Rachel Mondanaro, Christian Sebek and Gregory Emmanuel Rahming.  The photographer is Paula Court.

"The Sandman," a new opera after E.T.A. Hoffmann's eerie story of the same name, is being given this spring by the Target Margin Theater company, at the Connelly Theater, in the East Village, and makes for an intriguing evening of ambiguity and free association.  The tale also inspired the Olympia act of Offenbach's "Contes d'Hoffmann," as well as Delibes' ballet "Coppelia."  "The Sandman"'s lyrical, neo-Romantic score and Mozartian recitatives were written by Thomas Cabaniss and orchestrated by Cabaniss and John Mackey.  Collaborating on the libretto were composer Cabaniss, Douglas Langworthy, and director David Herskovits. Punctuating the opera are recorded bits of pop tunes, including "Mr. Sandman" (of course) and Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire," the "Forza del Destino" overture, tribal chants, and barnyard noises, as well as spoken translations, narration, and stage directions. "The Sandman" is played as if it were a rehearsal, with stops and starts, repeats, explanations and adjustments, as much as a finished performance.

The recorded interruptions can become annoying as one waits for the performers to get on with the business at hand, but the cast plays with that as singers exhibit impatience as well and vent at the sound man. Another playful moment involves some high-pitched sounds and leaves it to the listener to decide if it's the soprano or the theramin.  David Rosenmeyer presides from the piano over a cast of six fine singers--some cast in more than one related or directly antithetical role--and an instrumental complement consisting of violist David Wallace, oboist Sarah Johnson and cellist Enrique Orengo.  Stage and sound crew (Nathan Croner, Emilie Unterweger and Franklin Hundley) and instrumentalists all participate in the opera's action. "The Sandman" concerns the student Nathanael, in whose less than lucid mind are mixed the Sandman, a fearsome figure, invented by his childhood nurse and prone to throwing sand in restless children's eyes and then plucking them out; Coppelius, his father's no less terrifying associate, who threatens to relieve spying children of their vision and is present--and responsible?--for his father's death; and Coppola, who sells glasses of all varieties--eye glasses, magnifying glasses and spy glasses. Nathanael's faithful love is Clara, whom he abandons when enchanted by the lovely Olympia, who turns out to be nothing but an automaton. With exaggerated eye makeup, most cast members in this phantasmagoric affair, in which eyes play a significant part, aptly appear as if they haven't slept in quite a while.  Playing Nathanael as all but unhinged from the start and clutching the curtain as a security blanket by the time of the Olympia scene, Christian Sebek sings in a strong, bright and focused tenor.  He begins in German, switches to English, addresses Olympia in French, and then offers her a sweet German lied-like serenade.  Portraying the solicitous women in Nathanael's life--his mother, who consoles him with a tender lullaby, and patient Clara--as well as the nurse, who frightens him, Rachel Mondanaro displays a vibrant soprano.  Nathanael and Clara begin with a soaring duet, representing letters they exchange, and end with a rousing ensemble in which he threatens to throw himself from a tower and she expresses her horror, assisted by the others, when he succeeds. Soprano Violetta Zambetti sings a lilting love song in Italian, capped, as expected, by a beautifully executed coloratura cadenza, with a few Wagnerian "Ho jo to ho"s thrown in for good measure.  A dulcet trio in the style of "Soave sia il vento," from Mozart's "Cosi Fan Tutte," blends Nathanael's repetitions of "Freude" ("Joy"), Olympia's sighs of "Oh" and, from tenor Byron Singleton, Spalanzani's reassurances that the former "will be a welcome visitor."  Zambetti also plays the young Nathanael and Singleton, Nathanael's father. Disclosing a polished baritone, Gregory Emmanuel Rahming is both a leering villain Coppelius and, rhapsodizing about his ocular wares, the vendor Coppola.  Rahming's Coppola and Singleton's Spalanzani wrangle over who created and owns Olympia.  Their duet degenerates into barking and other animal sounds as they destroy the doll and send Nathanael over the edge. Baritone Jay Johnson completes the cast as Nathanael's friend Siegmund.  Devising the designs were Erika Belsey and Susan Barras (sets), David Zinn (costumes), Lenore Doxsee (lighting) and Tim Schellenbaum (sound).  Fran Rubenstein is the stage manager. "The Sandman" follows in the traditions of Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal's "Ariadne auf Naxos," with its prologue about the vicissitudes of creative life and putting an opera on the stage, and John Corigliano and William M. Hoffman's "Ghosts of Versailles," which elaborates on the story begun in Rossini's "Barbiere di Siviglia" and Mozart's "Le Nozze di Figaro" and draws on them stylistically.  One wonders, nevertheless, how Cabaniss' music for "The Sandman" would fare if it stood alone without the recordings, backstage trappings and other such diversions.  But, then, few get away with writing yesterday's opera today. Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays & Saturdays through June 1 The Connelly Theater, 220 East Fourth Street Tickets $20 212/358-3657