Edition: U.S. / Global

MUSIC REVIEW; A Little Chamber Opera Written for Full Orchestra

Published: June 5, 2001

Carlisle Floyd's one-act opera ''Markheim,'' based on a short story by Robert Louis Stevenson, seems like a nice little chamber opera. The score gets the job done in workmanlike fashion, with set pieces broadly characterizing each of the four characters: Creach, the pawnbroker in whose shop the action takes place; Tess, his pretty young maid; Markheim, a dissolute aristocrat; and the Stranger, a Mephistophelean figure who promises him a life of pleasure. An offstage chorus sings Christmas carols -- to rather unseasonal music -- as a final Victorian touch. It's not, in fact, a chamber opera, since it's written for full orchestra; but if it were reorchestrated for a smaller ensemble, this would be a fine piece for conservatory students to cut their teeth on.

It was a little hard to tell from the production by the Center for Contemporary Opera, which opened at the Kaye Playhouse on Thursday night. It's a little hard to understand what the point of the exercise was at all. As laudable as the desire to stage contemporary opera undeniably is, ''Markheim'' is contemporary only by virtue of having been written in 1966. It doesn't push any artistic envelopes, nor does it aspire to; its frame of reference is tonal, and verismo and would have been completely recognizable to, say, Puccini. This is legitimate: the work is not ashamed to be what it is. But it doesn't need to have a case made for it. It's at best a diversion, and it wasn't very diverting here.

Atkin Pace's set was the strongest element of the production: a Dickensian pawnshop, with shelves of bric-a-brac. The stage direction was undistinguished, and the musical values negligible. Paring down the string section to the bare minimum, the conductor, Richard Marshall (also the Center's founder and artistic director), was left with eight winds, nine brass and eleven strings, which made for a brass-heavy imbalance, all the worse because the music was poorly played and poorly conducted.

This didn't help the singers, none of whom seemed to have a very good idea of how to use his own instrument; Blaine Hendsbee, a tenor, was the most proficient as Creach, although there was a braying quality to his voice. Salvatore Basile, as Markheim, seemed more an actor than a singer; there was a touch of Broadway to Shira Lissek's brassy Tess. Even the Stranger, one of those devil roles that seem like foolproof show-stealers for a performer who can ham it up, didn't come off; Sam McKelton moved through it with curious restraint, and didn't seem to be having very much fun. Given the context, it's understandable that he wasn't.

Photo: Blaine Hendsbee, left, and Salvatore Basile in Carlisle Floyd's opea ''Markheim,'' presented by the Center for Contemporary Opera. (Chris Lee for The New York Times)