TV Reviews : ‘New Moon’ Casts Different Light Tonight on PBS

Even 61 years ago, when it was really new, “New Moon” was a nostalgia musical.

Though overstuffed with romantic platitudes and comic relief, this Sigmund Romberg Broadway operetta held faithfully to a vision of the individual courage and social reform of an earlier era--the sense of a corrupt (European) order challenged by new (American) ideals.

This dimension of belief is exactly what’s missing in the lively, opulent New York City Opera production tonight on PBS (9 p.m. on Channels 28, 15 and 24; Saturday at 9 p.m. on Channel 50).

Robert Johanson’s adaptation and staging have no use for heroism or class solidarity except as campy diversions--so “Stout-Hearted Men” is sung here as a jaunty anthem of self-promotion, 1980s to the max. It has never been less stirring.

Those who want nothing more from “New Moon” than its ballads--”Softly, As in a Morning Sunrise,” “One Kiss,” “Wanting You” and “Lover, Come Back to Me”--should be warned that nearly a third of the 2 1/2-hour telecast goes by before one of these lush classics is sung. Even then, vocal strain and (again) lack of conviction minimize many of them. (“New Moon” film clips of Jeanette MacDonald/Nelson Eddy from 1940 and Grace Moore/Lawrence Tibbett from 10 years earlier are highly enlightening in comparison.)

Richard White is handsome and likable as the lovelorn nobleman-in-disguise, but the music lies too high for him and his tone thins alarmingly in ascent. As the heart-throb of all New Orleans, Leigh Munro tries incessantly to glitter-glitter-glitter, but the role is more complex than she imagines and the task of pausing-to-think is clearly beyond her acting range. Her singing of “Lover, Come Back to Me” is utterly without feeling.

Michael Cousins keeps forcing his high notes as the hero’s Best Friend, and David Rae Smith substitutes a collection of mannerisms for a sense of character as his Worst Enemy. Perhaps because the telecast is a transcription of a stage performance (at Wolf Trap), the comic roles often seem pushed beyond the tiresome into the acutely painful. Gerald Isaac, Muriel Costa-Greenspon, Kenneth Kantor and Joyce Campara are the principal victims. Jim Coleman conducts briskly.