San Francisco. (North America).(Arshak II, Rigoletto)(Review)

The chimera of the long-forgotten masterwork, languishing in history's dustbin, then rediscovered and newly acclaimed, fires any opera producer's hopes and ambitions. Surely no opera has accumulated a thicker coat of dust -- at least in the world annals -- than Tigran Chukhadjian's Arshak II, which had its world premiere (sort of) during the opening weekend of San Francisco Opera's seventy-ninth season. And surely no restored-to-life opera in recent memory, accorded so handsome an opportunity to state its case, has failed more abjectly to live up to expectations.

Chukhadjian (1837-98) -- the latest Grove reverses prior practice and appends an initial "T," while San Francisco's program literature spelled it both ways -- was born in Turkey of Armenian parentage and studied in Milan (where he apparently listened well). Settling later in Armenia, he composed prolifically, turning out a repertory of light operas with such arresting titles as Hor-Hor, the Chickpea Seller and The Balding Elder, works that went some distance toward establishing an indigenous Armenian repertory. His most ambitious opera, composed in 1868, was, however, to an Italian text; it bore the title Arsace II, with libretto by Tovmas (or Tommaso) Tersian, and concerned the exploits, treachery and death of the title character, the fourth-century Armenian tyrant Arshak II. Only excerpts were performed in the composer's lifetime; in the 1940s, the score was rediscovered among the papers of Chukhadjian's widow. It was then extensively revised and outfitted with a new Armenian text by a certain Armen Goulakian, in which the historic tyrant metamorphosed into a proto-Stalinist superhero. That version still circulates in Armenia. Okay so far?

San Francisco's Arshak II was, however, not very much of the above. There is in Paris, if you're ready, a "Dikran Tchouhadjian [sic] Research Centre," which, in 1998, persuaded general manager Lotfi Mansouri to graft the original Arsace/Arshak onto roots it never really possessed, by commissioning a translation of Tersian's Italian libretto into Armenian -- a process comparable, say, to "restoring" Lucia di Lammermoor into Gaelic. This neo-Arshak, as translated and edited by latter-day Chukhadjianists Haig Avakian and Gerald Papasian, is what had its world premiere in San Francisco on September 8.

How did it get there? Armenian violinist Gerard Svazlian, who had played in the opera at the National Theater in Yerevan, brought his enthusiasms to his present post in San Francisco Opera's orchestra and raised a seven-figure bundle among Armenian communities nationwide toward an eventual performance. He then got Mansouri -- himself from the neighboring country of Iran -- to look beyond the matter of special-interest groups buying into cultural resources and accord Arshak II place of preference as the final novelty of his ...