Music: For Distress Cases

Every young operatic understudy dreams of divas being suddenly stricken just before the curtain goes up. To the Metropolitan’s blonde, bosomy Regina Resnik, 24, the dream has become a monotonous reality.

Three years ago, in Manhattan’s Metropolitan Opera House, Soprano Resnik was dropped at the eleventh hour into the formidable role of Leonore in II Trovatore, which she had never even seen staged. She brought down the house. Last February, the Metropolitan gave her three hours’ warning that she was to sing Cio-Cio-San in Madame Butterfly on the radio. She had never sung the role before and she had had no rehearsal. But fast study, plenty of self-assurance and a big, warm voice carried her through.

By Plane to Bizet. Last week, Regina Resnik heard the familiar SOS again. At 2 o’clock in the morning, the telephone rang in her Manhattan hotel suite. Could she be in Montreal the next day to sing the title role in Bizet’s Carmen? Soprano Winifred Hieidt had been taken ill in Chicago. Regina had sung the role in French only once, two years ago. She was still tired from a trip to Colorado, where she had sung Leonore in 13 performances of Beethoven’s Fidelia. But by 2 p.m. she was on a plane for Canada, studying the score en route.

In blistering heat, she rehearsed for six hours with the Montreal Festival Opera Company in McGill University’s Molson stadium. The next day, she had hurried costume fittings, finished the preparations with a steak dinner. That night she gave a performance that made Montrealers forget the heat. Wrote the Montreal Gazette’s Critic Thomas Archer: “Miss Resnik did a magnificent piece of work, considering that she had to substitute at the last moment. But an honest and accomplished artist can do just that.”

Calm of Ignorance. Bronx-born Regina Resnik was beginning to feel the strain. Said she: “The other times, I guess I had the calm of ignorance, but now it is a nervous strain. I was really scared about Carmen.” She was also a little wary of getting a reputation as an operatic spare tire. She had little cause to worry. Since she won the Metropolitan Opera Auditions of the Air and made her surprise debut three years ago, she has sung in many a Met production—Toscx, A’ida, Cavalleria Rusticana, Madame Butterfly, etc. On the strength of such performances,

Conductor Bruno Walter picked her to sing Leonore in an English version of Fidelia in 1945. Wrote the New York Times’s Senior Music Pundit Olin Downes: “[She] showed that she had the voice, the high intelligence and the dramatic sincerity required for Leonore’s great role. . . . The voice is of a warm color and stamina and resourcefulness throughout its range.”

Says versatile Regina Resnik: “My career is still young enough so that every new thing is a new opportunity. As long as I have the nerve, I guess I will help out where I can.”