‘La Perichole’: So degenerate -- and so dull

What a muddle Long Beach Opera has made of Offenbach’s comic “La Perichole,” unveiled Sunday at the Carpenter Performing Arts Center in Long Beach.

The original story concerns two starving street musicians, La Perichole and her boyfriend, Piquillo, whose fortunes change radically when the viceroy of Spain, who dominates colonial Peru, takes a romantic interest in her.

That’s enough of a cue for stage director David Schweizer to turn the city of Lima into a modern police state, with cowering, underwear-clad citizens hustled into line by machine-gun-wielding soldiers. A huge, inflated-balloon version of the tinhorn viceroy floats above barbed-wire-protected walls, and leaflets of his image are everywhere.

Yet it’s also a “Springtime for Hitler” police state.

The half-dressed soldiers break into chorus-line routines; the dictator cuts a mean caper or two in addition to making snarling threats; and the citizens, at least the women, are camp followers spending much of the second act servicing the soldiers in their pup tents.

Lima is very degenerate, very naughty, very boring.

At the end, after a duet in which La Perichole and Piquillo plead for their freedom, the populace and the soldiers turn on the dictator.

Ah, the power of song.

Following the conventions of opera comique, the Long Beach cast sings and speaks a new English translation by Brian Gantner. What could be heard of it Sunday sounded promising enough -- “I love my nieces to pieces,” for instance, or the much more telling commentary, “I’m in a nuthouse. I’m married and I’m in a nuthouse.”

But much of it was lost in the cavernous and mostly empty stage space. Some of the principals could barely project to the sixth row.

In their duets, both Cynthia Jansen in the title role and James Schaffner as Piquillo had this problem, although they did much better individually. Vocally, they were not well matched. Jansen’s creamy mezzo carried operatic weight. Schaffner’s tenor seemed better suited to a Broadway musical.

Jeff Morrissey made a commanding, if single-dimensional, viceroy. The excellent John Duykers, in the role of the First Gentleman of the Court, represented luxury casting. Paul Sahuc was a strong governor of Lima.

Catherine Ireland, Jordan Gumucio and Diana Tash sang and acted vividly as three sluttish cousins-cum-tavern keepers. Mark Bringelson was fine in the cameo role of the Old Prisoner.

Occupying a world almost as serenely unaffected by the silly stage shenanigans as the floating-balloon viceroy was conductor (and Long Beach Opera general director-designate) Andreas Mitisek, who led a stylish performance of Offenbach’s often suave and catchy music. The chorus was also a bright light.

Andrew Lieberman designed the barbed-wire sets. Audrey Fisher created the guerrilla soldier outfits, tarts’ wear and undergarment costumes -- and the silly fake beards the prisoners donned for no obvious reason. The sets were lighted effectively by Geoff Korf.

The choreography was credited to Ken Roht. Dancer Robert Porch, who portrayed a jailer as well as a soldier, usually commanded attention, even when he was doing go-go boy routines at the back of the stage.

Last season, Schweizer directed a powerful and sensitive staging of Thomas Ades’ “Powder Her Face” for Long Beach Opera. His work in “Perichole” didn’t have anything near that power or focus. It was strange. The performance, which included two intermissions, lasted nearly three hours.

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‘La Perichole’

Where: Carpenter Center, 6200 Atherton St., Long Beach

When: Sunday, 2 p.m.

Price: $35 to $100

Contact: (562) 439-2580