Nita Baxani as Dora and Jeffrey Picon as Freud. Photo by Patrick Henaghan.		"Dora," an opera composed by Melissa Shiflett to a libretto by Nancy Fales Garrett about a patient of Sigmund Freud's, and given concert and workshop hearings during the 1990s, is treated to a full-fledged production at the La MaMa annex during the early part of April, thanks to the joint efforts of La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club and the American Chamber Opera Company.  A lyrical work focusing on three families, "Dora" boasts such set pieces as florid and dramatic arias, piquant ensembles, waltzes and other dances and brought Stephen Sondheim's "A Little Night Music," with its own memorable ensembles and complex liaisons, more than once to mind.  With the death of child near the end, though, "Dora" moves into "The Turn of the Screw" and "The Medium" territory.  Conductor Douglas Anderson, guiding the small orchestra, and librettist Garrett, as stage director, presided over a fine cast, made up of no fewer than four leading sopranos, two tenors, a baritone, and two children.
The dramatis personae consists of the Bauers--16 year old Dora (Nita Baxani) and her parents (Peter Clark and Johana Arnold); the Ks (Kathryn Wright and Peter Lurie) --"a family," sings Herr Bauer, "with whom [our] family has intercourse...socially, of course"--and their young children (Kayla Ny and Nate Morgan); and the Freuds, Dr. Sigmund (Jeffrey Picon) and his 12 year old daughter, Anna (Karla Simmons).  The opera begins with Herr B, a stern father, bringing his troubled daughter to Dr. Freud and most of the rest of the story is told in flashbacks, though it was not always crystal clear whether some of the events depicted led up to Dora's psychoanalysis or were the result of it.  Picon's Freud introduces Dora to analysis in a heroic tenor aria.  Baxani's Dora recounts her dream of a fire, from which she seeks to save a red velvet-lined jewel case, in a lush soprano.  The precious jewel case, Freud surmises, is a sexual symbol, as surely as his "burning end of a cigar" is.  Later we learn that there is an actual jewel case, given to Dora by Herr K.    As Frau B dusts and cleans obsessively and avoids her husband's touch, Herr B turns from her to the arms of Frau K and brings Dora along when he visits.  With their high voices and Viennese accents, the Ks are a lusty couple and multiple seduction--including between the two women--is the theme of Dora, Herr B and the Ks buoyant quartet which asks "Will We Have a Chance to Be Alone?"  Dora and Frau K have a sensual scene.  At once youthful and advanced beyond their years, the K children sing to Dora of a witch that lives in the sea and describe how their father seduced their former governess.  A sextet (Dora, Freud, the Bauers and the Ks), which concludes Act One, pits the men's brusquely insistent query, "What Do Women Want?" against the women's passionately soaring reply, "wanting to get out."    In second act duets, Dora and Anna compare notes about their cigar-smoking fathers ("Sometimes in the Night") and Freud and Anna playfully role play, he as a patient and she portraying him, complete with her precocious sexual allusions and choking attempt to smoke a cigar.  A memorable turning point comes with a quintet and dance, "Noone Can Believe You," with the light-hearted Bauers and Ks, in fantastic glittery robes and hats with birds on them, taunting the hapless, angry Dora.  The mood turns completely somber, one might say punitive, with a series of sad or furious farewells--Herr Bauer and Frau K's "Our bodies have betrayed us and we are sick," when they discover the have syphilis; Dora's parting confrontation with the Ks, her seducers, in the presence of her father, as they mourn their son, drowned while his parents were preoccupied with their sex partners, and her warning "do not ruin your daughter" (Did this signal the start or finish of her time on Freud's couch?); and an angry Dora's parting from a smug, calm Freud.       John C. Scheffler designed the versatile, multi-level set, Kate Herman the costumes, and Matthew Staniec the lights.  Marcos Dinnerstein devised the choreography.  Lisa J. Bloch was responsible for projections depicting formative events in Freud's early life. The Annex at La MaMa ETC 66 East Fourth Street 212/475-7710 April 4-14 Tickets $25