Opera Review : A Flashy, Seductive ‘Samson et Dalila’ : L.A. Opera gives Saint-Saens’ tuneful biblical epic the Hollywood treatment.

Admirers of Camille Saint-Saens’ “Samson et Dalila” tend to be a defensive lot. Whether it’s in the New Grove Dictionary of Opera or in notes in the program book of L.A. Opera, which opened its season Wednesday at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion with the late 19th century French opera, the first order of business seems to be to exonerate this sometimes maligned work from its critics.

The truth is that Saint-Saens’ only success out of his 13 operas is a shallow music drama, all too obviously trying to extend a dying tradition of French grand opera with a superficial touch of early Wagner. Ferdinand Lemaire’s bland libretto does little to illuminate the biblical story. Saint-Saens’ opera hasn’t the spiritual majesty or powerful characterizations of Handel’s great oratorio “Samson,” let alone the surprising humanity of Cecil B. DeMille’s Technicolor epic.

But it is, in its conventional way, stage worthy. It has some solid choral and delicate orchestral writing (one of the strongest defenses for it) and great tunes for Dalila (the reason for its popularity). And since the opera’s critics by now have generally lowered expectations for the work, any production that can muster a sexy femme fatale, a fervent strong man and the appropriately kitschy sets will likely hold an audience.

L.A. Opera has Denyce Graves and Placido Domingo. And it has a 1981 production borrowed from San Francisco Opera with some amusing Hollywoodish touches. The exterior of the Temple of Dagon might have been fashioned from a fantasy home in the Hollywood Hills; a smoky interior (which appealed enough to the opening-night audience that it interrupted a very nice orchestral interlude to applaud Douglas Schmidt’s set) would do well as a theme restaurant where garish exotic drinks are served.

Dalila (along with Carmen) has become Graves’ calling card. She looks the part and sounds it. She has a voice that seems almost made to seduce with its intoxicatingly sensual richness and depth. Her Dalila, however, is less sex kitten than untouchable queen. She stops the show in her famous languid arias of the second act. But despite the wonderfully limpid singing, she is not a tender or vulnerable temptress. Her anger is everywhere apparent, and she makes Samson seem ever the knucklehead not to pick up on it. It is the ultimately prudish Saint-Saens who lets the lovers down, their duet being as much cat fight as love fest.

But none of this has kept Domingo from being one of the opera’s most compelling defenders. He recorded the role 20 years ago; he appeared in the original San Francisco production, which Nicolas Joel has restaged for Los Angeles; and he has used his considerable powers of persuasion to get it produced recently at the Metropolitan Opera and Washington Opera. And although it is not a role of much subtlety--oafish hero loses divine direction in Dalila’s arms and, humbled by betrayal, finds it again--Domingo invests Samson with genuine fervor.

It has become an opening-night ritual at L.A. Opera to muse at this tenor’s longevity and to wonder just how long it can go on. Compared with his 1979 recording of the opera, Domingo is clearly an older singer, his voice beefier and less agile. But it is still clarion, and the fullness becomes Samson. Domingo is now artistic director designate of the company (he has already become its symbol, his picture emblazoned on T-shirts and mouse pads with the company’s logo), and his short stay in town (just three performances before jetting off to open the Met’s season with “I Pagliacci”) is also packed with administrative business. Domingo, so tempted by accumulating power in the opera world, clearly understands a Samson readily seduced from his single path--but maybe his splendid singing Wednesday night was also an indication that he has taken this cautionary tale to heart.

Graves and Domingo got graceful support from Lawrence Foster’s elegantly understated conducting but were otherwise mostly on their own. The L.A. Opera Chorus struggled through its important roles as the Israelites and Philistines, self-consciously carrying out the production’s corny blocking. Richard Bernstein brought a degree of villainous wrath to the Philistine tyrant Abimelech, but Samson kills him early in the first act after a single aria. Gregory Yurisich, a likable Falstaff last season, was an underpowered High Priest of Dagon this year, the absurd rug of a costume he was wrapped in seeming to absorb most of his sound. Louis Lebherz provided the commonplace basso cliches of the Old Hebrew.

Samson, at the end, proved his own critic when he brought the house down on Daniel Pelzig’s trivially choreographed Bacchanal.

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* “Samson et Dalila” continues Sunday afternoon at 2, Wednesday and Sept. 18, 21 and 24 at 7:30 p.m.; and Sept. 26 at 2 p.m. (with Gary Lakes assuming the role of Samson on Wednesday and Sept. 21, 24 and 26), $27-$146, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave. (213) 972-8001.