BERLIOZ PROGRAM : MONTREAL ENSEMBLE IN BOWL DEBUT

Don’t call it the Montreal Symphony--it was the Orchestre Symphonique de Montreal that made its Hollywood Bowl debut Tuesday night, taking over Cahuenga Pass for a week’s engagement while our Los Angeles Philharmonic vacations.

Clearly, the language of the orchestra, both musical and literary, is French, and it was articulated at the first of these five performances by Charles Dutoit and his 53-year-old orchestra, as persuasively as one might have wished. The ensemble, though it comes from North America, is French by tradition, by location (in the province of Quebec), and by virtue of its leadership by Dutoit for the past decade. The sound--slender, clarified, self-balancing and usually pure of tone--is French.

Forget, then, that at least two-thirds of the Berlioz program offered on Tuesday would have benefited from being heard indoors. The finale of the evening, the “Symphonie Fantastique,” made the total worthwhile. Festive, even.

Dutoit’s way with the familiar “Fantastique” deals stylishly but respectfully, logically but honestly with Berlioz’s fervid Romantic scenario. In the process, it reinstates the basic integrity of the work, which remains, structurally, solidly proportioned, practically Classical.

The heart of the work is the “Scene aux Champs,” the gentle, bucolic plain of the third movement, surrounded by hallucinations both quiet and violent. Without making it static, Dutoit and his colleagues created a sense of pure repose, colored but not disturbed by splendidly faceted woodwind solos and alert and accomplished songfulness from the strings.

The subsequent and brilliant closing actions of the work gained in effectiveness from this handsome respite, giving the whole a shape and logic hard to resist. Throughout, the playing--now mellow and glowing, now sharp of focus--reflected the highest international standards.

In the sometimes hostile acoustical environment of the Bowl, the first half of this event disappointed. For all of Dutoit’s vigor and aggressiveness, the “Rob Roy” Overture failed to make much sense, or to charm with its tunefulness. A less-than-immaculate reading didn’t help.

And “La Mort de Cleopatre,” though sung gamely by mezzo Florence Quivar and conducted with fervor by Dutoit--some precipitously quick tempos in the first part notwithstanding--simply evaporates in a setting as massive and non-intimate as Cahuenga Pass.

Quivar seemed comfortable enough with the low-lying passages, but her apparently ample voice, poorly microphoned, seemed to thin out in ascent. Over-frequent breathing also detracted from the dramatic impact and linear flow of the cantata. But, basically, the problem with this fragile but haunting work in the Bowl seemed to be that it cannot compete with the normal sounds of the Hollywood Freeway.

Attendance: 7,779.