Presentation Leads ‘Abduction’ Far Astray

Lucinda Carver is a comer. The reputation of the Los Angeles Mozart Orchestra was little more than that of a classical music garage band when she became its music director in 1992. Now it is one of California’s notable chamber orchestras, and its first recordings of Haydn and Mozart on the RCM Records label are competitive with far better known groups.

Carver, herself, is also getting noticed. She made her debut with New York City Opera last season and was a hit. Finally, Friday night, she conducted an opera in Los Angeles, Mozart’s “Abduction From the Seraglio,” at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre. The orchestra was hers, the singers were appealing, and Carver was just about ideal.

The “Abduction” is the earliest of Mozart’s repertory comic operas, and though less fleshed out than his greatest, it is his most boisterous and full of remarkable insights into human emotion as well as remarkably precocious music for a composer still in his early 20s. Carver got it all. Utterly engaging, she brought forth the sheer enthusiasm Mozart had in presenting life as absurd and endearing. Tempi were quick and alert. Phrasing was rounded, polished. Everything seemed alive.

The singing was mostly engaging as well, particularly the fresh tenor of Greg Fedderly, a romantic Belmonte, said to be suffering from sinusitis, but sounding perfectly fine except for a slight congestion in the highest range (he did excuse himself, however, from his third act aria, “Ich baue ganz”). Michael Li-Paz, the oafish Osmin, and Daniel Ebbers, the sappy Pedrillo, did a nice job of remaining in character throughout the performance in a way the other singers didn’t. The sopranos--Camille King--a rather cool Constanze, and Diana Tash, a sprightly Blonde--were less vocally consistent but seemed to come through when the music, especially Constanze’s punishing coloratura, became the most demanding.

The performance was narrated with humorous asides by Rich Capparela, the classical music radio personality, who was on hand because the opera was broadcast live on KKGO-FM (105.1). And I suspect the radio listeners heard something better than what the audience did in the Ford. The theater offers a delightful outdoor setting for opera, finer by far than, say, the makeshift outdoor theater in Salzburg where the “Abduction” was staged last summer. But though a relatively intimate space, the Ford’s amplification was haphazard; it made the small orchestra sound very weirdly balanced and the small chorus (Zephyr: Voices Unbound) even worse.

But that was also indicative of a larger problem with the amphitheater. Not only was this a theatrically dull concert performance in a space that simply cries out for imaginative theatrical use, but it was hardly the “Abduction” at all. Mozart’s opera is a comic farce about Turkish abduction of Spanish nobility. It has things in it that could easily insult modern sensibilities, in its comic treatment of cultures and women. Much of that is in the dialogue, which was slashed to few fragments (recited in English, while the singing remained in the original German) and often misrepresented to avoid offense.

But offense, and the overcoming of prejudices, is the deeper point of “Abduction.” Far braver Salzburg updates it to the modern Palestinian conflict and even adds new ethnic music and whirling dervishes. Another Salzburg production of the opera is purely electronic and presented in a video arcade.

Meanwhile we in Los Angeles, the world’s multicultural and media capital, remain artistically blinkered. The county runs the Ford and is proud of its varied offerings for a varied society. Yet its idea of opera, censored and white-washed, comes from a different reading of media--opera as blandly unreal and meaningless as the one depicted in “The Truman Show.” Some other city will surely make Carver a better offer, and soon.