An awesome effort on the part of BU's Savoyards knocks 'em dead in the aisles. Their current production, Offenbach's The Grand Duchess of Gerolstein, shows all the hallmarks of a professional production.

All of the hallmarks, that is, except the hall itself. Hayden Hall on Commonwealth Ave. is the Savoyards' current home.

Blessed as the home of what must be one of the nation's most outstanding amateur opera groups, BU went all out on Hayden Hall's otherwise unused stage.

Meanwhile, BU maintains a fully equipped, professional theatre across town. Why can't the Savoyards be given the facilities they deserve?

Those who find this a trivial point had to be at Hayden Hall and hear Sheila-Gail Schneider's moving aria as the Grand Duchess declares her love for the Private-turned-General Fritz, which was marred by an incredible speaker hum. Schneider performed the scene so movingly it almost seemed out of context in a comedy.

A highly competent orchestra did a truly professional job in trying to stay under the vocalists. A proper pit and an acoustically designed hall would have put greater emphasis on their technical proficiency.

Two of the great failings of opera companies everywhere, including the Met, were refreshingly avoided. Opera singers all seem to be born with incurably poor diction and the ability of drugged boxing kangaroos.

Lyrics came through the orchestra as clearly and soundly as could be expected, given the hall. Even at Lincoln Center patrons can be found nudging each other in the ribs going "What's he saying?" Little of the operetta was lost in the singing.

Sets and double takes stole the show. A genuine "aah" cooed through the audience at the opening of the second act.

In brief, the plot revolves around the efforts of the court of the tiny Teutonic principality of Gerolstein to get the 20-year-old Duchess to settle down and stop chasing every handsome man she sees. In the middle of it all, to amuse her, Baron Puck, a pompous fop if ever there was one, declares war on a neighboring principality. In a truly comic setting, Gerolstein wins the war and the Duchess finally settles down with the "right" choice, the Caspar Milquetoast Prince Paul.

Groucho Marx could have taken a few lessons from Offenbach before he made "Duck Soup." See the Grand Duchess at work and you'll see why.

Tomorrow, Friday, and Saturday evenings, like last weekend, the BU Savoyards are initiating their followers into well established pre-Savoyard history - the Offenbach craze that swept the world in the 1860's and '70's, and first inspired Arthur Sullivan to emulate a sure-fire formula for contemporaneous musical satire.

The Savoyards chose Offenbach's Grand Duchess of Gerolstein, last performed in Boston in 1907, to prove the point, and released a flood of melody and uninhibited satirical fun long missing from the local scene. This piece, premiered in Paris in 1867, was a tongue-in-cheek satire of rising German militarism, skillfully disguised by a score of the most stylish and impelling sort, and, we are told in carefully researched program notes, it proved to be "the most widely performed theatrical piece in the world for five years."

A roving eye
The Grand Duchess is an imaginary young soverign with a roving eye for romance, who hand-picks Fritz, an ambitious private from her ranks ("no wounds, no campaigns"), and makes him both a general and a baron to confound the military and the aristocracy who would assume her rule. The problem is that Fritz loves Wanda, a peasant girl, who, despite the fact that she becomes "intimidated by his high rank and prestige," wins him away from the fickle Duchess.

It's a contest accompanied by the most lighthearted complications, really, and one is faced with trifling crises (as is the case in the G & S operettas) which are amusingly met with a song, a sigh, and a stiff upper lip. Mock-serious ceremony is likely as not to take over at a crucial point-as when the Duchess presents Fritz with "le sabre de mon pere" in a stirring number exhorting him to subdue the foe. When he returns later on with "le sabre" bent out of recognition as the result of domestic contention, the general reaction is expressed in a splendidly grave, musical ensemble of quasi-operatic proportions.

But it is the melody-packed Offenbach score, rather than the giddy Meilhac-Halevy plot, that keeps The Grand Duchess moving at top speed. One delicious musical confection follows another in the form of a march, a galop, a ballad, a waltz-a deluge of tunes of substance and invention: the dashing "I love the military," persuasive "Say to him," comic "Soldier of fortune," sentimental "The blushing bride," dynamic "Get to horse," witty and contemporaneous "What the papers dare to say," are only some of them.

While the Savoyards are college performers, and one doesn't expect slick Broadway standards, their Grand Duchess on opening night was wonderfully sophisticated foolishness, fast-paced and high spirited. David Stockton kept a sturdy orchestra of 30 and chorus of 18 in fine control, and the cast of singers-actors-comedians was on its collective toes.