`YOUR OWN KING OF MUSIC' MEETS BILLING, MAKES EVERYONE HAPPY

The Opera Workshop's dinner theater presentation Saturday night, "Make Your Own Kind of Music," lived up to its billing. The cast of students and assistant professor Louisa Panou-Takahashi served up a potpourri of classic opera, musical theater, Greek folk music and pop songs along with the roast turkey on the menu.

About 250 people attended the second annual event at the University Center Ballroom.

The wry asides of last year's emcee, music professor David Green, were missing, but tenor Jason Shaffer was engaging and earnest in the role. He also sang "Maria" and his duet with Panou-Takahashi, "Tonight" -- both from "West Side Story" -- quite beautifully.

Another memorable duet from "La Traviata" was sung by Cary Nall, recent winner of a district Metropolitan Opera Audition, and Neal E. Boyd. Their voices blended sweetly.

The hefty, tuxedoed Boyd also kept the audience laughing through unanticipated problems with set changes, bulldozing a balky couch about the stage.

Shaffer would declare the couch for sale by the end of the night.

Nall showed why the audition judges chose her in her rendition of "Dearest Mama" from the 20th century American opera, "The Ballad of Baby Doe." She has great power in her upper range.

The ensemble highlight might have been the "Jellicle Songs" from the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, "Cats." The feline-costumed members of the cast prowled the audience singing "cynical cats, rabbinical cats."

They were Nall, Christy Roethemeyer, Amy Mueller, Joshua Rhine, Alvin Hillis, Shannon McCreight, Thad Ortman, Lance Lancaster, Jessica Littrell, Heather Fisher and Boyd.

Fisher breathed life into "Memories," a song that has almost been sung into a coma.

Panou-Takahashi inserted a moving moment with her version of a Greek protest song called "Epifania." The song was a paen to the students who occupied the University of Athens in 1974 and eventually forced the military junta to give way.

McCreight and Shaffer provided the intentional comic relief with their rendition of Sondheim's "Country House" from "Follies." It's a dinner table duel based on communication problems. "I've got nothing to conceal so there's nothing to reveal," sings he.

Billy Keys finished off the night by singing his own composition," Forever," James Taylor's "Country Road," and leading the crowd in a sing-along of the Beatles' "Let It Be."

James Sifferman, an associate professor of music, was the evening's able accompanist.