TV REVIEWS : ‘LOHENGRIN’ FROM THE MET

What a challenge a video director faces in trying to compress the Brobdingnagian features of a Wagner opera within the Lilliputian limits of the small screen!

Still, credit must go to the undercredited director--who turns out to be Brian Large--for making the Metropolitan Opera’s “Lohengrin” TV broadcast--scheduled to air tonight at 8 on Channels 28, 15, 24 and 50, with stereo simulcast in most areas--as clear and as involving a story as possible.

Large receives scant help from the principal performers; their acting is a study in operatic excess, their singing at best adequate.

Eva Marton’s Elsa displays piety and occasional torment: Her account of the maiden’s growing insecurity and doubt is for once touchingly underplayed. But Marton is simply too physical, too powerful a presence for the role; while her musicality cannot be faulted, her palpable earthiness makes this Elsa a rather unlikely anchorite.

Peter Hofmann, who looks marvelous as Lohengrin, makes acceptable and even occasionally pretty vocal sounds here. But his tendency to disrupt long phrases with breaths--and his general inability to express any emotion other than mild concern--fashions Act III into a rather trying endurance contest instead of the heart-rending rejection of God’s love it might be.

For the rest, Leif Roar is aptly named: His is a gruff, barking Telramund with over-large, rolling eyes. Leonie Rysanek, far past her prime, struggles vocally with Ortrud’s pagan declamations, though, as always, she tries her best to make Ortrud more than a comic-book villainess. John Macurdy rumbles through King Henry’s alarums and proclamations, but Anthony Raffell’s Herald grabs attention whenever he appears, appropriately enough for a medieval Larry Speakes-type. James Levine--the subject of many adoring close-ups during all three orchestral preludes--conducts lovingly; his usual speediness is sacked here in favor of attention to broad architectonic designs.