If you thought The Summer I Turned Pretty had a messy love triangle, wait until you hear about what Mozart was cooking up in 1774.

The University of Maryland Maryland Opera Studio opened its production of La finta giardiniera Saturday night at The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center. Students sang Mozart’s time-honored pieces alongside live orchestral accompaniment conducted by opera studio director J. Bradley Baker.

Like most operas, La finta giardiniera tells its entire story through song with Italian lyrics. The Clarice’s Kay Theatre projected English supertitles throughout the performance.

The show features seven roles, with each character participating in solo numbers and group harmonies. The opera studio’s program featured a synopsis for the three acts, detailing the messily entangled web of romances, though some audience members went into the show blind.

Amikea Mercado, a student at Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda, chose not to learn the show’s plot beforehand.

“We fully thought it was gonna be purely instrumental,” she said. “And then they opened the curtains.”

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Performers displayed a wide range of talents on stage. In addition to singing long operatic solo numbers, they conveyed complex emotions without the use of dialogue. They used fine-tuned musical delivery, facial expressions, body language and choreography to express the joys and sorrows of their characters.

“It’s pretty cool. I can definitely feel the emotions of the singers,” Mercado said during intermission. “I like the music that goes along with it.”

The show’s pit orchestra played almost nonstop throughout the performance’s two-and-a-half-hour run time. The energetic strings and harpsichord helped cement Mozart’s iconic classical aesthetic.

The audience reacted favorably to many of the opera’s comedic moments. Actors silently acted out humorous choreography upstage while a solo was taking place in the foreground, adding to the liveliness of scenes.

The awkward Contino Belfiore, played by opera performance graduate student Douglas Culclasure, was the crux of many of the show’s comedic moments.

In his introductory scene, the character mistakes another woman for his fiancee, enraging his betrothed. Belfiore, in an effort to apologize, attempts to serve his actual soon-to-be-bride a cup of tea, but exaggeratedly shakes the saucer with his trembling hand.

When the love triangles intertwine at the end of Act 1, Nardo, played by opera performance graduate student Bryan Bennett, becomes so overwhelmed by the ensuing drama that he pulls out a flask from his pocket.

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“This is one of Mozart’s early operas, and it’s not very often performed,” said Zhihui Pang, opera performance doctoral student who played Il Podestà. “We have a lot of space to be creative, so we can see a lot of really funny stagings happening … that is the creation of both the director and our singers.”

But even with the opera’s many comedic moments, the performers still effectively portrayed the dramatic quality of Mozart’s work. By the end of Act 1, every character was experiencing the grief of heartache.

Junior architecture major Katarina Patzkowski was drawn to the opera studio’s performance because of her vintage interests.

“I personally am a fan of anything classical music, anything in that whole realm … gives me a sense of, ‘Oh, this is prestigious, like we’re going old school,’” she said.

True to the opera studio’s goals, La finta giardiniera featured a sparse set with only a few pieces to convey the setting. Performers used their creativity and acting to infuse the stage with realism and life, and scenic designers used colored lights throughout the show to help convey different locations and emotions.

“I just feel very glad to be at [this university] and part of this show,” Pang said. “Our hard work really pays off. In the end, we received a very, very good reaction from the audience, which I think is really good.”