Make-Believe

A pre-housing lottery maniac once described Lowell House "a place where you'll get a lot of wear out of a tuxedo or a long, black skirt. "Nowhere does the truth behind the caricature shine through so clearly as at the annual Lowell House opera. Few other music and drama societies, while putting off the most ambitious of feats, strive to emulate the Metropolitan Opera House. At the 44th Annual Lowell House Opera, by contrast, the ushers wear black velvet, the concentration of Faculty members and other non-students is high, especially on "patron night" and the sets, voices and period costumes dazzle with ornateness. Toward the end, a giant spritzer even douses the stage and audience with flower scented must.

Music director Stuart Malina '84 has brought to Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro a highly professional polish the tradeoff, as usual being some loss of student and House flavor. Three of the five main voices are Boston-area professional musicians; they carry the main musical burden for more than three hours. But in no sense do they overshadow the two undergraduate leads. Sebastian Knowles as Figaro and Nan Hughes as the lovesick pageboy Cherubino. Indeed these two make it obvious that casting professionals is not the only way to go. The valiant, largely student orchestra conducted by Malina and Michael Bank '86 teaches the same lesson; the musicians don't hang together too well on the score's subtleties, but they stay on beat and on key. Since there are 22 of them, the result is impressive.

Like most operatic plots, that of The Marriage of Figaro is tortuous and ultimately unnecessary. Suffice to say that it involve the feudal privilege known as droit de seigneur and, some hours later, reunites one character with an unlikely set of parents. Unity comes not from the storyline but from the voices, which without exception stay well in control of a difficult and lengthy score--especially Knowles, who must awkwardly sing the show's first notes from his knees.

Knowles brings a solid and rich baritone to the part of Figaro, the mischievous valet who fears for his fiancee's faithfulness and suspects his master, the Count, of designs upon her. The finance, Susanna--sung by Eileen McNamara--complements him perfectly with a soaring soprano. In counterpoint to their stratagems and quarrels, the Count Almaviva (Mitchell C. Warren) and his wife (Elizabeth Walsh) accuse each other of infidelities, trap each other into admissions, and argue endlessly over the fate of the pageboy Cherubino, who adores the Countess.

WITH ALL the rushing around, the acting predictably deteriorates to stylization. Widened eyes and gaping mouths abound Dramatic moments or turning points often fall prey to a sort of lag time, as singers apparently realize several lines too late that they were supposed to change expression; Count Almaviva in Act III, for example, plunges into "Ah, My Joyous Heart Is Flying" with a touching show of grief left over from the previous recitation. The exception to the awkwardness is Hughes, who as Cherubino portrays first a lively teenage boy, then a boy masquerading as a girl, with limitless aplomb and stage presence. Hughes' voice also provides some of the program's best moments, soaring effortlessly in an opening aria and a piquant love song to the Countess.

But this is opera, after all--as is evident when, just as the Count is about to discover Cherubino in the Countess's boudoir, everyone stops and sings for 40 minutes. Thus numerous small discontinuities seem unimportant and even proper. The English translation by Elizabeth McNary, for example, has moments of startling insipidity ("Do it my way/ Take the sly way/ Don't sit dreaming/ Don't by scheming") and a few jarring mistakes ("My lordship"). And the occasional intervals of equally forced dialogue sit strangely among the arias. But once you adjust to the production's apparent aim--to showcase actual, civilized musical finesse in this outpost of barbarity--it's impossible not to appreciate the success of the endeavor. The grown-up world does have its charms.