Music: Erskine Opera

More than seven years ago, sardonic, leather-faced John Erskine, then president of Manhattan’s opulent Juilliard School of Music, remarked that he saw no future in opera “as it is imported from Europe and produced . . . in the big American opera houses.” Mr. Erskine craved librettos that could be heard “without the listener losing his self-respect.”

Of the five operas by U. S. composers since presented in the cozy, elegant Concert Hall of the Juilliard School, three have had librettos by ex-President Erskine. The first, Jack & the Beanstalk (music by Louis Gruenberg, composer of the opera Emperor Jones), was light, agreeable, vaudevillian (TIME, Nov. 30, 1931). The second, Helen Retires (music by George Antheil, Dadaist enfant terrible). was based on Erskine’s smart novel The Private Life of Helen of Troy, had surrealist scenery and freakish, hit-or-miss orchestration (TIME, March 12, 1934).

Last week a small audience of students and musical notables gathered to hear the premiere of Erskine’s third libretto. Like its predecessors, The Sleeping Beauty was a sophisticated, faintly boudoirish version of a well-known legend. Its Prince Charming was slightly discouraged by the princess’ somniloquent references to a previous boy friend, but the discouragement was temporary. The music, by Cleveland Institute of Music’s Director Beryl Rubinstein, sounded like a protracted anthology of French Impressionism. In the few moments when it was not dull it echoed the libretto’s mood of gentle irony. Said gently ironic Critic Oscar Thompson (New York Sun) : “The subject of the new opera was not of itself one to promise an exciting evening and Mr. Rubinstein’s score was never false to its subject.”