Prince Igor by Alexander Borodin Sept. 21, 1996 San Francisco Opera (at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium) Despite the cast of hundreds, sprawling sets and thundering music, I got very little pay-off from this performance of Prince Igor. Though the story progressed engagingly through most of the opera, I wasn't ever involved with any of the characters and didn't much care what happened. Some of that may well be attributed to my location -- high in the third section, positioned at a joint where one aisle joined another and left my seat canted sideways and crowded into a tight line. (The row in front of us had six seats; ours, in the same space, had eight.) I was uncomfortable enough to be distracted several times during the performance. But I also think the performance simply failed to generate enough excitement -- vocally, musically or as theater -- to compel. Sergei Leiferkus was serviceable but hardly spectacular as Igor; he sounded muddy and a little unfocused from where I sat. Jeffrey Wells, a heavy bass and good actor, was a good Galitsky. I liked Lauren Flanigan's Yaroslavna best of all the singers. The chorus sang well and filled the vast civic auditorium stage with action and color; the more the merrier would be a good chorus strategy for any show in this hall, I think. I thought the orchestra sounded fine from its strange perch above and behind the stage. The sound was clean and precise, although not warm. I noticed the amplification only a couple of times, most gratingly in the last aria. There are a lot of seats in this auditorium and most of them were filled. I hope SFO uses the opportunity to expose a lot of new people to opera, although if they're sitting where I was, the experience won't be much like they'd enocunter in an opera house.