When the Bowl Is Half Empty

The Hollywood Bowl can be an amphitheater of pleasure and pain. And often on the classical music nights, one person’s pleasure will be another’s pain. Come for the picnic ambience and socializing, and forced attention to serious music can seem an interruption from supper. Come to listen, and distractions are a nuisance. But at those special occasions when compelling music completes an evening, thousands of people with wildly different expectations are united in awe.

On opening nights the stakes are a bit higher: The picnicking is more elaborate and, typically, there is the draw of a program more stellar and spectacular than usual. But the dynamic has changed lately. Now the society gala has become a pop event held before the first classical Tuesday, and the Bowl already was in full swing for a couple of weeks before this summer’s Los Angeles Philharmonic opener.

Perhaps that is why Tuesday’s program, “An Evening With Frederica von Stade and Samuel Ramey,” seemed so eager to compete with the gala and weekend pops. The singers desperately tried to please with opera, American song and Broadway. The orchestra, just back from a month’s vacation, was not the highlight of the program and did not exhibit enthusiasm for the project. Leonard Slatkin conducted. Attendance was unexceptional, with more than half the seats empty. I have never known so dispiriting a start to the Bowl season.

First off, there are changes to the Bowl experience. The new food service is provided by Patina, and part of the Philharmonic deficit woes this year are due to an expensive buyout of the previous service. That might explain more ostentatious selling at the Bowl than ever. Walk through the turnstile and now you are greeted by a massive champagne display ($10 a glass); throughout the opening overture, waitresses scurried around the boxes and settled checks. Programs have risen in price to $1, yet Tuesday’s edition supplied neither translations nor synopses of the evening’s French and Italian arias. The featured article--a screenwriter’s long love letter to the Bowl--offered such advice as “a guy with tickets to the Bowl is A Great Date. Period.”

That great date Tuesday began with a tentative performance of Berlioz’s “Roman Carnival Overture.” Then came the Sam and Flicka Show. Both are opera stars late in their careers but still exciting on the lyric stage. Ramey was commanding in the Los Angeles Opera production of “Faust” this season. Von Stade, who sang two arias from Offenbach’s “The Grand Duchess of Gerolstein” with spirit and charm, was in vivid voice, rich and sure. Ramey, who offered arias from Boito’s “Mefistofele” and Verdi’s “Attila,” was not in good voice. He can growl wonderfully as a deep basso, but a persistent wobble was italicized by aggressive amplification and high notes were strained.

The dynamic between Von Stade and Ramey was cute but no more. (At one time, when she seemed more ingenue and he more devilish, they might have made an interesting duo.) The pair cautiously labored through excerpts from Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” that were introduced by the opera’s famous Overture played with tubby insecurity.

The American half began well but slipped immediately into embarrassment. Slatkin and the Philharmonic came to life for a moment with Copland’s “An Outdoor Overture”--perfect, outgoing Bowl music, forthrightly played. But Von Stade and Ramey dragged Copland and the orchestra down with four overcooked excerpts from the composer’s “Old American Songs.” It was distressing, in particular, to hear Von Stade, once so elegant a mezzo-soprano, lose her “gift to be simple.” The bloating increased on Broadway, with Ramey over-emoting “Ol’ Man River” and both milking “Some Enchanted Evening.”

The most magical moment was an ironic one. For her encore, a mannered Von Stade sang “Send In the Clowns,” dramatically lingering over the line “you in midair.” Linger long enough--and she did--and “you in midair” will noisily fly by overhead. And it did.