Unsound Judgment

It would be nice to cheer Opera Pacific’s return--after decades of absence--to its early 1960s Laguna Beach roots with its “Festa Italiana” program Sunday at the Irvine Bowl, more familiarly known as the home of the Pageant of the Masters.

It would be nice, but there wasn’t that much to applaud.

Coarse amplification, uneven soloists, an apparent commitment to bellowing, and a bewildering smorgasbord of programming choices added up to a rather disappointing opera evening.

Greatest hit followed greatest hit without rhyme or reason.

The concert started promisingly, with artistic director John DeMain leading the Opera Pacific Orchestra in a spirited yet sensitive account of the overture to Verdi’s “La Forza del Destino.” Even a passing helicopter only momentarily distracted from the finesse, although the brass did tend to sound tubby as heard about a third of the way back on the left side of the orchestra section.

From then on, however, subtlety, even from DeMain, was a sometime thing--best evidenced in soprano Paula Delligatti’s “Tu del mio Carlo” from Verdi’s “I Masnadieri” and “Donde lieta” from Puccini’s “La Boheme.”

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As Cio-Cio San in Opera Pacific’s 1996 production of Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly,” Delligatti does have the requisite evenness of tone and sense of style. But she seemed to want to set her own tempo, and also to pump out the Easter hymn (“Inneggiamo il Signor”) from Mascagni’s “Cavalleria Rusticana.”

Baritone Mark Delavan, who had made such a fine impression as Opera Pacific’s suffering Dutchman in Wagner’s “Der fliegende Hollander” in January, here found anger but little pathos in “Eri tu” from Verdi’s “Un ballo in Maschera,” and rage but little scathing self-analysis in “Nemico della Patria” from Giordano’s “Andrea Chenier.”

Tenor Carlo Ventre, Opera Pacific’s 1997 Duke in Verdi’s “Rigoletto,” ventured an Italianate ring and ping but also succumbed generally to maximizing the decibels, perhaps imagining the Irvine Bowl to be the Arena di Verona when singing “Nessun dorma” from Puccini’s “Turandot.”

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A svelte Robin Follman, a 1998 company Musetta, was at her best recapturing the vixen’s argument with Marcello in the third act “La Boheme” quartet. Otherwise, she was vocally inconsistent and uneven, and not up to the interpretive demands of “Ernani involami” from Verdi’s “Ernani.”

The Opera Pacific chorus, which had often displayed reasonable sheen in the Orange County Performing Arts Center, the company’s subscription home, sounded as if it didn’t have a clue what the texts meant, particularly in the jaunty, waltz-like account it gave of the enslaved Hebrews deep mourning chorus, “Va, pensiero,” from Verdi’s “Nabucco.”

The program ended with a raucous assault on the closing fugue (“Tutto nel mondo e burla”) from Verdi’s last opera, “Falstaff.”

Blame the amplification.