MUSIC REVIEW : FALLIS PARODIES OPERA IN ‘PRIMADONNA’ AT LMU

As Anna Russell, Gerard Hoffnung and others have amply delineated, there is definitely room for self-parody in High Musical Culture.

Now, via the Stratford Festival in Canada, materializes “Primadonna,� as embodied by Canadian coluratura Mary Lou Fallis. Experienced Wednesday night at Murphy Recital Hall on the Loyola Marymount campus, “Primadonna� swoops and glides in the vocal stratosphere. Our heroine shares her fears, pratfalls and dreams with us; she even tries to sing while stuffing her face with Sachertorte .

Fallis is a game comedienne and an accomplished singer, and the combination made for a generally goofy, if decidedly uneven, evening of middle-low musical comedy. The general tone of the show is self-deprecating--�Aren’t we opera singers a loopy lot?�--and also lightly (too lightly) parodic of the formats and trappings of operatic performance.

The first half of Fallis’ excursion makes stops at seminal points in her fictional diva’s life: the first song (at age 2 1/2), the first music contest (she still detests the winner) and thence to her current lofty status as Canada’s most celebrated divissima --�something of a contradiction in terms,� as Fallis/Primadonna confessed. All through this half, Fallis’ winning smirk, wide range of vocal expressions and tightly written gags keep matters moving along gigglingly.

It’s in the second half--devoted to a more frontal assault on operatic practice--that the tempo bogs down. There’s a lot more straight singing, and since Fallis (unlike Russell) can really sing, that’s not at all a bad thing. But a misfired attempt to contemporize Lucia di Lammermoor’s mad scene and a rather lame parody of all those tired “Gala Vienna Nights� interrupted the tidy comic beat.

Still, there are enough titters to keep one’s attention, and Fallis makes “Primadonna� an evening worth perfecting. Her three-night engagement at Loyola Marymount ends tonight.