Music: Metropolitan Opera

Once a year the bronzed brick building known to Manhattanites as the Metropolitan Opera House has its one big social night, the opening of the Opera Season. The occasion is a sort of public festival for those who love music and for those who like to see and be part of the show. So last week the Metropolitan filled again with bulging dowagers and stuffed shirts, music lovers, some in white ties, others in frayed collars, stridulous debutantes with glassy-eyed escorts, and a great dun horde which prides itself on loving music more than show but nonetheless selects the first night of the opera to hear it. The restless din of Society nearly swamped moments of the final act. It was too much for one outraged Teuton who drooped among the lower classes behind the standees’ rail. “Quiet please!” he wailed over the surging strains of Artur Bodanzky’s orchestra and the equally surging conversational hum. “Der iss an opera going on. It iss a good opera; you might like it.”

An opera was, in fact, going on—Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, best-seller of recent Metropolitan seasons, its cast headed in familiar top-notch style by Lauritz Melchior and Kirsten Flagstad. Evident from the first drop of Mr. Bodanzky’s baton was a greatly improved orchestra. Not so evident, but present nevertheless, was a brand new stage floor capable of supporting even a Wagnerian soprano without creaking. Last season’s major Wagnerian discovery, svelte Swedish Kerstin Thorborg, again drew critical superlatives for her performance as the vacillating Brangane. Youthful American Julius Huehn again donned whiskers, impersonated the aging, battle-scarred Kurvenal. Emanuel List was the oratorical Mark. The box office, which had sold out the house one hour after opening its seat sale a week before, grossed an estimated $15,000.

On the second night, with Society’s annual mass raid over for the year, Richard Strauss’ Rosenkavalier, first of the forthcoming three-opera “Strauss cycle,” provided Soprano Lotte Lehmann with one of her most famous and mellowest roles, that of the absent Field Marshal’s wife. On the third night debuts began:

¶ Small, barrel-chested Baritone Carlo Tagliabue of Milan’s La Scala appropriately strutted the proscenium as Ethiopia’s Ras Amonasro in Aida. Looking club-footed in high-heeled stage shoes, Mr. Tagliabue was not so bad that the critics had to boo him. But Gina Cigna (Aida) sang more than one of her Numi Pietàs a quarter of a tone flat, while greying Giovanni Martinelli (Radames) eked out aging vocal chords with a veteran’s caginess.

¶ Most important Metropolitan debutant was German Heldentenor Carl Hartmann, who had made previous U. S. appearances with the German Opera Company in 1931. As principal protagonist in one of the finest Siegfrieds in decades, long-legged, prancing Hartmann acted his role as though he were living it, sang and pounded his anvil with energy and musicianship, peeled the armor from sleeping Brunnhilde (Marjorie Lawrence) with a taxidermist’s skill. Vocally he wavered once or twice, but he lived up to the excellent reports of his ability which had leaked out from rehearsals.

¶ German Bass-Baritone Adolf Vogel proved the most convincing and ear-filling of recent Alberichs.

¶ German-born Soprano Marita Farell chirped somewhat saggingly as the Voice of the Forest Bird.

¶ Finest ornament in the whole performance: the brilliant orchestral playing under Conductor Bodanzky (Siegfried’s famous horn-calls are rarely played with such sureness and finish).

Later performances of the week, Massenet’s Manon and Bizet’s Carmen, rested with the latterly feeble “French” contingent of the Metropolitan’s forces which now consists almost exclusively of Americans, Australians, Brazilians, Italians, Belgians and Germans and produces a corresponding hash of styles.

By present standards, however, pretty Bidu Sayao as Manon, Richard Crooks as Des Grieux, John Brownlee as Lescaut dished up a digestible version of Massenet’s very Gallic score. Bruna Castagna, whose buxom, pleasant Carmen is the best Manhattanites have heard since the days of Geraldine Farrar, had a nearspat with Conductor Gennaro Papi when he tried to slow down her singing of the Habanera. But the incident passed off in mutual glares.