E-Mail This Article to a Friend Limited Grâce Roger Rudenstein’s AIDS opera BY RICHARD BUELL

Lewis’s first words in act one scene two of Roger Rudenstein’s Grâce, spoken from his hospital bed, are: "Another nightmare!" At the Cambridge YMCA world premiere last Friday, he might well been speaking for anyone in the audience who had been bewildered, or perhaps repelled, by the scene just ended.

It wasn’t so much the ribaldry (an exposed mock phallus, a randy three-person triple-orifice coupling on Lewis’s bed) as the grotesque over-the-top costuming, which dominated the stage (and the poor singers who had to wear them), often threatening to take on a rich, fulfilling existence all their own. Hardened opera goers will recognize the shtick — excess, folderol, high and low camp, more excess, and (inevitably) diminishing returns.

It’s the 1980s in what’s being advertised as "the first AIDS opera," and Lewis is indeed dying of AIDS. But whenever he hallucinates, we’re whisked off to the 18th century and the court of Louis XV. We meet Madame Du Barry (Louis’s mistress), the Duc and Duchesse d’Aiguillon, the Duc de Croy, and a cardinal, all dressed to the nines. They are also doubles of the people Lewis knows in his day-to-day life.

Given the meal a composer could make of the opportunities presented here, it was wise of Rudenstein to produce the kind of score that critics of musical comedy used to call "serviceable." For much of the time, I wasn’t all that aware of it. The style is conservative/modern heightened speech. A frequent maneuver is to lay out a melodic line, choose points x and y in that line, then insert a mildly unconventional key switch.

My ear never recoiled at this — in fact, it became rather numbed after a while. Grâce is at its compositional best when the solo winds add a light and fluid commentary to what the principals are singing, or in the summing-it-all-up, many-lined ensembles. At the premiere, Karyl Ryczek proved first-rate; her keen, soaring soprano ravished the senses.

Moments like these offered a contrast to the real-life 1980s scenes in Lewis’s hospital room. I heard myself screaming inwardly, "Bring back the folderol! All is forgiven!" The trouble here was the tin-eared libretto, which plummeted to some truly toe-curling banalities. Catherine, Lewis’s mother, is unfulfilled; she takes a swig now and then. Andy, his stern-jawed straight-arrow dad, is also unfulfilled. Lewis, as a kid, couldn’t throw or catch. At this, Andy blurts out: "You’re not the son I wanted." Lewis then brings up the subject of fellatio, which proves to be a terrible mistake. An ensemble follows.

I bridled, too, whenever triple time began to raise its ugly head. Rudenstein’s predilection for dinky little tunes (with childishly picked-at notes from the piano) to evoke the glow of vanished yesteryears is something he really has to cure himself of. Whenever Lewis leapt out of his bed to waltz with somebody, we got an extra helping.

You knew, of course, that the story was headed for closure: Lewis would soon die. To its credit, this production of Grâce hit on an imaginative — and necessary — framing device to bring this across. The problem was that Ryan Turner’s Lewis was in the same robust physical health at the end as he had been at the beginning. As the opera opened, we saw a skeleton being removed from Lewis’s bed. After his death — he chooses to exit via heroin overdose — the skeleton was returned to its place.

That, surely, was the way to do it. Had there only been more such moments.