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No Opera at the Op'ry House Tonight - K of C Hall Feb,1986 No Opera at the Op'ry House Tonight - K of C Hall Feb,1986 No Opera at the Op'ry House Tonight - K of C Hall Feb,1986 No Opera at the Op'ry House Tonight - K of C Hall Feb,1986 No Opera at the Op'ry House Tonight - K of C Hall Feb,1986

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No Opera at the Op'ry House Tonight

The production, by Tim Kelly, is directed by Bob Cox and includes a cast of performers from the Effingham area. Admission to the production is $4 for adults and $2 for children, and includes free popcorn.

Theater-goers in Effingham will have a chance tonight and Saturday to cheer the hero and boo the villain when Fine Arts, County of Effingham presents the melodrama, "No Opera at the Op'ry House Tonight ... or ... Too Good To Be True."

Curtain time is 8 p.m. both days at the Effingham Knights of Columbus hall, 112 N. Fifth St.

Tickets for the family-entertainment production are $4 for adults and $2 for children age 12 and under, and may be purchased at the door. Included in admission price will be free popcorn.

Bob Cox of St. Elmo is the director, and Laurie Arnold and Frank Schoon-over are the assistant directors.

Featured in the cast are residents of the area: Cindy Borsch, Donald Paul Polk, Steve Abegg, Mike Hindman, Carrie

Sanderson, Jim Sherrick, Linda Huelskoetter, Judy Willenborg, Pam Brady, Tim Davis, Russ Kelley and Barb Kelley. Jeanne Cox will provide the piano accompaniment.

The play follows the lines of a typical melodrama: The villain, Baron Wolf-gang von Wolfpack, is out to marry the heroine, Alma Pumpernickle, a beautiful but impoverished opera prima donna, because she is to inherit gold mines that she doesn't know her late father found.

Alma, however, has fallen in love with a poor composer, Billy Bright, who is in reality a count who has fallen on hard times. Billy meets Alma when he tries to pursuade her aunt, Madam Violetta, to perform the opera he has written.

A number of subplots intertwine throughout the play, as Alma and her aunt seek to save the opera company and Wolfpack weaves his evil plot, aided by his accomplice, Lilly Liverspot.

Billy, trying to sell his opera so that his sister can have a dowry, finds his life complicated by his infatuation with Alma.

The melodrama takes place in the 1890s in Desert Rat, Ariz., and the cast is rounded out with a smattering of Western types: a sheriff, an Indian and an orphan who has lost her father, among others. A seafaring captain even makes an appearance.