AMAZON OPERA DRAWS FROM DISTANT SHORES.

Byline: Scott Duncan Orange County Register

At its Houston premiere last year, Daniel Catan's ``Florencia en el Amazonas'' was criticized for a lack of indigenous music from the Brazilian Amazon.

As if a composer born in Mexico City is not allowed to write music embracing an international style, while we accept Hungarian-born Gyorgy Ligeti's experiments in post-Webern modernism and Verdi's seething Italian lyricism in the Egyptian grandeur of ``Aida.''

Such are the political overtones at ``Florencia,'' which opened Sunday night at Los Angeles Music Center Opera, which toasted the event with an outreach organization called Hispanics for L.A. Opera.

While it's well and good for a Los Angeles opera company to explore works that will resonate with more diverse segments of its audiences, Catan deserves to be rescued from the fate of a minority-designated composer, a casualty of our time.

Catan, who had cosmopolitan training in London, Japan and with Milton Babbitt at Princeton University, saw his ``Rappaccini Daughter'' produced by San Diego Opera in 1994 and now ``Florencia'' co-commissioned by Houston Grand Opera, L.A. Opera and Seattle Opera.

In ``Florencia,'' Catan has written a score more mature, transparent in orchestration and melodically direct than ``Rappaccini.'' As a musical framework for an homage to the ``magical realism'' of writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez - its libretto was fashioned by former Marquez student Marcela Fuentes-Berain - it evokes a sense of atmosphere and finds moments of touching sentiment.

Its problems derive not from a missing quota of native Brazilian musical sources - though Catan chooses to flavor his orchestration with the African djembe drum and Caribbean steel drum - but from a score that never finds a voice of its own among the lush evocations of French Impressionism and Puccinian melodic devices. Too often, one listens to ``Florencia'' imagining that Princess Turandot has wandered into the ballet ``Daphnis et Chloe.''

The story, which has only a tenuous link to any characters of the writer Marquez, involves a riverboat carrying a group of South Americans to an opera house in Manaus, Brazil, to hear a concert by a famed opera diva Florencia Grimaldi.

A river muse, Riolobo, sung with panache by Rodney Gilfry, introduces the characters as they board in an opening scene. Trouble already: He describes the motivations of each character, and like cardboard cutouts they go about fulfilling our expectations.

Along with kindly Captain, there is a middle-age couple trying to rekindle a marriage; a young couple falling in love but facing their fear of becoming what they see in the older couple.

And Florencia, who is taking this remote journey to find a man she loved before all the fame and glory of her European opera career. She searches for Cristobol, who has disappeared into the Brazilian jungle in search of an exotic butterfly.

The opera is a series of monologues and duets as the characters struggle with these life questions while the El Dorado riverboat, actually a clever unit set, pivots to reveal various settings.

But these struggles, universal and human as they are, do not necessarily make compelling musical drama on an operatic scale. Catan's opera is about love, and how it transforms us. Lucia was transformed by love; she sings a mad scene in a blood-stained nightgown.

Musically and dramatically, Catan sets its sights lower, smaller, safer. Rather than surprise with the unpredictable, Catan's characters bend to fit a symmetrical symbology, like Florencia's somewhat trite transformation into a butterfly.

The cast for this production performed with excellence. Sheri Greenawald sang the title role with her usual superb stagecraft and pearl-like soprano voice. Her several lengthy monologues were always interesting on stage. Suzanna Guzman brought beauty and pathos to her role as Paula, distanced from her husband, Alvaro, sung by Hector Vasquez.

Greg Fedderly and Yvonne Gonzales sang attractively as the Captain's nephew and the journalist Rosalba. Gabor Andrasy was a beneficent Captain. Such effects as the storm of pink rain and the mysterious Amazonas river spirits were well depicted by Francesca Zambello's production with Robert Israel's sets.

Because it wears the trappings of opera so well, ``Florencia'' goes down easily and was warmly received by Sunday's gala audience. ``Florencia'' is a feel-good opera on many levels, but the river goes further and deeper than Catan's boat was equipped to go.

THE FACTS

What: ``Florencia en el Amazonas,'' a new opera by Daniel Catan.

Who: Los Angeles Music Center Opera.

Where: Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., downtown.

When: 7:30 p.m. Sunday and Wednesday, 1 p.m. Oct. 18.

Tickets: $24 to $135.

Information: [phone].

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Photo

Photo: The opera ``Florencia en el Amazonas'' involves a riverboat full of passengers headed for a concert at a Brazilian opera house.