Western's `Magic Flute' Is A First-Rate Success

BELLINGHAM - Opera fans must have felt some trepidation at the news that Western Washington University's College of Fine and Performing Arts intended to celebrate the Mozart bicentennial year with an all-student production of "The Magic Flute."

Despite its fairytale charm, this piece isn't a student opera; in fact, it's a casting nightmare, with some half-dozen major roles whose requirements tax the best professionals. Where would they come up with the students who could sing this?

At Western, that's where. Much to the surprise of cynics, the school has made its "Magic Flute" a glittering and occasionally explosive production of first-rate musical merit. It requires no great stretch of the imagination to envision professional careers for many in the cast.

And in the 1,100-seat Performing Arts Center, packed to the rafters all last weekend (the remaining performances tonight, tomorrow and Saturday are sold out, too), a delighted audience roared its approval of the vocal fireworks and the physical ones (some startling pyrotechnics attended the Queen of the Night).

The cast features a clear, brilliant tenor - Stuart Lutzenhiser, already known to Seattle audiences from his prize-winning performances in opera competitions and his four seasons with the Seattle Opera Chorus. The lyrical, artful Dolores Cejalvo sings Pamina, and Tracy Rhodus is a soprano who can really sing, not just squeak, the Queen of the Night's killer arias. (She also gets to wear a dandy light-up cape, one of the production's nicer coups from the design/production team of Christopher Reinhart, Des Price and Vic Leverett.)

Lars Mellander is an engaging, highly theatrical Papageno, whose charming Papagena is Tiffany Lutzenhiser (yes, the tenor's wife). Gary Jankowski's burnished, beautiful bass makes you lean forward in anticipation of Sarastro's arias. (In Jankowski, they're stretching the "student" designation a little; he is a recent WWU graduate who has gone on to Indiana University.)

The Three Ladies (Teresa Torstenbo, Jeannie Hines and Carolyn Smith) and Three Spirits (Teri Drinkwater, Shawna Peterson and Heather Urschel) are clear, accurate and stylish.

Conductor Bruce Pullan does a fine job with the fast-moving production. Kico Gonzalez-Risso keeps the action fast-paced and often inspired; he also did the English translation of the libretto, an uneven success (a recent translation by Hans Wolf for Tacoma Opera fits the music better).

The sets underscore the fairytale aspect of the production, and they're a little heavy on the shimmering plastic film; Tamino and Pamina appeared to have undergone not the Trials by Fire and Water, but the Trials by Saran Wrap. Never mind. This is a production that does just what it ought to be doing: Presenting a great opera imaginatively, with a young cast that gives opera lovers new hope for the future. Bravi to all involved.

Mixed results

Seattle audiences were not as fortunate last night, when the University of Washington Opera presented Mozart's "The Abduction From the Seraglio" in Meany Theater with decidedly mixed results. Norm Scrivner's sets, which descended piecemeal during the overture, were the most interesting theatrical element of the show; director Theodore Deacon, whose work usually is full of good ideas, presented a static staging.

There was some good singing, and also some wobbly and unfocused singing; several cast members had vibrato and pitch problems.

Emeritus professor Leon Lishner returned to present a lively, comic Osmin under the baton of Peter Eros. With the welcome advent of supratitles, the cast alternated arias and ensembles in translated German, while sticking to English for the dialogue.

Last night's leading singers included James Murphy, Kurt Alakulppi, Sandra Glover and Nancy Williamson; they sing again on Sunday, and an alternate cast performs tomorrow at 8 p.m. (Paul Mueller, Margaret Cleveland and Denise Devoe; Alakulppi and Lishner repeat their roles). Mel Ulrich portrays the Pasha Selim in all performances (543-4880).