`MR. FOX' OUTFOXED BY DETAILS.

Byline: Reed Johnson Daily News Staff Writer

If cats can be stars of a Broadway show, don't foxes at least deserve their own opera?

Judging by L.A. Opera's ``Fantastic Mr. Fox,'' which opened Wednesday night at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, foxes certainly can carry a tune every bit as well as their feline counterparts.

Not that Tobias Picker is likely to become the next Andrew Lloyd Webber. Justly celebrated for his 1996 operatic debut, ``Emmeline,'' a bleakly lyrical gender-reversed updating of the Oedipus legend, Picker has emerged as one of American opera's most promising young composers.

Now he turns his considerable talents to a 30-year-old fable by Roald Dahl, the freakishly original Welsh author of fiction for children and adults. The top-flight production team's other members are librettist Donald Sturrock, a British writer, director and documentary maker, and Gerald Scarfe, the trenchant British political cartoonist, who designed the multitiered, asymmetrical sets and whimsical, anthropomorphic costumes.

Somehow, however, these distinct sensibilities haven't quite meshed to form the cohesive, for-all-ages entertainment that L.A. Opera honorably intended for its first-ever world premiere commission.

Written during a time of personal hardship for Dahl, ``Fantastic Mr. Fox'' is, on one level, the story of a father's resourcefulness in protecting his family from three vicious farmers bent on exterminating them: Boggis, Bunce and Bean, ``one fat, one short, one lean,'' as the libretto puts it.

At the Dorothy Chandler, the trio is played and sung to a fare thee well by basso Louis Lebherz as Boggis, looking like a fat killer clownl tenor Doug Jones as the pear-shaped, pretentious Francophile Bunce; and bass-baritone Jamie Offenbach as the baleful, goose-stepping Bean.

Amusingly aided in their murderous pursuit by a sadsack tractor named Mavis (soprano Lesley Leighton) and a dinosaurlike digging machine named Agnes (mezzo-soprano Jill Grove), the farmers are an entertaining trio.

So entertaining, in fact, that they make the noble Mr. Fox (baritone Gerald Finley), his steadfast wife (mezzo-soprano Suzanna Guzman) and his vulpine brood of four seem slightly dull by comparison. Though Finley has a sleek, commanding voice and an elegant presence that suggests the hyper-alertness of a nocturnal predator, his character isn't fully developed or on stage long enough to really engage our emotions.

Part of the problem lies with Sturrocks' libretto. Though it stays remarkably faithful to Dahl's cranky wit, it pares away much of the story's urgency so we never truly feel the animals' peril.

Puckish humor rather than narrative propulsiveness also characterizes Picker's score, spiritedly conducted by Peter Ash. There's a pleasant, pastoral air to this music, with its sing-songy snatches of nursery rhyme, or bleating horns and warbling violins to suggest the woodland creatures. When Agnes the Digger goes to work, the mood is violently, sensationally interrupted by brutal brass and kettledrums.

Klezmerish notes pop up when the dowdy Rita the Rat (mezzo-soprano Josepha Gayer) makes a late entrance, sounding like a character from some zoological version of ``Three Penny Opera.'' But Picker's melodies are mostly ethereal and suggestive, subtle hues in a story that seems to call for bold, primary colors.

Those colors are definitely to be found in Scarfe's designs, his tippy tin-roofed chicken shacks filled with zany, googly-eyed roosters. Families in search of a G-rated holiday treat could do far worse than park their offspring in the Chandler's balcony this month. But with this much talent around, that partial recommendation feels like a minor letdown.

The Facts

What: ``Fantastic Mr. Fox.''

Where: Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Music Center of Los Angeles County, 135 N. Grand Ave.

When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 20 and 21; 1 p.m. today, Dec. 19 and 22.

Tickets: $20 to $68. Call [phone].

Our rating: Two and One Half Stars

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Photo

PHOTO Mrs. Fox (Suzanna Guzman) comforts her husband (Gerald Finley) in the L.A. Opera production of ``Fantastic Mr. Fox.''

Evan Yee/Daily News