Three for the price of fun

The type of opera most people are familiar with is grand, dramatic and seen at a place like the MAC. It utilizes a full orchestra, a large cast and three or four long acts. But opera is a broad genre and there are smaller, lighter works which do not draw the same amount of attention when performed because they lack the monumental stature of Wagner and Verdi. Music Works, a local group of singers who specialize in opera and musicals, is performing a sequence of three short, light, one-act operas at the John Waldron Arts Center which delight and amuse the listeners rather than move them to tears.\nThe first of the three was Mozart's "The Impresario," a singspiel -- work with singing and speaking-- that parodied the egos of opera singers and the dilemmas of their directors. The work was freely adapted into English by director Sarah Daughtrey. The setting was moved from Mozart's time to the year 1936 in the United States. Though the adaptation was a little too free with its changes, the alterations were all tasteful and well-chosen. They added a sense of greater relevance than an 18th-century setting would have given and many of the songs were kept in the original German language. A piano and ensemble of strings and woodwinds played as the orchestra. They played very well, but the selection of instruments was very treble-heavy -- only the piano supplied bass parts -- and the solo violin and viola were difficult to hear over the woodwinds.\nThe second one-act wonder was "The Telephone" by Gian Carlo Menotti, a very light and jovial comedy about a man trying to propose to his beloved, who constantly interrupts him to answer the telephone. The telephone dialogue set in operatic singing amplified the absurdity of the plot. The scenery and costumes were done in the style of the 1950s and, like the previous work, displayed remarkable coherence. The small chamber group was replaced by a piano-keyboard duet in this work.\nThe third piece was to opera what "The Daily Show" is to news. "The Stoned Guest" was written by P.D.Q. Bach (not the actual Bach, but a comic pen-name who wrote spoofs of classical music in the 1970s). This opera is a bizarre mixture of Mozart and "Monty Python's Flying Circus" -- it wonderfully parodies "Don Giovanni." Anyone familiar with opera would appreciate the tongue-in-cheek parody of the genre. The sheer bizarreness of the work can be seen in title roles like Donna Ribalda, Il Commendatoreador, Don Octavo (who sings in octaves) and a dog. The plot is a series of Don Giovanni-like situations gone awry and blown out of proportion. In short, this obscure work is wonderfully funny.\nThe most wonderful quality of this performance was the quality of the singers. They displayed a level of skill and profession which was unexpected in a local venue. Senior Alison Wonderland Bacich and graduate student Marcy Richardson in "The Impresario" blew away the listener with their beautiful duets. Graduate student Kristen Robinson in "The Telephone" also displayed impressive vocal talent with a phone receiver at her face. The two female roles in "The Stoned Guest," played by Margaret Nilsson and Melissa Korzec-Hillman had some parts whose difficulty was masked by their comic nature. They deserve credit for successfully executing their parts, and graduate student Michael Match as Don Octavo sang his falsetto parts disturbingly well.\nThe opera series at the Art Center is a good way to see opera without feeling like one is seeing opera. Rather than imparting deep emotion and meaning like the grand opera, these works seek only to entertain. And entertained one will be -- these works are both well written and wonderfully funny. It is well worth the experience.