New Twists on a Rarity From Puccini

With an infestation of Butterflies and Bohemians at local opera companies in recent seasons, less familiar and lesser Puccini has suddenly become a welcome change. “Manon Lescaut” found its way to Opera Pacific last month; “Il Tabarro” gets the Long Beach Opera treatment in June. And Saturday night, Los Angeles Opera brought the composer’s seldom-encountered “La Rondine” to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

Rare as “Rondine” is, this “Rondine” is rarer still. The production by Marta Domingo gives an entirely new twist to the ending of Puccini’s Italian “Rosenkavalier.” If “Rondine” weren’t so unfamiliar to most audiences, this is just the kind of thing that could get some operagoers very upset. Changing the decor in an updated production is one thing; changing the actual opera is something else.

In fact, the controversy is likely to be small. Domingo has taken an unusual bittersweet comedy and made it into just the kind of verismo melodrama audiences expect from Puccini. And the opulent production looks just the way the libretto says it should.

Inspired by Strauss’ “Rosenkavalier,” Puccini wanted a Viennese-style bitter-chocolate confection of his own. The libretto, about a Parisian mistress who tries unsuccessfully to recapture her innocent youth in a new relationship, is a poor one. Puccini labored with it through three versions of the opera. He also suffered bad timing. Premiering during World War I, the opera seemed an escapist entertainment just as the world was undergoing a radical shift.

In fact, the retro “Rondine,” in Puccini’s final makeshift version, is intriguingly ambiguous. The music is extremely fleet, never seeming to settle down for long. The ensembles are spectacular, and Puccini’s melodic gift is ever miraculous.

And it is in the music that we read the opera. There is little background about Magda’s past, and we have little sense about her relationship with her wealthy protector, Rambaldo. We are put in the midst of people we do not know, and it is left up to us to discover who they are (the same daring and exciting device that Susan Sontag adopts for the opening of her new novel, “In America”). We sense Magda’s suffocation and flight to freedom (a rondine is a swallow) through music not explanatory text.

Puccini ended his opera wistfully. Magda can never reveal who she is to her innocent young lover, Ruggero, and must return to her life in the Parisian demimonde. We have a tear in our eye for people caught in a world not of their making. But just one. They have a good life and fun; and now with eyes wide shut, Magda will be only slightly changed.

Domingo, however, wants clearer, more ordinary motivations. She has gone to every source she could get her hands on, be it early versions of the opera or sketches; and she has gotten the help of a fine Italian composer, Lorenzo Ferrero, to seamlessly stitch together all this material into predictable tragedy. In this new version, Ruggero learns of Magda’s past and rejects her. And Domingo takes it one step further in her production. Magda walks into the foggy sea.

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What Domingo gets from all this is a conventional opera; it works but is a lot less interesting than the one that doesn’t.

And then there is Carol Vaness as Magda. Vaness has a grand manner, and she is now a mature singer. That this imperious woman, who no longer has the youthful flexibility of voice or laughing high notes, could disguise herself as a pretty young thing as she escapes to the local cafe proves faintly ludicrous. And by imitating Joan Crawford in “Humoresque” at the end, she is in danger of falling into sheer camp. Her younger lover, Ruggero, sung with noticeable effort by Marcus Haddock, only adds to the kinkiness of the whole affair. Willam Parcher handles the expanded role of Rambaldo (his is minor in the original) with evil ferocity.

What, in fact, brings the opera to life is everyone else. Puccini recapitulates a device that worked for him in “La Boheme,” that of a lively, shallow couple as amusing complement to the tragic main lovers. Here it is a fussy poet, Prunier, and Magda’s maid, Lisette, sung with appealing spirit and a good sense of fun by Greg Fedderly and Sari Gruber.

The production also has the advantage of Michael Scott’s breathtaking sets and costumes (only Peggy Hickey’s parodistic choreography mars the effect). And the company’s excellent ensemble singers--including Catherine Ireland, Patricia Prunty, Megan Dey-Toth, Paul Floyd, Jamie Offenbach and Cedric Berry--are well employed. Emmanuel Villaume, a conductor new to the company, is full of spirit if less successful in getting a warm, Puccinian tone from the orchestra. It is no fluke that the largest ovation of the evening came for the big ensemble in the second act.

The production arrives by way of Washington Opera, the company run by Marta Domingo’s husband, Placido. Now Los Angeles Opera, which the tenor also takes over in a few months, is already starting to look like a family business. The first thing to greet the audience walking through the Chandler Pavilion doors Friday night was a poster advertising the new feature film “The Other Conquest,” which was produced by the couple’s son, Alvaro Domingo.

* “La Rondine,” Los Angeles Opera, tonight, 7:30; Saturday, 1 p.m.; next Tuesday and April 29, and May 2 and 5, 7:30 p.m., Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave, $27-$146. (213) 365-3500.