Music: A Bit Higher

When Rudolf Bing set out last spring to improve the “visual aspects” of the Metropolitan Opera, one of the first eyesores he operated on was the Met’s stumbling opera ballet. Since dancing appears in some of the most popular operas in the standard repertory, e.g., Carmen, Tannhäuser, Traviata, La Gioconda, Bing aimed to get the Met variety considerably higher on its toes. He handed the responsibility to Lucia Chase’s Ballet Theatre; Lucia, in turn, delegated the job to her principal choreographer, greying, London-born Antony (Pillar of Fire) Tudor.

At the season’s first performance of Faust last week, Met-goers saw how much Director Tudor has accomplished. Even for the enthusiasts (others regard any ballet in opera as sand in the spinach), the answer was: not very much yet.

In tackling Faust, Bing and Tudor had reversed a 31-year Met precedent. In 1919, principally because Faust seemed entirely long enough (three hours) without it, the Met had dropped the 17-minute Walpurgis Night bacchanale that opens the fourth act. Most European opera companies (Paris is one exception) also ignore the number. But to Manager Bing, the ballet in which Helen of Troy, Cleopatra and other famous beauties appear at the summons of Mephistopheles to tempt Faust seemed an integral part of the opera.

Ballet Director Tudor had a rejuvenated company to work with. He had kept 15 members of the Met’s old company—some of them partly to satisfy the union. But he had 21 new dancers, picked more for their ability to “look and move well on the stage” than for their technique (“I can always teach them to dance”). For top polish, he had brought along Texas-born Ballerina Nana Gollner from Ballet Theatre.

What the Met audience saw was a considerable technical improvement on the old ballet. The stage was sometimes cluttered, but Tudor’s well-trained dancers got up on their toes, pirouetted nicely without crashing into one another. What was missing was the brilliant choreography of a man who has proved he can create it. The bacchanale was routine ballet that failed to raise the level of a routine performance.