The Pearl Fishers at the Aotea Centre

By WILLIAM DART

It is difficult to explain the popularity of Bizet's The Pearl Fishers in this part of the world, and curious for Auckland to be offered another production when Lindy Hume's 1992 staging is still vivid in the memory.

The opera offers spectacle, to be sure, but melodic pickings are surprisingly lean, outside of the big duet.

The plot, a stir-fry of over-heated Orientalism and Boy's Own adventure, is pretty silly, even as opera goes.

Swedish director Ann-Margret Pettersson has tinkered about here and there, and The Pearl Fishers comes with what is, if not a totally happy ending, at least one that avoids any stabbings or burnings.

It also puts a gay spin on the relationship between Zurga and Nadir, although the presentation of this is rather demure - hand-on-shoulder stuff, and Zurga replacing "Leila, je t'aimais" with "Nadir, je t'aimais" in the closing scene.

Pettersson's framing of the tale in terms of Zurga's later memories is an elegant theatrical device, although it does undercut some of the later drama, which must have given Luise Napier a challenge in its staging.

How fortunate that the unstinting resourcefulness of John Conklin's set, with all its screens, ruined temples and inscrutable Oriental statues, more than compensates for any narrative flab.

Nigel Leving's imaginative lighting design, making much of mists, stars and candles, played its part too, and was skilfully handled by Michael Knapp.

Mark Holland was a brooding Zurga. A little ungiving at first, he all but tore his soul apart at the opening of Act III and, alongside Deborah Wai Kapohe, provided the most thrilling drama of the evening in the confrontational duet that followed.

John Daszak, burdened with a rather ungainly costume, was a smooth Nadir, offering "Je crois entendre encore" with only a smidgen of strain in the upper register, while Jud Arthur offered solid support as the High Priest Nourabad.

The real pearl of the production was our own Deborah Wai Kapohe and it was fascinating to watch her performance develop over the course of the evening.

The occasional rough phrasing here and there was more than atoned for by her exquisite Act II aria, with its lustrous ornamentation. By the last act, the priestess had become a vibrant and vulnerable woman.

The chorus sang their lungs out, wishing, I'm sure, that this score had more Verdi in its veins, and the Auckland Philharmonia acquitted themselves admirably in the pit, making the most of Bizet's colours - the opera is anything but the fortissimo in three acts that one critic described it as in 1863. The experienced Michael Lloyd kept tempi snappy and, presumably, a straight face during far too many snatches that could have strayed in from an Offenbach operetta.

Perhaps the young, inexperienced Bizet is ultimately to blame, if blame is needed for such an entertaining evening. With only four more performances, you miss Wai Kapohe at your own cultural peril.