise about pitch.