In review: from around the world: New York City.(North America)(Opera Review)

In reviving La Juive (Nov. 6) after an absence of sixty-seven years, the Metropolitan Opera took the practical course of importing a well-received production from the Vienna State Opera. Director Gunter Kramer, abetted by set designer Gottfried Pilz and costume designer Isabel Ines Glathar, took a probing look at Eugene Scribe and Fromental Halevy's melodrama, without seeking novelty for its own sake.

At its inception in 1835, La Juive was celebrated for lavish, proto-cinematic spectacle; the Staatsoper/Met deconstructive revival was like a snapshot of a vast fresco. An abstract unit set, drained of color, reduced the stage almost entirely to lines. Grand opera became baby grand--no ballet, only one skeletal procession, the chorus largely immobile. The original fifteenth-century setting (during the violently repressive Council of Constance) was updated, but not to the Nazi era or any other specific time. Glathar dressed the Jewish characters all in black and seemingly in the 1930s, while the Christians wore white--operetta-style Alpine garb for townsfolk, nineteenth-century operatic finery for nobles. An English-speaking viewer might wonder whether the ramp that rose at a 30-degree angle across the back of the stage was meant to suggest bias. (The ramp depicted the rulers' domain in several scenes.) But it quickly became apparent that the reductions were more liberating than didactic, and with Marcello Viotti's agile conducting and a dedicated cast, the entire enterprise epitomized dramatic focus and taut energy.

Because of the prevailing simplicity, the shock was all the greater when the two final "acts" each closed with a sudden visual and dramatic coup: first the Jews' arrest, then their execution. The jaw-dropping impact made by these scenes was abetted by Wayne Chouinard's well-chosen lighting effects and by the executioners' startling costumes at the end. The audience's gasps were well earned.

The score also was downsized, from five-pins hours (if it were ever to be performed complete) to a bit more than three. This spared both the audience (since Halevy has his longueurs) and singers who would find it difficult to sustain the requisite grandeur.

In the great tenor role of Eleazar, the heroine's embittered father, Neil Shicoff was so essential to the success of this production, so palpably devoted to the work and to his character, that it seems churlish to point out the cuts and shortcuts, the deleted notes, phrases and entire numbers (such as the Act IV cabaletta, "Dieu m'e-claire") that eased his vocal burden. The editing of his role had the effect of moving it forward from florid-tenor style (typical of the 1830s) to something like helden-tenor status from the 1860s. But it worked, because Shicoff, besides being in clarion vocal condition, proved himself an eloquent singing actor. His rendition of the aria "Rachel, quand du Seigneur" combined polished lyricism with incisive diction and almost disturbing dramatic intensity.

Ferruccio Furlanetto's resonant bass and intensely emotional delivery produced a fine characterization of Cardinal Brogni. Finnish soprano Soile Isokoski, the affecting Rachel, sounded like a born Mozartean, with the virtues and limits that implies. She sang with warm timbre, evenness of scale and ample support for the role's many long, shapely phrases, as in the extended aria "Il va venir." One still missed dramatic-soprano weight in the fiery confrontations, such as her interrogation and her denunciation of treacherous Leopold (Eric Cutler).

In the stretto of their duet, Cutler sounded particularly hard pressed, despite some extra accommodation from Viotti in the pit, but the tenor dealt valiantly with the taxing tessitura of his elaborately written music. Elizabeth Futral was more comfortable in the other bel ...