Music Reviews : Cal State Resuscitates Monsigny Comic Opera

Cal State Northridge exhumed a worthy rarity from the French rococo period in offering what was billed as the United States premiere of Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny’s 1761 comic opera “On s’avise jamais de tout” over the weekend at the Gallery Theatre at Barnsdall Park.

While the production seen Friday made a strong case for reviving repertory such as this, there were major problems.

None of the small cast, a mix of professionals and students, had the limpid vocal resources to make the composer’s deceptively simple songs bloom. Gabriel Reoyo as Dorval, the ardent and eventually successful pursuer of the heroine, acted with animation but sang with a woolly, strained tenor.

William Trabold was skillful in acting Dr. Tue, the aging bachelor who hopes to wed his ward, Lise, but offered tight, coiled vocalism.

Elizabeth Saunders, as the governess Margarita, exhibited a finely focused mezzo that tended to evaporate at the bottom; student Robin Parkin was Lise, the object of all the attention.

It also seemed a miscalculation to present the work in French, at least in so far as the long stretches of would-be comic dialogue were concerned. The cast exhibited a wide range of comfort with the language, as did the minuscule audience, judging from its minimal responses.

Daniel Kessner conducted his nine-piece pit band (reduced to seven when two oboes decamped after the overture) with buoyancy, flair and sympathy. But the players, set to the left of the stage, were frequently off-pitch.

Steve Parkin moved the characters intelligently around Owen W. Smith’s handsome cream-and-blue set pieces suggesting the front gates of facing mansions.

Linda Stones, a Southland mezzo-soprano and musicologist, prepared the edition of the opera, which will be repeated with this cast on Friday at the campus in Northridge.