For better or worse

“A Wedding,” the opera, is not the first winsome wedding, or opera, that required an immoderate amount of wooing. Even so, an interval of 26 years between love at first sight and a march to the altar does say something impressive about composer William Bolcom’s plucky determination.

The object of Bolcom’s affection was Robert Altman’s unloved (by critics and audiences) film “A Wedding.” Seeing it when it opened in 1978, he knew then and there that he wanted to turn it into an opera.

An improvisatory, sprawling, screwball parody of an American wedding, an unwieldy film with 48 characters, it was operatically impratical in every imaginable way. Nor was Bolcom a proven opera composer. He was thought a talented eclectic, perhaps too talented and too eclectic to have his own voice.

Well, he does have his own voice and now has two successful full-scale operas under his belt. So Saturday night, Lyric Opera of Chicago premiered Bolcom’s “A Wedding.” Altman directed and was coauthor of the libretto with longtime Bolcom collaborator Arnold Weinstein.

In “A Wedding,” Bolcom succeeds at what he set out to do. He wanted to make people laugh, and he does. He added inner lives to sketchy characters. He wrote delightful and moving music. He found mature and subtle ways to integrate his excessive stylistic diversity.

And yet, for all the enjoyment “A Wedding” delivers, and for all the promise of deeper appreciation of the score that repeated hearings will surely bring, “A Wedding” is still not the great opera that Bolcom was, I am convinced, born to write.

With his previous two operas, “McTeague” and “A View From the Bridge” (both also for Lyric Opera), Bolcom demonstrated a sure sense of mood, drama and musical development. These are fine operas deserving a place in the repertory. But they lack the bold gestures of his magnum opus, “Songs of Innocence and of Experience,” an epic orchestral song cycle based on William Blake that is outrageously operatic (and cries out for staging).

For “A Wedding,” Bolcom had the comfort factor of a close team. Dennis Russell Davies was again conducting, as he had “McTeague” and “A View From the Bridge.” Weinstein was writing the libretto, as he did for those operas. As in them, soprano Catherine Malfitano is a member of the cast (playing the groom’s mother). And Altman directed “McTeague.” But somehow, the weight of working in opera seems to keep this composer overly conventional. And “A Wedding” cries out for immoderation and chance-taking.

The wedding is between a nouveau riche Southern family and Chicago old money. Altman’s film is a satiric frolic that brings out the worst in a shifty bunch. The groom’s socialite mother is strung out on morphine. Her husband was a waiter when she picked him up in Italy. There is a socialist-artist great aunt who shocks all with her nude portrait of the bride.

The bride brings in tow an easily outraged, morally uptight truck-driving father, a ditzy mother (Carol Burnett in the film), a blank sister who will sleep with anyone and is pregnant by the groom (Mia Farrow in the film). There are dozens of other amusing, shiftless, corrupt characters.

Bolcom saw in all this not only a great operatic farce but also a comedy of manners that satirized serious social concerns. None of the class-conscious invited guests show up for the reception at the groom’s family’s Lake Forest mansion.

For the opera, Weinstein and Altman reduced the characters from a completely unwieldy 48 to a still nearly unwieldy 16. Most get substantial musical numbers. Many who had been caricatures in the film become living characters.

The opera is -- as Altman acknowledged in a panel discussion Saturday afternoon -- better than the film, which he found, like just about everyone else, a mess (although it does have its cult following and inspired moments).

All of this makes it hard to understand why “A Wedding” isn’t a more winning opera. I think the reason may be that, curiously enough, all concerned did their jobs too well. Highly unsympathetic characters -- meaning just about everyone -- become sympathetic as we get to know them better. Yet that turns out not to be very interesting.

When Tulip, the bride’s mother, becomes a sexual object to the husband of one of the groom’s aunts, a drunken doctor (a compilation of two characters in the film), the highly dramatic soprano Lauren Flanagan has a great emotional outpouring. This turns out to be the first sexual awakening in her uninteresting life. It’s a nice idea, and a nice aria, but oddly ordinary and pathetic. And that’s what happens all along: We get inner lives that make sense and give a point to the drama and the issues, but no longer surprise.

Still, it’s a good opera with moments of wonderful music. These characters provide a perfect excuse for Bolcom to indulge his love and talent for popular music -- the soft-shoe number for the socialist aunt and the one nonfamily guest (who was hired to come) is so good that if these were the old days, it would have been immediately repeated. The orchestral writing is marvelous, and I loved all the sliding tones accompanying the groom’s mother’s shooting up. The whole show also starts with a bang, Rossini for the 21st century. Davies is the perfect conductor.

More Broadway punch from the singers might help. Even so, Jerry Hadley is quite funny as the Italian father of the groom; so too is Malfitano. Mark Delavan is a nasty piece of work as Snooks, the father of the bride. Maria Kanyova is the shrill dominating wedding “directrix.” Timothy Nolan and Kathryn Harris are tops in their soft-shoe number. Jake Gardner is sleazy as the doctor but not sleazy enough. Anna Christy, the bride, Muffin, sings lots of high notes.

Set designer Robert Wagner does well working on what appears to be the cheap. The use of gauzy curtains is clever, and the company gets away with murder, since the stage is supposed to be an environment of bad taste.