Levi and Singers Deliver a Lively Evening

In a bright and generous debut, Yoel Levi made his first appearance with the Los Angeles Philharmonic on Tuesday night at the Hollywood Bowl. It was not a performance of great subtlety or deep probing, but it excited a noisy audience gathered in the outdoor amphitheater, and all the music proved lively and thoroughly engaging.

Levi’s commanding conducting of a mostly operatic program ending with Respighi’s non-operatic but compelling “Roman Festivals” held our interest through the evening. The bonus was the appearance of two accomplished and glamorous opera singers, soprano Hei-Kyung Hong and mezzo-soprano Jennifer Larmore. They delivered some thrills, some disappointments and many pleasant moments.

Until some very showy--even beauteous--performances after intermission, both Hong and Larmore proved vocally challenged.

Despite brave performances of duets from Mozart’s “Clemenza di Tito” and Rossini’s “Tancredi” and arias from “Gianni Schicchi,” “Semiramide,” “Don Pasquale” and “Barbiere di Siviglia,” the first half contained a lot of forced singing, effortful high notes and hard-edged tone along with what we might have expected from these operatic stars: a few charming musical details and indisputable visual glamour.

Larmore made heavy going of Arsace’s opening aria from “Semiramide,” a test piece of abundant hurdles she worked hard to conquer. Her “Barbiere” excerpt made of Rosina a tough and inelegant heroine. Hong did the same for Norina in the famous “Pasquale” aria; here, a curdled trill and strident top notes stole our attention from the music.

After the break, with “Cruda sorte” from “L’Italiana in Algeri,” Larmore gave the sort of virtuosic, polished performance for which she has been so often praised. Then, Hong sang “Chi il bel sogno di Doretta” from Puccini’s “La Rondine” captivatingly. At the end, after closing their program proper with the exposing “Norma” duet--they sang it well, and acceptably, but without the genuine dramatic vocalism that might cause an impresario to cast them in the opera--the singers took a welcome encore and sang the duet from Delibes’ “Lakme.” The enthusiastic audience cheered.

The Romanian-born conductor and the Philharmonic achieved rough-edged but exciting performances of the overtures to Verdi’s “Forza del Destino” and Rossini’s “La Gazza Ladra,” and Respighi’s exigent showpiece “Feste Romane.”

Because she has not earlier been spotlighted, one must note the orchestra’s new keyboard principal, Joanne Pearce Martin, who contributed handsomely to this occasion in the solo that begins the “Rondine” aria.