Music: Flying Dustman

Baldheaded, 51-year-old Baritone Friedrich Schorr of Manhattan’s Metropolitan Opera is a specialist in dignified Wagnerian Wotans. He almost never smiles. Last week, black-robed and bearded as Wagner’s Flying Dutchman, he scowled his way through the second act, knelt with dignity upon the Metropolitan’s splintery stage and prayed for his redemption. The prayer over, Baritone Schorr got up and, with a regal gesture, threw his black mantle about his shoulders. The gesture enveloped him in a cloud of dust from the Metropolitan’s unswept stage. The audience guffawed. When the act was over, Friedrich Schorr sulked in the wings, refused to come back for a single curtain call.