Mozart Meets P.D.Q. Bach on Comic Opera Bill

Scale isn’t everything, even in opera. What this weekend’s Ventura College Opera Workshop program lacks in grandness, it makes up for in resourcefulness and daring. It will present a pair of fully staged, compact comic operas, plucked from wildly different sources.

Mozart’s “The Impresario” is a satire of the music business (a ripe target even in the 18th century), about feuding divas. From a more recent vintage and an odd corner of the music world comes “Oedipus Tex,” by P.D.Q. Bach--a.k.a. Peter Schickele--who recently appeared in Thousand Oaks. The piece is described by the composer, in his usual punning manner, as “the dramatic oratorio that demonstrates that the only two sure things in life are death and Texas.”

The opera double-header is being directed by Dean Lundquist and Marc Dana Williams, music director/conductor. Linda Ottsen is the producer, Adena Patten the choreographer, and Elizabeth Helms the chorusmaster.

* Ventura College Opera Workshop presents Mozart’s “The Impresario” and P.D.Q. Bach’s “Oedipus Tex,” Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., and Sunday at 3 p.m., Ventura College Theater on Loma Vista Road between Ashwood Avenue and Day Road. $15 general; $12 senior citizens, faculty and staff; $10 students and children (regardless of age). (805) 654-6459.

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Put-Together Art: The act and mind-set of putting together disparate parts is at the heart of the current show at Ventura College’s Gallery 2. Welcome to the “sequel” to last year’s collage/assemblage show, culled nationally.

Perhaps more than in other corners of the fine art scene, aesthetics in the collage/assemblage scene are particularly subjective. For this viewer, certain artists manage the delicate balance better than others. David Sellers’ assemblage involves a strangely seamless collection of elements, including piano hammers, voyeuristic old snapshots and doll parts.

A dream logic holds it all together, as it does in Ruth Terrill’s “The Time Is Always Now,” a clean, joyful and utterly irrational collage. A darker persona hums in John Selleck’s “Waiting for Her to Come Out,” with its vague stalker theme accented by the black-painted corrugated cardboard.

Bill Woolway’s “Another Day, Another Dollar” combines rusty metal, rough wood slabs and folkish figures painted on in a disarmingly natural way. Judi Birnberg’s subtle, polyrhythmic design sense includes forms, lines and letters corralled into a happy heap. The fine art of heaping is what it’s all about.

* “Collage/Assemblage/USA--the Sequel,” Gallery 2 at Ventura College 2, 4667 Telegraph Road. Ends March 22. Call for viewing hours. (805) 648-8974.

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Regional Rearview: For anyone interested in a regional art history lesson, proceed directly to the California Oil Museum in Santa Paula. A small but rich sampling of works hangs as part of a selection of winning artworks from the Santa Paula Art Shows over the decades. The works have been collected by the city and can be seen scattered around different public buildings.

Most notable are paintings by the co-founders of the art show, back in 1937, who also went on to spearhead a genuine art scene in this hidden jewel of a Southern California town. Cornelis Botke is fittingly represented by his 1938 winner, simply called “Santa Paula,” an idyllic hilltop view of the town that has changed much less than most on the West Coast. He won again in 1951 with another nostalgic ode to fading rural life, “Old California,” painted with a charm akin to the WPA-era Regionalist style of Thomas Hart Benton.

His wife, Jessie Arms Botke, often set her sights and her fanciful palette on bird life and fowl. “The Intrusion,” which won a “best oil” award, is a close-up portrait of ducks, an image charged with tacit drama.

Fellow art show founder Douglas Shively, another important figure in Santa Paula’s art scene of yore, captures arboreal splendor with a simple flair with the 1969 winner, “Sycamores.”

* “And the Winner Is--Santa Paula Art Show Favorites Since 1937,” California Oil Museum, 1001 E. Main St., Santa Paula. Ends March 24. Wednesdays to Sundays, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. (805) 933-0076.