Opera : New Leads in ‘El Gato’ Finale

A new torero and a new heroine took the stage for the final performance of Manuel Penella Moreno’s “El Gato Montes� Saturday at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

Both singers proved dramatically involved and involving, and both, in an otherwise previously reviewed cast of the Music Center Opera of Los Angeles presentation, responded to the text, to each other and to the rest of the cast with realistic complexity.

Vocally, however, there were some problems.

Antonio Ordonez brought a small and slender voice to the bullfighter Rafael Ruiz. He sang with evenness, flexibility and point, making much of Italianate catch-in-the-throat expressivity.

But, although occasionally he rose to large, heroic utterances, he often was overpowered by the orchestra (led again by Miguel Roa) and otherwise tended to sound constricted at the top of the range.

Paloma Perez-Inigo acted Solea with mercurial moods, sometimes flirtatious, sometimes childlike, often intense in declarations of love.

She sang with a smallish, dark-toned lyric soprano, which she cannily exploited in some pianissimo passages and in shading of the text. Still, her very top notes emerged raw under pressure, and elsewhere she displayed some unsteadiness.

Nevertheless, both singers were impressive in negotiating the composer’s Spanish inflections and contours in musical line with ease and style.