CLASSCOL

Until this past week, the local cultural forces had honored the Mozart bicentennial with no particvlar distinction. There were lots of routine programs of predictable substance, and a half-hearted attempt by the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, to commission a series of new pieces “in the style of…” that bore but withered fruit. Then came the Long Beach Opera’s production of “Lucio Silla,” and a note of true distinction was finally sounded. The work dates from Mozart’s 16th year, composed for a company in Milan whose own tradition rested largely in sustaining a repertory of artificial, serious, display operas set to old-fashioned plots. By and large, “Silla” honored that tradition. Giovanni di Gamerra’s plot held no surprises: the tyrannical Silla loves the virginal Giunia who loves the virtuous Cecilio who plots, with his friend Cinna (loved by Silla’s sister Celia) to assassinate Silla. The plotters are discovered, but Silla brings on the requisite happy ending by forgiving them all. The forgiveness gimmick was, of course, a basic 18th-century plot device; it showed up again in Mozart’s “Seraglio” and in “La Clemenza di Tito” and is also faintly echoed in “The Magic Flute,” in Sarastro’s sudden conversion from villain to saint.”Silla” was a success in Milan, on what must have been a grandiose staging with lots of clanking armor and elaborate sets. The Long Beach staging, which was none of the above, used the tiny space of the Center Theater to stunning effect; the company’s finest hours, over its 14-year existence, have been in that smaller of the Convention Center’s two theaters, in a repertory extending from Monteverdi to Britten. “Silla,” which has virtually no history of modern stagings in this country (although a fair number of cut-down concert performances), was a triumphant addition to this list. A single lush, green plant, in a lighted niche high above the stage, provided the one visual contrast. Most of director Roy Rallo’s action took place in heavy shadow, with single characters brought out with narrow spotlights, against a floor and a back wall done mostly in black.The plan of action made no attempt to do battle against the basically static manner of the music; the mind was left to feed, undistractedly, on the work’s multitudinous beauties. It all worked, surprisingly well. “Lucio Silla” is not an opera of action; its arias and set pieces are long, and the musical forces at Long Beach made no cuts in what is accepted as the opera’s authentic form. (The original Milan production ran some six hours, by dint of several inserted ballet episodes not by Mozart. The Long Beach production, with all repeats observed and nothing cut, came in at 3 1/2 hours.)For his “pit” band (actually located on a platform above the stage) impresario Michael Milenski chose wisely; Gregory Maldonado’s Los Angeles Baroque Orchestra is evolving into one of the area’s most valuable ensembles. For all the small accidents among horns and winds in the opening performance last Sunday, the orchestral sound was prevailingly sweet and strong. Patrick Summers, of the San Francisco Opera, conducted, and shaped a splendidly paced, unflagging performance. Conductors of this early-classic repertory must make many decisions on their own, and Summers’ decisions — in the matter of tempo. and in determining questions of the singers’ improvised ornamentations and cadenzas — seemed constantly just. Without gimmickry or intrusive attempts at updating, the essential power in this exquisite work of Mozart’s boyhood came across. An extraordinarily fine cast helped: not merely five singers of excellent technique and exemplary diction, but a cohesive enesemble that had obviously been well-trained in the elusive art of singing together. A brilliant young mezzo-soprano named Lynnen Yakes sang the Cecilio (a role orginally for castrato) with marvelous strength; Carmen Pelton, as his sweetheart Giunia, was equally touching. Lydia Mila, Anne Marie Ketchum and William Livingston (in the title role) rounded out this most remarkable group. ”Lucio Silla” exists on a splendid new recording on Teldec, under the lively, probing leadershipo of Nikolaus Harnoncourt, with a fine cast that includes the delectable Dawn Upshaw as Celia. There’s no point in bemoaning the fact that a work as glorious as this hasn’t found its way to the major houses. A traditional staging at the Metropolitan or the Music Center would undoubtedly underscore the opera’s length and relative lack of action at the expense of its many musical wonders. The Long Beach production was exactly right, a tribute to this occasionally misguided, more often triumphant and always enterprising company, and a tribute to Mozart as well.Scholarly conscience dictates that I deliver a critical broadside against Paul McCartney’s “Liverpool Oratorio,” which sprawled across quite a lot of PBS’s time time a week or so ago. I cannot; something about the sweetness of the piece, underscored by the personality of Paul himself as it came out in the hourlong documentary that preceded the performance, drew out in me a benevolent tolerance toward the music itself that no exercise of common sense can quite obliterate. Sure it’s pure cornball, and its derivations stick out like a porcupine’s quills. Yet the piece is likeable, in exactly the ways that Andrew Lloyd Webber’s sludge never is. It never overreaches itself, and that’s a rare achievement.I only wish Angel-EMI had issued the documentary along with the video of the performance. That, at least, was a work of art.