Pueri Aquam De Silvas Ad Agricolas Portant, a delightful vignette set in the unforgettable epoch of pre Punic War Rome. Marcellus, the hero, is beset from all sides by the problems of approaching manhood. The story opens on the eve of his fifty-third birthday, as he prepares for the two weeks of festivities that are to follow. Suddenly, a messenger arrives and, just before collapsing dead at his feet, informs him that the Saracens have invaded Silesia, the home province of his affianced. He at once cancels the celebrations and, buckling on his scimitar, stumbles blindly from the house, where he is hit and killed by a passing oxcart.

The Albany Civic Opera's presentation of Spumoni's immortal Il Sevigli del Spegititgninino, with guest contralto Hattie Sforzt. An unusual, if not extraordinary, rendering of the classic myth that involves the rescue of Prometheus from the rock by the U.S. Cavalry was given last week in the warehouse of the Albany Leather Conduit Company amid cheers of ``Hubba hubba'' and ``Yalagaloo pip pip!''

After a ``busy'' overture, the curtain rises on a farm scene -- the Ranavan Valley in northern Maine. A dead armadillo, the sole occupant of the stage, symbolizes the crisis and destruction of the Old Order. Old Order, acted and atonally sung by Grunnfeu Arapacis, the lovely Serbantian import, then entered and delivered the well-known invocation to the god Phineoppus, whereupon the stage is quite unexpectedly visited by a company of wandering Gorshek priests, symbolizing Love, Lust, Prudence and General Motors, respectively. According to the myth, Old Order then vanishes at stage left and reappears at extreme stage right, but director Shuz skillfully sidesteps the rather gooshey problem of stage effects by simply having Miss Arapacis walk across the stage. The night we saw it, a rather unpleasant situation arose when the soloist refused to approach the armadillo, complaining -- in ad-lib -- that ``it smelled.'' We caught the early train to New York.