FROM AROUND THE WORLD: NEW YORK CITY.(Review)

The Met revival of L'Italiana in Algeri (seen Feb. 2) captured the humor and color of Rossini's score, thanks to onstage teamwork and the crisp, pliable conducting of Bruno Campanella. For bel canto style, there was the pleasant, lyrical Lindoro of Matthew Polenzani; for character comedy, the practiced, amusing Taddeo of Alessandro Corbelli. Samuel Ramey, an unduly solemn Mustafa at the start, was outpaced by the role's light-footed coloratura demands, but by the time he reached the ludicrous "Pappataci" scene toward the end, the bass-baritone had limbered up quite a bit, delivering a series of high Gs with evident relish. As for Isabella, the Italian Girl herself, Jennifer Larmore played a Steel Magnolia version, made up like Scarlett O'Hara. Glamorous and imperious to a fault, she caught Isabella's sense of adventure -- and her sense of humor. The mezzo's intricate passagework went off like smoothly lubricated clockwork, but she delivered much of the role in a masked, gravelly tone, apparently to project better in the lower register. Mariusz Kwiecien played a mildly menacing Haly, Joyce Guyer a poignantly mopey Elvira.

Probably few in the audience were perplexed by the Italian habit of referring to North Africans as "Turks," and in fact the Barbary Coast did fall under Turkish rule during the sixteenth century, fueling L'Italiana's piracy-based story. Not that history is needed to justify such inspired nonsense. The brilliant orchestra put Rossini's score across with elasticity, point and clarity, but the real strength of this production, staged by Grischa Asagaroff after the late Jean-Pierre Ponnelle's original, is its visual musicality. Ponnelle possessed a genius for distinguishing the various sections of a marathon finale by rearranging the singers, like chess pieces on a board, to show how the music is designed and which soloists are exchanging ideas with which. One or two soloists might stand on either side, for instance, while the others sing in a clump at the center; and when the music changes, so does the grouping. In a work such as L'Italiana, or the Cosi Fan Tutte that Ponnelle did for Zurich, this procedure literally brings order out of confusion.

For the revival of Manon (seen Feb. 13), Ponnelle's vision failed to reach any such insights into Massenet's score. Almost as if he were embarrassed by raw sentiment, Ponnelle distilled the action into objective sets that resemble framed prints from the period. For the inn courtyard and the Cours-la-Reine, this works well enough: for the barnlike Paris apartment and austere St. Sulpice, it exerts a dampening effect. The compartmentalized Hotel de Transylvanie belabors the obvious image of gambling as a mechanical, obsessive pursuit, and the final episode, cluttered with trash at the foot of a bluff along the coast, dwarfs the intimacy of the lovers' last moments together.

Ruth Ann Swenson, having recently sung one of Manon's musical forebears, Gounod's Juliette, evidently worked with care on the details of Massenet's multifaceted portrayal. In the Amiens scene, she registered the right amalgam of fatigue, confusion and excitement; in the Paris apartment, the girl's conflicting emotions flew off at tangents around a central core of regret, which finally emerged in "Adieu, notre petite table"; in the Coursla-Reine, her superficial delight gradually dissolved into regret again, leading to her most demanding scene, the seduction of des Grieux in the chapel at St. Sulpice. Perhaps Swenson's characterization wasn't yet all of a piece in its transitions from one flighty state to another, but the states themselves were presented with assurance and credible conviction.

As des Grieux, Giuseppe Sabbatini kept his tenor in tight focus, tracing the line elegantly. The difficult attack at a piano volume level on "Ah! fuyez, douce image" he handled in exemplary fashion, and his growing emotional engagement in Manon's plight built up to a final scene of intensity without violating the framework of Massenet's style. Roberto de Candia's carefree Lescaut made less than expected of "Rosalinde" ("A quoi bon l'economie") at the Cours-la-Reine but conveyed the character's amusing indignation in matters of family "honor." Kim Josephson portrayed a hearty Bretigny with no illusions about Manon's potential for constancy. An authentic French stylist, Michel Senechal showed how, without any breach of socially, vocally or histrionically correct behavior, Guillot could assert himself with ruinous consequences. Julius Rudel's long familiarity with the score elicited its softness, irony and piquancy, despite a few patches of approximate coordination, and despite Ponnelle's oddly cool stage picture.

JOHN W. FREEMAN

[] The season's final performance of Fidelio (Jan. 11) marked the Met debut of Austrian soprano Renate Behle as Leonore. It was a truly respectable performance: any singer who gets through this role's hazards safely and accurately commands and deserves respect, and Behle's wide experience in heavy German repertory served her well. But no dramatic or musical sparks flew, as they do when the great Leonores take the stage, even in such a wrongheaded production as Jurgen Flimm's. Behle at least worked up a decent head of steam for her "Abscheulicher!" scene and "Tot' erst sein Weib!", and she negotiated handily all the ladders and trapdoors strewn in her path. But there was never a sense of her getting to the core of an admittedly almost incredibly heroic character or conquering, rather than merely (!) surviving, Beethoven's musical challenges.