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

In the last two decades, Erich Wolfgang Korngold's concert music has undergone a huge renaissance in live performance and recordings, yet the Viennese composer's stage works have yet to regain the same favor. The monster international success of his opera Die Tote Stadt -- the work was given its premiere in both Hamburg and Cologne on the same night in 1920 -- remains, for the most part, a curious historical footnote. The opera has not been heard at the Met since 1922-23, when the glamorous Maria Jeritza sang the double role of Marie and Marietta.

Die Tote Stadt remains a strange yet compelling work, as was aptly demonstrated by New York City Opera's revival (seen April 26) of its 1975 production, designed by Robert Chase and originally directed by Frank Corsaro. Though the commedia dell'arte bits of Act II can wear thin quickly, Korngold's lustrous score abounds in inspired moments. Most famous of all is the celebrated first-act stunner, "Gluck, das mir verblieb" ("Marietta's Lied"), which rivaled "Nessun dorma" for popularity in the 1920s. The simple, poignant melody, once heard, is unforgettable. The reprise of that music as a solo for Paul is intensely moving, when, at the end of the opera, he decides to start life anew, far from Bruges and its reminders of his dead wife.

The fantasy element and general weirdness of Die Tote Stadt's story line beg for special stage effects. Yet the Corsaro-Chase production, revived with all its multimedia excess intact under the direction of Cynthia Edwards, now seems chaotic and wildly overproduced. A quarter-century ago, Korngold's fame was at a very low ebb, and the production inevitably had the sense of trying too hard to make a case for the opera. The filmed projections of Bruges's dark, monastic structures are a nice touch but quickly prove too much of a good thing. Garish, constantly changing scrim projections detract from the stage action, and the jumpy filmed excerpts merely induce motion sickness.

Despite the hyperkinetic visual barrage, Korngold's tale remains in the foreground, and City Opera's first-rate cast provided the requisite vocal firepower for this demanding score. At first blush, Lauren Flanigan would seem miscast in the role of the dancer Marietta. Yet the American soprano is such a superb actress and uninhibited stage presence that she almost convinced one that she was indeed the erotic force who could lead Paul to moral doom. Vocally, Flanigan was superb. The high leaps of Korngold's brutal lines held no terrors for her, and her part in that gorgeous, showstopping Act I duet made its full effect, beautifully sustained, reducing the audience to silence.

Balding and decked out in spectacles and bad moustache, John Horton Murray as Paul at times seemed faceless, as if a nebbishy accountant had wandered onstage. Despite the somewhat caricatured getup, Murray sang well and acted with understated dignity. Though dearly husbanding his resources for that final solo, the tenor ardently registered the heartache of Paul's farewell. Mezzo Lori-Kaye Miller was a rich-voiced Brigitta, Charles Robert Stephens an unsubtle Frank. Baritone Keith Phares provided a wonderfully lilting Viennese rendering of Pierrot's Act II song.

The New York City Opera Orchestra can't quite summon up the opulence that Korngold's luxurious music demands -- how wonderful it would be to hear the Met Orchestra play this opera! Still, George Manahan directed the tortuously difficult music with uncommon skill and ...