A labor of love from opera’s femme fatale

The influence on American culture by Schoenberg and the other Jewish composers who escaped the persecutions of the Nazis and made a new life for themselves in Los Angeles is one of the most extraordinary chapters in the history of music.

They changed everything. Experimental music, conceptual art, academic music, the symphonic film score can be traced directly to their work or their influence (some of it, admittedly, inadvertent). Broadway and popular song as they came to be known in the ‘50s would likely not have evolved in quite the same way without them. The story of how these men, deeply imbued with German culture, contended with West Coast culture shock has been told often. But not often enough or well enough.

The latest to try is Constance Hauman, whose one-woman show, “Exiles in Paradise,” opened at the Falcon Theatre in Burbank on Friday night for a two-week run. If anyone could pull it off, this fearless American soprano should be the one. She has been one of the more effective femmes fatales in opera during the last two decades.

Her dangerously sexual Lulu -- the title character of Alban Berg’s opera -- was a sensation in the ‘90s. More recently, she took part in the premiere of Olga Neuwirth’s nervy avant-garde opera “Lost Highway,” based on the David Lynch film and with a libretto by Elfriede Jelinek, the Nobel Prize-winning novelist and specialist in depicting degradation. Hauman was also terrific as the oft-debauched goody-goody Cunegonde in Gordon Davidson’s 1995 production of Leonard Bernstein’s “Candide” at the Ahmanson.

Getting the word -- and music -- out about these exiles has been Hauman’s passion for the last seven years. This performance -- in which she incorporates collages of documentary film material, narration and many characteristic songs (familiar and obscure) by a dozen composers -- is one she’s given in important venues. It “was chosen from 700 applicants to open Daniel Libeskind’s Jewish Museum in Berlin on Sept. 10, 2001,” the press release tells us. Seven hundred is, at least according to one person involved with that opening, a highly inflated number (30 being more like it), but the date and place do get one’s attention.

Alas, “Exiles” turns out to be more a labor of love than of professionalism. There are songs worth hearing (Hauman has adequate accompaniment from a quartet of piano, violin, cello and clarinet, arranged and orchestrated by the evening’s pianist, David Wolff). Some songs are well sung. The range of material is enthralling. Cabaret songs come from Schoenberg and Kurt Weill. Numbers made famous in films by Marlene Dietrich and the Marx Brothers share the stage with biting political satire from Hanns Eisler and Bertolt Brecht. It’s nice to report that at least someone in this town remembers the music of Ernst Toch and Eric Zeisl.

Hauman has a feeling for the various styles, although her voice doesn’t handle them all with equal ease. And there are many moments when her innate theatricality is unmistakable, as well as some evidence of why she has been a darling of daring directors over the years.

But she doesn’t have a daring director here. She doesn’t have any director credited. She doesn’t have an editor. She delivers stilted texts describing Nazi atrocities and the composers’ plights and successes as though she’s reading them for the first time. Factual errors need correcting. A lighting design that doesn’t wash out the video should be a priority. A full can of theatrical polish is still needed to fashion raw material into a show.

I hope she finds someone who can help her with her wardrobe, movements, lighting, stage presence, writing, research and delivery. All need work, and all are worth making work.

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‘Exiles in Paradise’

Where: Falcon Theatre, 4252 Riverside Drive, Burbank

When: 8 p.m. Friday and March 31; 4 p.m. Sunday and April 2

Price: $35 and $40

Contact: (818) 955-8101