MOZART AND EDUCATION STILL SERVED IN MONTECITO

There have been improvements made--in teaching facilities, practice rooms and landscaping--at Miraflores, the sprawling former mansion in Montecito and home of the 38-year-old Music Academy of the West.

But, approached via its seven-decades old, tree-lined driveway, Miraflores, with its pink outer walls, its red tile roof and, most important, its buzz of constant musical activity, looks and sounds in the summer of 1985 much the same as it did in the 1950s.

In those days, when the summer conservatory was still a fledgling music school (it was founded in 1947, in nearby Carpinteria), its faculty list was filled with names of international distinction: recently retired soprano Lotte Lehmann; conductor Maurice Abravanel, who served as artistic director; pianists Gyorgy Sandor, Gwendolyn Koldofsky and Emanuel Bay; violinist Sascha Jacobsen; cellist Gabor Rejto. Among many other music students attending those early summer sessions were Lucine Amara, Grace Bumbry, Benita Valente, Laurence Lesser. . . .

An alumnus of three of those 1950s summers, walking the halls of the academy recently, finds the ambiance unchanged. In every nook and cranny, it seems, someone is practicing. Earnest musical conversations are taking place in the formal studios and offices. In the patio overlooking the lush gardens leading to the beach, one observes other ongoing conferences, unscheduled but no less urgent. The same air of youthful seriousness pervades the entire building.

Today, as 30 years ago, the academy remains the most prestigious summer conservatory on the West Coast, serving a student body of approximately 150 young musicians through a faculty of 26 teachers, plus auxiliary staff. Both students and faculty perform frequently during the summer, but the principal activity of each academy department (strings, brass, vocal, woodwinds, percussion, harp and piano) remains the weekly master class in that department.

On the same Monday afternoon, Jerome Lowenthal, giving his weekly master class in the main room (formerly a ballroom, and now called Lehmann Hall) at the academy, unraveled intricacies in, and provided perspective on, the piano music of Schoenberg and Prokofiev for an attentive group of auditors.

At the other end of the hall, the string chamber music class, taught by violinist Zvi Zeitlin, was in session.

And several miles away, in downtown Santa Barbara, operatic stage director Richard Pearlman, new this summer to the academy faculty, was keeping busy backstage at the Lobero Theater, in the time-honored manner of directors before an opening night. Indeed, Pearlman’s adaptation of Mozart’s “La Finta Giardiniera,” which he calls “Lunatics and Lovers,” was scheduled to open that night.

For more than a quarter-century, the academy faculty and staff seemed--one can never say for sure what goes on in other people’s families--the very model of mutual musical support and organizational stability.

With the stepping down of Maurice Abravanel in 1980 (for health reasons), all of that mutuality and stability was threatened.

In September of that year, another U.S.-based conductor of Spanish heritage, Theo Alcantara, was named artistic director of the institution. Alcantara’s first move, with the approval of the board of directors, was to expand the public-concerts area of academy activity, creating a summer-long festival, one peopled largely by visiting artists, around the traditional student and faculty concerts.

Without jeopardizing the academy’s special educational functions, Alcantara told The Times at the beginning of his tenure that public performances would be increased and that the academy would achieve a closer identity with the Santa Barbara community. Along with concerts by glamorous touring artists like Itzhak Perlman, Gary Graffman, Sherrill Milnes and the Cleveland Quartet, there would be free concerts around the city by student ensembles.

The new plan seemed to work nicely for a couple of years. Then, according to one longtime academy observer who prefers to be unidentified, the board of directors lost interest in maintaining the expansion and “retreated from their former position.” Alcantara resigned his post last summer and refused to talk to the press.

Last week, on the phone from Arizona, where he remains music director of the Phoenix Symphony, Alcantara acknowledged that he left the academy “when the leadership on a new board of directors did not agree with the concept of the job the old board had brought me in to do.”

Christine Seemann, who served as president of the academy’s board of directors during Alcantara’s final two summers as artistic director, confirms the conductor’s assessment:

“The board felt we were getting away a little bit from our main goal, which is to be the No. 1 summer music school on the West Coast. We know we can’t compete with Aspen in size and number of activities. But we want to bring in some visiting artists, though not at the expense of our wonderful faculty. So we retreated from further expansion and the festival concept.”

Lawrence Leighton Smith, the academy’s newest music director, has been doing conductorial double-duty with the principal orchestras of San Antonio and Louisville for the past two seasons. As of June, he has left his Texas post--where he had been since 1980--and will concentrate all his winter energies on the Louisville Orchestra, with which he is contracted through 1988. His appointment at the Music Academy is for two summers only, through September, 1986.

Backstage, before the opera performance, the 48-year old American-born conductor said that his experience as an educator--outside of his main professional activities at the Metropolitan Opera (1965-68), the Phoenix Symphony (1971-73) and the Oregon Symphony (1973-80)--began in the 1950s. He has served on the faculties at Boston University, the Mannes College of Music in New York and the University of Texas at Austin.

“What I find at the music academy,” Smith said, “is an atmosphere of real cooperation among the faculty and staff, all of whom are 100% supportive.”

Alexander Saunderson, the veteran arts patron who serves as president of the academy’s latest board of directors, says the feeling is mutual.

“Larry (Smith) has shown himself to be a musician and a leader of enormous value. We are looking forward to his being here again in 1986,” Saunderson said. “He sets a tone that we can all relate to, a tone of musical seriousness and personal informality.

“The academy went through many troubles in the recent past--but, as we know, every musical organization goes through such periods. Now, we are stable again. Yes, we really are.”

Since 1977 the director of the Opera Theater at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y., Pearlman still plies his trade on opera stages around the country. But teaching has become an important part of his schedule.

“I have found that I get along with the young singers at Eastman and elsewhere because I treat them like professionals, not like students. They respond much better to that treatment,” he believes.

Pearlman introduced his witty and vernacular treatment of “Finta Giardiniera” at Eastman, two years ago. He says Mozart’s fifth opera, written just before the composer’s 19th birthday, “has had a bum rap, beginning in his lifetime.”

The original manuscript was lost, so makeshift versions had to be used, even one in which recitatives from another opera on the same subject (and by another composer) were inserted. Consequently, Pearlman believes, “Finta Giardiniera” got a reputation for being unstageworthy that it by no means deserves.

“Recent scholarship (a complete edition of the work, published in 1978) has now made possible a fair assessment of the work,” Pearlman claims, adding that in his adaptation, which he says leaves out only one musical number, “Every note is by Mozart.”

The stage director’s conclusion: “This is no forerunner. This the first of the great Mozart operas.”

As conducted stylishly by Lawrence Leighton Smith, the performance heard on opening night bore out Pearlman’s and Smith’s affection for “Finta Giardiniera,” as well as the stage director’s conviction that the depth and universality of Mozart’s insights into human nature, well-revealed to us in “Cosi fan Tutte,” “Le Nozze di Figaro” and “Don Giovanni,” are strongly foreshadowed in this early and relatively little-known work.

The musical grace, comedic pacing and character-delineation in the piece have to be admired, just as its novelties--for one example: two separate mad scenes for the male and female protagonists--must be noted.

These characters are not stereotypes by any means, but we can relate each one to another, later Mozartean character (or characters). Belfiore, after years of analysis, may become Tamino; Arminda is a younger sister to Donna Elvira; Serpetta, through experience, will take on the wisdom of Despina, etc.

Pearlman’s translation, arguable in some details, abounds in wit, point and genuine humor. It begins, like a fable, when the assembled cast of characters, after revealing their separate states of anxiety, sing “Such perfect weather for falling in love.” It climaxes, nearly three hours later, in the finale ultimo, when the formerly troubled hero and heroine come to their senses, and the rest of the cast sings: “Look, everyone. The crazies are better. Love has driven them sane.”

In between, a Mozartean feast fills the ear. And, in this production, wherein the young singers have been gorgeously costumed, elegantly motivated and carefully staged to move about a constantly moving, two-unit set (at the end, the two parts are united!), Rococo colorfulness fills the eye.

The drawbacks might have been predicted. Smith’s virtuosic student orchestra, handsomely balanced within itself--though seldom aiming for soft-playing--tended to swamp the singers. The unhelpful acoustical properties of the 667-seat Lobero Theater further amplified the showy pit band. And, young and inexperienced Mozarteans that they are, the seven principal singers (the opera was double-cast) heard on opening night became sometimes cruelly exposed by the demands of the score.

In descending order of present achievement and operatic promise, they were: Karen Holvik (Sandrina), Sara Chaikin (Serpetta), Kevin Tarte (Belfiore), Cherie Caluda (Arminda), Jeremy Pick (Nardo), Michele Schayne (Ramiro) and Jeffrey Araluce (Governor).