Dallas. (North America).(Therese Raquin)

Always more conservative than David Gockley's Houston Grand Opera, Dallas Opera deserves credit for its second opera of the season, Tobias Picker's Therese Raquin, only the second world premiere in the company's forty-five-year history. Commissioned by Dallas in partnership with Opera de Montreal and San Diego Opera, Therese is based (albeit loosely) on the novel by Emile Zola that inspired Harry Connick, Jr.'s recent Broadway musical, Thou Shalt Not.

It's easy to see why Therese would appeal to any composer, and the grim story, written in 1867, resembles that of Picker's first opera, Emmeline, in its depiction of an innocent woman who breaks free from her shackles but comes to a tragic end. Possessing the potential for powerful operatic treatment, Therese Raquin revolves around a bored, sullen heroine married to a weakling mama's boy, Camille; her adulterous love affair with his best friend, Laurent; and their murder of Camille. It features a sinister morgue scene and the gruesome psychological revenge exacted by guilt when the dead man comes back to haunt the now-married lovers, who then kill themselves. What could be more sumptuously melodramatic?

Yet both Gene Scheer's libretto and Picker's score lack the spark necessary to bring characters and story alive (seen Nov. 30 and Dec. 6). Their heroine is neither Zola's brooding, irascible Therese nor even a compelling version of Ibsen's Nora or other angry nineteenth-century women. Instead, this Therese is a bland, somewhat stifled woman who, from the beginning of the opera, is involved already in her clandestine affair with Laurent. The libretto relies on banal dialogue to reflect the drabness of urban life, and the music does little to enhance the triteness of the characters' speech and of their lives. More often than not, the words either serve the score badly or are badly served by it.

In an effort to achieve dramatic balance, Picker and Scheer designed Act I to build toward Camille's ...