Summer’s waltz with love

Midsummer’s night smiles three times, the gloriously cynical Swedish grande dame tells us at the beginning of “A Little Night Music.” The first is on the young, who are innocent. The second is on fools, they who love and know not why. The third is on the old, who know too much.

There is a fourth smile, as well, and it is on opera companies that attempt, however timidly, their own midsummer productions of Stephen Sondheim’s luscious musical comedy. The smiles at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, where Los Angeles Opera has opened a three-week run of “A Little Night Music,” may not be as broad as they might, let alone as carnal. Nor do they live up to Madame Armfeldt’s other bit of wisdom about not dallying with a Scandinavian, since your partner will surely be insane (“It’s the latitude”).

But even though this production’s muddled lovers exhibit more good-humored, straightforward befuddlement than shrewd sensuousness and seldom seem in danger of truly desperate dalliance, the summer night manages to smile on the show anyway -- and to send in the clowns.

Why, you may ask, is L.A. Opera producing musical comedy at the Pavilion in July? Why not? The theater was built 40 years ago to accommodate both the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Civic Light Opera. The former moved out a year ago; the latter went out of business many years ago.

So it is nice now to see L.A. Opera wanting to take advantage of its increased access to the Pavilion, and it is intriguing to have a classic musical given an opera company’s expertise, in contrast to the more typical Broadway offerings across the plaza at the Ahmanson.

Moreover, “A Little Night Music,” which was first produced on Broadway in 1973, is operetta in all but name. Based on Ingmar Bergman’s sophisticated 1955 comedy “Smiles of a Summer’s Night,” it fills in many of the musical illusions found in the film. Bergman made the film just after directing “The Merry Widow” onstage, and Lehar’s spirit, along with Mozart’s, can be found in nearly every cinematic scene, as lovers, ill-fit for their partners, eventually, if painfully, sort it all out in the dappled, twilit midnight sun.

Sondheim’s wit is ever acerbic in his lyrics, but his bittersweet waltzes are less so, tinctured as they are with Ravelian harmonies. There is real music to be sung and played by real singers, real orchestras and real conductors (all increasingly rare species on Broadway). There is also the sex. And while American opera companies are less daring than their European counterparts, adventuresome companies (and L.A. Opera is sometimes one of them) display far more theatrical imagination and boldness than is typically found in commercial theater these days.

That said, L.A. Opera hardly approaches “A Little Night Music” as operatic material. Although the family-friendly production, skillfully directed by Scott Ellis, comes from New York City Opera, it offers no new point of view. The cast bios are, for the most part, opera-free. As in a Broadway show, the singers are amplified. But thanks to conductor John DeMain’s Mozartian approach to the score, there is the delicious sensation of music driving the drama.

By turning to Broadway veterans and not the new generation of opera singers facile in many types of music or to an audacious opera director, L.A. Opera probably has a more bland production than it might have otherwise. But there are, at least, two big personalities and one fine singer in the cast. The personalities are Judith Ivey as the captivating actress Desiree Armfeldt and Zoe Caldwell as her crusty mother, Madame Armfeldt. Each is, in her own way, a regal seductress.

Ivey’s Desiree is a sexual puppeteer who, with extraordinary skill, reels the men in and lets them out. Hers is the show’s famous song, “Send in the Clowns,” and Ivey sings it just well enough and in a manner just wry enough to tell us that she knows folly is at the heart of not just sexual escapades but also love. She doesn’t need her highly experienced mother to tell her she’s a fool. But we do, and Caldwell is magnificently nasty.

With the exception of Marc Kudisch’s superbly sung and acted Malcolm, the blowhard dragoon, the rest of the cast merely copes. Victor Garber’s Fredrik Egerman is less libertine than a Larry David type who falls into women’s arms because, well, they’re there. If he could sing well, that might have made a difference, but he has likability on his side. As his teenage virgin wife, Anne, Laura Benanti looks fine in her period clothes but moves and talks like a 2004 Broadway performer; she even makes Hugh Wheeler’s 30-year-old dialogue sound anachronistic.

That is, in fact, pretty much the problem with the other, otherwise passable younger performers -- Danny Gurwin’s Henrik, Fredrik’s hot-headed, ecclesiastical son who loves (and runs off with) his father’s young wife; and Michele Pawk’s Charlotte (Malcolm’s man-hating, can’t live-with-’em, can’t-live-without-’em wife). Jessica Boevers is the most anachronistic of all, when she turns the serving maid Petra’s “The Miller’s Son” into a leg-flashing, arm-heaving Broadway number.

Better performers can make us hate the characters at first but grow to like them as we realize that, once their masks are removed, they are us. Still, to watch these hapless lovers waltz through their intricate roundelays (Susan Stroman is the capable choreographer), to savor Sondheim’s tart comments, all set against set designer Michael Anania’s impressionistic backdrop, is a rare pleasure nonetheless. “A Little Night Music” is a near perfect musical, and if L.A. Opera’s production is full of imperfections, the smiles of a summer night put one in a very forgiving mood.

*

‘A Little Night Music’

Where: Los Angeles Opera at Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., L.A.

When: 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays, except July 28; 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays; 2 p.m. Wednesday, July 28; 8 p.m. Sunday, July 25.

Ends: July 31

Price: $20 to $100

Contact: (213) 365-3500

Running Time: 3 hours

Judith Ivey...Desiree Armfeldt

Victor Garber...Fredrik Egerman

Zoe Caldwell...Madame Armfeldt

Laura Benanti...Anne Egerman

Michele Pawk...Countess Charlotte Malcolm

Marc Kudisch...Count Carl-Magnus Malcolm

Danny Gurwin...Henrik Egerman

Jessica Boevers...Petra

Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. Book by Hugh Wheeler. Directed by Scott Ellis. Conducted by John DeMain. Set by Michael Anania. Costumes by Lindsay W. Davis. Lighting by Jeff Nellis. Choreographer Susan Stroman. Sound designer Jon Westin.