For the third time in the past four years, a Temple Opera production — in this case, Verdi’s Falstaff, a spring 2006 staging — won a first-place award in the National Opera Association’s opera production competition, the only national competition of its kind.

Once again, Temple Opera competed in the highest of the competition’s five categories, Level 1, going head-to-head with the nation’s largest, most prestigious college opera programs, many of which muster far greater resources.

“Temple Opera has generated an enormous amount of momentum,” said Robert Stroker, dean of Temple’s Boyer College of Music and Dance. “The NOA award is further evidence of the superior training, support and performance opportunities that our students get from our superb faculty and staff.”

Falstaff was conducted by Temple Opera’s musical director John Douglas, an associate professor of voice and opera at Boyer; directed by guest artist Leland Kimball of Opera Delaware; and produced by Jamie Johnson, Temple’s producer of opera.

The Temple Opera production of Pietro Mascagni’s seldom-performed L’Amico Fritz (a 2003 staging) took the 2005 Level 1 first-place award — the program’s first time competing at the top level. In 2004, Temple Opera’s 2002 production of Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel took the first-place award in Level 3.

For Douglas, who won last year’s Temple faculty Creative Achievement Award for his contributions to voice and opera at Boyer, the wins are particularly gratifying because of the degree of student participation in Temple Opera productions.

“Unlike most college companies, we engage students in all aspects of production, from building sets to sewing costumes,” Douglas said. “Even our music staff is composed entirely of students, which is unique among high-level college opera programs.”

Entries were submitted on videotape and divided into five categories based on the scale of the college program. They were assessed anonymously by judges from the nation’s top college opera programs for their musical accuracy and style, quality of singing and accompaniment, directorial concept, quality of acting and production values. Scenes from the winning productions were shown at the NOA convention’s awards banquet.

Temple Opera’s next production, Mozart’s Don Giovanni, will be staged on April 20 and 22 in Tomlinson Theater.