Baritone Ed Spitz is ecstatic about his role in Frank Loesser's The Most Happy Fella, calling it "the most challenging role I've ever had. I've never had a role like Tony, a role where the emotions go from low to high and back again." The Most Happy Fella is this year's Light Opera Group of the Negev (Logon) production in English, and it opens its five-city tour at the Beersheba Municipal Auditorium on March 5. Tony is the hero of Fella, as it's nicknamed.

He's a middle-aged Italian-born vineyard owner in California's Napa Valley. He sees Rosabella, a pretty waitress (Rosa Howden) in a San Francisco cafe, falls in love with her and proposes to her via the mail. And there's another courtin' couple too, Cleo and Herman, played by Arlene Gilboa and Steven Howden (last year's charismatic Curly in Oklahoma'), to add spice and laughter.

But like Cyrano de Bergerac, Tony is too shy to declare his love face to face, so when Rosabella asks for a photo, he sends her a picture of his foreman, Joe (Melvyn Rach). Of course when they meet, Rosabella thinks that Joe is Tony,

with near disastrous consequences, and a lot of people have to learn a lot about themselves before the ending, which is not exactly happy, but offers a chance at it. "We watch their characters grow," says Fella director Meir Vardi.

"It's Loesser's particular genius that he allows this process of maturation to happen. "I think the show concentrates on the problems of choice: Who is 'the right one' and their concept of the answer colors what the characters do. What is it that turns each of them on to the other." Spitz agrees, saying "Tony and I are about the same age, but I've been married for 35 years.

What makes Tony at age 57 suddenly decide he wants to get married? I have a bit of a problem with that, but I'm working on it. "Just to say he sees a pretty face through a window is facile. He's a likable guy SPITZ IS a practicing allergist at Beersheba's Soroka Hospital and a reserve lieutenant-colonel in the US Army.

One of Logon's founding members, he has played a leading role in every production. The first was Gilbert and Sullivan's Trial by Jury in 1980.

The spirited amateur group has since done just about every one of the British pair's perennially popular operettas, some of them twice, like The Mikado and The Pirates of Penzance.

Others include H.M.S. Pinafore, The Yeoman of the Guard and Iolanthe. They've also tried their hand at Viennese operetta, such as The Merry Widow and, most recently, Broadway musicals, the first of which was Fiddler on the Roof.

"This little hobby takes up a great part of my life," says the good doctor, who also did a stint as the group's producer for two years in the late '80s. The Most Happy Fella, which gave the world such musical staples as "Standin' on the Corner" and "Somebody, Somewhere," premiered on Broadway in 1956. Loesser had already made Broadway history with his music for the phenomenal Guys and Dolls in 1950 and the almost equally successful Where's Charley? in 1948.

But for Fella, he also wrote the libretto, which was based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Sidney Howard. There are many who say that Loesser's libretto

(he invented the engaging Cleo and Herman) was better than the original. Loesser had an equally successful career in Hollywood where, he created songs for more than 60 movies.

He went back to Hollywood in the middle of his Broadway career to write the songs that Danny Kaye sang in Hans Christian Andersen. Spitz thinks that Tony gets many of the best tunes in Fella. His own favorite is the ballad he sings to Rosabella's picture in Act 1, "Say You Love Me, Maybe." He enjoys working with Vardi, "who gives me room to develop." This is Vardi's second production for Logon, after last year's Oklahoma'.

He enjoys the group, saying "I don't push for results. I like to go with the actor to build the character each is capable of. But I do wish they'd learn to come to rehearsal on time'" This year, as last year, David Waldman is musical director and conductor, with Howden doing the choreography.

The show is in English with Hebrew supertitles. In addition to Beersheba, The Most Happy Fella will play in Haifa, Jerusalem, Rehovot, Kfar Sava and Netanya.