Music: Barking Busoni

What kind of horseplay was this? On the opening night of the New York Philharmonic-Symphony, with no conductor in sight, a trumpeter stood up and blew a shattering blast at the audience. A figure in top hat and cape leaped to the podium and began to orate: ” ‘Tis not for children, not for gods, this play; for understanding people ’tis designed . . .” Finally, Conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos appeared and gave the downbeat, and the perplexed audience settled down to the first U.S. performance of Ferruccio Busoni’s “theatrical capriccio,” Harlequin.

There were no gods present, and few children. Philharmonic first-nighters, who have learned to expect surprises from Conductor Mitropoulos, did their best to be understanding people. Most of them found it good fun.

Busoni, an Italian who spent much of his life in Berlin and was more famous as a pianist and pedagogue (and transcriber of Bach) than as a composer, wrote the libretto for Harlequin on a visit to the U.S. in 1915. He hung his sardonic and sometimes savage satire on romantic opera, World War I and man in general, on a framework of commedia dell’arte. Harlequin is Faust in evening clothes, and his suave cynicism corrodes everyone it touches—an old Dante-reading tailer, his young wife, Harlequin’s own wife, her lover, a doctor and a priest.

The music, as terse in style as the libretto, is sardonic too. Sample: the young guitar-playing tenor of the piece (David Lloyd) manages to parody the Walthers and Rodolfos of romantic German and Italian opera without sounding exactly like either.

Conductor Mitropoulos, who once studied composition with Busoni and as a result took up conducting, staged his concert version of the satire more for barks than bites—in fact, it fell just short of slapstick. He arranged his orchestra on two sides of the stage, so that his singers had all the freedom of movement they could use.

All that was missing was scenery. But an excellent cast, with John (Fledermaus) Brownlee as Harlequin, Soprano Martha Lipton as his wife, and Bass-Baritone James Pease as the priest, just about made up for that.