Music: Double Triumph

“My dearest dear.” sang the baritone to the soprano at West Berlin’s Deutsche Opera Berlin last week, “a triumph awaits you.” As a prophet,Baritone Thomas Stewart was only half right. For their roles in Composer Giselher Klebe’s opera Alkmene, a modern version of the Amphitryon legend, triumph awaited both Texas-born Stewart and his wife. Brooklyn-born Soprano Evelyn Lear. Raved the influential Frankfurter Algemeine: “What EvelynLear as Alkmene and Thomas Stewart as Jupiter attained belongs among the most gloriousachievements in all Berlin opera.”

Such unstinting European praise has greeted Soprano Lear and Baritone Stewart ever since they stopped knocking truitlessly on impresarios’ doors in the U.S. four years ago. Schooled in borscht belt hotels and summer stock, they both won Fulbright scholarships and in 1957 entered Berlin’s Hochschule für Musik. There they were discovered by Director Carl Ebert of the Berlin City Opera (predecessor of the Deutsche Opera Berlin), who signed them both for his company. Their debuts—Stewart’s as Escamillo in Carmen in 1958. Lear’s as the Composer in Ariadne the next year—started the couple on the road to recognition on the Continent.

Most singers would be happy to make a career out of the engagements that the pair has since turned down: Evelyn, for instance, has bypassed invitations from the Salzburg, Glyndebourne and Spoleto festivals. Heavily in demand for knotty contemporary scores, they have been especially careful to avoid being stereotyped in what Evelyn once called “this modrun crap.” have studiously built up a repertory of classical roles.

The Stewarts have seldom shared the same stage. “We never did try to become Jeanette MacDonald and Xelson Eddy.” says Stewart. But this season, they will appear together in Berlin in Don Giovanni and The Marriage of Figaro, as well as in subsequent performances of Alkmene. They are determined to return to the U.S. only on their own terms—preferably at the Metropolitan Opera. At the time of his wife’s Berlin debut, Stewart presented her with a mink stole. For the Met, he explains, “it will be full length.”