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Show Opera Rendition Draws Praise For Top Quality By Wm. H. Manning -' Last week, music lovers of southern Utah were given a musical mu-sical treat that few cities many times the size of Cedar City, are privileged to enjoy. The treat was the grand opera "Faust" by Charles Gounod, dished out on a golden platter, with all the trimmings of magnificent scenery, scen-ery, costuming, skillful lighting effects, and an adequate stage, presented by a capable cast of performers, and a strong supporting support-ing orchestra, all combined to make this an unforgettable experience ex-perience at the Thursday night performance. The first orchids go to Dr. Blaine Johnson, producer Su'd director, di-rector, for - coordinating, all of these elements Into a masterful presentation which was nothing short of an artistic triumph. And with him, a huge bouquet to Professor Pro-fessor Roy L. Halversen whose orchestra gave splendid support to the singers and who for the past 33 years of painstaking training, has developed perhaps a thousand young musucians to accompany scores of major musical mu-sical productions, at this performance per-formance was pertect coordination coordina-tion of voice and Instrument ' To Wallace Adams, tenor, who sang the title role, a bouquet for his portrayal of Dr. Faustus, the aged frustrated old scholar, who became in a puff of smoke, a handsome dashing lover. Mr. Adams has been a sterling lead in La Boheme, Rlgoletto, La Tra-viata. Tra-viata. 111 Trovatore, Cavallerla Rust tea na and now Faust added to this list He has sung the leading tenor roles In "The Messiah." Mes-siah." Not only has he been a dependable soloist but a great teacher of voice at the Cedar City High School. Now to the magnificent handsome hand-some "Satan," Le Ray McAllister, McAllis-ter, who1 gave one the best performances per-formances we have witnessed in a long time. His characterization of Mephlstopholes showed a careful care-ful study of the part and a great maturity of voice, stage hearing and Interpretation that left little to be enjoyed. The next star and at the top in performance was Janice Olson, Ol-son, whose beautiful voice and fine acting captured her large audience from her first appearance appear-ance as a timid girl till, her as-senclon as-senclon up the golden stairs received re-ceived by her anger mother and by the angels of mercy; this last was a magnificent scene. Kent Myers was a forceful Val-entire Val-entire both as a singer and actor. act-or. Also must be mentioned in the supporting leads, Bcrnett Baldwin as Wagner, Pat Frame as Seibel, and Cynthia Williams as Dame Martha. Reed Berrett at the organ and Austin Dalley, make-up artist To Dawn Hunter for designing of the Impressive scenery and costuming, Ada Carpenter and aids for the making of the costumes. cos-tumes. To Prof. LaVeve Whetten for the waltz group, the carpenters carpen-ters who built the scenery, those who handled the lights and everyone who contributed to the magnificent performance. This reviewer wishes he could have witnessed the other leads of the double cast who, It Is reported, turned In splendid performances. They must be named: Ann Sher-ratt, Sher-ratt, Sharon Dalton, Chad Thor-derson, Thor-derson, Julia Bogh, John Griffin and Judy Jensen. Let's all Join in saying our hearty congratulations congratula-tions to Blaine and Roy and company. com-pany. Let us have many more of such musical treats. It was a great demonstration of school and community effort |