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Show Summer Festival Count Almaviva listens to the "greatest barber of all Seville. The nineteenth annual University Summer Festival was brought indoors to the Pioneer Memorial Theater stage this year. The move - designed to avoid inclement weather and outdoor acoustical problems - facilitated an enlargement of the summer program to include the popular broadway play You Can't Take It With You as well as the traditional opera and ballet selections. Veteran actor Leon Ames starred in the Hart and Kaufman play as the easy going grandfather of a household dedicated to the philosophy that life should be a pleasant experience and not a fight for success. Immediately preceding You Can't Take It With You was Rossini's comic opera Barber of Seville, deftly directed by Ardean Watts. The music and staging combined delightfully to tell the story of how Count Almaviva of Seville enlisted the aid of Figaro, the "greatest barber of all Seville," to sneak himself into the presence of old Dr. Bartolo's ward and intended bride Rosina to win her love away. Figaro, played by Roy Samuelson, proved himself to be a better barber than trickster and a better singer than barber. Destined to steal the hearts of festival patrons, though, was Leo Delibes' ballet Coppelia, a delicate and beautiful story in dance of a master doll-maker whose dolls were so lifelike that they almost caused a split between two village lovers. But the truth was discovered, and the jealous lover returned as the village celebrated a Festival of Belles. 106 |