Music: Sunken Bell

In the beginning Rautendelein was just a pale, elfin creature who lived in a German wood at the bottom of a well. She was really no being at all, just a light, pagan spirit who kissed men’s eyes and made them well. And as such she came to Gerhart Hauptmann who put out his fingers swiftly and caught her for a play about a village bellcaster.

Hauptmann’s play begins in the forest with Rautendelein and three of her faery ilk; Nickelmann, the old man of the well, all moss and weeds and dripping; a witch whose herbs were powerless against humans, and a mischievous faun whose first prank was to push down into a lake the bell which had just been cast by a certain villager named Heinrich. This Heinrich, like his wife Magda, the schoolmaster, the barber, and the pastor, was a simple peasant. All his life he had worked on the bell to hang in the church tower—so long, so hard that, when the bell crashed down the mountainside into the lake, his heart cracked too, would not mend until Rautendelein kissed him and took him with her into the forest. There, with new youth, new courage, he started a second bell, sang praises as he worked. But when the pastor found him, asked him what church the bell was for, he weirdly said “no church,” sang on, swearing that before he would leave Rautendelein the sunken bell would ring again. The sunken bell did ring and by the hand of Magda who drowned herself to ring it. Too deep the crack was then for even Rautendelein to heal. He cursed her, left her, came back to her and died, while she went back to the old Nickelmann who had wanted her all along.

Last week La Campana Sommersa, the music by Ottorino Respighi to a libretto by Claudio Guastalla taken from Hauptmann’s play, had its U. S. premiere at the Metropolitan Opera House, Manhattan. Rautendelein was still its inspiration, Heinrich still the heckled human. And for it all Respighi had made lovely, lyric music. But operatic singers, operatic trappings rarely enhance a poetic mood. Soprano Elisabeth Rethberg as Rautendelein managed her bulk skillfully, sang difficult music easily, spent clear high notes’ lavishly. But her appearance, her acting left little illusion. Nor could Giovanni Martinelli forget he was a tenor for the sake of the bellcaster. Dramatically it was Baritone Giuseppe de Luca in a minor role who served best. As Nickelmann he never once stepped out of the well, just poked up his moss-covered head, beat his webbed hands against the side. Yet when with a “Brekekekex” he lost Rautendelein, the audience was sorrier than it ever was for Heinrich. And it was happier for the “Brekekekex” that won her back than for any of her flawless cadenzas.

The composer had the ovation. A sturdy, middle-aged Italian, Respighi had come to the U. S. especially for the premiere. Only in Heaven, he announced after the general rehearsal, could one hope for so perfect a production as the Metropolitan’s. The Metropolitan’s audience tried to return the compliment, called him again and again before the curtain. For critics The Sunken Bell was commendable, if unimportant, an opera to make one pleasant evening, if scarcely half a dozen.