Music: Kansas Lakm

Kansas Lakmé

Pretty, blue-eyed Marie Wilkins hardly knew what to make of it. She suddenly found herself singing in place of Lily Pons at Manhattan’s Metropolitan Opera.

Just a fortnight previously Marie had left Lawrence, Kans. to try the Metropolitan Opera Auditions of the Air. Last year she had missed out. This was to be her last try. If she failed, she had decided to go on keeping house for her husband, University of Kansas Music Professor Joseph F. Wilkins, and their eight-year-old daughter.

Marie Wilkins never got her second Audition of the Air. As soon as she arrived in Manhattan, with a small traveling bag and a determined expression, she went to see Metropolitan Conductor Wilfred Pelletier about a second audition. Conductor Pelletier asked her if she knew the score of Lakmé, She did not—and she had heard the opera only once in her life. But she thought that she could learn it in two weeks.

Conductor Pelletier gave Marie Wilkins a week. She practiced herself hoarse and trotted down to the Metropolitan to get some pointers listening to Lily Pons rehearse the score. But she found that Soprano Pons was laid up with laryngitis. Soprano Wilkins agreed to rehearse in her place.

Next day, a few hours before the performance, Soprano Pons was still laid up. Soprano Wilkins managed to assemble a costume out of odds & ends. With the help of Stage Director Desire Defrere, she learned Lakmé’s stage business. At 8:30, before a surprised Metropolitan audience, Marie Wilkins walked confidently before the footlights to tackle one of the most difficult coloratura parts in opera. Her singing, unlike the occasion and her own bravery, was not extraordinary. She muffed the high E at the end of the famed Bell Song. But as she trilled her way across the finish line the audience applauded to the rafters.