Glanni Schicci and La Rondine

Music by Puccini

At the Dunster House Dining Hall

8pm February 23-25

Tickets: $6 general/ $5 students/

$4 Dunster

Student opera--the phrase is enough to unnerve the most stolid opera lover. Yet this year's Dunster House production of Puccini's Gianni Schicchi and La Rondine proves a delightful exception. With gratifyingly competent singing and acting illuminated by two stellar performances, the Dunster House production is a rare musical offering.

The weight of the past anchors both operas. Born as an operetta and filled with nostalgia for the glorious frivolity of second Empire Paris, La Rondine at seems like a frothy escapist fantasy composed in the shadow of World War I. The opera's interest stems from the emotional counterpoint between the longing for an unattainable past and a deep melancholy about the possibility of translating this past into the future. A similarly valedictory sense marks the humor of Gianni Schicchi, which responds to the tradition of opera buffa and becomes, in a sense, the terminus of this tradition.

The two operas were composed within two years of each other toward the end of Puccini's career, and both exemplify his talent for making characters and emotions emerge from a complex musical tissue of motivic patterns. These pieces show Puccini at his most delicate, working with subjects that demand greater lightness of touch than the tragic loves of his better-known operas. The duster House double-bill, put together by an all-student cast and production team, is full of talent and enthusiasm. Even if it misses some of Puccini's subtleties, it amply conveys the charm of two lesser-known gems of the operatic repertoire.

The plot of Gianni Schicchi turns on the engaging protagonist, a wily peasant who thwarts the rapacious Donati, a family of Florentine landowners, in order to provide his daughter and her lover with the money they need to wed. All of the opera's characters are sharply delineated, with a delicate but mordant touch of satire--the greedy relatives (the Donati), the starry-eyed lover (Rinuccio), and the resourceful swindler (Schicchi).

To exploit the piece's full comic potential, a production must avoid the temptation to deflate the characters by making their irony too equivocal. In this, the Dunster House production is more or less successful, largely on the strength of Brain J. Saccente's performance in the title role.

Even so, the action is limp through the first ten minutes or so. While the house lights are still up, old Buoso Donati shuffles to his desk and conspicuously examines his will before collapsing into bed and dying, coughing and hacking exaggeratedly all the while--and inauspicious beginning.

This coarse pantomime misses the comic brio of buffa; instead we have the self-conscious and self-subverting irony of a "Saturday Night Live" sketch. The chaotic ensemble action of the first scene--where the various members of Buoso's family mourn his death only because they fear disinheritance--is only a slight improvement.

The production really hits its stride with the entrance of the protagonist. Saccente's magnetic presence and strong voice are enough to bring order to the haphazard bumbling of the Donati clan. He is a marvel to watch. Taking care to ensure his delivery is clear and comprehensible, he displays a range of gesture and emotion that transcends the handwaving and mugging of some of the smaller roles. Here, we have comic subtlety of the true buffa coin.

Most impressive of all is the way Saccente orchestrates the action of the entire cast (this is the greatest staging challenge in an piece where almost all the characters are present from start to finish). Moreover, he exhibits the same control in his own acting. In a role that invites excess, Saccente is all understatement. He achieves more with a grin or a wink than a lesser actor would with a flurry of gesticulations.